Listless

For my 35th birthday I got myself: a diaper bag, new cushions for a hand-me-down glider, and a nursery monitor. Feeling a bit pathetic.

Also I am totally burned out on pregnancy books. I went through my pile today to return some to the friend who lent them to me. I copied four books' lists of "what to bring to the hospital" for later reference. I'm not going to pack until I'm actually in labor, I decided, but I will make a list ahead of time.

The good side of this burnout is that I was inspired to get into my glass studio and play with stained glass for a few hours tonight, which is something I haven't really felt like doing lately.

My therapist and I had an interesting conversation earlier this week about how I feel like my (normally sharp science-oriented) brain has been way under-stimulated lately, and how I am afraid I am wearing out all my friends with my incessant talk of babies, labor, and pregnancy. She helped me to separate two issues: whether I want to make the time for the things I used to do (stained glass, piano, sciencey geeky things, reading math books for fun), and coping with self-judgment about my shift in focus right now. The self-criticism side of it is something I don't need, yet it's hard to let go of how other people (who don't have kids, aren't interested in babies, etc) see me right now. It's bad enough that strangers see just the "pregnant woman" identity, but I squirm thinking that I've truly become less cool because the mama-to-be side of me is so dominant.

Climbing tomorrow should help my psyche a bit, although I think it will probably be my last time on the wall until after baby - my belly is growing and dropping at an alarming rate and it is getting too hard to keep my body far enough away from the wall.