More often than not, I seem to be feeling really anxious and tense these days. There are a lot of contributing factors here, but I think it’s mostly pregnancy-related. I feel like I barely have a handle on the whole “working mom” thing right now, and the one kid I have is fairly self-sufficient. The idea of throwing a baby into the mix is… well, really freaking scary, to be quite honest. Babies are really needy (uh, in case you weren’t aware of that), and I’m just not sure how I’m going to balance it all when I don’t feel like I have a good handle on life as it is.

I think a lot of this is that I don’t exactly have fond memories of the first few months of Catie’s life. Looking back, I probably should’ve gotten on some kind of medication for post-partum depression, but I didn’t because I thought my feelings were normal. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s exactly normal to feel like your life is a black hole of despair, no? I was just so exhausted that I couldn’t see that things would ever improve. And of course, they did improve, and relatively quickly at that. Sometime after the two- or three-month point, Catie started sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time, and I slowly (slooooowly) started to feel more sane.

Still, the idea of enduring that again isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to. Which is probably why it took me so long to come around to the idea of having a second baby, when it seems like a lot of my friends had their second babies ages ago. But it makes me feel like the Worst Mother Ever. What kind of pregnant lady isn’t excited about her upcoming arrival? I mean, of course I’m excited to meet this little person. I just wish there was a fast-forward button for that initial newborn phase. Is that awful? It feels awful.

And yeah, I talk about this stuff with my therapist. I don’t know if I also need medication or not at this point, I’m still trying to figure that out. Mostly, I just think how nice it would be if I could drink something fruity with vodka in it. But that won’t happen for probably at least three more months. Dammit.