Overwhelmed

I'm going a little crazy today. It's those darn contractions. They won't let me get anything done. We have a serious laundry backup problem, and I got some of it started yesterday but not much accomplished on my own (Terence folded some & that helped). Today I planned to at least get a few loads folded and put away-- seeing as I have piano lessons this afternoon and my living room is a disaster filled with baskets of dirty clothes, piles of folded clean laundry, and various crap of the kids on the floor. Something has to be done. But literally every time I get up today I have a contraction.

Mentally I'm going a little crazy. How can I have contractions every time I stand up? It feels sometimes like they never stop, so maybe my belly is just uncomfortably tight all the time today & I only notice it when I'm on my feet? Or I'm causing them just by stressing about it? Or they are Braxton-Hicks that normal pregnant moms don't notice because their body hasn't been stretched out by five pregnancies? Or are the contractions caused by the fibroids I have (as my OB has speculated) and my uterus is just irritable but no dilating will take place?

I'm so tired of feeling guilty because my house is a disaster. I feel guilty when I watch Terence frantically trying to get a load of dishes done and fold laundry and feed the kids. I feel guilty when my sister comes to clean my house because everything is so awful that it takes her hours to get just the bare minimum done. I feel utterly embarrassed because every time a piano student has come for a lesson during the last couple of months there has been laundry on one of the couches in my living room. (As if the kids I teach are judging me! Still, I'm mortified that I don't have a spotless room when they come over. It's even worse when the moms come inside.)

Yet, I can't argue with how uncomfortable I feel when I get up and try to do something about it. Imaginary or not, it DOES feel like I am having contractions. Maybe they seem worse to me than they really are-- I have a notoriously low pain threshold. So when I stand there and grimace, one hand on my stomach, waiting for the tightness to pass, my husband goes ballistic. Then I feel guilty because I'm trying to do something-- or because I'm not drinking enough water.

To add to my mental distress, I'm feeling very overwhelmed at the moment. It was easier when the kids were out of school. School brings the stress of homework and projects and book reports. Working with B on this kind of stuff has never been easy, and every time we try to work on her homework, she gets stubborn and whiny and I lose my temper. I still have my two callings at church, and for whatever reason, I'm finding them harder and harder to handle. M has activity days & her Faith in God award to be working on. J is starting Cub Scouts this month and needs a uniform & all the trappings (and Scouts is just intimidating to me all the way around). He also needs to start working on his Faith in God award. Just little things like visiting teaching, which should be no problem at all since my companion does all the work on this, add to what is beginning to feel like a burden that is too heavy to bear. Most of all, I feel a looming anxiety over the fact that I do not have a space ready for this baby (nor even basics like baby clothes) and I know I can't really do anything about it right now, either.

And I feel guilty about feeling overburdened because nothing about this should be all that strenuous or worrisome.

Underneath all this, I have this horrible fear that I will go all the way to 40 weeks or beyond, with not a hint of all these contractions doing anything. And then I will have inconvenienced everyone around me for nothing. Just Heidi being crazy, thinking things are difficult with the pregnancy and demanding help that she doesn't really need.

It's exhausting, this mental confusion. I'm trying to tell myself that if I can just survive the next ten weeks, everything will be OK. Then I will be 36 weeks-- I can go ahead and tackle my house and let the contractions come if they will. But I wonder if that will really help me stop feeling overwhelmed. . . .