It is 4:03 on Friday morning, and I had another dream that my husband is divorcing me. I am not insecure in my marriage; it’s only when I’m pregnant that I have these serial abandonment dreams. This one was a continuation of the last one, so it just got worse. This time I asked my family “there must be another woman, I mean, right?” And they, seeing that he was serious about apparently never speaking to me again, began to think it wasn’t really my fault, but of course this dream was horrible, because I was sure it was.

I think this pregnancy it’s worse. Before I would dream that he had died in a horrible car accident, the kind of waking nightmare you have when your husband is twenty minutes late coming home from work and you’re stirring dinner on the stove and the kids are wild in the background and you wonder how you’d ever cope since he’s surely dead on the highway because he isn’t answering his phone and he hasn’t called to explain that he just had to finish that one application before he could leave his desk.

This time it’s always divorce, and it’s always much worse, and I wake up feeling so sick at heart. I feel, in fact, just like I felt in March two years ago when my mom called me before church and told me that Marcy’s husband had left her. Then, nothing we could say was any comfort. We all agreed it would’ve been easier if he had died, loving her.

Now, my sister is getting married this summer. She is different: stronger, not emotionally insecure. She’s not a doormat anymore, she can tell a guy to take a hike if he isn’t good enough for her, if he doesn’t love her and respect her as she now knows she deserves.

Her fiance is a very nice man. He’s divorced, also, with three kids, also, and they have lots of other things in common, including exes who make very nice villains of their separate pieces. I have seen him with Marcy’s kids, and he is as good with Marcy’s kids as my husband is with ours, or almost; some of that just takes time. He and Marcy are more alike in the ways that matter than she and her first husband were. I think, in general, that they will have a good marriage, if anyone wanted my opinion on it.

At Thanksgiving (the first time I met him and his kids) Marcy told me she had given him one of my posts to read (the one about how blended families can be beautiful), and she said she liked my most recent post (the one about the snowy day), because it had my usual blend of frustration with motherhood ending in acceptance and [joy].

And then she said that her fiance (who is the residential parent) used his wife’s blog against her in the custody hearings. I quickly joked that Dick wouldn’t ever have to do that — he knows if he ever left, I wouldn’t dream of fighting him for custody.

But I can’t forget that conversation, at 4:18 in the morning when I’ve woken with the copper residue of fear in my mouth and the tearful certainty that in reality my husband would never, ever leave me, and more, if he ever did, that he would never take these words of mine, these words that I have labored so strenuously to deliver, honestly, onto the page.

Because there have been times when I resent my children, when I resent motherhood, when I think what could have been if I’d pursued my other dreams instead. And if I thought my husband, my Tom, who in our first year of marriage, ever since that tender beginning, labored beside me our final year of college, when we holed up, side-by-side, stopping only to eat and drink and talk, once in a while, to share the questions and answers we were so elegantly, passionately weaving into our papers and essays, if he were to belittle and demean the offerings of my heart, however so pitiful and inadequate they are once sprung from my short fingers, I would never be able to forgive him. I would know, finally, that he didn’t understand, that he never would, never had, never wanted to, and how could you ever stay married to someone like that?

Of course divorce is always betrayal, and it’s a better betrayal than the betrayal of self or of the children one swears on one’s life to love and protect, and the question of who betrayed whom first is one that only God and the families of the first-betrayed really care about anymore. And sometimes it is a betrayal forced though the first-betrayed would have forgiven anything if only the betrayer would reconsider.

I remember thinking, right before Tom and I were married, that marriage wouldn’t be such a significant, and potentially joy-giving institution, if it weren’t also such an unfathomable risk. The more of yourself you commit, the more you stand to lose if you are betrayed; if you commit less, there is less to be betrayed, but also much less to make the marriage worth desiring. Total giving of self, of merging of dreams and hopes and plans and subduing of extraneous, give-up-able wants, is vulnerability defined, and also the only hope for making a marriage so good, so life-sustaining, that the thought of losing it, fueled by raging fetus hormones, is enough to make one wish it were morning and no longer night.

When I was in 10th grade Honors English (Mrs. Dart), we read To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s an easy read, and a compelling story: I read it that first night. Then I went back to school and realized we were only supposed to read one chapter a day, and we had to fill out a lame, lame, lame worksheet every day to prove we’d read it. I hated (HATED) going back and filling out those stupid worksheets. (In (expletive) HONOR’s English, for crying out loud.)

My AP English class a couple years later was a million times better, and worth the price of admission to public school. Mr. Olsen stood at the front of the class, strumming his guitar and reciting poetry. We read books and wrote essays. I learned how to argue a point with evidence from the text, and to love poetry even if I did recognize the rhyme and meter. He was a Dead Poet’s Society-type of teacher, without the Robin Williams creepiness.

But was it worth suffering through two years of Mrs. Dart’s “honors” to get one year of Mr. Olsen’s sublime rendering of the William Carlos Williams verse?

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I still remember the tune he wrote to accompany it. I can’t recite the poem without singing it the way he did. His favorites were Dylan Thomas, John Donne, and Bob Dylan. I loved books before him, but all of my appreciation of poetry comes from those first fifteen minutes of class every day when we read our way through the anthology of poetry and discovered The Silken Tent, and Emily Dickinson. I did my college thesis on Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

We went to Sally’s parent-teacher conference last night. Mrs. W. loves Sally, and Sally loves her. Sally is helpful, cheerful, bright, blah blah blah. Sally’s grades were all A’s and B+’s. Dick and I being who we are, and one of those B+’s being in reading, we wanted to know why. Sally didn’t read at age three or anything, but once she did start reading (at seven-ish), she caught up right quick. In the past month she’s read A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and the second Percy Jackson book.

Mrs. W. pulled out Sally’s DRA form and showed us where she’s at a fifth grade level for fluency, speed, and vocabulary, but lost points on comprehension, summary, and reflection. Fair enough. Those are important things, only it turns out the lack is in her comprehension of the test, not the text. I pointed out that the questions were poorly worded (asking for a “list” but expecting “list and describe”) and that a summary by definition means that you do not include every single detail. As for reflection, I am beginning to think that she is even more literal than I am, because she answered the question accurately, concisely, but apparently not reflectively enough to satisfy the district rubric.

Much worse though, when we were discussing this and Sally protested that she likes to read fast to find out what happens next, Mrs. W. said that the point of all this is to get you ahead, so that when you’re in fourth grade they don’t knock you back from a level 34 reader to a level 28. And I said:

HOLD THE (expletive, but only in my mind) TRUCK, lady, the point of all this is for you to enjoy reading a book.

I was pretty outraged. I know I probably started it by expressing concern over a B+, and probably lulled her teacher into thinking I cared what freaking reading level the district rubric assigned to my daughter (as if that matters in any way), but really, she can read whatever-the-heck she wants, and I only want to know if she’s really having a problem understanding what she reads — which, as far as I can tell from her re-tellings at home of the books she reads and her reasons for liking and disliking them, she doesn’t.

There are two things here, and I explained to Sally last night that knowing how to read and enjoying and understanding a book are one thing, and deciding to play the game of testing and school is another. If you’re going to play the game and take tests and go to school, you have to learn not what the best answer is, but what the test answer is. You can read for fun, but then you’ll have to go back and look for the details that will prove that you have read it. Eventually you will train your mind to pick up the kinds of details that teachers (and districts) like to ask about to easily and superficially gauge comprehension.

It’s fine. I reconciled myself long ago to the discrepancy between knowing something and testing well. And, if I may say so, I can teach her how to test well. And I will, because I want her to enjoy school and college and a profession of some sort.

But something in me rebels. I don’t like explaining to my nine-year old that her teacher at school cares more about how her answer on a poorly-written worksheet compares with the unstated and murky expectations of a central office than about whether or not she is enjoying herself reading books.

It’s not really a last-straw type of thing for homeschooling, but last night it felt like it.

Last night was plain awful. I dreamt that Dick came to me and told me he’d been unfaithful numerous times but that this time he was in love and was going to have the Dave Matthews Band play at his second wedding. One of the worst parts was that my family was sure that it must be my fault because I am apparently as big a shrew as Elizabeth Edwards allegedly is, and remind me not to read about their twisted lives right before bed again.

I responded by draining our bank accounts (didn’t take long), getting cash advances on our credit cards (also didn’t take long), dropping off the kids at school, and flying to Europe. (I called my mom from the airport to ask her to pick up the girls). Why I thought slumming around Europe was a good idea with a severely troubled tummy, I don’t know. And really I’d never do that. This time of year I’d fly to New Zealand, not Europe.

When I was pregnant with Sally, I dreamt that I gave birth to a seahorse, and as I breastfed her she got smaller and smaller. Another time it was that I was able to take my babies out and look at them, only they were graham crackers, and I lined them up on the floor of my mom’s old minivan, and then I had to yell at Brad for trying to eat my babies.

Anyone else think it’s crazy that on top of peeing four times a night you have to dream about serial abandonment?

Last week on our walk I told Chrysanthemum all about Penelope Trunk’s complicated love life. I also told her about my favorite of Penelope’s posts ever — it has “language” but may be the truest elegy to motherhood ever written. If you don’t recognize yourself in her post, I envy you, but I also think you’re in denial. Or maybe perfect. I suppose that’s possible.

Then I told her all about Penelope’s discussion of The Pioneer Woman, because we both love The Pioneer Woman. (Who doesn’t?) Poor Chrysanthemum probably gets a little tired of my telling her stuff during our walks. But the juxtaposition of Pioneer Woman and Penelope Trunk is absolutely fascinating. Pioneer Woman lives on a ranch, has kids, writes a popular (understatement) blog. Penelope Trunk lives now on a farm, has kids, writes a popular blog. They’re similar in age and superficial candor and charm in their writing. Penelope writes about more hard things, more sad things, than Pioneer Woman, or maybe she just writes about them more darkly.

Penelope’s post about the Pioneer Woman pointed out several things that Pioneer Woman does on her blog that make her so likeable (presumably in contrast to Penelope’s more abrasive, though equally appealing persona). Pioneer Woman never “disrespects her guy” and she’s optimistic. The difference between the two blogs boils down to this: “that [Penelope is] drawn to writing about the fights, and the Pioneer Woman is drawn to writing about pies, and feeding the Marlboro Man.”

The women differ in other areas: Penelope works more than full-time at her fancy career and Pioneer Woman homeschools her four children (though surely she also has a lot of household help, and spends plenty of time working on her blog and recipe book business). But the thing I think they differ in most is that Penelope is so unhappy much of the time and Pioneer Woman is not only happy but content and satisfied (though never smug, which would be unforgivable). If I thought their blogs were mirror images of themselves and their lives, I’d want to talk to Penelope every day, but I’d want to be Pioneer Woman.

(I’m really not a blog stalker. I just take my fictional characters very seriously. If I could choose anyone to be, it’d be Anne, or Valancy, or maybe even Emily, though she was monumentally too proud. Probably Valancy. Because of all that money.)

Reading Penelope I always think of how I want to do this little or big thing differently. Even though, like her, I am drawn to writing about the hard things. Of course I love and appreciate my husband. Since he doesn’t wear chaps and I don’t know how to work my camera, and because of course I love and appreciate him, what interests me is the things he does that make my otherwise-fairytale life frustrating in the extreme. Like, he won’t take a class to learn how to finish our basement even though our fourth kid will be squished in our current 1600 square feet.

But I want to be happy, like Pioneer Woman. Somehow I want to retain my critical, curious thinking like Penelope but gain a joie de vivre over every little thing like PW. Because what I like about Pioneer Woman most, maybe, is that even though she’s obviously rich and lucky (and talented), I still don’t hate her. Somehow she has me convinced that even if she were stuck in a dingy tenement with four rickets babies, she’d still be making a beautiful life.

So I have a goal to disrespect my guy less. Beginning with three things recently that made me glad to be once again bearing his child. (Here, if I were Pioneer Woman, I’d say something about my ovaries singing, or something.)

His touch: I have been less-than-not-interested in anything relating to connubial bliss for the past month. He brushes against me in the hall and my tummy quivers, and not in the good way. Then last week, as we lay in bed, him on the laptop, me reading a book, I reached for his hand and just felt his palm. His skin was warm and pleasantly dry. A little rough from work, but smooth and tingly. I rubbed it for a couple minutes and then turned back to my book. He laughed: “That’s enough holding hands, huh?”

His little women: Of course we want a boy this time around. Of course. But now that I know how different each child is, that we won’t be repeating ourselves with another little girl, I am eager either way. Tom said last Sunday morning that he’d had a dream we had our baby, and she was old enough to be crawling around, and she was so cute. When we think of names, at the dinner table, he says silly things like Zeus and Wolf, and then he says he really likes Mia too.

His devotion: Lucy had croup Saturday night, and Tom was up with her several times, wrapping her in a blanket and sticking her head in the freezer. She breathed easier downstairs (where it’s always cooler), and he wanted to be sure he heard her if she needed him, so they slept on the living room couch. Then he got up early and took the other kids to church.

(These are old pictures, but there’s something about snow that makes my camera not work.)

Today, though I didn’t much feel like it, I went to a quilting bee for Haiti organized by Kalli (with LDS Humanitarian Services). I wasn’t there long; I’m not an expert quilt-tier. But even that forty-five minutes of being with fun ladies and thinking about something besides my own complaints, really helped. I mean, physically I actually feel better. Maybe coincidence, maybe distraction, but whatever it was, I’ll take it. (And take it again and again if I can make it to Sue’s monthly service thingies. If you’re in Utah, join us! (her!)

It reminded me of other events that I’ve gone to in the past year even though my initial inclination is to stay home with a book even when I’m not gestating. Whenever I do get out and see new things, hear new people, take the opportunity to think differently or more about anything, I feel better, even if the event isn’t overtly “inspirational.”

This is not a stunning insight, I know, but I think I’m a bit of an all-or-nothing thinker when it comes to new things. Tom and I spent years moving to new places — Japan, New York City, Cairo, Florida — and every day in those places was an overload of “new,” a sensory and intellectual feast of “different.” Here in Utah, where I am glad to be settled (at least for now) I forget that there is so much to experience right in this familiar place.

One of my favorite things last year was the Moms Who Make It (MWMI) conference, though I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. “Entrepreneur” has always seemed like a vaguely dirty word to me, from my days idolizing Thoreau to seeing the shady side of my ex-brother-in-law. But MWMI was amazing. Tonight we were having FHE/scripture study with the girls, and discussing Moses 8, and I got choked up explaining to my daughter that we need to keep journals, and this is one reason I blog, so that my life as a woman is recorded, because sometimes the scriptures we have are really lacking when it comes to talking about women’s lives, about our hopes and motives and fears.

Listening to the amazing women who spoke and taught at MWMI, courageous women from different faiths and life circumstances, was awe-inspiring. I don’t throw superlatives around: it really was wonderful. It made me want to work harder in my roles as mother and wife, and also to pursue more diligently those talents and interests I have. And to be grateful, for all that I am and can imagine being in the future. I’m so glad to live in a time and place when we have opportunities, where we can gather in public any time we want without worrying about acid being thrown in our faces or about how we’ll feed our children tonight (though several of the women, who make “entrepreneur” look G-O-O-D, began their businesses as a way to provide).

I don’t know if there’ll be another Moms Who Make It conference, but if you get the chance to attend something organized by Quinn Curtis, go for it! (I was also especially impressed with Raw Melissa, Cari Greer,and Pam Baumeister.)

Anyway. That’s old history, but it’s why I’m excited about the Wasatch Woman of the Year lunch this Friday. It’s the kind of thing that I’m initially inclined to roll my eyes about or feel awkward about playing dress-up to attend (since I still usually feel like a little kid pretending to be grown up, especially around such accomplished women). It also takes some negotiating to leave the kids in the middle of the day; I don’t ask my husband to come home early from work unless it’s really important.

And this — celebrating women who are great mothers, great leaders in our community, great wives and sisters and daughters (and hopefully being inspired to be the same myself) — is important. You can come too (I think they even let men in ).

Several weeks ago I went to my first prenatal visit. I told the doctor I was either seven or eleven weeks along, and we did an ultrasound to get a better idea of just how unreliable my memory is. It was early morning, I was drinking water like mad so I could give a sample later, and when the doctor put the wand on my lower belly, there was nothing to see in my uterus.

Five months before that, I had gone in at seven weeks because I was bleeding, and we saw a potato-shaped lump in there, but no heartbeat.

This time there was nothing. No pole, no body, no heartbeat. I wondered aloud if I was having one of those psychological pregnancies, or if I’d read the home test wrong, after all (I felt heartbroken, and also foolish). We did a urine test, which was positive, and figured my body could have already resorbed the embryo (the “products of conception”) or maybe it was ectopic, or something.

Thirty-two hours later I was at the hospital for a fancy ultrasound. I told the tech, as she led me back, that I wasn’t expecting good news, that we hadn’t seen anything on the machine at my doctor’s office, that this would be my third miscarriage, and that I was okay with it, really.

She turned on the machine, squirted me with the cold jelly, pressed on my belly, and said, “I don’t know what to tell you pumpkin, but there’s something in there, and it’s got a heartbeat.”

A heartbeat of 152, in fact, and confirmation that I was seven weeks and four days along.

(I have a very retroverted uterus, which I knew, but didn’t think of, and also, turns out that you cannot emphasize enough how important a full bladder is for ultrasound imaging.)

Since then I’ve been miserably, gloriously nauseated. Well, more miserably, but I’ll say gloriously for the purposes of posterity. It’s certainly better to be nauseated and pregnant than nauseated and not-pregnant. During the thirty-hours I thought I had miscarried again, I was so angry to be still nauseated. Luckily I didn’t turn to drink or start smoking crack, but I did refuse to take my prenatal vitamin that night. Sorry, baby.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about my desires for a more natural labor this time around. I’ve had three children, three epidurals, two inductions, and until a couple years ago, I thought my labors and deliveries were just about ideal. There were no major complications, no forceps or vacuums or c-sections (and my babies were all healthy, no small consideration).

But my epidurals were never wholly satisfactory. Though I usually started with a “walking” epidural, I have a small scoliosis in my spine that makes the numbness affect only the left side of my body until second and third doses are given and I lie on my right side and end up flat on my back, afraid to so much as shift or I’ll fall off the bed, I’m so numb. This makes for awkward laboring.

I’ve been thinking, since following Rixa’s and Heather’s blogs (and even Dooce’s), and researching more about the effects of medical intervention on labor, that I would love to have a a less-interventioned birth. More importantly — a more prepared, educated birth, a more aware-of-my-options and in-tune-with-my-body birth.

My two ultrasounds at seven weeks are so metaphoric (illustrative?) in this context. The second, more invasive (including a vaginal wand) ultrasound (intervention) was even more unnecessary than the first ultrasound/intervention, and yet, once I had had the first, I could not forgo the second. I was glad after the first, I told my mom, that at least I had found out early, and that we could do something about it instead of suffering severe nausea and delusional happy baby daydreaming for no reason. And I was even gladder for the second, for obvious reasons.

But I can’t say that I honestly wish I hadn’t had the first ultrasound, or that I would not have an (early) ultrasound with another pregnancy. My previous miscarriages make me unwilling to “trust nature” or “trust birth” to the extent of not needing (emotionally) — medical proof that there is a tiny heart beating away in my belly.

In thinking of my previous labors and births, I have felt ashamed that I took so little responsibility for or control over what happened. That I took as much initiative in childbirth as I did in going for a appendectomy at age fourteen. Why wasn’t I more curious to learn about the actual process, more empowered, more determined to experience, more eager to do it well? Why was I so passive? (I am not a passive person usually.)

So I had a stack of books to read and grand plans to see if I could find a midwife (preferably one who would know of a woman who would let me observe her birth — despite being delivered of three babies myself, I really have no idea what a natural birth would look/be like). Or maybe I would just watch Ricki Lake’s documentary and listen to Hypnobabies.

But I have been so sick and snappish, so despairing and disgruntled and unhappy, I have not read a single book or written a single line in my birth plan.

Perhaps I am merely lazy. Thinking of this concentratedly enough to write about it, I remember my former passion to make this birth special, but when 3 pm (or 11 am, lately) rolls around, and with it, the turbulent esophagus, unsettle-able stomach, and general misery, I am sure of two things: that I just want this to be over, and that maybe I should be easier on my pre-enlightened self. Maybe she just wanted to lay down and rest, too. (And who could blame her?)

One of my best friends came to stay with us for a few days. She planned her trip before I was struck down in the afternoon and evenings by this first-trimester-stomach-unhappiness, and I have been hoping that I can be cheerful enough to not rain on her vacation. (I am great in the mornings, which is why I am up writing this.)

So we were talking about pregnancy last night, because I wanted an early start monopolizing the conversation. I am sicker this time than ever before, and I weigh a lot more. I weigh more at the beginning of this pregnancy than I did at the end of my first pregnancy nine years ago. Though I am only 8 1/2 weeks along, I feel encumbered when I bend over, out of breath when I climb the stairs, and nauseated beyond belief at food that smelled good an hour ago.

My body image/contentment is at an all-time low, especially as I know how important good health and activity are to my labor/delivery/recovery and mental well-being.

Also, I just feel fat and ugly, and it makes me sad.

I mentioned my friend Beth who is suffering the hemorrhoids at the end of her pregnancy, and how she can’t understand how some women love being pregnant. I love feeling the baby move, hearing the heartbeat, and thinking about the new baby, but I do not enjoy being pregnant.

So my friend who is staying here told me that she liked being pregnant because it was the one time she was proud of her body. She’s pretty happy with her legs and arms in general, but her middle has always been a trouble section, with dips and rolls and when she is pregnant and that’s all smoothed out by the baby bump, she is happy with her body. She feels beautiful.

She is in awe that her body can work so well to grow a beautiful baby, and she just feels happy and proud, Look What I Can Do!

Good point, I thought. It will sound even better in the morning, when I am on the other side of this nocturnal barfiness.

About an hour later Chrysanthemum was here to watch Fringe with us, and we came across a post inviting shocked! outrage! over these Cotton Mother Dolls that Rixa highlighted (very favorably) a year ago.

My friend obliged, saying there was something wrong about that, the dolls are gross, and why would you want your kids to see that? My initial reaction to Rixa’s post was that the dolls were a little scary, but that was a year ago, and I am always ready to disagree, even with myself.

Because life is not as neat as a blog post, I stumbled around, settling with: “Would you rather your daughters played with Cheerleader Barbie who’ll teach them anorexia?”

These dolls are graphic, anatomically correct; they’re probably not for everyday play, though it’s hard for me to articulate why. Certainly they’re better than boob-job, impossibly-long-legged Barbie. Would it harm my daughters in some way to see and hold a realistic representation of a mother giving birth, on hands and knees, to a baby? Or to play with a doll that models breastfeeding?

Why don’t I worry about it when they worship everything princess, sparkly, and fake? Why don’t I cringe when we pass mannequins at the mall with Victoria’s Secret bodies and push-ups?

If pregnancy is the one time you’re proud of your body, shouldn’t that be an image to cherish?

I understand if modesty is the main concern, the feeling that the body (and its form) is too sacred to be played with on the living room carpet by cheerful, irreverent toddlers. But I hate to tell you: our Barbies are more often naked than clothed. And my girls just really don’t need to be seeing that.