vaginismus’s left over effects on my body

i used to have vaginismus. in my case it was a result of childhood abuse. i no longer have it or if i do it is very mild it is hard to tell for certain if i have it because of where i am in pregnancy. one thing i am realizing though is in a way it is making this point in my pregnancy a lot easier for me to deal with. i feel very crampy like i am about to get my period and have felt this way for a few weeks now. i’m not in any pain as far as cramps go and i een like them they tell me my body knows what it needs to do and is doing it. they help me trust my body. the pas few daysi have also een havingvaginal pain and the pain is a lot like the pain i used to have on a regular basis from muscle spasms in mypelvic floor. the spasms mostly went way with biofeedback therapy for vaginismus. i used to have a lot of pain on a regular basis and because it isn’t something people talk about and because i was not ready to have a doctor diagnose me or to do the physical therapy needed to get better i just acted like i was in no pain. i used to spend all day working in retail walking around talking to customers while having shooting pains in my vagina and smiling and ignoring it. it is awful that i went through that and it is awful that i was abused and that the abuse caused my body to have so many problems both emotional and physical but a result of the pain i used to have is that now when i get little contractions and every day a bit of vaginal pain that seems to be slowly increasing is that this pain seems really mild and i don’t even feel like it is pain more like it is discomfort than pain. i think a lot of women would rate this higher on a pain scale but because of what i have to compare it to and because it is something i am associating with such a positive good thing.  this is discomfort that comes with a baby that i have been creating out of love with the help of the person i love most in the world and that this baby is doing what he or she needs to do to come out of my body and my body is doing what it needs to do so my baby can be born. it is strange it is like i am having this incredibly positive experience right now. i hear a lot of women complain about wanting pregnancy to be over and i admit i am getting really impatient i want to hold my baby i want to see my baby and feed my baby and snuggle p and smell my baby but i also am loving being pregnant i feel so empowered right now and i am looking forward to giving birth so much the happy anticipation is really amazing. pregnancy has been such an amazing growing experience for me and being a mom to my baby will just be  continuation of that growth. so right now i am 39 weeks and 3 days my baby is welcome to arrive whenever he or she is ready and i am happy to wait but happy to not wait whatever this baby needs.

vent

my mom has started calling me daily. i will soon be screening calls especially screening calls from my mom. she informed me that my baby is her baby to which i quickly corrected her on this is not her baby this is my baby papa mouses baby and my babies baby and thats it. this baby belongs to no one but his or herself and thats that! and i am the one who has grown this baby and cared for this baby for the past 9 months and papa mouse has cared for me and helped me take care of this baby so if the baby “belonged” to someone other than the baby it would be me and then rob and thats it. when i told rob what my mom said he was a bit shocked and glad i swiftly corrected her. i don’t actually plan to tell my mom hen my baby is born i mean i will tell her but not for several or more days i don’t want to deal with her visit for a while and when she does come i will have a friend on call to help get rid of her if that needs to happen.

A Quiet Healthy Rage

I’m a survivor of incest. Covert incest from my step father from the time I was 6 until I was 19 and overt incest from my older brother which started when I was around 2 or 3 and stopped when I was around 8 or 9. I am also a survivor of other forms of abuse including neglect and emotional abuse and verbal abuse from my mother. I worry a lot that my issues will effect my labor and birth and effect me as a mother. For many years I worried that the abuse had somehow effected my fertility and in a way it did. the abuse caused me to have fairly sever vaginismus which I have had treatment for and it didn’t effect my fertility in any other way. When the father of my baby said he was ready to have kids I said ok lets get started! I managed to conceive immediate. I had spent close to 8 years in therapy by that time and the ptsd that I had suffered for so many years had finally gotten to a point of being very mild. I had spent what seemed like my whole life suffering from sever anxiety and depression and it had gotten to the point where I no longer had any real depression and my anxiety level was very manageable and both have remained this way for my pregnancy. I have felt sad and blue at times and have mourned for the little girl I once was and I have certainly had some anxiety but nothing like the panic attacks I once had on a daily basis. My Therapist who I guess is my ex therapist now because she moved away recently told me before she left that she felt I was feeling a “healthy and quiet rage”. She said this when we where talking about all the feelings about my own mother that pregnancy is bringing out for me. It had never occurred to e that rage could be quiet or healthy. My father (who probably did abuse me some but who’s abuse seems so minor compared to other abuse that happened it is hard for me to really think of it as abuse) has anger problems. He tends to own up to the mistakes he has made as a parent and take responsibility for his actions. I have seen my father express a lot of unhealthy loud rage in my life. So I guess i have no point in this post except I am feeling confused today. I am 33 weeks pregnant and went to a baby shower yesterday that was arranged by my mother and now all sorts of emotions are coming up to the surface. I think a lot of these feelings must be that quiet rage that is hiding deep within me and I really have no idea what to do with it. As a child if I expressed any emotions around my mother that where not either neutral or happy I was punished. I find expressing emotions like anger very scary and confusing and I am a pacifist by nature. I generally do not yell or hit things not even pillows. I don’t do any of the things i have witnessed people do when they are angry healthy or unhealthy. I feel like I need an outlet though and the lack of having one leaves me feeling confused. So I guess thats the point of my post. I am outing myself as a survivor of incest and other abuse and saying that right now pregnancy is brining stuff up for me and I don’t know what to do with it and am confused. If anyone reads this and has words of wisdom to share then please do. If anyone reads this and would like to say something mean to me please know your comments will be deleted. I have this anonymous so I can keep it public and since it is public I feel vulnerable but I am not going to let that stop me from posting this and maybe this can even help someone.

Birth Control

This post is inspired by a thread on a parenting forum I frequent that turned into a debate about the environmental impact of birth control pills and condoms.

I often find myself somewhat shocked at how many people do not seem to realize all the ways people can make love that do not involve intercourse or the making of babies. Because of my having had primary vaginismus when Papa Mouse and I started dating when we got to a point in our relationship where we felt ready to make love we had to be creative and find ways to make love other than intercourse. We had been together for close to 8 years before intercourse was even possible for me and after it became possible it was somewhat painful for me and still sometimes is. The pain doesn’t make it not feel good also but it is there and is a sign I still have some degree of vaginismus. Because it was not long after intercourse became possible that Papa Mouse and I decided we wanted to have a Little Mouse we have not really had to think much about birth control. We both very much enjoy intercourse and I think we are pretty good at it but we are good at so many other ways of making love that we don’t need to have intercourse to make love.

Now that my due date is approaching and soon my Little Mouse will be born and Papa Mouse and I will have to make decisions about birth control I am finding myself with a lot to ponder. I think we may just avoid intercourse unless we know it is a time of them month not close to when I ovulate. Of course with on demand breast feeding 24/7 when my fertility returns will be unpredictable. We may decide to have some condoms around for if we decide we really want to have intercourse; I have pondered using Lea’s shield but I feel uncomfortable with the spermicides available in the united states. I am especially uncomfortable with putting Nonoxynol-9 into my body. I have known women who had very bad reactions to it. I could use it without spermicide and it would have a higher chance of failure. I have also heard of mixing personal lubricant with vitamin c powder (making it acidic) and using that as a spermicide with diaphragms. There is also “the pill” and other forms of hormonal birth control. I personally am not ok with putting hormones in my body and I am not ok with the pollution of our planet earth that is caused by hormonal birth control and other medications for that matter. I have plenty of time to think about this and no idea when i will have the energy or desire to make love once Little Mouse is here anyways. It is interesting to ponder though.

I want to share some things I have found.

First I will share a link to an article on The Onion which is quiet amusing but also speaks a lot of truth through satire.
Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful

Clearly, a mistake has been made. For whatever reason, I have been singled out and wrongly characterized by the adult world as a “real handful.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

The next thing I want to share is a video that is in a lot of ways not related to the subjects of this blog but which I found really interesting. I found this video by following a link from Just Folks which is a blog I read pretty often but don’t really comment on much. I also want to sow off a bit here because today I learned how to go about embedding a video on wordpress without any fancy plugins! This is an episode of The Pinky Show and like I said before it does not have much to do with parenting or pregnancy but this is about the country I live in and this is something that will effect my child and affects me and i feel it is important to share it.
The Pinky Show : The Iraq War: Legal or Illegal?

And I want to share one more episode of The Pinky Show

The Pinky Show : Students Against Rice Eaters

Homeschooling

The majority of my local friends seem to think kids who are home schooled have poor social skills and are “weird” . I find this an odd observation for my friends to make being as how they are all rather odd people (myself included) and most of them don’t seem to have particularly good social skills. I have not known many people who where home schooled
so i can’t say how they seem but i have known many people who went to public and or private schools and
it really didn’t seem to help them at all as far as social skills go. I think my child will be lucky to not be a bit weird consider that myself and Papa Mouse are certainly odd.

I sometimes wonder if having tis baby will mean that I am going to lose many of my friends. I am not worried about it since the friendships that i would loose seem to be drifting apart already and have been for a while. It does make me a bit sad though. Many of my friends seem to be very mainstream and to have very mainstream ideas about the world and I am a Mouse who makes my own path and doesn’t follow the crowd.

8 pm

It’s 8pm. I can hardly keep my eyes open. Little Mouse has awoken and is kicking away. It could be that i just took a nice warm cozy bath with epson salt. I sang to little mouse for most of the bath. I thought about recording my song to post here but it was very much a nonsense song about whether Little Mouse is male or female and being born in October. Maybe i am so tired because i never took a nap. Regardless of why I need to go lie down and i don’t want to. It is sunny out still and the day it isn’t my bed time! I am feeling childish. I am going to be a good Mama Mouse though and go lie down so Little mouse can enjoy his or her evening kicking of my uterus.

We Have To Call It School and Toys From Trash and More

I have been into toy making lately. I think it is because I recently purchased some hand made wooden toys. I have also been reading more about unschooling. The following are web pages I have found fascinating and a link to a documentary.

Folding School is a web page with directions for making cardboard furniture for children. I think it would be to hard for a child to make alone but i bet a child would love to decorate it paining it drawing on it covering with stickers.

Toys From Trash is an amazing web page with all sorts of inspirational ideas about simple and complex toys and science projects people can create I especially love this one. The home page for the whole site is also interesting.

I don’t know if this “school” is still around but it reminds me some of the high school I went to. My high school was a lot more structured. This is a 1978 documentary called We Have To Call It School and it is about a free school in Copenhagen.

We saw Little Mouse!

We had the ultra sound yesterday and saw Little Mouse. We did not find out the gender but we have a very healthy baby and everything was perfect. I did a lot of debating about whether or not to have an ultra sound and in the end I chose to. Papa Mouse tends to leave all these decisions up to me which is nice at times and nerve racking at other times.

Ultrasounds and Beans

Next week I will be having an ultrasound and will get to see Little Mouse for the first time. Right now Little Mouse is a very good kicker. I recently had a dream where my grandmother told me I will be having a girl. Papa Mouse has left it up to me if we find out or not and I am still dithering. For a long time I did not want an ultrasound at all what has changed my mind is that a number of women I talk with on a forum who are due at the same time as me have had ultrasounds that found problems that are fixable. For some information on the safety of ultrasounds checkout this article.

Below is a very blurry photo of our pet Black Bean. Someday I might post a less blurry picture.