Stress

I am stressed out. I know I'm taking everything too seriously and personally but I can't seem to snap out of this state of mind. I felt pretty down last night and was hoping a good night's sleep would bring me out, but today I'm wound tight as a spring.

In brief:

- Work is sucking. Just when I most need money, everyone seems to be asking me for favors, deals, breaks on price. This puts me in a shitty position because I am NOT busy, so either I say no and make zero dollars, or I say yes and make less than I should. Working manual labor while you're pregnant for less than you are worth sucks big ones. And then of course they are that much more likely to underpay me next time too.

- We're trying to fix the van so we can sell it. Once we sell it this will be fine, but short term, we're stretching the bank accounts to the max to make these repairs. I think I'm going to have to temporarily pull from my maternity fund, which makes me extremely nervous. What if we CAN'T sell it???

- I don't know why I'm so stressed about it, but I am totally freaking out about flu shots. I have to stop watching the news and looking at the Bump maybe. I researched vaccines to death and intellectually persuaded myself that it's safe to take preservative free shots, but I'm too scared to go through with it. I've never had one before and am terrified of a freak averse reaction. My OB appointment is tomorrow and I'm practically having an anxiety attack thinking about how she's going to give me a hard time for not getting flu shots.

- General anxiety also about the OB appointment... I guess it's a bad sign that I now dread my appointments. I dread the idea that she might rush through and I won't ask questions and the next day I'll be full of regret again, or that she'll say things I don't like but I'll just passively accept it, and that I'll lack the courage to talk to her about natural birth, and that I just totally suck as a patient and can't advocate for myself at all. Ugh.

- I'm trying not to feed into it (but sometimes I do), but Mr. Ibis is also stressing about finances. He's putting too much pressure on himself to be a better breadwinner and provider, even though I always tell him that basically everyone these days needs to be a double income family and it's really not his fault in any way if we are struggling. But he's sick of his pay cut, sick of the pay disparities at his company, sick of never getting ahead... although we don't exactly fight about this, it's really not fun when we are both stressed out and sometimes losing sleep over it.

- I kind of just want to scream right now.