My kids know just enough about how babies are made to get their little minds churning, but not enough to stop them from coming up with crazy wild theories. Laylee knows that a baby needs an egg from the mom and a sperm from the dad to get cooking, but has no idea how the two are exchanged. She puts humans and birds in the same category because both are hatched from eggs.

Magoo knows the baby is inside my “tummy” which he thinks of as a huge cavernous region below my mouth somewhere. He thinks it’s hilarious that the baby is swimming around in a sea of all the food I’ve eaten in the last 8 months. He can’t wait to see pictures of her when she comes out with cheese stuck to her face and carrots coming out of her ears. Unparalleled comedy that will be.

I’ve had a rough day. I’m edging into my third trimester, so I’ll blame my quarterly hormonal shift for the increased anxiety and irrational fear I’ve been feeling lately. I monitor myself closely and try to take as little medication as I can while still feeling normal and capable of coping with life.

But this week it’s been rocky, and I’m sick of asking myself, “Am I afraid for a real reason or are these cyclical thoughts and this tight feeling in my chest and the pit of my stomach just my brain rebelling against me again?” When I picked up my anxiety meds yesterday, the pharmacist asked me whether I was familiar with them and I started crying. Oh, I’m familiar with them. I was familiar with them for 2 years after Magoo was born and I’ve been familiar with them again throughout this pregnancy and I don’t want to be familiar with them anymore. I want my independent, strong, unbroken brain back.

I’m tech savvy in my own way but when a really hard problem hits my computer, I find that my favorite answer is always REBOOT. At least half the time I can solve my weirdest computer errors by simply restarting the machine. I vaguely understand how this can work. Processes that are running out of control in the background are stopped and when the machine starts up again, only the basic programs are initiated.

The same basic principle holds true for my body, especially during pregnancy. When I first wake up, I feel okay and then all day long I feel worse and worse. The sickness builds throughout the day and by bedtime it’s all I can do to keep from throwing up as I lay down for the night. I’m also very cranky by that time and not so fun to be around.

But magically when I wake up the next morning I feel decent again and can get a fair amount of stuff done before the nine month flu takes over my body again. I’m even nice to my kids and my spouse most mornings thanks to my sleepy reboot.

Last night I found myself trying to explain to a 15-year-old girl, who has “issues” with her own mother and doesn’t plan on ever having kids of her own, how I feel about my own kids. I’m not sure how the conversation got to this place. I’m sure she didn’t ask me, “Hey Kathryn, please pour out your heart’s deepest feelings to me about motherhood.” I just wanted to tell her. I started talking and it all came spilling out.

There are days, a lot of them lately, when I just have a hard time dealing with any changes in my routine. This continual sickness has worn away at my patience, my stamina, and my empathy. I am not currently the mom I know I can be. Every day I wake up, hoping that today will be the magical day that the plague of death will pass my door. If I had lamb’s blood on hand, I’d be smearing it somewhere. Well, I’d probably have Dan do it, thus saving me another trip to the puker.

Last night the kids were up several times. Magoo was just playin’ around and acting like a 3-year-old, but Laylee said her tummy hurt and Dan took her downstairs for something to eat. This morning I had the hardest time waking her up for school and she felt warm to the touch.

“It’s because she slept in fleece jammas,” I told myself. “Everyone’s warmer when they first wake up.”