hannah ananas

Tonight, I picked up this activity table horse I’d originally intended to give to my brother, in order to show it to him while he was at the house. However, as I held it up, my husband came over to see what it was before my brother came back into the room. My husband, at first, criticized it for its price new – I got it used and in great condition for $20, versus $70 new – but, upon closer inspection, asked my what it was. As I explained that it was like the activity table thing, but in animal form, he proceeded 100% genuinely to explore the toy… ‘What is THIS? Where does This thing go? What does This do?? What?!’

I kid you not, as he fiddled with all the bits, his excitement and fascination at his own exploration of the toy was the epitome of what designers want kids to do with the toy.

My husband, the toddler. It was beyond adorable.

Thank you, God, for the fun stuff, like this. Thank you for your silly sense of humor and your childlike joy. (I suppose you’re the origin of their joy in the first place…) Thank you for this life and for my husband and for our daughter and for our home and family. Make us well and keep us safe, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

I was discussing this evening with the neighbor about how depression kind of snuck in yesterday and was pushing pretty hard on me today. She said that she has also noticed that it has been off and on ever since she had the baby, and that it kind of sneaks up her each time. It has definitely been an emotional rollercoaster these past few months. 14 and a half weeks. I suppose it has even been rather whiplash-y, so much up and down emotionally, often within a single day or night.

But I saw specifically for this round that it might just be tied to my lack of feeling any sense of accomplishment in my daily life. I am accustomed to checking things off, completing tasks and then moving on to others. I receive a huge surge of positive hormones every time a task is completed.

And I seem to have very few surges of them when I don’t check off tasks. I have begun to feel very useless in the world, like I’m not making any difference for anyone. Yes, logically, I know that my job is to keep a baby alive and well, and I know that I am doing just that. But that isn’t exactly an item to check off the list – it kind of an ongoing and ever-present task that will last for the rest of my life, really. And that particular task keeps me so busy and interrupted that I hardly get any other task truly completed at home, anyway.

So, I’m not getting those surges of oxytocin or anything else happy and positive. Instead, I am living pretty fully in this cortisol-led survival-esque state of being most of the time. And it’s hard to feel worth it while spending so much time in that state each day.

So, as my husband and I discussed tonight, I think my best move is to look for ways to check items off my lists. Perhaps I need to adjust the tasks so that they are in parts and so can accomplish single parts here and other single parts there. I also would do well to list out some new activities I’d like to do for myself (and for the baby), and start working them into my schedule. More items to check off that way, too. Let’s get these check marks going and this oxytocin flowing(!), shall we?

Yes, let’s.

Thank you, God. Keep us safe and make us well and together, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

I’m working on getting my husband to go camping. He has wanted to do it but hasn’t gone in years. He is very stressed right now. I am, too, but in a different way than he is. I would love to go on a wilderness adventure. But my wilderness adventures require normal homes, not tents. I can go get dirty during the day, but only so long as I have a hot shower and clean space in which to walk around and relax at night. And no, a tidy tent and campground do not count as a clean space. Nope.

I’m working on my ability to do camping. I wish I were comfortable with it. Especially since it’s so affordable. And we already have just about everything awesome we could need or want for camping. And since I want to go experience nature better and stay in all the state and national parks and all… Anyway.

The point is that I want my husband to get to go enjoy camping and relaxation in nature, even if I can’t. Especially right now, when he is so terribly stressed.

God, help us to sort through all of this beautifully and clearly. Guide us clearly at each step and help us to be the people you call us to be, our best selves. Grant us the lives you have set in our hearts. Keep us safe and make us well, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

I’m not sure anything about a job interview would stress me out more than a personality test. How do I prepare for that? Be less myself? No employer needs to know how nuts I am. There’s a reason I’m good at reading social cues. I’m not meant to unleash all of me to all of the world. This ain’t to say that I need to hide. Certainly not. But we also don’t want to walk up to the Sunday school teacher and start discussing our sex life, nor do we bring up how stupid we think people have become in society with someone who employs us. It just isn’t tactful or smart. I am extremely accepting of opposing viewpoints to my own. But I don’t openly contradict people who do not read as being truly open to discussion. (Because most people aren’t, by the way, even if they say they’re open to it. They’re lying. They’re open to stating their opinions like facts, and then meanly judging anyone who doesn’t agree exactly with them.) So, that being said, having to take a personality test as part of an interview process, to me, sounds terrifying. It also sounds like a 99% chance of being rejected, or, at least, of being treated negatively by others.

So, yeah… no, thank you. Haha

Post-a-day 2025

I sent a joke I crossed to my family this morning. One brother commented that it had to be AI-generated, as it wasn’t a very good dad joke. I then went to AI, told it that we needed better dad Joe’s than this one, and waiting for its response.

Sadly, the jokes it provided were incredibly terrible. And I don’t mean in the sense of their being dad jokes and that dad jokes are terrible. I mean in the part where they were barely jokes at all, they were so bad. Cleverness was lacking greatly. Let alone the part where it’s supposed to be a dad joke, not a failed joke by a child (which is how most of them turned out). Despite multiple rounds of feedback, it still wasn’t creating anything funny by the end of it all.

Big bummer there. However, it does seem to suggest that AI can’t write jokes too well, at least not dad ones. That then suggests that the original joke likely was not AI-generated, as it was actually funny as a dad joke. It seems AI can’t do comedy so far. Hmm…

Post-a-day 2025

The weather is cooler tonight for an unexpected respite. So, my husband decided to open up the tent and camp in the backyard. And I allowed him to take our daughter with him. So, the two of them are camping in the backyard together for the first time, both in celebration of the great weather and of her first anniversary of life. (Yes, we made her on May the fourth last year, so, her life from conception makes today her first anniversary of life! Yippee!)

I am stressed, and also calm. He even took the camera, so I could monitor. However, this is the view I got first:

Fortunately, he was still awake, so he picked it up from being face down on the mattress and righted it. However, the view wasn’t much improved after that, anyway…

So, yeah… I know she’s in the tent, at least… haha

God, keep us all safe tonight especially, please. Make us well and keep us always safe and together, please. Thank you for this life and this family. Help us to love one another fully and always. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

My husband is attempting to sleep in our bed tonight for he first time since he got sick and had to sleep upright in the other room. He said to me, “We’re gonna try this… If I end up coughing too much, just wake me and tell me to go to the other room.”

Pretty sure I did a sort of scoff at his idea. He asked what the deal was, and I replied something along the lines of, ‘Yeah, that’s gonna work,’ and he started chuckling, almost childlike. I threw out,”‘Honey, wake up, please, and go to the other room.’ ‘WHAT DOES IT EVEN MATTER?!’ That could be an excerpt from our future conversation.” He kept chuckling all the more. He understood fully how true it was. 😛

Post-a-day 2025

My husband and I just exchanged several text messages. We were sitting about three feet apart. And it wasn’t even in an effort to keep from waking the baby…

The room is mostly quiet, but for the AC unit directly behind where my husband was sitting and rocking the baby to put her to sleep. So, he couldn’t have understood me easily if I had spoken out loud. I half expected him to ask me why I didn’t just ask him out loud what I was sending to him. However, I think he also realized that it was much easier this way. He had, after all, just kind of fussed at me a few minutes ago when I spoke to him about something else, because he couldn’t hear me well enough. So, it all made sense.

Sort of, anyway… it was still totally ridiculous, without a doubt. 😛

Thank you, God, for my home and for my family and for our good health and safety. Please, keep us well, keep us safe, and keep us together and loving with one another. Help us be our best selves together, always supporting one another in doing so. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

No joke here: I’m really talking about sex the resulting baby in this one. Prepare yourself, or choose to skip it! You have been warned! 🙂

…………….

I already had the mental and psychological struggle last year when we got married of coming to terms with the concept that sexual intercourse was suddenly fully allowed and encouraged and safe and good, even. (As in a good thing, not that it feels good.) The whole concept of Catholic women often feeling that they either are virgins or harlots was one that definitely hit home once I was married. It took lots of intentional effort and conversation on both my part and on my husband’s part for me to grow easy with sex and its being a positive thing, not a wrong thing… indeed, for me to accept that it didn’t make me a slut to participate in it, to want it, to ask for it, to initiate it…

But I believe that I truly got there. I had a healthy psychological relationship with sex in our marriage – we won’t talk now about how others relate to sex, because that it a whole different concept and conversation. It had become a fun and loving aspect of our relationship.

Now, however, 13 and a half weeks postpartum, it has been several months of no sex due to my physical state. By the end of pregnancy, my body, even when it wanted sex, couldn’t handle the physical nature of sex. Things just hurt at a certain point, and we both were disappointed that we had to hold off for the foreseeable future. So, no more sex then. Then, a baby tore apart my vagina by being in compound presentation and having her head tilted slightly upward. (The circumference of a baby’s exit, mathematically, can’t get almost any bigger than that, in case you weren’t sure.) So, that, combined with the double uterine sweep for the piece of placenta that decided to stick and break off at the very top of my uterus, put me on necessary bedrest for two weeks, then house rest for the next two, and left me taking my first actual walk at six weeks postpartum. And, even then, it was still quite difficult to do said walking. But I could and did do it then.

Fast-forward through more slow healing, and we are now at almost 14 weeks postpartum. My husband and I have discussed the idea of sex, but things feel very different in my head now. For one thing, there is a part of me that is genuinely scared of birth right now. I no longer remember physically labor, but I remember it conceptually. And it was really, really terrible pain. By the way, pain-free birth is nonsense. Yes, staying present and not resisting makes all the difference. But the whole thing still sucks a**, and I cannot recommend it. Zero out of ten stars – do not recommend. Baby at the end? Best thing ever. Process to get there? Possibly the worst.

Anyway, so, I discovered that that fear was there for me. Okay. I started working on that slowly. But then I discovered something else. As I have begun having sexual desires again – yes, they were pretty much entirely gone for a long while – I have noticed that I feel wrong for having them. In fact, I feel bad.

Thus I discovered that the whole virgin-harlot complex has returned to me. Ugh. Hopefully, because I reached a good place before, I will be able to reach it faster this time. It just feels absurd. As if I didn’t already have enough barriers to a sexual relationship with my husband, I now have this added gem of psychological shaming. (That statement includes irony, to be clear.)

Anyway, so, that’s where things stand there. My husband joked that we could have sex on the same day as we made our current baby, and see if another shows up. Then we could jokingly tell people that we only have sex one day a year. I found the idea hilarious. But I also felt trepidation and shame.

I probably will check in with a few folks on their experiences with this, see if they have anything that supported them in their transitions like this. It isn’t something people discuss openly. I strongly considered not sharing it here. But I think openness on big deal things is important, especially if they are traditionally kept quiet, though speaking about them could be immensely helpful for most. I am very grateful that my cousin reached out to talk to me about this complex thing shortly before my marriage. I hadn’t really ever heard of the idea before then, but I’ve experienced it firsthand, to be sure. Her support was quite helpful back then, even in just telling me that I wouldn’t be alone if I experienced it. Perhaps she will have guidance on its return. Perhaps not, too… most people don’t seem to go so long without sex in a happy marriage this early on…

Anyway… that’s what I had to say about all of that. Hopefully, this can be helpful in some way to others, my having shared it.

God, thank you for your love and for this life and my family and home. Keep us safe, make us well, and keep us together, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

I just want to cuddle with you a lot these days
Will you come touch me and love me a bit before you go to bed?

I just sent these two messages to my husband. He is still sick – shocker – and sleeping in the guest room so he can sleep upright. So, we don’t get to cuddle yet at night. And I miss it dearly.

It’s funny how the baby has been so needy physically, wanting to be held so much of the time – though, she allows for and enjoys increasingly more time on her own as she is getting older – and that I find myself in a similar boat. I like my alone time, and increasingly more so as I have improved physically in my recovery, but I really just want to be held and touched and loved a whole lot right now. I can’t seem to get enough. Though, to be fair, it does seem to be the case that I’m getting way less than I used to get pre-pregnancy. But the baby’s neediness helps somewhat. Snuggling with her as she sleeps is quite wonderful and soothing. But it only satisfies a certain version of touch and love that I seem to need. My husband’s – as silly as this may sound, it is entirely true – manly touch and love are the other half of what I need in this love language.

Dear Lord, thank you for my husband and our baby and our home and our love. Please, make us all well and keep us all safe and together. Praise be unto you. Thank you. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025