Life's What Happens...

Because I'm a Pile of Lazy Fatness

2010-08-05T13:14:00.000-04:00

The gym used to be my hiding place. It was a refuge from my all consuming job. It was the one part of my life that my boss respected.  He didn't care that I had a husband or a family, but if I told him I was going to the gym, he would not call me. I used to spend two hours in the gym at a time. One hour with weights, one hour on the elliptical. Some days I only had time for one hour and I would just hit the elliptical. I would crank up the music in my headphones and run until I felt the stress melt out of my pores. That runner's high you hear about? Totally real.

I made fitness my hobby. My superior, holier than thou, knowitall hobby. Along with the gym devotion, I ate super clean. Six meals a day, nothing processed, complex carbs, good fats, lean proteins. I was a woman obsessed. I was in really good shape, probably the best shape of my adult life.  I had definition everywhere.  Even my abs (which will never be a six pack) were flat and hard. My boobs were the smallest they ever could be without surgery. To quote Frank, upon looking at a vacation picture of us that summer, I was "diesel".

The gym part wasn't hard, but the eating clean was brutal. I'm a fatgirl. I love deep fried, covered in ranch dressing goodness. And pizza.  I prefer my chicken in finger form. Dr. Drew could probably do some work with me on sugar addiction. My favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon is a two hour brunch with mimosas. My favorite thing to do after work is red wine and cheese and olives.   Most of my socializing with friends involves food and wine. All of which, after having a baby, ha-HA, but you get my point.

The day I found out I was pregnant was the last day I went to the gym. In the beginning it was the absolute fatigue. It hit me the hardest. Trying to still work 80+ hours a week and being so tired, I just didn't have it in me to go to the gym. Pregnancy became my get-out-of-diet free card. The world became my very own all-I-could-eat-buffet. All the things I never touched; pizza, ice cream, deep fried everything, macaroni and cheese, pudding(!). I ate it all and then took a nap. It was awesome. My sister warned me to take it easy because it's not that easy to bounce back after baby. I filed that information right next to all the advice I ignored about breastfeeding.

My marathon eating slowed a little as Bo grew because I just didn't have the room for him and the pound of pasta. The diabetes diagnosis made me put down the Phillies Graham Slam (best ice cream flavor ever) and return to my breakfasts of oatmeal and egg whites. But still, I did not exercise. Being confined to the couch for 8 weeks made me totally inactive - which was the point I know, but something about being medically prohibited from moving in my brain equaled EAT. Also, I ate out of boredom.

In all I gained only about 25lbs and lost some of it in delivering Bo and the subsequent nursing marathons. I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but not my pre-pregnancy body. The number on the scale is irrelevant to me. I'm short, top-heavy, and thick-waisted, all characteristics that have gotten more pronounced since being pregnant. All of my old definition is gone. I'm squishy and soft-bellied. My stomach muscles are totally slack and if I don't pay close attention to my posture (and suck in), I still look a little pregnant. All of my endurance is gone. All of my strength is gone.

I hate it. I hate how I feel about myself. I hate how out of shape I am. Yet I can't get it together to work out. We have at treadmill in our basement. I can't get it together to walk downstairs. Every day it's the same routine: nighttime Hopes set the alarm for 5am because I know that if I don't exercise before the day starts, it's not going to happen at all. Nighttime Hope pep talks herself about how great the rest of the day will feel if I work out first thing. She has big plans, that nighttime Hope. Unfortunately, morning time Hope has no interest in starting her day at all, let alone starting it with exercise. It's the oldest cliche there is. Once you stop exercising, starting again is the hardest part. I have no excuses you haven't heard already: the baby needs something or there's something interesting on tv or I'm tired or it's too hot or it's too cold or blah blah blah, fat. I am really tired. You know what would really help me get some energy back? Exercise. I'm in my own catch-22 over here.

I'm trying to get my mind right about getting back into shape, but it's not happening. 80-90% of weight management is diet. You can run to the end of the Earth and do a million crunches but if you're following that up with a pound of fettucini and pint of Chunky Monkey, it won't matter. I've got the eating part down pretty well. I haven't gone back to eating clean because it's frankly a pain in the ass, but my weight has been stable for months now. I just need to get myself moving.

Frank has lost 60 pounds since last year. He gets up every morning at 5 to do P90X before work. He runs every day. He's running 5k races every weekend. I'm so proud of him. I don't know what to do to get myself going. I really don't. We've signed up for a 5k together at the end of October and if I finish in under 30 minutes I get to buy myself a fabulous new pair of boots and even that isn't getting me out of bed in the morning.

I guess I'm trying to shame myself into exercising. If I tell all of you - you know, all 4 of you - maybe I'll have some kind of accountability or something. I don't know. I have to do something.

Sophie's Fund - PLEASE READ

2010-04-21T16:13:00.000-04:00

The summer before my junior year of college, I transferred from my local Penn State campus up to the Main Campus in State College, PA. I was 20 years old and took myself way too seriously. My roommate was a girl I had known from my Delco days (they've since fancied themselves up and now call the campus "Brandywine). On the Sunday of move-in weekend I got back from church with my parents to find my roommate, her boyfriend, and some boy I'd never seen before hanging out in our dorm room. That boy, Jim, became my best friend, boyfriend, study partner, and many other things over the subsequent four years we spent together. It didn't last because it wasn't right. We didn't want the same things. There were control issues and trust issues and all sorts of crap. We weren't the ones for each other.

I haven't spoken to Jim in years and years but yesterday I stumbled onto his Face*book profile through a series of coincidences typical to its way of connecting people. Of course I clicked on it - who doesn't want to see what their old boyfriend has been up to? - only to find some incredibly sad news. The kind you never want to hear about happening to anyone.

Jim and his fiancee Jen welcomed their daughter, Sofie, last April. She was born about a week after Bo actually, in a strange bit of the parallel universe at work, I suppose. They found out last month that Sophie has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The doctors - no thanks to any medical work on their part, as they kept wanting to send Sophie and her neurotic parents home to wait out her "bug" - caught it just in time. Sophie just turned one year old yesterday. If everything goes according to textbook, she's looking at two years of treatments. Two years of direct lines and chemo and spinal taps and life in the hospital.

Sophie's mom, Jennifer, is an independent photographer. She won't be working any time soon as she spends her days and nights at the hospital with her baby girl. Jim has a good job, but two years of intensive cancer treatments, living at or near the hospital for weeks at a time, could bankrupt them. The last thing they need to worry about is their mortgage payment or keeping the lights on when they're focused on keeping their baby girl alive.

Which is where we come in.

A website has been set up to receive donations for Sophie, Jim, and Jennifer. It's not just any donation site though. Jennifer knows a lot of photographers all over the world and they've come together to offer something special. When you make a donation, you have the option to "purchase" a photograph from a large - and growing - gallery, donated by some very talented professional photographers. When you give to Sophie's Fund, you get back something beautiful. A donation of as little as $8 will get you a photo.

This is just terrible. I can't imagine the nightmare of taking my precious boy to the doctor and ending up in an ambulance screaming towards the hospital with the word CANCER blazed into my corneas. I don't have a wide audience on this blog, but some of you who read (thanks very much) do. If you could repost this story, or just the link, it would mean a lot to two genuinely good people who are living a nightmare they never saw coming.

www.sophiesfund.org

Spring Forward

2010-04-07T14:20:00.000-04:00

The weather was gorgeous a few weeks ago. Way warmer than it usually is in Philadelphia in mid-March. Sort of like today. It was St. Patrick's Day and I was off. I decided to take Bo down into the city with my brother to meet up with (my sister who lives in town but I never see) Rose for lunch and then wander around my old neighborhood and soak up some sun. Bo was fascinated by every stranger who walked by our table at lunch and could not get enough of staring at everyone around him. This in between yelling for more bread! and more fruit! and anything else from your plate you want to feed me! After lunch we headed to Rittenhouse Square and Bo met the famous Frog and Goat and Lion (we learned we are not friends with the Lion) and I had an out of body experience a little.

A million times. I walked through that park a million times, sidestepping toddlers and brushing past gossiping moms pushing babies in strollers; tapping away at my blackberry, earphones blaring. Headed who knows where; dinner with my sister, drinks with friends, shopping for nothing in particular, the gym, anywhere and nowhere in particular. And there I was, pushing my baby in a stroller, toddling my son around the goat, watching pretty young things walk by in their fiercely stylish outfits, tapping away on their phones, earphones blaring, headed who knows where. I just smiled and kept walking with Bo, thinking I must look a hundred years old to those girls.

My time is over, I know that. The days of knowing every doorman in the city, of bypassing lines of people waiting, of walking into a bar with my girls and owning the joint immediately; those days belong to someone else now. There's a new crop of girls - fully ten years younger than me - running wild in this town, believing the whole place is theirs for the taking. If I'm honest with myself, the nightlife part was over a long time ago for me. I was tired of the scene and the noise and the crowds long before Bo came along. But the other parts? Sitting for hours at a sidewalk cafe talking about nothing on a warm spring night, waking up whenever on a Saturday to roll out to brunch (Bo didn't get his eating habits from the stork)? I'm a little wistful for those days.

The boy is a year old so it's not like this is new information for me. I guess in between missing spring last year completely - aside from what I could see from the living room window - and the hibernation inducing winter we had this year, I never got the full illustration of how much my life has changed until I watched younger versions of myself swing past that day. I'm not saying I want that time in my life back. It was fun while it lasted but I wouldn't trade the delicious boy and life that replaced those days for anything. For the first time in seven years, my husband is home on the weekends and every night for dinner. I'm good.

I just miss that girl sometimes, that girl I used to be. She was a lot of fun.

What's St. Paddy's Day without a Little Ham?

2010-03-17T23:32:00.000-04:00

About a month ago, maybe more, Lora and I were talking about plans for her boy's birthday party and I volunteered to pick up the cake. She replied that she didn't want to put that responsibility on me just in case that weekend was the one that Bo comes down with the pukes.

So I think I'm free to blame Lora for the unbelievable explosion of bodily fluids all over the damn place last week. She talked it up.*

I'll spare you the details but holy crap. Holy contagious crap. Bo went down first. Two days later Frank spent the entire night in the bathroom. He had two black eyes the next day. That's how hard he was puking. A day after that, my dad and my brother went down. We missed Lora's party. I didn't want to take Typhoid Mary anywhere, especially to a house full of children. I declared a quarantine on our house until all symptoms and fevers were gone. Somehow I was spared the worst of it and just had a little stomachache Saturday. It was no fun around here for a while.

But we're all better now! And it's Springtime!

Bo is 11 months old. The first one to tell me he's about to be a year old gets diarrhea wished upon you.

He's not walking or talking yet but don't tell him that. The day is a constant stream of babbling, yelling, laughing; directed at me, Frank, random toys, his own feet, whatever. He says mamamamamamamama! and babababbababababa! for everything and nothing. His favorite phrase is to stick his tongue out and say thumathumathumathum. If you say it, he'll repeat it and it's like a whole deliciously gibberishy conversation. He also likes to repeat consonants and fake cough.

He's getting braver and braver in terms of walking. Every day he spends a little more time - we're talking seconds really - standing without holding on to anything. The past few days he's been trying take a step with no hand while cruising. We keep saying we have to get the video camera ready. Huh. I should really just go plug it in now...

What else? He eats everything. And if you're eating near him you'd best be ready to share. Don't try giving him a stupid sippy cup of formula either. You better break off a piece of that sandwich/salad/fruit/shoe leather you're enjoying and keep it coming. Just put it down and back away and don't try any of that spoon feeding nonsense. Too much lag time between dish and mouth. He likes to eat, is what I'm saying.

Blahblahblah mommyblogblah.

He's awesome and makes my life awesome.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

*Of course I'm joking. Lora doesn't bring plagues down on households. I love Lora. One day I may even see her again.

Evidence that the Trip Wasn't a Total Disaster

2010-01-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

It wasn't all bad.

There was this:

Watching the candle light processional at Epcot. He's strapped to Frank here too.

With his name on the back and everything.

Watching the fireworks at Epcot. We were worried that the noise was going to be too much, since the vacuum is the most evil invention ever at home, but he fell asleep halfway through.

The half a guy you see over Franks shoulder had a B.O.B double that he tried to use to box me out. It was a demolition derby. He did not prevail. My City Mini carried the day. Jerk.

Everything was decorated at the Osborne lightshow. Also, they sold beer and it magically snowed every few minutes.

There's an old fashioned barbershop in the Majerk Kingdom. They do a special "baby's first haircut". They gave him a certificate and ears that were embroidered with "First Haircut" and they saved all of his hair for us. His curls were starting to tangle up and lock at the ends so it was coming eventually. I only cried a little, at the end. This shot is in the airport the day we went home. We were delayed 4 hours. Because of course we were.

(Still) Recovering

2010-01-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

We went to Disney World for Christmas. We left on Christmas Day and came back on New Year's Eve.

Oh shut up, I know it was bad idea. I mean, I know it NOW.

We were warned not to go during that particular week. All of our guide books* and websites** said DO NOT GO and gave tips only IF YOU MUST GO. We blew them off though, because we are experts. They don't mean us. Those warnings are for amateurs. We're seasoned veterans! We go every year! We have a plan! And fail safe routes! Crowds don't bother us! We're used to it!

Dude. Do not go during the week between Christmas and New Year. It's not worth it. Everything that makes Disney special and magical is lost during this week. Lost to the endless throngs of rapacious people trying to get there first. There were women, mothers with small children by the hand, kicking my stroller out of the way to get in front of me. And we weren't even trying to ride anything! Bo spent most of the time in the carrier strapped to Frank's chest because he didn't enjoy being surrounded by so many people that towered over him.

The poor employees, who are usually so happy and helpful that I secretly wonder if they're all robots, were visibly frazzled and stressed out, trying to direct the masses with - I'm not even kidding - the wands normally used for waving in airplanes. In addition to the whole damn world being there to celebrate the holidays, there were at least three bowl games taking place in Orlando on New Year's day. So of course people were like, "let's go early and go to the parks before the game". There were mothereffing marching bands in the middle of the Ma-jerk Kingdom, as if foot traffic could have gotten more congested. I swear the entire state of Louisiana was there. Geaux Tigers. Puke. I was even ready to punch my fellow Penn Staters because really, get the hell out of my way.

In short. I don't care if your last name is Disney. DO NOT GO the week between Christmas and New Year.

* if you ever plan a trip to Disney, this book is invaluable. We buy the current edition every year. It's full of genuinely helpful tips and info. It has restaurant reviews, hotel reviews, ride recommendations for different age groups. It's incredibly comprehensive. It also has touring plans in the back that you can cut out and take with you.
** as valuable as the book, this website will tell you which parks to visit or avoid on particular days according to crowd levels. He uses a red light, yellow light, green light system and following his advice always ensures a comfortable and fun day at the park.

Haunted

2010-01-14T16:09:00.000-05:00

Ever since Bo was born, I've had a hard time with the news. Specifically, news stories that involve terrible things happening to small children and babies. Before, I could just shake my head and make tsking noises and go on with my day unscathed. Now, unbidden visuals of suffering children and audio of screaming babies run in an endless loop in my head if I dare read a story about anything worse than Baby Plays with Kitten.

Like everyone else, I'm horrified by the devastation of the Haiti earthquake. Until today though, it was a general sympathy for the people on the ground - the people who died and the families who can't find them. Haiti was keeping the wolves away with a whip and a chair before the quake, so my heart was already breaking for the people who are being swallowed by despair. Still though, I managed to send my donation texts and still drink my morning coffee.

Then today I read an email from a lady I know whose husband does mission work with an orphanage in a village just outside Port au Prince. The email included the following (bold type mine):

"Barbara, the woman who runs the orphanage, is overwhelmed. The entire village surrounding her is relying on her for their needs. Most of her food supply has been destroyed by the earthquake (babies without formula is sad and scary). The food depot where her essentials were stored has collapsed, so the food is now buried in rubble. They are not sure how much they can salvage at this point."

They don't have formula. Babies who are already orphans in a real life orphanage do not have formula. I'm haunted by this. The image of children who already had nothing now have even less. They're sleeping the street. What are they feeding the babies? Can you imagine what it must sound like? Can you imagine not being able to feed a screaming baby because you don't have anything to give him? I don't want to imagine it but I can't help myself.

When I get home from work today I'm going to try and not suffocate my boy with squeezes and hugs while sobbing. Then I'm going to find more than $10 to donate and offer up silent thanks for everything that I have.

How to help

I may also pray for Pat Robertson to burn in hell. Feel free to join me.

Happy Merry Joy and Peace

2009-12-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

Merry Everything!!

We sent out a holiday card this year but I'm some kind of moron who can't get it to save any larger than this:

Happy Everyone!!

Truly wishing you joy and peace and butterscotch schnapps in your eggnog and short visits with obnoxious relatives...

Way More Than You Ever Need to Know About Christmas and Me

2009-12-14T22:44:00.000-05:00

Aaaand go. This is the first Christmas season in five years that I can call my very own. There will be no working at 2am on Christmas Eve. There will be no spending Christmas morning watching a family that isn't mine open presents that I chose and wrapped, whispering what they are in my boss's ear so he can take credit for them. This year I won't miss every fun holiday party and local festive event. I'm no longer Ebenezer Scrooge's personal Christmas elf. This year I get to have my very own Christmas. I'm sucking up every minute of it.

*******************

I had a whole thing working here about the war between the decorating themes in our house, but it was boring and going nowhere. So I copied this list from Lora instead.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Oh wrapping paper. I love to wrap presents. When I was in college I had a stupid job at a department store in a suburban mall. It was great because they would hire me back every time I was home from break. They also had a gift wrap department. Between shopping on my lunch breaks and the gift wrap department, I probably gave half my paycheck back to the store. My gifts were the prettiest ones on Christmas morning though. I do appreciate a gift bag for things are too weird and awkward to wrap properly. There is plenty of tissue paper and charmy, dangly things to add to the beauty of the bag.

2. Real tree or Artificial? We always a real tree growing up and ideally that's what I like to have. Our first Christmas together (before we were married), Frank came home from work one morning with a surprise real tree for my tiny apartment. It was probably about 4ft tall and even at that height it brushed the ceiling. The past few years we've had a fake tree or none at all. This year our tree is fake and I have to admit, it's much easier and practical. We're leaving for our big vacation on Christmas day this year anyway. I want Bo to remember having a real tree though. Maybe next year we'll leave the fake tree in the shed and get a real one.

3. When do you put up the tree? The tradition I grew up with was we put the tree up on Christmas Eve. It evolved from my parents at first not being able to really afford a tree until the last minute when the tree guys were practically giving them away to not being organized enough to get a tree sooner than a few days before until it just became a tradition. My mom would make snacks and appetizers. We'd listen to Christmas music and act dumb while my dad fought with the tree. Every year with the hammer and the platform and the yelling. Every year hitting himself with the hammer at least once. Once the tree was up my mom and older sister would string the lights. Then we would all hang ornaments, my mom supervising to make sure they didn't end up all bunched up in one spot. It was such fun to unwrap all the ornaments that we'd made or collected as we grew up. That we'd forgotten about over the course of the year. Our tree is already up. My goal is to put it up by December 1st one year evenntually.

4. When do you take the tree down? This is the tricky part. And another reason why a fake tree is probably best for us. I'm not so good at taking the tree down. In past years I've left that dry ass fire hazard up until February or March. It's such a pain in the ass to take all the ornaments down and wrap them up and put them away. I hate that part. I'm really aiming for New Year's day this year. January 2 at the latest.

5. Do you like eggnog? Eggnog is one of those things that I try every year in the hopes that I will like it. It seems like something I would like. It never works though. I always hate it. We got some lactose free eggnog for the tree decorating and I actually liked it. First time ever.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Gosh. It's hard to pick my favorite. One year there was a Brook Shields head, the neck of which was set in a plastic star shaped tray. The tray had a makeup palette in it and we could put makeup on Brooke's face or style her hair. They were called Glamour Heads. That was a good present. Then there was the year I got a CD Walkman. I think I was in high school That was awesome. I wonder if they even make those anymore. Every year my dad would get a new board game and we would all sit around the dining room table after all the gifts were opened and play the game. That was the best thing I got every year.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? I have a porcelain ornament on the tree that has just Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. Frank's mom probably gave it to us. There's a house a few neighborhoods over that has a life sized nativity scene on the front lawn and a leg lamp in the front window. Makes me laugh every time I drive by.

8. Hardest person to buy for? My boss. I have to get him a present because he gets me lots of big deal presents every year and we have a close relationship that warrants gift giving. He's a millionaire though. What do you get the person who already literally has everything and if he doesn't, buys 10 of whatever it is? I always end up getting him a book or something equally lame. I think I have a good idea this year though.

9. Easiest person to buy for? Frank. He loves presents. Although I suppose Bo is even easier. Tonight I gave him a paper bag to play with and it was seriously BEST TOY EVER!

10. Worst Christmas gift ever received? I can't think of any terrible gifts I've received. I'm so easy. I love presents of any kind. Everything makes me happy.

11. Mail or e-mail Christmas card? I think I managed to send out cards one year, the first year we were married. Since then not so much. This year I've got photo cards ordered and will send them out. Hopefully by New Year my boy's smiling face will be wishing you joy and happy holidays.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? I'm a sucker for the old movies. White Christmas might be my most favorite. Holiday Inn isn't technically a Christmas movie but I love that one too. The old A Christmas Carol with Alistair Sims (Simm?) is fantastic and so is the newish one with Patrick Stewart. Captain Picard makes a great Scrooge. I also love the Grinch - cartoon, not Jim Carrey. That guy is just creepy. And all the old nostalgia ones like Rudolf and Frosty. I tried to watch the Miser Brothers' Christmas the other day. Have you seen it? That one is just weird. Frank woke up from a nap on the couch in the middle of it and was totally confused. I was watching George Bailey go through life as if he hadn't been born the other night and then had a dream that I'd killed myself. No more Frank Capra for me for a while.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? I start shopping on behalf of my boss ( for his kids and friends and girlfriend and her kids and friends) in early November. No matter how much I try to have him all done and sorted and ready, I'm inevitably putting the finishing touches on things right around the 24th. I fit my own shopping in here and there.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Of course! But not anything I've ever given you. I pick all of your presents out special.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Everything! My mom makes traditional Spanish cookies called rosquillos de huevo (help me out with the spelling here Belen. i know you're reading). They're sort of like little doughnuts and they're glazed with a honey citrus stuff. Mom only makes them at Christmastime because that's the tradition and because they're a ton of work. I don't know how to make them. I should probably learn. They are my favorite thing to eat at Christmas.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? I like little white lights that do not blink. Frank likes colored lights that blink, the more seizure inducing the better. He also likes tinsel garland and all manners of junk on the tree. I like a tree that would look good in a department store. He wins this year. It seems more kid friendly anyway. Maybe one year we'll get two trees; a family tree covered in junk and a beautiful, perfectly matched and styled tree for me.

17. Favorite Christmas song? It's so silly but I like all the ridiculous ones like, "I Wanna Hippopotomous for Christmas", and "I'm Gettin' Nuttin' for Christmas", and "Mele Kanikimaka". I also love the standards. Who doesn't love Nat King Cole singing about roasting chestnuts on an open fire. Have you ever had roasted chestnuts? Add those to the list of things I love to eat at Christmastime. My all time favorite might be "We Need a Little Christmas". Bo loves to hear me sing that one.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? I went to California one year around Christmas but not specifically for Christmas. I've been in Miami with my boss on Christmas day and New Year's eve and New Year's day. This year we're going on a big family trip, the three of us and Frank's mom. I'm excited. It should be interesting.

19. Can you name Santa's reindeer? Did you know that Donner is Rudolf's dad? I never noticed that in the show until this year. Rudolf's family is the Donners and Donner is his dad. Santa even calls him Donner. Watch it again. You'll see.

20. Do you have an Angel on top or a star? We have a really great, old fashioned star on top. The silvery kind with lights in it? Yeah. Clark Griswold is jealous of my star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Definitley Christmas morning. Frank has a hard time waiting to give presents and sometimes has to give me at least one.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? My crazy ass boss who I think believes I'm actually Santa. Also traffic. And the fact that it's dark at 4:30. That has nothing to do with the holidays I know, but it's this time of year. I just barely win my cage match against seasonal depression every year. The holidays actually help keep me sane. Well, the holidays combined with a vacation somewhere warm at some point between December and March.

23. Ugliest Christmas Decoration ever invented? Inflatable lawn crap. My neighbors have an inflatable nativity scene right next to an inflatable Santa roasting marshmallows with a couple reindeer. Weird.

25. Which looks best theme trees or homey trees? My personal aesthetic is theme tree but I'm really looking forward to a tree covered with ornaments of popsicle sticks and cotton balls and popcorn strings we make ourselves.

26. Gingerbread or sugar cookies? I love love love gingerbread. In man form or big hunks of the bread version. Delicious. Add that to my list of favorite Christmas foods too.

27. Do you like Fruitcake? I really do. I think it's delicious. When someone asks you, who eats this stuff? Now you know. I can't be alone. They make thousands and thousands a year. What? It's really good with coffee.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

He looks like a Who in Whoville, right? Would be such a better picture if you couldn't see the charger for the dustbuster. A dustbuster which I no longer have because I put it in the utility sink and then forgot about it and then ran the washer, which drains into the utility sink. But I still have the charger. I'm a few years away from my very own epidsode of Hoarders I think.

Stuffed

2009-12-02T09:53:00.002-05:00

It was a super special Thanksgiving this year. All the babies were here! My big sister, who hadn't been home for Thanksgiving in 15 years, was here! With her husband and both of her kids! My brother and his wife and their baby were here from California! My baby sister and slightly wacky baby brother (plus girlfriend) were in from California too! (did I ever tell you that I hate California? I do. It steals my family.) All the babies are about the same age and it was the first time we had them all together.

All of us back together for a significant length of time can be tricky. We're SO HAPPY to see everyone and to be seen by everyone. We want to spend lots of time together. Normal family routines and obligations fall by the wayside. I want to hold their babies and they want to hold my baby and the spouses try desperately to keep up and participate and stay out of the way at the same time. I can't imagine what it must be like to be new to our family. Not that my inlaws are that new anymore. Even so, we're so clannish and exclusive. We have so many inside jokes that it's practically a different language. It can't be easy for Frank or my inlaws to sit at the same dining room table as everyone else and have absolutely no idea what's going on. It must be weird to see their wife/husband spoken to like a little brother or a big sister. Frank is an only child so I have no experience with it at all.

Family politics are sticky. There's a certain amount of regression to the roles we played as children; the boss, the knowitall, the brat, the wingnut, the mute, the loose cannon, the baby. Even though we're all adults now and our conversations are about real grownup stuff, eventually and inevitably, personalities clash and feelings get hurt. People feel slighted or left out or disrespected and we kind of all remember why we left home in the first place.

But not last Thursday. Last Thursday we all gathered at my mom's to eat and talk and take pictures. We tried to cram in memories and conversation and laughter in between cramming turkey and stuffing. We watched our kids sing and dance and create a new layer of memories in the story of our family. It was all over too soon. My big sister - my only older sibling - went back to Europe on Saturday. My my baby sister left Monday morning followed by my brother and his family on Tuesday. All too soon these people that my boy is just getting to know and recognize are gone. We're all back to the normal routines of the lives we've made for ourselves. It was nice to be 12 years old again for a while though.

Kitty

2009-11-24T14:17:00.001-05:00

This cat. I think he's out of chances.

Kitty took a few swipes at Bo again recently, this time claws out. The boy was reaching blindly over the arm of the couch (from Frank's lap), just to see if he could do it. The cat pounced and swatted at Bo's hands and mercifully missed. He then jumped onto the couch where he tried to again scratch and claw at the baby. Frank locked him in the basement until Bo was safely in bed.

Something has to be done.

What can we do? None of our friends or family will adopt this cat. He's a psycho and they all know it. Even my sucker-for-anything-with-fur sister wants no part of this cat. I can't in good conscience offer him to strangers, knowing full well that he's unbalanced and will literally bite the hand that feeds him.

Bo is right on the cusp of crawling - we're talking days, if not hours - and while I can put covers in the electrical outlets and locks on my cabinets, I can't babyproof the cat. Or kitty-proof the baby. Anything on the floor to Kitty is fair game and I can't have him coming at Bo's face.

So what do we do? Be those people? Those people who abandon their pet when they have a baby? I'm not that girl. I'm the girl who gets all eye rolly and disdainful when I read the little descriptions on the cage at the shelter about why the animal was given up. Like, didn't you KNOW that was going to happen? Why didn't you PREPARE better? How can you just give your cat away? Why don't you try that book Or a clicker?

So now I direct all of these mean and judgey comments at myself. And I add new fun ones like, why am I so LAZY? How can I say I'm too TIRED to try the book now? Don't I LOVE my cat?

I'm horrified at the thought of taking this poor cat to a shelter. When he gets out of the house (he makes a break for it every time the door opens), he doesn't even leave the yard. We always find him waiting by the front or back door after 10 minutes of backyard adventure. I can't imagine how freaked out he'd be in a shelter somewhere, waiting for me to come back.

I don't know what to do. I mean, I know what has to be done, but I can't bring myself to do it.

It's Been a Long Time Coming

2009-11-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

I don't really want to talk about it. I try my best not to think about it too much. There's no answer that doesn't suck and the whole thing makes my stomach hurt. So I avoid it as much as possible and just get on with my day. Until it rears up unexpectedly to slap me in the face and leave me holding back tears at my desk or behind the wheel or wherever I happen to be at that moment.

Most recently it was my dad. He was in my neighborhood and had some time between appointments. He called to see if I was home and could he stop by to see his grandson. When I told him I was at work and Bo was at his babysitter's, my dad's response was, "Oh, he has a babysitter now? I don't like that one bit. But you gotta do what you gotta do." To which I responded, "I don't like it either".

Thanks Dad. Because this is really a conversation I want to have out loud. Because I'm not already tortured every day that my baby boy is cared for by someone else as I sit at my stupid desk and order socks or remove salt from pretzel sticks. Because when I walk to the Fedex box and see babies crying and their nannies trying to console them I don't worry about my son and if he's crying and if his lady is consoling him. Because I don't want to scream with jealousy at the girls standing in the bakery discussing their latest playgroup gossip over their ridiculous strollers as I frantically fix myself a cup of coffee on my schlep to work. So thanks Dad, for bringing it to my attention in the middle of my awesome day.

My job has always sucked. My boss is a walking, talking cross between Michael Scott and Mr. Pitt. I do nothing remotely important or meaningful during my day and never have in the almost 5 years I've been here. The thing is, before Bo, I never cared. I was Jim Halpert to my boss's Michael Scott. Frank's own work schedule is always shifting so missing weekends was no big deal since he was usually at work too. The pay for putting up with the craziness made the 14 or 15 hour days (and 100+ hour weeks) totally worth it. There were also perks galore like shoes with red soles and a personal trainer. It was a good gig.

Now I'm working only part time. Fake. Part time by the standards of this job still means one 10+ hour day a week, really being firm about when I have to leave, and still leaving at least an hour later than planned. The upside is that it's not every day. The downside is no regular person would call the work schedule I'm keeping these days "part time". There aren't as many perks. There's a new girl keeping most of my old hours and now she gets all the extras.

I tell myself that I would go crazy staying home all day, every day with the boy - I tried to write as much in this space - but it wouldn't be true. The days I leave him with the sitter and go to work are so sad for me and I count the minutes until I can leave to get back to him. I'm having a terrible time trying to balance it all (like every other working mom out there I know). There are days where I feel pushed to the floor by the stress of trying to figure out a way to maintain everything.

We could most likely get by on Frank's salary but it would be hard. It would involve more sacrifice than we're willing to make. I don't want my husband working himself to death with overtime, missing his own time with our son so that I can stay home. And I like going to work. It feels good to put on nice clothes and leave the house. I like contributing to the family coffers. I also believe it's good for Bo to get the socialization of other people and other kids.

(I'm going in circles with this post. Can you tell I'm just trying to work my shit out by writing it down?)

It makes me angry and sad and bitter that I have to leave my son with someone else to do this. This nothing of a job. This glorified babysitting of a man old enough to be my son's grandfather; older than my own father by 7 years. This job that requires no specialized skills or abilities, only never ending patience and absolute devotion bordering on co-dependence.

I used to be a teacher. A really good teacher, I don't mind saying. I worked in a terrible school in an awful neighborhood on purpose. The conditions of the school were bad and the pay sucked. I made a difference every day just by showing up and I loved it.

So.

I had an interview a couple of weeks ago with my old school district. I'm going back in January.

It's a trade off to be sure. My work schedule will be five days a week instead of 3 or 4 (or 5, if I'm honest) but I'll be done every day by 4pm. Nobody will call me at home at 9pm because he can't figure out how to switch from cable to the dvd player (swear to God) or because he needs help in drafting a mean email to his ex-wife over how she mothers their children. My weekends will be my own. Bo will technically spend more time with the sitter but not really, since Frank's days off are during the week most of the time. It's going to be hard and thankless.

I can't wait.

Perspective

2009-11-10T10:18:00.004-05:00

I'm not quite done beating myself up over allowing my son to fall on his head. In fact, the very next day walking down the front steps of our house with the boy in the carrier, I achieved the advanced move of stepping on the hem of my right pant leg with the heel of my left shoe. We have 12 front steps. Somehow I managed to not lose my grip on the carrier and sort of pitched myself sideways so I landed in the ivy, one ass cheek slamming hard onto the step but the baby landing right side up.

That was an awesome start to the day.

***************************

A couple weeks ago my mom and I were talking about winter coats for Bo and I mentioned something about the one piece snowsuit deals and she said do NOT get one of those things because it's her experience that babies hate those things.

Her experience.

One day my mom decided to take us to the playground near my grandparents' house for the afternoon. She liked to take us for walks during the day, to get out of the house and do something. The playground was within walking distance but not close. It was probably a 10 minute walk for an adult alone. There were four of us at the time, ages 4,3,2, and 1 (roughly) so it was probably more like a 30 minute walk.

When we got to the playground my mom turned us loose to play while she wrestled my brother (the one year old) out of the stroller. He was pissed and thrashy because he hated his one piece snowsuit. In the time it took her to take her eyes off of us and wrangle him, my younger sister, Maria (the two year old) fell off her swing and broke her arm.

It was about 1981 or so. Mom was 25 years old. She didn't speak any English (neither did my older sister or myself). There were no cell phones. Still, she didn't panic or freak out. She got my brother back into the stroller, turned her scarf into a sling for Maria's arm, and walked all four of us back to my grandparents' house where she could call my dad at work and my grandfather could take her and Maria to the hospital.

I have no memory of the event at all. I vaguely remember Maria's arm being in a cast but barely.

I'm 32 years old. I have one kid. I speak the language. I have a cell phone and a driver's license and a car. Still, I think I would melt into a puddle of panic faced with that situation. I certainly don't think I would have the presence of mind to fashion a sling out of my scarf.

My lesson? Kids get hurt and it's not the end of the world.

No snowsuits for Bo.

And maybe one baby is enough for me.

FAIL

2009-10-26T08:40:00.005-04:00

It's not my intention to let this blog languish for weeks at a time. I was talking to Lora the other day (it was more than 2 weeks ago but in the freaky fastforward wormhole that sucked me in the day Bo was born, that was like yesterday) about how this blog sucks. Her response was that it doesn't so much suck as it's just nonexistent. So true. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about or think about or work through. I just sort of suck at life these days.

Speaking of sucking at life...

You know that expression we like to use about how people should be required to obtain a license to have kids? I solemnly swear to never, ever say that again. Because if it were true and I passed the test in the first place (which is no guarantee. My stupid driving test took 3 tries. And I was 23 years old.), my license would have been revoked already, multiple times. Because I suck. I also promise to never again snark about the ridiculously unecessary warnings all over every baby item ever produced, as I am apparently their target audience. That audience being, of course, morons.

Last weekish, I was in the kitchen with the baby, trying to clean out the refrigerator. He was in the bumbo seat because he MUST! BE! UPRIGHT! at all times. In being upright though, he must be no more than 2 feet from my face. So I had him in the bumbo, in one of our kitchen chairs. The chairs are those high, bar stool style ones for sitting at a counter. Or a bar. They do have backs, they're not actual stools. Anyway, he was in one of those chairs and I had him pulled close to me, within (what I thought was)arm's reach. Except notsomuch.

In the minute it took to turn my head and shove something down the garbage disposal, that boy fidgeted and wriggled himself right off the edge of the chair, head first, onto the floor. Onto the ceramic tile kitchen floor. Head first.

Then I had to be the idiot mom at the pediatrician's office (at 8pm bless them) explaining that I had my baby rigged precariously and let him fall off of a chair. I could not believe I was actually uttering the words "I just turned around for a minute". GAH. I wanted to roll my eyes at myself.

He was fine. The doctor isn't sure he even hit his head at all.

It's becoming scarily clear though, that could be the first of many trips we'll be making to the doctor's office/emergency room with this boy. He spends most of his day launching himself head first at things he wants or at nothing in particular. When he's not trying to bash his skull, he's attempting to escape from whatever I've tried to use as confinement. He makes the exersaucer move across the floor with all his vigorous thrashing about, he's figured out how to use his foot as leverage to get out of the bumbo seat (that thing is so retired by the way), and more than once he's rolled clear out of our laps. I'm not saying it's ok to drop your baby, but I understand how it could happen.

Close Encounters of the Feline Kind

2009-09-16T15:09:00.001-04:00

When I was little we had a crazy mutt of a dog. Some dog in the neighborhood had a litter (there were always litters of puppies and kittens in the neighborhood) and all it took to get my dad to agree to a dog was to put the tiny mewling thing on his chest as he sat in his recliner one night. Such a simple manipulation and the puppy was ours. My mom gave her the name Gypsy and it was a harbinger of the wild, incorrigible mutt she would turn out to be.

In hindsight, my parents probably had no business getting a dog at all. My mom was pregnant with baby number 6 or 7, I can't remember. Either way, it's pretty safe to assume that she and my dad were holding things together with both hands. The oldest of us was about 8 and the youngest was a toddler, Maybe about 14 months old.

Gypsy was a maniac. She ran all over the house, she chewed things, and she never stopped barking. I remember taking her for walks and she would drag me along behind her as she strained at the leash to go faster and farther. We could never let her off the leash because there was no guarantee she would ever come back. Now that I'm an adult (an adult who has seen many, many episodes of the Dog Whisperer), I realize that Gypsy needed way more exercise than she could get living in our little Southwest Philadelphia rowhouse. My mom didn't have the time or energy to devote to training Gypsy much past housebreaking and had to resort to simply letting her out in the backyard (we mercifully had a backyard) when the kids old enough to walk her were in school during the day.

And then one day, Gypsy was on a tear through the house and she ran right over the baby and scratched his face. He was fine (I'm pretty sure it was my brother) but I'm guessing that was when my mom reached her limit. One day I came home from school and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Gypsy in a couple of days. I still remember my mom swallowing hard before telling me that she and my dad had sent Gypsy to live on a farm where she would have plenty of room to run and play.

Apparently people really give their kids that line, it's not just for television.

I should ask my mom what they really did with her.

********

We got Kitty a few months after we got married. He adopted us. Frank came home one night from ~~work~~ the bar and found him stretched out across the front step of our building. When Frank brought him upstairs, that cat immediately started purring and winding himself in and around my legs like he had known me for years. That was all he needed to do. He was our cat forever from that night, when he howled and scratched at the bedroom door until I let him in and he curled up on my pillow next to my head. We never could decide on a name for him and eventually he just started answering to Kitty.

We soon found out that this cat is um, psycho. He's incredibly needy, especially for a cat. He must always be in my face, on my lap, in my ear. He endlessly bashes his face into mine, which I know is a sign of deep affection but hi, so annoying. He licks the corners of my eyes and the tip of my nose when I'm sleeping. He does that kneading, pawing thing endlessly, especially when I'm sleeping. If he could find a way to crawl inside my face and live there, he would be the happiest cat ever.

Kitty also has aggression issues. He wants to be stroked and petted and scratched and then he doesn't. He makes his feelings clear by attacking the hand of whomever is showering him with love. He waits in corners and just on the other side of doorways to bat and scratch at the ankles of passersby. Our poor black lab outweighs Kitty by at least 50 lbs and even she avoids crossing the lunatic's path. We've gotten him toys for him to play with, thinking that the aggression is misplaced energy and boredom but no, just pure crazy. Even the vet - who is exclusively a cat vet - said he was the weirdest cat she'd ever met.

It's always been sort of a joke amongst our friends that our cat is the devil. Everyone knows to ignore him and they all try petting him at their own risk. We chalked every one of his quirks up to being lost on the streets for an unknown amount of time and gave him more love. He was just our misunderstood kitty that we loved no matter what.

Of course, we were quite worried how Kitty would react when the baby came. I didn't believe any of the old wives' tales/urban legends about the cat that smothered the baby, but Kitty's neediness comes with a side of extreme jealousy. I was worried about him climbing over the baby to get to my face. People say that cats instinctively stay away from babies and display gentleness with small children. While I'd never really seen Kitty interact with kids, I had no reason to think that he would suddenly find sanity upon the arrival of a smaller, weaker rival for my attention.

Clearly, I was right to be concerned

If he was allowed any closer to Bo's face, he would so be on it. Because that damn baby is in his spot.

Unfortunately, when we're not shooing Kitty away, we're ignoring him altogether. This has resulted in way more nighttime face diving since the baby is in bed and my arms/lap/face is free. As soon as Bo goes to bed for the night, Kitty climbs into my lap. As soon as I'm in bed for the night, Kitty is on my face or on my pillow, behind my head, both paws in my hair.

Things took a bad turn the other day when Bo - who is now all about grabbing at everything around him - took a few swipes at the cat. Kitty responded by batting Bo in the face. I was in the shower and I could hear the screaming through the closed bathroom door, shower running, radio on.

You may be surprised to learn that Kitty is still breathing.

There weren't any scratches. We don't think he used his claws. It was like a warning shot I guess.

So now what? We really don't know. It's unthinkable to me to take Kitty to the pound and essentially abandon him. There's a good chance he was abandoned once and that's how he ended up on our front step. On the other hand, I can't have a psycho cat attacking my baby.

************************

This all happened like 3 weeks ago, which is when I started this post. Apparently though I live in some kind of wormhole where time slips by without my knowledge.

Kitty is still with us, still desperate for attention and pushing the proximity envelope with Bo. Our solution for now is to not let Bo reach out for the cat and to do our best to keep the cat away from Bo. I'm sure we'll have to revisit once the boy is crawling.

Maybe I'll get the name of that farm from my mom.

And If You Got 10 Sticky Fingers...

2009-08-18T22:50:00.009-04:00

Like most 4 month olds, Bo has discovered hands. He loves to watch my hands do things and he puts his hands on mine when I'm buckling him into his car seat or stroller, like he's helping. He doesn't really stare at his own hands so much as suck on them all day long. He tries to get both fists into his mouth at once sometimes. He'll also sit playing with his tongue and chewing on his fingers at the back of his mouth, where his molars will eventually be.

Anything else in the general vicinity of is face will end up in his mouth too. He's starting to figure out how to grab things and anything he manages to get into his hands goes straight to his mouth. He chews on my shoulder when we're walking around and he even got a handful of my hair in there today (because the hair is excellent for grabbing and holding onto, apparently. I really need a hair cut btw.). Bo will grab Frank's thumb and put it in his mouth and go to town. He'll even take a break, pulling Frank's thumb out and then putting it back in. He does it with the pacifier too.

Even though this is all normal developmental stuff, my baby is a genius. No baby has ever figured out how to put things in his mouth as efficiently and smartly as my boy. And the drool is just proof of his incredibly giant and brilliant brain. SHUT UP, he's a genius.

I'm a little concerned though, because he's sucking his thumb a lot. He's pretty much given up the pacifier in favor of the thumb. He'll actually spit the pacifier out so he can suck his thumb. Mostly I'm unconcerned. Except for a little bit. Because I don't want Bo to be a thumb sucker and he's already displaying some of the behaviors of one. He sucks for comfort when he's feeling upset or stressed, he sucks to get himself to sleep and to get back to sleep if he startles himself awake. I have visions of him being one of those 6 year olds you see at the mall, still in the stroller, sucking away. And well, ew.

I'm unconcerned because he's only 4 months old. This isn't a hard and fast habit he's developing here. Right? RIGHT? The other thing is, it's so damned cute. He gets that fat little thumb into his mouth and sucks like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes his enormous head falls forward into his lap because he's so intent on getting as much of the thumb into his mouth as possible, he can't expend the effort pick that melon up.

I'm trying to get some sort of schedule going with this boy (and oy, talk about sucking), part of which is getting him to sleep before 11pm, on his own, without nursing himself into unconsciousness. The trade off is the thumb. Am I setting myself up for a fight down the road? Is there going to be a pepper on the thumb showdown in our future? If I discourage the thumb in favor of the pacifier, isn't it really just the same thing?

No really, I'm asking you.

Because I'm a marshmallow when it comes to this boy.

Do you see those legs? Those legs are so FAT that they get stuck in the Bumbo. I pick the boy up and the seat comes with him.

17lbs.

SEVENTEEN POUNDS!

----------------------------------------------

two posts in two days. you have to be impressed. I'm just saying.

So Much To Haaaaate

2009-08-17T23:29:00.001-04:00

Forgive me for the sputtering incoherence of this post.

Have you seen this train wreck?

Seriously.

I'm unfamiliar with the whole dating reality show genre. I've managed to avoid every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette purely out of disinterest. This show however, sucked me in by having the time slot directly following Hell's Kitchen. I love me some Gordon Ramsey.

This show annoyed me from the jump with all its damn commercials about "real women" looking for love. All the stats about the average size of the American woman versus the average size of the reality dating show contestant. I'm sorry, are the women on all of those other shows cartoon characters? Are they figments of our imagination? And come on, skinny women aren't really the biggest obstacles to reality on any of these shows.

Given the setup, I was fully expecting a whole, "big girls are beautiful, we're here and we're curvy sodealwithit" love fest. I was expecting a group of women confident in their own skin, having a great time, fighting for the affections of some dude. That would have been something.

Like I said, I'm unfamiliar with the genre. I wish I still were.

These women are so saaaad. And the show totally takes advantage of their self esteem issues and filters their entire life stories through the lens of being overweight. Rather than portray the contestants as confident in their bodies and comfortable with themselves, the show does everything to make it clear that "fat" and "pathetic" are basically synonymous. It almost seems as if the more they talk about their weight and body issues, the more screen time they get. It's even obvious during some of their narrative interviews that the producer sitting there is prompting them to circle everything back to weight. It became painfully clear after the first episode that these women hate themselves and every episode is going to pick at the open wound of their self-loathing. On top of that they've layered the promise of Mr. Wonderful and the happy ending of a marriage proposal. Because, you know, marriage totally makes everything easier and better. The wedding is the end of the story.

And they're so young. One woman is only 21 years old (!) and while she's the youngest, I would guess the average age is about 25 or 26. They're talking about how they've never experienced real love and that they've waited "their whole lives" for someone like Luke (Mr. Wonderful) to accept them for who they are and not what they weigh. Really? How is it possible that they think this show is going to be about anything other than their weight? When we first met these ladies, climbing out of their limos and walking up the red carpet to Mr. Wonderful, they were captioned with their name, age, height and weight. Who exactly is accepting them for the wonderful person they are on the inside?

Why are we even calling this a reality show? We all know there's nothing real going on here, right? Do these women know it? I'm just asking, since more than one of them claim to have never been on a date. Do they know that private jets to Vegas, horseback rides, gondolas with sparkly lights, dinners in rented out restaurants, and diamond effing promise rings are not standard dating procedure? Do they know that none of these excursions are Mr. Wonderful's idea? That he's a giant puppet (and I mean giant. Homeboy rings in at something like 6'5", 330lbs) being manipulated by the producers? They keep swooning over how no guy has ever been so romantic or imaginative and how thoughtful Luke is to come up with these wonderful experiences. While he seems like a nice enough guy, he's obviously not long out of the frat house. I'm guessing if left to his own devices, date night would be sucking down beers and wings at the local sports bar with all his buddies.

The last episode was all about Mr. Wonderful presenting them with dresses and taking them to the "prom". In the set up he talks about how he's sure most of these girls had negative experiences with their proms and probably didn't get to go and so he wants to make it up to them. And they're all so excited to go the prom because they never went to prom or their prom sucked or they went with a big group and without a date. And of course all of the bad prom experiences resulted directly from their weight issues but it's all better now because Luke's taking them to prom. Right. Because there's nothing creepy about waiting around to be told what you're going to be doing and then being told what to wear to that activity, when you find out what it is. And you're calling hanging out with some dude and 8 other women "a date".

There's so much that is wrong with this show. Reality television in general is a disaster but this is just awful. I wonder if these women knew what they were getting themselves into. I wonder if they're sitting at home watching this fuming that they're being portrayed as blubbering, needy messes. I sincerely hope that they're angry that every scene and episode shows them eating or making references to food. I mean, there are close up shots of them biting into some kind of beef on a stick and sometimes it's just a close up of the food. Like, let's see what the fat girl is eating. Alcohol doesn't seem as prevalent on this show as others but there seems to be food everywhere. This show is objectifying these women just as much as all the other shows do to thin women, despite the protestations to the contrary in the commercials.

I'm gonna keep watching though. I admit I'm hooked on the spectacular awfulness and even though I'm fully aware of how contrived and manipulated every situation is, even though I get that these women are being reduced to caricature, I'm interested to see what happens next.

I'm so weak.

Toys

2009-07-29T18:19:00.015-04:00

Babies have a lot of stuff. Ok, my baby has a lot of stuff. Lots of stimulating, brain engaging, fun time toys that he only wants to play with if someone is right there, playing with him. And by someone I mean me.

We have a Bumbo sitter

We haaate to lay down. We must be sitting up at all times. But only if you're sitting next to me. Why are you up there and not down here, entertaining me?

We have a bouncy seat

Which isn't so much for bouncing as it is for spazzing out and talking to the animal friends dangling in front. But don't walk away please. And do NOT turn on that jerk vibration feature.

There's the play gym mat thing whose rightful name I do not know.

Which is not nearly as interesting as your upside down face behind me, Mommy.

And do not even think of putting me on my tummy, lady or I will cut you. Or at least cry.

This mat lives in the pack and play when not in use because the monster of a cat that lives here turned it into his personal kitty bed ten minutes after it hit the floor. And Bo hates the pack and play. Will not lay in it. If I put him down in it after he's fallen asleep, he immediately wakes up and starts screaming. So I use it to hold stuff, like blankets and extra clothes and the play mat thingy. I'm tidy.

We have rattles and stuffed animals and loveys. We have books and videos and a Sesame Street Subscription on YouTube. All of this is fantastic, fun stuff. As long as I'm right there, playing along. And if the game can take place in my lap, even better.

It's a pretty good gig.

*And yes those are green monkeys. They're pajamas people.

**You may notice nail polish on my thumb. It's only on my thumb. And half chipped off.

***What? I'm not letting myself go...

****The pacifier? I'm not worried about nipple confusion. This boy will suck on anything happily, including my shoulder and Frank's nose.

Because This Stuff is Hard

2009-07-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to write this post for months now. It's been banging around in my brain this whole time but the longer I've waited, the more perspective I've gained. There's a distinct possibility that my terminal smugness may have contributed to some of the issues I had with breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is haaard. And at first I was very angry that, amidst all the literature and commercials and general beating over the head you endure while pregnant that breastfeeding is best, nobody wants to talk about how hard it is. And how it can really suck. I find the photos you see of a mom staring lovingly down at the child at her breast silly and misleading but also guilt inducing. Like I'm some kind of bad mother already because I don't enjoy the wonderful bonding experience of nursing my son. But now I realize some of the trouble I had could have been avoided if I would have taken a minute to climb down off of my stupid high horse and listen.

I paid very little attention to the information about breastfeeding that was available to me while I was pregnant. I took it for granted that this was something I wasn't going to have a problem with. There had to be some reason why I'd been carrying around a freakishly large rack my whole life. I didn't bother taking a breastfeeding class (then again I didn't take a childbirth class either. Not so much with the being prepared over here) and when I read about it I pretty much glossed over the war stories of cracked and bleeding nipples, engorgement, and incorrect latching or not latching at all. In my own defense, I did pay close attention to the descriptions and directions on how to get the baby to latch properly but reading about it and doing it are so not the same. And the baby? didn't read any directions.

Everything was fine in the hospital - before my milk came in. The baby was latching on just fine and while it wasn't a pleasant sensation, I wasn't losing any skin in the deal. The nurse gave me some lasinoh and I was religious about using it and everything was great. I was nursing every two hours exactly, waking the boy up to do so because of his jaundice and weight loss. My mom was visiting while I nursed and she said that I looked like a natural with the baby. That was some high praise from a lady who had 7 kids in 9 years and nursed us all and it only increased my bloated sense of self-satisfaction. There was a breastfeeding class on the postpartum floor the day after Bo was born and I turned my nose up at it with the attitude of "I'm too busy actually feeding my baby to bother with that." Also, "Sissies". I was also trying to prove that I was saner than my roommate who dragged the lactation consultant back to her bedside after the class was over.

Then day two of Bo's life dawned. He decided to wake up to the world around him and he was hungry! Clusterfeeding is not an adequate description of what ensued. He nursed nonstop for hours. He would fall asleep on the boob and wake up 30 minutes later ravenous again. We were leaving the hospital that day and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get him off long enough for the ride home. I asked the nurse for a pacifier just so he could suck on something. At some point that day my milk started to come in for real and that's when the fun started.

There are a lot of things that happen to your body after you have a baby that nobody really talks about, perhaps because it doesn't happen to everyone or it's different for everyone or it's one of those things that go fuzzy after time. There's an outside chance I just didn't pay attention to those bits of information in my research'. At any rate, up until the milk came in, I was going braless at night and it was totally fine. The engorgement started in the middle of the night, along with the worst night sweats I've ever experienced in my life. I woke up soaked, shaking and shivering. I had to change my pajamas it was so bad. The sweating made me have the chills too which left me sore and achy. On top of the soreness and ache of having just given birth. Awake during one of these bouts, I rolled over and wondered when someone put a ten pound weight on my chest. Oh wait, those are just my boobs! I had to get up in the middle of the night and fumble around for a bra because oh.my.god. My boobs had become rock hard and even bigger - which dear God, how is that even possible.

I don't know when exactly my nipples started bleeding but let's just say things went from bad to worse rather quickly. Bo couldn't latch on anymore. It was like trying to suck a softball. Or a honeydew. So he would cry and scream and get on there any way he could. Then I would cry, first from the frustration of not being able to feed my son and then from the extreme pain of his latch which I wouldn't break because the poor child finally got on there and was getting some food. Meanwhile, he's going to the doctor every day and his stupid bilirubin numbers kept climbing and the doctor is suggesting we supplement with formula until I establish my supply. Dude. I've got milk coming out of my ears. Supply isn't the problem here*.

After about 3 days of this - which felt like my whole life - I swallowed my stupid, stupid pride and called the lactation center that the doctor recommended. I was very leery of the lactation consultant after hearing stories of how mean and strict and fear inducing they can be. Thankfully, this was not to be my experience. That lady saved my sanity. She helped me with how to hold Bo in a football style so that I wasn't covering his entire face with my boob. She told me to get rid of the Boppy because it positioned Bo too high up and made the angle all wrong. She watched me try to nurse him and helped me with finger placement and all that stuff. Turns out I had interpreted the directions and diagrams wrong and was doing it wrong.

Shocking, right?

At this point I was so engorged that my fingers were leaving dents, dents behind and it was just too difficult for the baby to get his tiny mouth to latch on because it was too hard and smooth and he couldn't get any traction. That's when Collette, the lovely lactation angel, gave me the tool that saved everything. She said maybe we should try a nipple shield. And then there were rainbows and unicorns and a chorus in the background. The boy was able to latch on to that and suck away happily. It also sort of slowed down the flow so he could swallow without choking. As a bonus, it really did work as a shield, putting a barrier between his vigorous sucking and my poor torn up, bleeding nipples. They healed in about a week, around the same time we got into a rhythm of supply and demand and the softballs went away.

But I still am no fan. And I feel guilty about it and then I'm mad that I feel guilty about it. I know it's the best thing and what nature intended and blah blah blah. I'm doing it, ok? I'm sticking with it as long as I possibly can stand it. But I think a disservice is being done here in the effort to reverse the formula trend of the 70s and 80s and get women to breastfeed. It's irresponsible to say that breastfeeding doesn't hurt. It does hurt, especially in the beginning. As Collette said to me, we're talking about very sensitive erectile tissues being pulled and tugged and freaking chewed on all day long. That shit hurts. Even now that the baby and I are a well oiled machine and I can nurse him in the dark, it sometimes hurts. And that's with the nipple shield. He bites.

It makes me mad that the breastfeeding propaganda machine makes me feel like a bad mom for saying that it sucks. It makes me madder that there are girls out there who just can't do it and they're made to feel lazy or weak if they don't stick with it. Some people just can't do it and we need to recognize that and support those women. There are no medals or merit badges for breastfeeding. I grant that it's the best thing for baby and it's what nature intended and all that and it should at least be attempted. Sometimes nature fails though, and in the past when nature failed, babies used to die. We need to give each other a break. Being a new mom is stressful and hard enough without the added pressure of trying to make your body do something it's just not going to do.

There's nothing wrong with just wanting your body back, either. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth (no matter what kind), and new motherhood beats the hell out of you even if you don't breastfeed. At some point you want to feel less like a milk machine and more like a person again. We should support that too. The whole business of pregnancy and parenthood is intensely personal. That needs to be respected and honored no matter what form it takes. As long as the baby is loved and cared for and safe and well fed, the rest of it is nobody's business.

And now I need a drink. All the shouting from up here has made me thirsty. Maybe my horse needs a drink too.

*Bo was back up to his birth weight - over it actually - by the time we went and got help. Supply was certainly not the issue. Stupid pride was.

Getting My Feet Wet

2009-07-13T20:49:00.006-04:00

We joined a pool this summer - a swim club. No, not that swim club. We actually were careful to check that this pool didn't have such membership requirements before we joined. It would've been a deal breaker for us for sure. You have to be careful when you start joining organizations that designate themselves as "clubs" for that very reason. We narrowed our search down to two pools and picked the one that allows alcohol on the premises. Gotta have priorities.

The pool is lovely. It's leafy and cool, with lots of sunny spots and shady spots. It totally takes me back to the pool we used to go to when I was little. There's a snack bar and a baby pool and a deep pool with two diving boards, a one meter and a 3 meter board. When I was little the 3 meter board seemed skyscraper high. It was a terrifying thrill to jump off of it and a major accomplishment - worthy of screaming at my parents to watch me! - to dive off. It's funny to look at this board and think that it can't possibly be as high, the old board must've been way higher.

I haven't been off the dives yet. I haven't even been in the pool yet. Bo finds the pool extremely uninteresting and spends most of our days there sleeping, either on a blanket in the shade or in the stroller. Much like his attitude towards the bathtub, he doesn't really care for the pool. We got him in gradually up to his butt and that was ok but there was no splashing or laughing, just bewilderment and lots of squinting. Getting him any wetter resulted in lots of screaming. It's a process, I understand. So we sit in the shade and watch all the kids race back and forth from the pool to the playground to the snack bar.

And man, there are kids! And moms! There are lots of moms with babies right around Bo's age, maybe a month or two older. There's a mom I've seen there twice now with a baby that looks to be about 6 weeks old. I could maybe be friends with these women if I, you know, talked to them instead of silently appraising their strollers/post baby bodies/children's behavior. It might be nice to have some mom friends in the general area since I left all my friends way far away when we moved up here (this is Philadelphia, moving 30 minutes up the Schuylkill is like leaving the state). Someone who could come over for coffee and a fake play date that's really for us and not our kids.

But making friends is not my strong suit. It never has been. I'm weird and shy. Not painfully unable to function in society shy or freak you out when you talk to me weird. Just not the girl who's going to strike up a conversation with the person the next blanket over. It makes me seem snobby and standoffish but I'm really not. Just shy. And weird. It's like I'm the new girl at school and everybody already knows everybody. They all stand in the baby pool with the kids on their hips or in the water and they're chatting and gossiping and I just watch from my chair in the shade, unsure of how to get into the conversation. Or even what I would say.

But look! I'm a mom too! And my boy is cute. Wanna be my friend?

Bring the Noise

2009-06-30T22:45:00.008-04:00

One of these years I'm going to learn how to stop being so damned smug. Either that or the universe is just going to keep smacking me in the head every once in a while, especially when I'm so obviously asking for it.

I just couldn't stop talking about what a pleasant baby Bo is. How happy he is all the time. How even with the reflux, he's still bubbly and giggly and how he'll projectile vomit and then laugh. My baby is the best baby in whole wide world. So there.

Right. Except for the screaming.

We took Bo to the doctor yesterday for his 2 month checkup* - he'll be 11 weeks old on Thursday - and during our conversation I asked for tips on how to make bath time easier. I think my exact words were how to make it not a living nightmare. Because, seriously**. The doctor suggested switching bath time to the mornings if we find that Bo is in a better mood. I said that might be a good idea since Bo is a miserable, screaming disaster from about 6 - 9pm every night and he said yeah, that's colic.

Colic. When I'd been mouthing off all over the place about how my boy is so great and do babies even get colic anymore? What the hell is colic anyway? Bam. Here's some colic. Shut up smug lady.

It's so sad, the screaming, and there's nothing I can do about it. He just screams and screams, his little tongue curled back in his mouth and his face all red. He screams so hard he stops making any sound and then coughs and hacks and screams some more. He screams so hard he makes his skin all blotchy for hours afterward. I walk him and talk to him in low tones and sing to him and do that obnoxious shushing noise but there's really nothing to do but wait until he feels better. Sometimes he'll rip a few killer farts and that helps. Yesterday and today we had scream fests in the morning too. Today he did not take one nap that lasted more than an hour.

And then I get scared. Today he wore himself out screaming but he wasn't sleeping. He was just sitting in his swing and sort of staring into space, without really blinking, which was totally freaking me out. Then he fell asleep and I couldn't leave him sleep in the swing because he just looked so strange; the look on his face was not one I'd ever seen before and it was unsettling and I get scared when I see things like that because the specter is always there. The specter of SIDS that never fully leaves my consciousness. So instead of leaving him nap in his swing I picked him up and stretched him out on my chest to nap. I wasn't going to get any laundry done that way but I would be able to feel every breath he took and thereby keep breathing myself.

I know it's upsetting for him too because he just wants to be held. He will not be put down when he's awake on a day when he's feeling especially screamy. Interestingly, today he was fine as long as he could see me. He was cool in his swing while I puttered around and fought the never ending war against animal hair (tumbleweeds of pet hair blow across your path around here) , but as soon as I was out of sight, the bottom lip would poke out and the whimpering would start. He cat napped in his bassinet this afternoon while I fought the Ikea dresser from hell one more time but again, as soon as I was out of his line of sight, instant whining. He'll tolerate the sling but he has to be in the mood for it, and that hasn't been recently.

It's exhausting and there are moments when I think I may actually go insane if the screaming doesn't stop Right. This. Minute. It's not the noise. I'm impervious to the noise. It's the fact that there's nothing I can do and he's so upset and I can't fix it for him and he can't tell me what's wrong. There are days when I want to hand Bo off to Frank as soon as he gets home from work because I just need a damn minute to maybe walk around the block and regroup. But it's not like Frank just came home from a day at the beach and it's not fair to thrust a screaming, writhing boy into his arms when he's just getting home from a long day of his own.

It's not the worst case in the world. He doesn't cry for consecutive hours. He takes breaks and short naps - because he wears himself the hell out - and he's still cheerful and happy and smiley. He still smiles and gurgles at me when he wakes, even if he screamed himself to sleep twenty minutes earlier. And he's still the best baby in the whole world, colic and reflux be damned.

-----------------------------------

* For those of you keeping score, Bo came in at 15lbs 7oz and 25 inches long. He's a frickin' moose. All of his development is right on track and he's even a little ahead of the game in that he's already recognized himself in the mirror and cracks himself up making faces and talking to himself. Because he's a genius.

** I may never bathe this child again. Today I decided to take advantage of his very cheerful mood to give him his first bath since last Wednesday. Frank was all ready with the video camera and as soon as Bo's foot touched the water, it was over. The screaming and the writhing began. If Bo had better motor skills he would launch himself right out of his whale of a tub, I'm sure. This screaming really gets me because I'm doing it to him and I'm causing him to be that way. It's so not worth it.

How dirty could he possibly be getting anyway?

My boy doesn't actually have freaky colorless eyes without pupils. It was either this or red, demon eyes. This is the best I could do with the red eye reduction tool. His eyes are still the dark, crystal blue they were at birth.

Boaz's Birth Story

2009-06-27T13:29:00.003-04:00

You know why it's taken so long to write Bo's birth story? Because it's boring. And a little anticlimactic. It's not boring to me, but out of the pool of interesting birth stories, this one is definitely wearing swimmies in the shallow end.

I did manage to piss off my roommate on the night Bo was born with this story but in my defense she asked and I was high on the adrenaline of the whole experience and she asked and how was I supposed to know her own experience may not have been so smooth and she was a raving lunatic*?

Anyway, I'm telling the story because I never get sick of it. I don't think it's boring and it's within my rights as a mom to regale any and all with it's awesome unremarkableness.

We went to the doctor for my regular 38 week appointment on April 16 fully anticipating that he would decide to just send me across the street to Labor and Delivery for an induction. Even though we were totally expecting it - my hospital bag had been in the car for weeks - I tried to downplay our excitement. I kept saying that the doctor may decide that I'm not ready and send us home for another week. Frank said either I would be admitted to the hospital that day or the doctor would. After weeks and weeks of contractions and bed rest and false alarms, we were ready to get the show on the road.

Thankfully, after checking me the doctor declared that I was 100% effaced and even though I was only about 1 1/2cm dilated he thought it was best to get me admitted and induced because he wasn't going to be on call over the weekend when I would most certainly go into labor on my own - to which we said woohoo! He stripped my membranes a little - which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - and sent us across the street. He called ahead to Labor and Delivery with specific instructions to admit me directly (without an exam) and that the midwives were not to come near me until he got onto the floor in the afternoon. He didn't want them waving sticks over my head and reading their tea leaves and neither did I.

We got to the hospital and got settled into the delivery room which freaked me out a little because there was the scale and the warmer and all the tiny hats and blankets. Like a baby would be in this room soon. It was just suddenly so real. We had been waiting for him for months and months, getting more and more impatient every week and then it seemed like it would be so soon. The feeling of excitement and anticipation (and not a little panic) was overwhelming.

They hooked me up to the pitocin drip and we tried to get comfortable. It was about 12:30 and we weren't expecting to see the doctor again until around 3pm. Frank had been up since 4am for work and I hadn't really slept in weeks so we tried to nap but it was all too exciting so we emailed and texted and made phone calls and updated our Facebooks to let people know it was for real this time.

Right around 3:30 the doctor came in to see how I was doing and I didn't have much to report. I was having contractions but they weren't any worse than the ones I had been having for months and I wasn't uncomfortable so I hadn't asked for the epidural. The doctor broke my water - such a weird sensation, like a fountain is all of a sudden coming out of your business, a fountain you have no control over - and then suggested that I get the epidural. Unless I wanted to know what active labor felt like. I was not interested in that experience and agreed to just get it. It had been my plan all along to get it as soon as possible. Getting the epidural and avoiding pain was pretty much the extent of my "birth plan". The doctor left to order the epidural and the little anesthesiologist came in right away. Getting an epidural is a strange and not terribly comfortable experience as you sit there with your back exposed all the way down to your ass and you receive injections and a catheter into your spine but it wasn't really that bad, especially when your anesthesiologist is a little Italian man right out of central casting who talks to you about Pedro Almodovar and Spain the whole time.

The epidural had an almost tranquilizing effect on me. I was finally able to really relax and sort of sleep. Frank was starving but didn't want to leave my side in case he missed something. I promised him I was only going to sleep for a while and that no babies would be born while he was inhaling a cheeseburger. He eventually left to get some lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I just kind of drifted in semi-consciousness for a while, not really sleeping and watched TV. The moms showed up around 5 or 6 and we chatted and waited. We listened to the Phillies game on Frank's Iphone because it wasn't on the hospital television. The nurses kept jacking up the pitocin a little at a time and I felt nothing. Frank kept watching the contraction monitor and asking, "you really can't feel that?". I felt nothing. Not even pressure.

What I did feel was effing hungry because even though I knew I was most likely having a baby that day, I didn't bother to eat any breakfast before leaving for the doctor's office. Because I'm a genius.

Eventually, maybe around 8pm, Bo's head came all the way down and I could really feel it. There was about an hour of skull on pelvis, bone on bone, pain. I tried breathing and staring at a fixed spot (the polka dots on my boppy), but that was some intense pain. There were tears and some serious squeezing of Frank's hand. The nurse came in and saw my face and called the doctor. He came in ordered some kind of epidural booster shot. He said he'd give it 10 minutes to work after which it would be time to push, and either the booster would work or I would just have to push through the pain. Thankfully, the booster worked like a charm and I was back to blissful numbness. So much so that the doctor had to put my legs in the stirrups for me because I couldn't feel them to move them. It was like they were asleep. It was awesome.

Then it was time to push. It was really more of a conversation interrupted by occasional pushing. We talked about how we love Disney World and drinking a beer in every country at Epcot. Push. How Frank puked on the grass in Epcot during Illuminations last summer. Push. The doctor told funny stories about women pooping on his shoes during delivery. Push. This went on for about 45 minutes and then Bo was out.

There were some small issues after he was out but I can't really remember. He didn't breathe right away and the cord was around his neck one time. but then he cried and screamed and everything was wonderful and perfect. They put him on my chest and I cried and kissed Frank and stared at my son. And holy shit I had a son.

The rest is kind of a blur as the pediatrician came in and they cleaned Bo up and weighed him and gave him his Apgar tests (8 and 9). Frank hovered around the edges, taking pictures and listening closely to the language the doctors and nurses were using. Meanwhile, I was getting sewn up from the medium episiotomy the doctor performed to get Bo's giant head out.

After we were all fixed up and presentable, they let the moms back in. They could have stayed for the delivery. Hospital policy allows three support people in the room but I didn't want anyone there but Frank. My doctor, in his awesomeness, kicked them out for me. I didn't even have a chance to ask the nurse to get them, they were practically beating down the door to be let back in.

After about a half hour of phone calls and pictures and tears, they took Bo to the nursery to get cleaned up for real and they wheeled me to the postpartum recovery floor, which is the only part of the story that sucks.

It's a very busy hospital all the time because it has a high standard of care and a good reputation, especially for maternity. It's also one of only two hospitals in the Philadelphia metropolitan area with maternity wards so it also draws moms without health insurance who use the emergency room for prenatal and primary care. On this particular day it was super busy for having babies. They had women in labor in the hallways because they were so short on beds. So of course having a recovery room to myself was not going to happen. Added to the indignity of having to share a room in the first place, the bullshit is that when you have a roommate, your partner/support person can't stay the night and has to leave by 10pm. "Hi, brand new mom and dad! Congratulations! Get out." Since it was almost midnight by the time I got to postpartum, they let Frank stay for a half hour. Bo wasn't even back from the nursery in that time.

A little while after Frank left they brought Bo in and gave him to me. They also gave me a turkey sandwich and some graham crackers which may have been the greatest food I ever ate in my life. I ate it with one hand, holding and staring at the boy the whole time. That night, I couldn't sleep. I was too exhilarated by the whole experience. I just held Bo and stared at him and cried off and on and watched the sun come up. The first of many sunrises we would see together.

*The roommate gets her own story because DAMN.

Not the End of the World

2009-06-18T15:12:00.001-04:00

So Tuesday came and went and everything was...fine. Actually, better than fine. It was pretty good. There was no meltdown (for me). I didn't cry in the car on the way to work or hide in the bathroom with my grief once I got there.

Getting there was a spectacular exercise in stupid though, and I thought I was in for just the type of day I was expecting.

Monday night I went to sleep still so anxious about the day ahead and worried about leaving enough milk for Bo that after I fed him on Tuesday morning, I pumped some more. Which put me behind in my timing to get ready. So rushing out the door with my giant messenger bag/pump carrier and my purse and without the completed portions of my big at home project, which I left sitting by the door where I had put them so as not to forget them. Awesome.

When I got to the garage where I needed to park, the other person had parked way too far over into my spot so I had to really squeeze in which left me no room to get out of the car. I had to climb over the console to the passenger side to get out. At which point I saw that I hadn't pulled up far enough to shut the garage door. Do you see where this is going? That's right, had to climb back over console, shut the passenger door from the drivers side - because of course my car will not start with an open door, pull up, and then climb back over and out again.

Walking down the street with my bags, two sets of keys, and my phone in hand, can you guess what got dropped? That's right folks, the phone. In front of two painter/construction worker guys having their morning coffee and waiting for their day to start. Only after picking up the phone and walking around the corner do I realize that the tracball had popped out and there was a gaping hole in the middle of my phone. Does the piece of crap Blackberry at all without that particular little piece of plastic? No. So I had to go back around the corner and search the ground for it. In front of the same guys who say, "aww did it break?" To which I wanted to answer, "Do you find this funny? Because I will cut you." instead of just smiling and saying something generic like, "yeah, I do it all the time".

It was about 7:15 and I was already thinking FAIL. But it wasn't so bad.

It was actually kind of nice. *gasp*

It was nice to get myself ready to go somewhere alone. It was great to get out of the house by myself. I enjoyed driving my windy road blasting the radio without worrying about someone crashing into us or the music being too loud for tiny ear drums. It was, I'll admit, awesome to walk down the street without looking like a mom. Getting checked out by creepy painter guys notwithstanding.

My kids were so happy to see me and we had a wonderful ride to their camp chatting and laughing, just like our rides to school before I left. The rest of the day flew by. It was the same nonsense it always has been. I wouldn't say I got any work done but then, I rarely did before. I picked the kids up from camp, did some more fake ass office work, went with one of the kids to the bakery, drank coffee and ate a cupcake, and then went home.

What I did not manage to do was pump at work. I could not get it together to tell my boss I needed to do it, which is so lame. Could I be a bigger sissy? I know! But it never seemed like a good time and to be honest, between the bullcrap work I was doing and the driving around, there really wasn't a good time to take a break and do it. I wasn't too uncomfortable by the time I left. I did manage to sneak it in on Wednesday while the boss was in physical therapy. The whole thing is so weird. More on that in my upcoming post, "breastfeeding can suck it".

I didn't get the pun there till I just read what I typed. Am a literary genius.

Anyway, I went to work and the world didn't end. My boy was sleeping when I got home and happy to see me when he woke up. Or I was happy to see him and projected the rest. Either way I'll take it.

Separation Anxiety

2009-06-16T23:07:00.001-04:00

Bo and I spent a lot of snuggly time on the couch yesterday morning. He was unhappy every time I put him in his cradle but slept peacefully (and long!) on my chest. As I held him and listened to his little contented puppy noises (when he's not really sleeping, just dozing, he makes this whimpering puppy sound of pure contentment), I cried.

I cried because I knew I was leaving him to go back to work today. I feel like an ass because it's not really going back to work. It's like fake going back to work. So many of you out there have gone back to work for real already and here I am crying in my boy's hair over a few hours away from him.

Work and I have made arrangements for me to come in physically to the office 2 times a week and otherwise sort of telecommute; handling phone calls and emails and such from home. I'm also working on a large project at home that was supposedly started while I was on bed rest except...notsomuch. This arrangement wasn't going to officially start until September once the kids get back in school. Unofficially, I'm simply going for a few hours today and tomorrow to spell the girl who has taken my place, to spare her from working 100 hours this week. Which meanwhile, nobody gave me a break when I was working 100 hours every damn week of my life. It's little wonder I ended up on bed rest.

This is no big deal. I agreed to do it because I knew it was no big deal. I'm really only going to be gone for a few hours and Frank is home the next two days. It's not the first time I've left Bo home with Frank. I've gone to the doctor and the grocery store and even a morning at one of the kid's schools already. I'm not even dropping the boy off at some hellish day care*. Frank knows what he's doing. Sometimes I think he knows more than I do. The tears, they make no sense.

But I was so anxious yesterday and I'm still anxious today. Like, sit on the couch, hug my son and cry anxious. I was worried about being able to pump and leave enough milk for him. I was anxious all day today that what I did pump was enough. Because of course I don't have any storage bags yet and therefore don't have milk stockpiled in my freezer. Because of course I don't. I'm super anxious about pumping at work. It's not exactly the most friendly environment for disappearing from my desk for 15 minutes and it's really not a conversation I want to have with my psycho boss - with whom I share an office. I know it's the law that he has to let me pump and whatever. Even so, I'd rather avoid pointing out the fact that I have breasts at all, although that's probably moot, let alone tell him I have to go hook myself up to a milking machine for a little while. I brought my pump with me today but I don't know if I'll have the guts to actually do it. Also anxious about how the pumping will disrupt the whole supply and demand, sleep cycle, balance thing which I already did on our trip to the beach last week that I'm still trying to fix.

I'm really just anxious because I don't want to leave my boy. Going back today, even for a few hours, just means I'm one step closer to the time I have leave on a regular basis and that makes me saaaaad.

I like being home with him all day. He's changing so much every single day. It's joy to watch him discover is own face in the mirror above his swing. It's freaking magical to hear his developing giggles and laughter. It's fun to play with him, singing silly songs and making eye contact, seeing in his eyes that he recognizes me now. I'm even liking the housework, although I admit I still suck at it. I hate leaving all of that to go sit in an office. An office where my presence is so essential I spent an hour creating a Facebook quiz about myself this morning.

Not that I'm complaining because again, totally aware that a lot of you are working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day and I realize I have a pretty sweet arrangement going. And if I have to be at work, putzing on Facebook beats the hell out of you know, having to actually work on stuff.

If you told me when I was pregnant that I was going to want to stay home, I would have called bullshit on you before you could finish your sentence. Not because I particularly like my job. I don't do anything IMPORTANT (see: Facebook). The world is not a BETTER PLACE because of my work. It's definitely not anything I BELIEVE IN. But I always liked working and having a job, even when work was at its absolute jerkiest and I was on my 85th hour. The thought of being Home. All. Day alone with a baby, even my baby, made me itch. Then I got pregnant and discovered that yes please, I'd love to stay home.

So isn't it a bitch that I find myself happy to stay home and can't do it? And really, we just can't do it.

I suppose this is the universe having some more fun with me. Or punishing me for my smug, judgey, insufferable knowitall, prepregnancy self.

I don't find the irony amusing.

We all know what happened last time I wrote about this. Could my magic work again? Perhaps without the medical issues and hospital stays this time?

*We have no arrangements for child care yet. Because you know, that's not the sort of thing you take care of before the baby gets here or anything. We do have a couple of options. My mom works as a nanny a few blocks over from my office and she thinks she might be able to take care of Bo while she's taking care of her two boys. This would of course be absolutely ideal but it depends on how that mom feels about it. Which I totally understand. Our other option is a lady in my mother in law's neighborhood who watches a couple of kids in her home. She's really flexible about our fluctuating schedule. We know people who have used her and she comes highly recommended. She'd be like Grandma Babysitter. What we're avoiding at all costs is Daycare Incorporated. Hellish might be a tad harsh. It just seems like baby jail to me.

6 Weeks a week ago

2009-06-03T14:16:00.009-04:00

Bo was 6 weeks old last week. He was still 6 weeks old when I started this entry. He is now 7 weeks old. Again, I know. Worst. Blog. Ever.

Anyway, Bo was 6 weeks old last week. We took him to Dr. Dan for his well baby checkup and the first round of evil, evil shots. We love our pediatrician. How can you not love a doctor that you call by his title + first name? He's younger than us by about 4 years and straight out of residency. He's joined his father's practice - with plans to eventually take it over I'm sure. We really like having such a young doctor, although it totally freaked me out at first (as perhaps evidenced by my use of the word young twice in the last two sentences). He's really dedicated and earnest and we can totally relate to him. You have to love a doctor who refers to his patient's testicles as "his boys".

Boaz is 13.25lbs and 23 inches long - or was when I started this post. The boy is a gorilla so I'm sure he's heavier by now. We learned that he has symptomatic reflux. Well, the internet already told me he had it but I shared the symptoms with the doctor for official confirmation. Dr. Dan gave us a prescription for itty bitty baby Zantac which Frank took to the pharmacy immediately after our appointment to get filled.

Before Bo, when I was one of those insufferable know it alls who liked to pass judgement and expert opinions on parenting out of my ass, I would totally have looked down on a mom who gave her tiny boy Zantac instead of just sucking it up and riding out the inconvenience of baby reflux. Because I am a jackass who would deem baby reflux an "inconvenience" while having no frame of reference to do so.

As a fully formed grown up, I have no problem sucking up a little baby reflux. Seriously, I'm impervious to crying. My son however, is only 7 weeks old and cannot suck up anything. He can't lay on his back at all. He writhes around and arches his back. If I do put him down on his back after he's fallen asleep, he wakes up shrieking as if he'd been burned. They aren't the cries of a baby waking up, they are the cries of a baby in serious pain. He vomits and chokes on it. Not instantaneous, greedy, "I swallowed more than my belly can hold" spit up. Oh no, I'm talking half digested, 30 minutes later vomit that he chokes on. He gags. You know, gagging where you can't breathe and you open your eyes and mouth really wide to take a breath but you're gagging? Right. Imagine a 7 week old making that face. Imagine your 7 week old making that face from his precious little lamb swing and straining to lift his head to get some relief. Now add the specter of SIDS that haunts your little family because it's been here before. Zantac is a damned godsend.

Speaking of swings and godsends, while struggling with what the hell is wrong with the baby syndrome, the only place Bo could sleep peacefully was his swing. Which is in our family room. Which is not where our bed is. For about a month we slept on the couch and love seat (Frank on the love seat, me on the couch) while Bo slept in his swing. So really only Bo got any sleep at all. But what else could we do? He couldn't sleep on his back. He would sleep on my chest but really, that wasn't practical because at some point I would fall asleep and weren't no way that boy was being put down on his tummy to sleep. So the swing it was.

Then we dragged our bleary eyed, sleep deprived selves to the doctor for the six week checkup. When we told Dr. Dan that Bo was sleeping in the swing, he told us it was very important to try to get him to sleep either in the crib in his room or in the bassinet in our room. Apparently a new study has been published that suggests a relationship between sleeping elsewhere and a higher risk for SIDS. Awesome. Other than that Bo passed his physical with flying colors. He's spectacularly normal and developmentally fantastic. He's in the 95th percentile for his weight which whatever, I pay very little attention to that stuff.

Then it was time for the shots.

I don't really have anything to say about the controversy over infant immunizations. Well, that's not true. It's more accurate to say I don't have a firm position. The autism spectrum is vast and growing; not to mention overwhelming and devastating to a parent who finds herself thrust onto its merry go round. This I've seen in person and it's not for me to say that it's over diagnosed or that the spectrum is too vast. We don't know why it happens or what causes autism. There's no describing the anguish of parents not able to reach or help their precious baby through that darkness nor the need to find a reason why it happened; to blame something or somebody for what really is in some way the loss of their child.

Do immunizations cause reactions in the brains of some children that result in autism? I really don't believe that they do. But I'm not going to dismiss anybody that does believe it. Although certain 90s MTV game show host, quasi-celebrity, former playboy models do their cause no favors by being so angry and screamy and dismissive of anyone who isn't as religiously convinced as she is. My Dad always said that nobody listens to the screamers on either side of an issue and he was right. It's too easy to tune them out because they make no allowance for informed dialogue or conversation. Nobody wants to listen to an attitude of my way or the highway. You marginalize yourself and make your message less effective. Also, those certain celebrities may want to examine the relationship between frequent and habitual coke snorting during those 1990's and her son's problems. I'm just saying.

All of this is to say that of course we got Bo immunized. I don't know about shots and autism but I do know about rotovirus and hepatitis and other creepy crawly things that I do no want infesting my boy and that these shots will most definitely thwart them. And that is what I kept telling myself and him, while apologizing profusely for the whole experience.

Everyone knows that watching your baby get shots is excruciating. Most people expect the parents to cry just as much as the baby. All of this I knew but I didn't know exactly why until I held my fat, wriggly son in my arms and offered his delicious thigh up to the nurse for the shots. Word of advice to parents who haven't had this experience yet: do not look at your baby's face while this act is being performed. Avoid his eyes especially. See, I thought parents cried because of the pain being inflicted on their precious baby. But that's not it. At least, that wasn't it for me.

Bo was in my lap, waving his arms and legs uncontrollably and looking around with his giant blue eyes, probably happily expecting to be fed soon since it was time and he could smell that he was in the right lap for it. Then the shots came. It's almost too hard to describe the looks of first surprise and then hurt and then pain on the boy's face. You know in the movies when a person gets stabbed or shot without warning and that look of confusion and betrayal that they always telegraph? That's the look that was on Bo's face. And before he can really process the pain, here comes another shot and another and another. Of course he starts screaming in pain but the confusion and surprise on his face is what really got to me. It was like I betrayed him. I couldn't explain to him what was happening or why. I could only hold him and rock him and pray that he didn't associate my smell with that awful feeling forever.

He was pretty out of it the rest of the day, sleeping a lot and waking up when the Tylenol wore off. Yes, Tyelnol too. Every time he woke up he was in pain. His cries were different and I could just tell it hurt. Projecting a little? Perhaps. But he was in pain and I was going to fix it if I could.

I was also going to use the opportunity to try and get the boy back to sleeping in his bassinet and thereby get myself back to sleeping in my bed. I suggested to Frank that while our son was groggy and kinda whacked out we should try putting him to bed properly and he agreed. Don't you know that boy slept in his bassinet that night and every night since? A full week of sleeping in a bed like people. It's been awesome and I don't think I've ever been more grateful for my bed.

The Zantac started working immediately, despite Dr. Dan's warning that it would take 5 or 6 days. There's far less vomit and writhing around. Bo is sleeping well for about 3 hours at a time at night and we're luxuriating in our fabulous Ikea queen size. Ok, maybe not so much luxuriating as passing out cold amongst the cat and the dog and each other. Even so, it's better than the couch.

Not that it matters because I'd sleep on the ground outside if it means never seeing my baby gag and choke again.

It was a very rough day.

Worst Blog Ever

2009-05-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

I know. I know. I KNOW. Never have I been any good at the whole consistently posting thing and now, with Bo actually here, it's worse. The birth story still has not been written and the boy has been here for over a month. Trust me though, it's so boring you'll be glad it took so long. Life with baby is a constant cycle of nursing, diapers, sleeping, repeat. I spend a lot of time holding him and staring at him and trying to fathom that he was inside me and stuff. Also brain fried sleep deprivation.

So for the first two or so weeks of Bo's life we were at the doctor's a lot. He was very yellow and his bilirubin numbers kept rising, even after being discharged from the hospital. I don't know if he ever officially had jaundice but he was headed in that direction. So we were taking him to the doctor every day and then every other day there for a while to get his blood tested and his weight taken. When I say we, I mean Frank because after the first day, when the nurse made my newborn son scream bloody murder while squeezing one drop of blood at a time from his heel and scraping the vial against the place where she stuck him, all the while blithely saying he'll never remember it; after that day where I cried in the exam room and nearly punched the nurse in the face, Frank suggested that I stay home and sleep while he took the boy to the doctor.

Seriously, don't tell me that he's not going to remember it. That's a jackass thing to say. I know that I'm a brand new mom and totally hormonal and everything, but you are causing my tiny, brand new son to be in pain right now and you're being condescending and dismissive about it. I don't care that he won't remember it later, I don't care if you've done this for eleventy million years and have tortured hundreds of babies. You're hurting my son and while he may not remember it, he's surely in pain right the eff now so please, a little compassion. Or how about if I stab you in the eye as long as you won't remember it later?

Anyway, Bo's numbers eventually started to go down and he was back up over his birth weight at five days old so the risk was over as quickly as it was identified. He's totally fine now.

We go tomorrow for his 6 week well baby visit and he'll get his first round of immunizations. I can't wait to see what he weighs. I'm betting on 15 or 16 pounds. The boy is a moose.

Also, gangster.

Boaz

2009-04-29T16:53:00.006-04:00

Boaz was born two weeks ago (it will be exactly two weeks tomorrow) and I have tons of stuff to share about labor (almost anticlimactic after the drama of the past 3 months), life with a newborn (is it wrong to stare at your child all day long?), and other things (La Leche League can kiss my whole ass).

I'm not ready yet though. Frank goes back to work on Sunday and for now I just want to sit in the living room and stare at my boy with my husband. And dog. And cat.

Feel free to join us in the staring.

Because he's the most beautiful baby that ever lived. Except for yours, of course.

And who wants to be on the computer when there's this to see?

Know what I mean?

Many thanks for all your supportive comments and thoughts two weeks ago. Also, thanks to Lora for posting for me and letting the internet know the party was getting started. You collective Kegeling really helped!

Labor Day

2009-04-16T13:27:00.002-04:00

Hey all, it's Lora standing in for Hope today.

Hope is officially hooked up to the Labor Maker at the hospital and feeling those horribly wonderful contractions and listening to some obnoxious biznatch screaming at the top of her lungs like she is the first person to ever push a body out of her body.

Everyone think progressive thoughts and keep your lower belly clenched in honor of the pushing, and be sure to do your kegels all night long.

I'm doing them right now.

Holding Pattern

2009-04-14T10:46:00.000-04:00

You know what's fun? When doctors and nurses don't know anything and just best guess your ass to the hospital because they don't really now what the hell is going on so "go to the hospital and get checked" is their answer for everything.

A week ago I went for another nonstress test. They don't allow "support people" back for the test because the room is too small so Frank just drops me off and then finds somewhere to park and wait for my call. He watches dvds in the backseat. The test is supposed to be about a half hour. They strap a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor on my belly and then watch to make sure the baby's heart rate responds to his movements. There was some kind of staff shortage or whatever that day because I sat in the waiting room for over an hour past my scheduled appointment time, the excuse being "there's only one nurse today". I'll refrain from criticizing the nurse because that has to be some bad karma for a person who is about to be at their mercy but seriously, she wasn't like, a one armed nurse or anything. When I finally did get in there and hooked up, I was contracting a lot and the chicken kept squirming off the monitor. I sat there for a half hour while they couldn't get a reading at which point they decided to do a biophysical profile - which is an ultrasound where they hold the wand in one spot and watch specifically for lung and diaphragm movement. The nurse doing the ultrasound noticed that I was contracting a lot too and tried to distract me by talking to me and taking 3d pictures of the chicken for me. She saw the movements she needed to see from the baby and said she would tell the doctor about my contractions when she told him the profile was good.

At some point, I should have said, "it's nothing. I've been having contractions like this for over a month now." But I guess there was some wishful thinking on my part that hey, these people know more than me and if they're concerned by my contractions, maybe we're getting somewhere. Ha ha. Fake.

The doctor came in and said it looked like I was in early labor and to go to the hospital to get checked out. While waiting for the elevator we ran into my regular Ob who asked what we were doing there and when we told him he said, "yeah I'll see you Thursday" (my next appointment). He didn't think I was anywhere near labor. But even he said go get checked anyway. So back to labor and delivery we went, back in a hospital gown, back on the monitors, back to getting poked by strangers. It was a midwife this time who said I wasn't dilated at all but she would check again in two hours. Two hours! My original appointment was at 10:30am. It was now past 2pm. Two hours later, the midwife came back, checked again, no change, and we were sent home. Again. The midwife said I just have what they call an "irritable uterus" that contracts all the time. I KNOW THAT! Ugh. SO cranky then and still now just thinking about it.

So we went to our regular Ob appointment on Thursday where the doctor checked me out. We're at the pantsless stage of visits now, which I actually don't mind since at least it seems like things are moving along. The doctor said I was 1 1/2cm dilated, about 90% effaced, and the baby's head was at -1. To go from no dilation to 1 1/2cm in a couple of days is pretty good progress apparently and he said that he wouldn't be surprised if I went into labor all by myself sometime this week. If not, he would help me along at our appointment next week.

Here it is Tuesday now and nothing is happening. Yesterday was very exciting because I was having tremendous pressure in my lower back, so much so that I couldn't stand for more than a minute or two. I was also feeling very crampy and my usual contractions had a different edge to them. It was all very exciting...and ultimately not. Nothing developed any further. Nothing happened over night. Here I sit.

I hope something happens before Thursday because I would really like to go into labor by myself. Not enough to tell the doctor so - I like his plan much better - but there's a part of me that wants things to get going on their own. It's a small part though and at this point, I'm truly happy to get there any way I can. Bring on the weird, crochet hook looking water breaker thing. I'm so ready.

Total Stream of Consciousness Not Worth Reading

2009-03-25T11:44:00.000-04:00

This is my son's room right now. To be fair, this is only half of the room. The other half is actually cleared out and ready to have furniture and baby stuff but this side is where the crib is going to go. Right there in front of the window is my plan, based on the layout I have in my head. The changing table is also going over here somewhere. The layout in my head is sort of fuzzy because the boxes make it hard to visualize.

Obviously there is much work to be done.

I did spend some time in there the other day emptying out some boxes and putting things in their proper homes. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be because all of the boxes, except for one or two, are deceptive in that they're destined straight for the attic without unpacking or sorting. It's boxes of that stuff that you want to keep for whatever reason but don't really want out anywhere. The other two (or 3) boxes are full of clothes, about half of which I'm betting can be thrown out or given away. Finding a home for the stuff I want to keep will be hard because the Ikea dresser from hell has still not been put together and there's seriously no place to put them. At this point I may just close them and put them in the room on the third floor which has a bright future as a guest room/play room/walk in closet but right now is a catch all for crap I don't want to deal with.

My plan for today is to get in there and do some more clearing out. The problem is I can't really be on my feet for any length of time. I'm not supposed to be, for one thing, but also I physically at this point can't do it. I'm a huge sissy because I can't suck it up and all you girls are still going to work every day - or did when you were pregnant - but I can't do it. After about 5 minutes on my feet I have to sit down, totally out of breath. I really have to get going though because the shower is Saturday and we're going to actually put all the resulting stuff somewhere. Also, the crib right now is in the living room, in pieces. He's not going to sleep in it for a while, but still. I'd like to have the whole room ready.

All this and I'm 35 weeks today. We have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow and the doctor on Friday. I'm worried that the ultrasound doctor is going to take one look and say go directly to labor and delivery, screw your plans and your shower. Or that my doctor on Friday will. Realistically, this is doubtful I'm aware. They most likely won't do anything before 37 weeks but even so, it's not like I have all the time in the world over here.

Can you tell how much I'm hoping that time is really running out? That I don't want to wait four more weeks, nursery be damned?

It's Official

2009-03-16T12:54:00.001-04:00

The first thing I did when I got the glucose test results from the doctor's office was to call Frank at work. When he got home that night he suggested maybe I should call the doctor's office again and ask to talk to him to get some more information. This was a good plan because neither of us was terribly comfortable with the idea of just waiting for two weeks. I'm pretty sure Frank was staring down two weeks of me using the internet to educate myself on the worst possible outcomes of a diagnosis of gestational diabetes and wanted to avoid that fun house of neurosis at all costs. We didn't even have an official diagnosis since the only person I talked to yesterday was the medical technician who is probably discouraged from doing that.

So I called the doctor early Friday morning, hoping that by calling before the office actually opened, I could get the answering service and get the message directly to the doctor thereby bypassing the receptionists at his office who Frank swears are really these guys in human form except not funny at all. My plan did not work out so well as one of the charming ladies called me back to take the same message all over again.

The doctor called a few hours later and said that it is officially gestational diabetes. The two hour test the technician (a lovely girl named Tangela who is warm and pleasant and does the best job ever of not hurting me when she takes my blood) was talking about is one of a series of weekly tests I have to undergo from now until the end. Every week I have to go to the doctor's office two hours after I've eaten to have my blood drawn and my sugar tested. A pain in the ass to be sure but I was getting close to the weekly visits anyway and it's still far better than having to stick myself 4 times a day, which some people have to do. I also have to go every week for ultrasounds and nonstress tests so they can monitor how big the boy is getting and how his little heart is keeping up.

Thankfully, my numbers aren't high enough to require insulin shots or medication of any kind. I just have to stay far away from sugar, including juices, flavored yogurts, and simple carbs like white bread and white pasta. A friend of mine who is a PA in an endocrinologist's office gave me some good information about breakfast. According to her, your body is most insulin resistant in the mornings so the last thing to eat is fruit, cereal, or juice. Hello I start my day with a giant glass of orange juice, followed my an english muffin or a bagel or some cereal and another glass of orange juice and maybe a piece of fruit. (Confession: I've been taking advantage of this pregnancy to go to town on the foods I would never otherwise eat, like english muffins and orange juice.) The best thing to eat, according to my friend, is animal based proteins (like eggs) and a small amount of whole grains, like steel cut oatmeal or whole grain toast. It's also best to eat several small meals all day long to avoid spikes or dips in blood sugar. That part I have covered since sitting at home all day means snacking all day. Now though, "snacking" has to be carrot sticks instead of Doritos.

The biggest concern apparently is the size of the chicken. Based on the last ultrasound we had - about 3 weeks ago while in the hospital - he was already about 4.5lbs. If he continues to grow at an average rate for the next 6 weeks, he'll gain about 4.5 more pounds, which means he'll weigh 9lbs at birth. The doctor said if he gets that big (according to their ultrasound estimates) they won't allow me to even try and deliver and will instead plan a c-section. The reality is he could be much bigger than that since insulin is a growth hormone and he's getting way more of it than is normal. They will also only allow nature to take its course up until my due date. If nothing is happening by that day, they'll have me come in and either induce or just go in and get him.

So more fun and excitement as we head into the home stretch. I'm glad that we have only 6 weeks of this stuff ahead of us, although catching it earlier than they did would probably not have been a bad thing.

In other exciting news, we had our second trip to Labor and Delivery last night, because it was so fun the first time. All day long I had been having a lot of contractions. Hard, painful ones. But they weren't getting closer together and there was no real pattern to them. Still, by about 6pm I decided to start keeping track because it did seem like a lot and the doctor's instructions were to call if I had more than four in an hour. I kept track for four hours and in the first two, I had four contractions. In the next hour, I had 7 contractions. By the third, I was up to 7 and the hour wasn't over yet when Frank called from work and asked how I was feeling. I told him about the contractions but said don't worry, it's not labor, there's no pattern, everything is fine. He said are you insane, call the doctor right now. I didn't want to call the doctor or go to the hospital because I don't want to be alarmist, neurotic, first time prego. But I called him and he said go get checked. Frank was already on his way home when I called him back and honestly, I fought off tears as I got dressed and waited for him.

At the hospital, same drill. Into the exam room, stupid hospital gown, hooked up to the monitors and yay! another pelvic exam complete with speculum! It wasn't too bad this time. It still hurt but far less, probably because I was prepared for what it would be like this time. The doctor said my cervix was totally closed and my water was intact (I had mentioned to them that I had been feeling like a leaky faucet all day). Relieved, I was ready to put my pants back on and go home. Right. I was in fact having contractions very close together and my heart rate and the chicken's heart rate were both a little high. Solution? IV fluids! Yay! And when the first bag of fluids was empty, the contractions hadn't slowed down and neither had our heart rates so they hung another one and we watched more crap tv. Finally, around 2am the doctor was satisfied that the contractions had slowed down and so had our heart rates and were allowed to go home. The nurse said you can get dehydrated even if you're drinking water all day long. Not sure how to prevent that in the future but good to know.

6 more weeks to go. I wonder what adventure awaits us next. The truth is, we're not so secretly hoping that they decide to go get him early, like 37 or 38 weeks. At this point, we just want him here, safe and healthy, and no more bumps in the road.

You've Got to be Kidding

2009-03-12T16:30:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we went for the 3 hour glucose screening since I failed the one hour test. Can I tell you it was pure torture? It was at 9 in the morning which meant leaving our house at 8 in the morning because rush hour on the world's most poorly designed highway - and the only sensible way into the city - turns a drive that should take 20 minutes into an hour long affair. I don't sleep anymore so waking up wasn't an issue but the last thing you want to do when you haven't slept is get out of bed. Frank had his dart league the night before and only got about 5 hours of sleep. We were not a happy pair to encounter.

At the doctor's it was the same deal: take my blood, drink a sugar drink. This one was even worse because it had DOUBLE the amount of glucose in it than the one hour. And it wasn't even orange, it was some fake me out lemon lime grossness but I drank it thankfully because I hadn't even had water since the night before. Because you know, water is somehow going to impact my glucose levels and throw the entire test out of whack. I'm smart. And rational. Anyway, drink the drink and then we saw the doctor who said I have a 50 percent chance of actually having gestational diabetes. What the hell kind of odds are those? I was expecting something way more lopsided (in my favor) and definitive than "you may have it or you may not".

Other than that the doctor didn't have much to say. My weight is pretty stable - a surprise to me since all I do is sit home and eat anymore - and the belly is measuring exactly what it should for 33 weeks. He said that when he does the Group B Strep test he'll also break out the speculum to take a look at the "alleged polyp". He's still not entirely convinced that's what it is, which is why I'm still under house arrest, just in case it's something more serious. Awesome. I love a pelvic exam with the speculum in late pregnancy. It's great to cry in the doctor's office from pain!

Then we went back out the waiting room to sit and well, wait. I was flying from the glucose drink and feeling a little sick to my stomach. That is some seriously gnarly stuff to give a girl who hasn't eaten since the day before. I was all shaky and wobbly and a little tweaked out. I brought a book to read but spent a lot of the first hour leaning on Frank's shoulder and trying to keep the room from spinning. Then back for another blood draw. We sat for two more hours of waiting and blood draws. Also, it was 479 degrees in that waiting room, which only got worse as it filled with people. By the last hour I felt like my face was going to melt off.

Finally it was all over and we got to go home. When I tell you the wooziness was bordering on loss of consciousness I am not lying. Of course I had to field a work related call on the way home. It was not my best moment and I'm sure there was some babbling incoherence happening. The first thing I did when we got home was make a fat sandwich with chicken cutlets my mom made for me. Then I made straight for the couch where I spent the rest of the day in various stages of semi-consciousness, except when I had to answer the phone for work. Then I put my fake, "what, I'm totally awake" voice on and tried to keep my crap together.

The girl who ran the test said that the results would be in today and that they would call only if they had something to tell me. I tried really hard all day to just wait it out and not be the neurotic spaz who calls even when they said they'd call me. I made till about 4 at which point I couldn't take it anymore. Guess what folks? My test was abnormal! My numbers were way higher than the guidelines. Now according to the internet, my source for all things true and not alarmist in any way, failing the 3 hour test is an automatic diagnosis of gestational diabetes. This is according to the Mayo clinic and WebMD, not you know, Yahoo answers or anything.

My doctor however, wants to do some other type of test where I eat a small meal first, then come in and have my blood effing drawn again. He plans to talk to me about it at my next appointment, IN TWO WEEKS. That's right. Two weeks of growing a giant baby who might have jaundice and hypoglicemia at birth before another damn test. At this rate, I'm going to deliver the boy before they get around to diagnosing the damn problem. Also, two weeks with nothing to do but think about it.

Frank says I jinxed myself into all of these problems by obessesively watching endless hours of When Childbirth Attacks. I say none of this funny, dammit and what happened to that pregnancy I was having for the first 6 1/2 months where nothing was happening at all? Can I have that back please?

House Arrest in Full Effect

2009-03-09T16:03:00.002-04:00

We went back to the doctor last Wednesday for my 32 week visit, which was also a follow up visit after my hospital vacation, and also the day for my glucose screening. When we got to the doctor's office, the lady at the front desk told us he wasn't there because he had to deliver a baby but he wanted me to have the glucose test anyway, especially since it was already a little late in the game for it. I was bummed because I was really looking forward to being taken off house arrest at this appointment.

So fine we go back for the test and it's no big deal really. I didn't mind the sugar drink at all. It was kind of like what orange jello would taste like if you drank it in liquid form, or like a super orangey version of the "orange drink" we used to get at camp. Since my one consistent craving this whole pregnancy has been oranges and orange flavored things, it was pretty good. We both brought books to kill the hour in between so we went back out to the waiting room and settled in to wait.

Did I mention that I had to go in for the test fasting? Apparently, some docs allow you to eat the day of the test but mine isn't one of them. About 15 minutes after the blood draw and the sugar drink the wildest sugar rush of my life set in. I actually felt a little drunk. All speedy and kinda woozy. And then very quickly crashing down tired and a little nauseated.

At some point around that time, the doctor appeared out of nowhere, beckoning to two other women from the waiting room. One had a duffel bag and her husband in tow, the other had a friend or family member of some kind. Both women were in the exam rooms for maybe 10 minutes and then they reappeared, one after the other. The doctor has this very convenient policy wherein if you want him to deliver your baby while he's on call at the hospital, you can schedule a day with him and he'll break your water and then you go across the street to the hospital and say "I think my water broke". This is what happened with both those women, I'm sure and I figured he wasn't going to talk to me at all.

On his way out of the office to head back to Labor and Delivery though, he did stop to talk to us. I asked him my burning question as to whether his orders for me were the same. He said to get up and move around a little more normally over the weekend and see what happens. Still no exercising and no lifting of anything remotely heavy. Frank asked, "She still can't go back to work, right?" and the doctor pretty much said I could go back to work until I landed myself back in the hospital with more bleeding but the best thing to do and his recommendation was to just stay home. The nurse called me back to take my blood again and that was that.

After the appointment we headed down to South Philly to get some cheesesteaks from Geno's. Generally, we don't get our cheesesteaks from Pat's or Geno's because they're not that good and those places are really for tourists who don't know any better and really, I eat a cheesesteak like once a year. On a more personal level, I stay away from Geno's in particular because the old man is a xenophobe who has been waging a nasty ( albeit unintentionally comical) campaign against immigrants and non-English speakers. His support for the Phila police is unparalleled though and on this particular day, Geno's was hosting a fund raiser for the family of the most recent Philadelphia police officer to be killed in the line of duty. 6 officers have been killed in the past 16 months in my fair city, 4 shot to death and 2 killed in car accidents by repeat criminals under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. The most recent was a 25 year old newlywed whose wife is expecting their first child. The least we could do is buy a couple of cheesesteaks and a tshirt.

I was so wiped out from the stupid sugar drink and the blood draws and then in a food coma from eating a cheesesteak too fast, I passed out on the couch for about 3 hours when we finally got home. It was a really good nap.

The next day, the doctor's office called to tell me that I failed the glucose screening. Of course I immediately started googling "gestational diabetes" and "acceptable glucose level" so as to reassure myself. And by reassure myself, of course I mean freak myself the eff out. There's no real standard of what's a really high number, what's marginal, or what's normal. Some doctors cut off at 140, some higher, some lower. There was no comfort in the damn internet but I didn't come across any horror stories so at least there was that. So this Wednesday we're headed back to the doctor for the 3 hour test. I'm trying to remain calm and tell myself that it's normal and lots of people fail the first round and then turn out to be normal on the 3 hour. My own sister in law just went through it last month and she was declared fine after her 3 hour test. But really, at this point I'm not shrugging anything off or ruling anything out. Also nagging my thoughts is the fact that this boy is already measuring quite a bit bigger than average for this particular stage of development which is of course a side effect of gestational diabetes. Awesome. We shall see. At least they'll let me know the next day so that should keep the obsessing to a minimum.

We're pretty convinced that this boy is not going to wait 7 more weeks to make his grand entrance. I'm feeling fairly certain he's going to be an early bird. If that does turn out to be the case, he totally gets it from his dad.

A Little Excitement

2009-03-06T17:25:00.003-05:00

So you know on all the pregnancy websites it tells you to always call the doctor if anything seems weird because it's always important and they won't think you're crazy or neurotic and they always would rather see you and send you home for nothing than not? Funny thing happened a week ago Saturday night (so not this past Saturday night, the one before), I got to test that theory out.

It had been a long week for me. I had been in Miami for the weekend for work and while it was actually very relaxing and fun, getting a family packed and ready for vacation, the whole plane thing, and just not being home really wore me out.

As soon as we got back to Philadelphia I was slammed with a brutal cold. I was coughing so hard my stomach muscles were sore. The doctor prescribed me antibiotics because at this stage my immune system is a total punk and a simple cold can morph into bronchitis or pneumonia quickly. He also prescribed cough syrup with codeine in it so that I could actually get some sleep. Who knew a prego could take codeine? It was all very low dose stuff, not regular strength at all. As soon as we got home from the doctor I took my medicine and went straight to bed. That was Thursday. I stayed in bed all afternoon that day and the entire next day, sleeping mostly and watching television. Did I mention I'm addicted to Birth Day and Deliver Me on the Discovery Channel? There's about 4 hours in the afternoon every day of these shows. Also another one called Bringing Home Baby where they show the first 36 hours home with a newborn. I don't understand the people who sign up to be on these shows. Who wants to be a crying, greasy, breastfeeding mess on television? Not me, but I'll watch you do it.

Saturday I felt a little better and also guilty and pissed off about my weekend being wasted in bed when there were dishes in the sink and my suitcase wasn't unpacked and I felt like a lazy slob. I decided to get up and tackle the dishes first. It seemed like they took a long time but I was probably moving in slow motion. The whole time I stood at the sink I was having contractions but I just chalked them up to Braxton-Hicks and paid no attention. The dishes pretty much wiped me out so I headed back to bed.

Poor Frank had been hiding in the basement all week so as to avoid my disgusting germiness and also to give me space to thrash around and cough my head off. When he came home on Saturday night we actually spent some time together in his man cave in the basement since I wasn't contagious anymore. He fell asleep and I went back to my sick bed to watch some more television. CSI Miami is on for hours and hours on the weekends and it's pure trash and I love it. CSIs don't actually walk around in low cut tops and 5 inch heels. Did you know that? They wear coveralls and are usually big fat guys. They also don't interview suspects or witnesses. They collect all the crime scene grossness and then leave. Frank shares this with me every time the show is on, which is why I only watch it when he's not around.

Around 2am I had some discharge that didn't feel normal but again, paid no attention because Horatio was about to crack the case and get the bad guy and really, the mystery of pregnancy discharge is never ending. About 20 minutes later I got up to go to the bathroom and blood! There was bright red, coming out of me, blood! I ran downstairs to Frank (still in the basement) and woke him up saying we had to go the hospital right now! He said well let's look it up on the internet. He Googled something like 30 week bleeding or whatever and everything that came up said call your doctor right away. So I called the doctor's office, got the answering service who paged the doctor, he called back and said go to the hospital.

We got dressed and headed for the hospital, I tried not to freak out and Frank saw it as a good opportunity to do a test run since the hospital is about 30 minutes away. When we got there I told the nurse at the desk "I'm 30 and a half weeks and I'm bleeding and the doctor said go to the hospital". The doctor on call was standing right there and she said "I'll see you in a minute". They put us in a room and gave me a gown. I got in the hospital bed and they hooked me up to a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor and an IV. The doctor came in and asked me questions about the bleeding and then did a pelvic exam with a speculum. She found and removed a large clot off my cervix.

Ok, I've had hundreds of speculum exams and while they're never pleasant or comfortable, they've never hurt. This hurt like you wouldn't believe. I was actually crying out from how much it hurt. Apparently you're not really supposed to jam stuff like that up there while pregnant. It doesn't feel so good.

The doctor said I wasn't dilated at all but couldn't explain the bleeding. Meanwhile, the contraction monitor showed I was having a contraction A MINUTE. I wasn't even feeling them but there they were on the print out from the monitor, consistent bumps. They called my doctor to tell him what they found and he ordered me admitted, put on magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions, and steroids to mature the baby's lungs in case labor continued to progress. The steroids by the way? Literally a shot in the ass. At that point it was about 5am and I was totally dazed and shocked by all of these developments. I was fully expecting for them to listen to my story, do an exam, and send me home. Instead, they wheeled me into a room on the Labor and Delivery floor hooked up to all kinds of machines (including a catheter because I wasn't allowed out of bed under any circumstances - awesome!) and told me I was there for at least 24 hours.

We both tried to sleep for a while, Frank in a hospital chair. The nurses and residents were in every hour checking the monitors and my reflexes and my breathing so sleeping wasn't really happening. Also, sleeping with a catheter? Right. I did doze for a few hours. The doctor came in around 9, not my doctor but a partner from the practice, and I asked him if this was just a whole lot of precaution and he said "no, you were contracting every minute and would have gone into full blown labor if you didn't come in". Ok then.

The day passed in a blur of nurses and visitors. It was really hard to know what day it even was (Sunday) since my room didn't have a window and we got there in the middle of the night. Lora came to see me bearing all the things a girl should have while spending time in Labor and Delivery, stuff rookies like me don't even think of, like hair clips and chapstick. Frank went home for the night - there's nowhere to sleep in the hospital and our poor dog was home all by herself all day - and I tried to sleep but again, the constant checking and poking and beeping and lights. It's never dark enough. I think I finally got to sleep a little around 1am, only to wake up at 5 with Frank back next to me and the nurse there to give me a second shot of steroids (2 doses in 24 hours is required) before I was even fully conscious.

My own doctor came in around 8 to see how I was doing and I asked him when this whole fun experience was going to be over. He said I had to spend at least one more night so they could monitor what happened after they stopped the magnesium. I waited until he left the room to cry. Thankfully, the nurses came in and took off the magnesium and iv and antibiotics and disconnected the iv completely (they left part of it in my arm in case I had to be hooked up again), and greatest thing ever, they took me off the catheter. I was allowed to get up to go to the bathroom and everything. The first time I got up my legs didn't work. The nurses warned me that it was a side effect of the drugs and to let them know the first time I needed to get up so they could help me and seriously? My legs didn't work. Frank thought it was hilarious and asked me if I was drunk.

Eventually they moved me out of Labor and Delivery and into the Antepartum unit which is full of pregos trying to stay that way and I was finally allowed to eat something. That's right. There's no eating or drinking while on magnesium or anywhere near possible labor. At first I didn't notice because of the iv but as soon as they let me eat I went to town. Hospital food was the best thing I'd ever seen! They also took me off of constant monitoring and instead did it twice a shift. Frank brought me some things from home so I could take a shower - including a towel. Hospital bath towels are small and thin and scratchy and thankfully, I'd read about this already. Seriously, if you're looking at any kind of hospital stay, bring your own towel. The rest of the day (Monday now) passed uneventfully. I watched tv and napped and talked to Frank, who was going home only to feed the dog and shower, and looked forward to Tuesday when I could finally go home.

Tuesday was all about waiting for my doctor to come by and give me the all clear. More tv and napping and talking to Frank. More monitoring that showed a baby that never stops moving and maybe a contraction an hour. Some time in the afternoon I got up to go to the bathroom and...more blood! I didn't even want to tell the nurses but Frank made me. A few minutes later my doctor comes in and said he was on his way over to discharge me but now, not so much. They scheduled me for an ultrasound the next day and I settled in for another night at the damn hospital. At that point, the doctor was concerned that it was a placental abruption and he wanted an ultrasound to see what exactly was going on in there.

More tv, more napping, more hospital food. Halfway decent sleep on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, more of the same. I told Frank to stay home and sleep in and he came around noon bearing gifts of food from the hospital cafeteria, including Doritos. They came to take me for the ultrasound around 1pm and I had to go in a wheelchair. The nice lady wheeled me into the ultrasound waiting area, filled with people in regular clothes and I know I scared all the pregnant ladies and made them feel sorry for me at the same time. Mercifully she didn't leave me in the waiting room, instead wheeling me right into the ultrasound area to wait in the hall.

The technician performed the ultrasound, checking for size and stuff, and then the doctor came in, resident in tow. He was a high risk pregnancy doc and he asked me all sorts of questions about what happened and how I ended up there. He then took a look with the ultrasound and didn't find any evidence of placental abruption, but did find some polyps on my cervix which he said were the culprits for the bleeding. He said it was his opinion that I could go home that day and he would call me doctor and say so.

We got back to my room and waited for what seemed an interminably long time before they officially declared me able to go home. It was probably a couple of hours. Finally, the resident came in and said she talked to my doctor and I was free to go home, after she explained the doctor's orders. I was to be on modified bed rest. Modified in that I could get out of bed to sit on the couch and I could get up from the couch to use the bathroom and that's it. No more going to work, no more anything vertical. They discharged me and the man with the wheelchair came and wheeled me all the way to the car door and we went home. I was never so happy to be home in my whole life.

That was a week ago Wednesday. My mom and mother in law have been here, cleaning and cooking. Frank has been awesome doing everything around here while yelling at me to sit down. I don't sit so good. And I wait for word from the doctor that everything's fine now, go back to your regularly scheduled life.

I'm not holding my breath.

Still Here

2009-03-06T12:47:00.004-05:00

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. A whole mess of crap has gone down around here in the past couple weeks. Crap involving hospital and medication and way too many contractions way too close together. Also, a bunch of crap I still call total overreaction and can I please just get off this couch and go back to work now?

And as of today, the hits just keep on coming.

I'm trying to sort it all out and get it all down but it's a long story and it's proven more difficult to share than I thought it would. I may just put up what I've got so far. Especially since the universe keeps providing me with new material.

Everything's ok. The chicken is still on the inside cooking. My body has just decided that this pregnancy has been way too easy and boring so far and we need some excitement around here.

Full story coming soon, promise.

Technical Difficulties

2009-02-11T12:48:00.001-05:00

So you may be wondering, what's the deal with the crappy, inconsistent posting? Well, there's laziness. Then the sort of spaced out, slightly stoned, pregnancy brain in full effect so it's really hard for me to concentrate on a task or organize my thoughts into coherent sentences. Also, my life is not that interesting. Even pregnancy at this point isn't that interesting. And really, how many times do you want to read about panic and craziness and gas?

The real issue though, larger than any of those, is that my computer situation is a damn hot mess. My computer is a piece of junk. It's not actually mine, it's a work computer that I get to keep at home. Part of my 24 hour, you must be at our constant beck and call package. It's old for a computer - I would say about 5 or 6 years old - and it's already had a hard drive replaced after a complete blue screen of death, why are you keeping me alive meltdown. Still, it worked fine for email and blogging and stalking people on Facebook.

Until it wasn't.

The computer decided it didn't like wireless internet anymore. Wireless internet to my computer is for jerks and losers who spend too much time stalking old high school classmates on Facebook and if I'm going to make it do that, I'm going to have to suffer. This wasn't a problem in our apartment where I could just plug the computer right into the router in the living room and stalk away. Now the router is in our basement, in the laundry room, where it's very cold and there's nowhere to sit and the floor is cement. As much as I love filling you all in on my slow nervous breakdown, I'm not about to stand in front of my dryer (on top of which the computer currently resides) for an hour to do it.

Frank's computer is off limits to me. He has a little scanner on the thing that he drags his finger across and it reads his fingerprint and that's his computer's password protection. He's not doing anything secret or important on his computer either, just stalking and putzing like me. I simply have a long and colorful history of breaking computers so I'm not allowed to use his.

Why not write at work, like the rest of you pretending to be all busy and industrious when really you're just updating your blog? Like I'm doing right now? I share an office with my boss. Our desks are about as far apart as Dwight and Jim's are on The Office. Don't watch The Office? Seriously? Ok, our desks are practically touching and he can see what I'm doing at all times. Also, he just had major surgery that has rendered him unable to really ever leave the house...or the office so he's always. right.there. This would be an uncomfortable arrangement for blogging all by itself, but then factor in that my boss is exactly like Michael Scott except it's never funny. I'm not about to reveal to him that I even have a blog, forget letting him see me writing it.

So that's why my posts have been so inconsistent. Well, that and the general fogginess that has overtaken my brain.

But look! A picture of my freak show mutant belly! First one ever. I'm 29 weeks today and no, it's not a fun house mirror. My hips and ass really are really that small and my belly really is that round. Rounder in person. I did not swallow a beach ball. Those are maternity pants (hate) but that's a regular shirt. Can you hear it screaming?

Quick baby update: I think he's trying to kill me by slowing punching and kicking me to death. I feel like one of the extras from Alien with all the freaky ripples and waves in my belly. Like any at any moment an alien is just going to burst through.

Boob Update: I finally went to a proper store and got measured and fitted for new bras. Wanna know my new size? 36G. That's right. I didn't even know they made such a monstrous thing. Overall though the experience was very pleasant. The saleswoman was very nice and professional and if my boobs weren't out it may have even been comfortable. They had my size in stock and I'm happy to report that I kinda can breathe now. If you live in the Philadelphia area and need new bras, seriously go see Michelle at Nordstrom in the King of Prussia mall. She's good. I'll be seeing her again in a couple more months when I need another size adjustment and maybe for a nursing bra or two. Let's face it, Target is most likely not going to have what I need.

2009-01-29T14:15:00.004-05:00

There's so much going on in my brain right now and most of it can be filed in one of two categories: panic or rage.

Panic because we have just about 3 months left - if the chicken goes all 4o weeks before showing himself - and nothing is done. If you came over to my house there would be no evidence that would suggest a baby was on his way to live there. We are in no way set up at this point for a baby. Also, in less than 90 days there will be a new person on this planet, a person that I will physically put here, and I will be his mother. Can't quite get my mind around that one. He doesn't even have a name yet.

Let's not even talk about the physical part ok? Because the panic people, the panic. I've never been to the hospital for anything other than visiting hours. The emergency room only exists on TV to me, as I've never seen one in person. Do you see what I'm saying here? I have no experience being a patient for more than 15 minutes in a doctor's office. Physical trauma and being in the hospital are not things with which I'm familiar. Yet very, very soon, I'll be admitted to the hospital to give freaking birth and oh the hyperventilation just thinking about it.

The rage is a little more of a puzzle. Generally, I'm not an angry person. Most people (I think) would say that I'm rather easy going and slow to any kind of anger. Not so these days. I'm pretty pissed off most of the time and things that usually would not even register are making me seethe. Maybe it's the testosterone my baby boy is producing. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm lumpy and cranky and so done with this experience can the boy just get here already please God? Being in a state of increasing and bizarre physical discomfort - is that an elbow and how is he kicking me all the way over there? - makes it tough to be cheerful. So far I've managed to keep the anger to myself - hence the seething - since it's not really fair to bite the heads off of those around me just because I'm irrationally enraged all the time. I'm not making any promises about these last few months though.

Panic and craziness aside, two things were purchased from our baby registry this week and I'm so excited it's like I'm a 9 year old in December. It was quite by accident that I found this out. Really, not stalking my own registry I swear. I was trying to show someone the stroller we picked out and lo and behold, some items had moved into the "already purchased category. It's a little weird I know, to be so freaking excited about a pack and play and a receiving blanket but someday I will share with you my anxiety and weirdness suffered at the idea of actually creating a baby registry at all, so to see that it actually works is very thrilling indeed. And probably because it helps with the panicking, to know that things are indeed moving along. While the idea of an actual baby in my house is still a little too abstract for my own mental health, at least the boy will have somewhere to sleep now. Maybe we'll even move the boxes out of his room before he gets here.

Award Winning

2009-01-28T09:46:00.006-05:00

One of my best girls gave me an award! Lora from Jakezilla recently was the recipient of the When Life Gives You Lemons award (not an official name but that's what we're calling it) and she turned around and gave it to me! My very first blog award ever!

And here I though all I was doing with my recent haul of lemons was squeezing them on my paper cuts.

Thanks Lora!

Rant Interrupted

2009-01-26T14:23:00.006-05:00

So my plan was to unleash my grumpiness today and complain about all those jerks who continue to ask me how I feel. I've been thwarted in my efforts though, because Lora tagged me for a meme and I'm sure you'd much rather read about my handbag obsessions than my irrational crankiness.

Apparently, my free admission that I'm bratty and spoiled isn't enough. Some people want hard evidence of my spendy ways. I'm happy to oblige. My belief is you can be cheap about your clothes - to an extent - but not your bag or shoes. Your bag and your shoes will make or break your outfit. You can be dressed very nicely, even in designer labels, but if your shoes are cheap or "run over", you look a mess. Ditto your bag. A great shoe or bag can also be a more affordable way to add a some luxury to your look, even if your entire outfit came from H & M (like mine).

Here are Lora's rules, (via Beth who tagged her first):
1) Post a picture of whatever bag you are carrying as of late. No, you cannot go up to your closet and pull out that cute little purse you used back before you had kids. I want to know what you carried today
2) I want to know how much it cost:) And this is not to judge, because I’m honestly telling you I was ready to put down some cash; I just got lucky. This is for entertainment purposes only. So spill it. And if there is a story to go along with how you obtained it, I’d love to hear it.
3) Tag some chicks. And link back to her post so people know why the heck you’re showing everyone your diaper bag/non-diaper bag.

So here is the bag I've been carrying around lately:

You can't really tell from the picture (taken with my camera phone at work) but it's deep purple, patent leather, Coach. I would describe it as a bucket bag because it's taller than it is wide. It has two side pockets on the outside that I have so far found completely useless save for the time I used one to hide a car key from myself. The pockets do have the lovely Coach silver hardware so I like how they look. The inside is quite functional with a zipper pocket and a couple of regular pockets, including one especially for my cell phone. I can fit my wallet, planner, sunglasses (in their case), a thermos, and all kinds of random kid crap in it. During a recent cleanout I found a baseball in there. The straps are long enough to put over my shoulder and it also hangs comfortably in the crook of my arm.

Part of the rules of this game is that I tell you how much I paid for this lovely bag. The truth is, I have no idea. I certainly didn't need a new purse and hadn't been out shopping for that specific reason. I just saw it, liked it, and bought it. This was back before I became wondergirl on a budget, when I used to buy whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I told you, bratty.

This exercise raises an interesting question for me. I'm not sure what to do about a diaper bag. There are tons out there and of course anything with cartoon or storybook characters on it gets dismissed outright, but then what? I'm not interested in a bag that screams "baby" or "mommy". It's my bag and I have to carry it around all day so I'd like for it to fit my style. Something along the lines of this would be fantastic. Also? A totally appropriate shower gift since I don't buy things like this for myself anymore.

HOPE, Day 1

2009-01-20T11:25:00.004-05:00

It's hard to put into words how I feel today, after watching perhaps the most remarkable inauguration this country has ever seen. The sense of hope and promise and optimism is so overwhelming it's almost corny to say it out loud.

I feel like there was a shift today - actually back on election day and even before that. A shift away from the kind of politics that for years has been labeling people red or blue, or pinko leftist commie wackjob, or right wing bible thumping gun loving nutcase. There was sense during the campaigns and election that this one had to be about more than that. I think that's part of the reason the other side lost so hugely. People are tired of the message of division. There's so much going on that's bigger and scarier than whether I'm pro-choice or you're pro-gun and it's scary for all of us. We need to talk about why we can work hard every day and still not have health care. We need to talk about why my friends and I are already worried about where to send our kids to school because there's just nowhere for them go. We needed to elect someone who was going to talk about what was really happening to us every day. The old rhetoric of terrorism and nationalism and fear of the other guy just isn't relevant when you're trying to figure out how to save your home from foreclosure and your family from homelessness.

We were looking to elect a leader, not another politician and I believe that's what we got today. I believe that this President is less interested in making sure his team wins and more interested in making sure we all win. He emanates a sense of inclusiveness and an air of cutting through partisan crap to effect the change needed. I'm encouraged that his vision is about more than his own legacy or the legacy of his party and that he may just care more about what happens to all of us, not just to those of us who agree with him.

This is not to say that now all of our problems will be solved and the White House will live under a rainbow of magic and joy for the next four years and we'll all have a pot of gold and a puppy waiting for us when we get home today. Things are bad out here and you know what? Things have been bad out here for a while. It's going to take a long time to turn things around. It'll take longer than that to actually make strides in the right direction again. I don't for a moment expect that this President will be able to fix everything, even if he gets 8 years to try, but my spirits are lifted by the knowledge that he will do his best and that he'll do it for me and for my son.

I also am in awe of the fact that we saw our first African American president get sworn in today. Race was the last thing I cared about in this election and I would have voted for him no matter what color or religion or whatever because I believed in his message. The historical significance that it holds though, that barely 60 years after people who looked like him were getting beaten and thrown in jail for daring to want to vote this man is now the President, is too enormous to cast aside. Kids have no sense of history or that there have been other presidents other than the one they know. It stands out to me that my son's first image of who and what the president is will be a black man. I'm proud that my country voted to make that happen.

Change takes time and we're not going to see anything happen overnight, but I'm excited to see what it will be as it unfolds.

Attention Shoppers

2009-01-19T14:41:00.000-05:00

I am in desperate need of some new bras. I've been stuffing myself into the same ones I bought right before I got pregnant (I'm talking like, the day before) and at this point I can hardly breathe and the marks they're leaving make me look like some kind of torture victim. My prepregnancy size was 34DDD. That's right, prepregnancy. I don't know what my current size is and I'm almost afraid to find out, but I have to get some new bras before the one I'm wearing either gives out from the effort - shooting hooks and eyes in all directions as it snaps in two - or I suffocate.

As a newly minted girl on a budget, I decided to stop at the Kohl's in the shopping center near my house and see what I could find. I've never been in a Kohl's but what the hell, bras are bras, right? They sell the same brands pretty much everywhere, except for maybe Target or Walmart or something, and maybe they won't be $75 apiece at Kohl's. My plan was to ask the (hopefully) little old lady in the lingerie department to measure me for the correct size, after which I would explain that I'm pregnant, not a mutant freak, try on some examples and go home with a few new, well fitting bras.

Turns out, Kohl's doesn't work that way. While the store does have departments, it doesn't have personnel assigned to specific places, nor does it have registers in each department. Having tried (and failed) to measure myself earlier in the day using internet instructions, I didn't really know what size to look for and just kind of guessed. I quickly found out that while DDDs were scarce, anything bigger was just nonexistent. I tried a few options with just larger band sizes and while I could breathe, they didn't fit correctly. Think shopping for bathing suits is fun? Imagine trying on bras, in the winter, 5 1/2 months pregnant.

Anyway, upon giving up in disgust and headed out of the lingerie department, I happened upon a section of maternity clothes that wasn't large enough to call a department. They were smashed into a corner between the baby clothes and lingerie because, sure. Maternity clothing and I have a difficult relationship since they're stupid and ugly and expensive and I'm trying to avoid buying much of anything. I love a pair of $200 jeans but not if I can only wear them for 3 months. And anyway, my new budget conscious self does not like $200 jeans anymore. There wasn't much merchandise at all and what was there was not cute, although far cheaper than I've yet to find elsewhere. There was a wide selection of jeans that already looked like momjeans while being maternity jeans, a true example of design genius. Seeing as how I'm still jamming myself into my Rock and Republic skinnies (with the help of a repurposed hair tie and a bella band), those were not happening. There was also a small assortment of ugly blouses made from bad synthetics with terrible patterns. Really? Still?

It became clear that perusing these clothes was more an exercise in humoring myself than in finding anything to wear, but I kept looking. There was a clearance rack with a bizarre combination of children's, juniors, and maternity items that I almost missed. Upon closer inspection, I found a few good looking tops. Nothing spectacular or particularly fashionable but definitely cute enough to wear for the next couple of months. And they were on super duper clearance so each top was about $2. That's right, 2 dollars. I found 3 shirts and a tank. You can guess who was feeling pretty proud of herself at the end of that trip.

Still, I need new bras. I did find bra extenders at the Kohl's so they're helping out for the time being - I can actually breathe again - but I started out on the very last hook with those so they're definitely only a stop-gap measure. It looks like my best option is a real store, the kind where all they sell is "foundations" and it's staffed by old ladies with measuring tapes around their necks. So much for avoiding the $75 price tag. If I'm lucky they'll only be $75. There's such a place in South Philly that Lora reminded me about. It's been around for about a hundred years and I've always wanted to go in there anyway. It'll be the highlight of my weekend I'm sure.

World's Brattiest Woman

2009-01-12T17:41:00.006-05:00

I'm a huge brat. This is not an epiphany for me. Frank would tell you I've been a brat for a long time and he's not exaggerating nor does it hurt my feelings. I like to have things my way (and I usually do). I enjoy pretty presents and expensive bags and shoes and clothes. This is not to say I'm vain or shallow because I'm neither of those - I blow dry my hair without a mirror or hairbrush every day for pete's sake. Some days I don't even brush it (it's short so you can't really tell). That aside, I own up to the fact that I'm an enormous brat, made even worse by Frank spoiling me and giving me what I want.

So why then, is this topic blog worthy? I don't know that it even is, I just realized that my brattiness has taken on an entirely new dimension recently and it's the brattiest I have ever been.

I don't want to work anymore. There. I said it.

I've had jobs since I was 15 years old. I always liked having a job and working. When I graduated from college I tried to take some time off before entering the grown up workforce. It lasted a month before I felt bored and lazy and had to get a job. When I first started teaching I did that plus waitressed at night, both for the money and to be around people instead of home alone in my single girl apartment. I've always been proud of having a job and have always been dedicated and reliable and blah blah blah.

No one really likes working, I get this. Even when you've found your life's true calling and what you do fills you with a sense of purpose or worth or whatever. At the end of the day, work is for jerks. If work were fun, as my friend Nicky says, they wouldn't call it work. And so even when I was saving the world one poor neglected child at a time, I still had resigned myself to this unavoidable fact. So why now with the internal whining and tantrums? (I stress internal here people, I'm not throwing tantrums or whining out loud about going to work. Just in my head. And now on the internet.)

Maybe part of it is the total life suck that is my job and how after 4 and a half years of working for the real life incarnation of Michael Scott and Mr. Pitt combined (with none of the humor), I just can't take it anymore. When I compare that burnout with the way more important things happening in my life right now, I just want to run screaming. Not that I ever cared about ordering the correct type of sock or helping decipher stereograms (I swear to God), but at least before I could fake it.

But it's more than I don't want to do this job anymore. I don't want to do any job right now. I want to be home, cleaning things and unpacking those last few boxes. I want to spend my day trying to figure out where the old man smell is coming from in my bathroom and get rid of it. (More on the old man smell later. Seriously, it's killing me.) I want to make dinner and fold clothes and be home when Frank gets home from work so that we can eat together.

It's bizarre really. I'm no housekeeper and we've never had a typical home life because of our shifty work schedules. In fact, my aversion to any type of housework usually borders on violent. There are so many better things to do than dust and straighten. My friends and I have talked at length about how we're definitely going back to work after we have babies because eff that, we're not the kind of girls who stay in the house with a brat all day, vacuuming the lamp shades. In fact, all of those friends had babies and went back to work and here I am, baby not even born yet and I'm looking for my apron and string of pearls. Whaaaaat??

Is this a particularly strong onset of nesting? Perhaps brought on by my crazy work schedule whereby I'm not home till late at night and I work lots of weekends? It's possible. But if I think about teaching in a classroom right now, I don't want that either. Again, the desire to just be home doing domestic things is overwhelming. It's not even the desire to be home on the couch with a tub of ice cream, which would make a little more sense. Oh no, I want to pull out my standing mixer and bake things from scratch.

Obviously I'm not going to up and quit my job to become a stay at home preggo. Just saying that right now, I wouldn't mind it if I did.

Insert Clever Title Here

2009-01-07T14:36:00.001-05:00

Christmas is over and I survived. To be honest, I barely noticed Christmas personally this year. I worked Christmas Eve until about 7pm, after which I met up with Frank at his Aunt's house where his whole family was gathered. My own family was scattered to the four winds this year. Frank's godson really loved his present from us and we got a few goodies from the fam. The multiple Lowe's gift cards were especially appreciated, as was the cash from the MIL which will be burned at an overpriced maternity wear shop soon enough. We got home around midnight. I wrapped gifts for my charges and then we went to bed.

I was up bright and early Christmas morning to go back to work. I worked until 1:30, then headed to Lora's to enjoy the peace and quiet of her annual Christmas boycott while Frank was at work. I headed home around 5pm to feed the dog and let her out. I built a fire and put A Christmas Carol on the television and was asleep with the dog and cat on top of me by 9pm. Frank got home after 10 and we watched some tv together and then went to sleep. Merry Christmas.

Next Christmas of course will be a completely different story, and we're looking forward to the fun of it. The chicken will only be 8 months old at Christmas and will have no idea what's going on but it'll still be fun. I'll have a different job next year and I'm looking forward to being able to focus on my own family's Christmas. I think that our little family is staying home next holiday season and if folks want to see the boy on Christmas Day, they can come to us.

The big move went extremely well. Those packers and movers were more efficient than I'll ever be in my whole life. Alberta was a phenomenal help on moving day. We had the whole kitchen and downstairs area unpacked that day. It was a lot of fun to realize that we don't live in an apartment anymore and that there's actually storage space for things! I have an attic and a basement and a linen closet for crying out loud! Not everything is unpacked and right now the baby's room is full of unpacked, rifled through boxes. It's all clothes and crap from our old bedroom. There is a box of books from my teaching days that I'm planning to put on the chicken's bookshelf that we don't have yet so that's just there in a corner.

The closet in baby's room has been commandeered by Mama because really, it's a whole adult sized closet which is really wasted on a person who can fit their clothes in a shoebox. We'll get a nice, baby sized armoire for the chicken's clothes and I will have my own closet for the first time in almost 6 years. The baby won't notice for a couple of years at least and that gives me plenty of time to turn the third floor room into a walk in closet.

The unpacking of the clothes has hit an impasse because there's just nowhere to put them. Frank's closet shelves are piled to the ceiling with his tshirts and I'm keeping a few of my most frequently worn things in the baby's dresser. I've made progress packing up summer clothes and storing them (I have an attic people) but there are piles of things that keep getting moved around because there's nowhere for them to go.

Why don't we go buy ourselves some dressers? Oh but we have. Frank went to Ikea weeks ago and purchased two lovely dressers that match our brand new bed. They just need to be put together. Frank does not enjoy assembling Ikea furniture while I get an enormous (and a little weird) sense of satisfaction from the task. I got to work on the dressers the day after Christmas. My plan was to have both of them put together and full of clothes from unpacked boxes that day. Alas, it was not to be. In trying to affix the top of the six drawer, almost as tall as me dresser onto the wobbly base being held together by pressboard beams, I dropped the top piece through the middle of the almost dresser, snapping the beams and ripping the little wooden dowels out of the wood. This development coupled with my current emotional stability of a two year old had me in tears on the phone with Frank, cursing the evil that is Ikea. Then I took a nap because it was all very stressful and upsetting.

Of course, they don't sell or supply replacements for the parts I destroyed. So the dresser parts are just in our hallway, not good for anything but we can't bring ourselves to throw out something brand new that we never even used. The other dresser remains flat packed in its two boxes, one in the foyer, one in our bedroom. I won't go near it because due to my new Ikeaphobia and Frank still hates to do it.

So my clothes keep getting shuffled from box to box and I just keep washing and wearing the same things. Hopefully some time in the next 3 months we'll have the chicken's room looking like a nursery rather than a store room.

I started this post so long ago I don't even remember what my point was. Maybe this is why I'm a nanny instead of a literary genius.

Gotta be Moving Along

2008-12-17T13:28:00.004-05:00

It's been quite a couple of weeks over here at the Frank and Hope household. The biggest development of all is of course the new knowledge that we will be parents of a baby boy in about 4 months. Perhaps even dwarfing that fact though, is construction work has been completed on our house and we are moving in! Tomorrow! The freaking out, oh yes, it has begun.

We hired movers for the big day. This not being our first move, and having tried both moving ourselves (and by ourselves I mean pressing friends into service) and hiring movers, it is really a sanity saver to just pay someone to move your crap. This time we decided - ok Frank decided - to hire the moving company to also pack for us. It made a lot of sense. We've lived here for almost 4 years. We have a ton of crap that would have taken me months of flipping through old magazines and trying on old clothes to get packed. These guys were done in 3 and a half hours. It was incredibly expensive and really, am I so lazy that I can't pack myself? Quite simply, yes.

Allow me to justify. This is the absolute busiest time of year for me at work. I'm up to my eyeballs in someone else's Christmas, from the tree to the gifts (buying and wrapping them) to the holiday festivities and traditions , to the damned Christmas Eve dinner, all of it is my job. I work just about 7 days a week during the month of December. I mean it quite literally when I say I don't have time to pack. Add fat pregnancy, which is an excuse for lots of things, and a general overwhelming sense of panic, and professional packers are a fabulous solution and totally worth the cost.

Why are we moving the week before Christmas? Fair question. The house is done. We've already made one mortgage payment without living there. We want to wake up in our new house on Christmas morning. At least Frank will. There's a good chance I'm going to wake up at work on Christmas morning. We have four months before the chicken gets here and that's if everything continues to sail along smoothly. We have to get unpacked, settled in, and start getting ready for his arrival. I'm not going crazy over setting up the perfect nursery - I am resisting the baby gear marketing machine with all my might - but the boy can't sleep in a drawer. It's just time.

So we're all packed and the movers are coming tomorrow morning to do their thing. Frank will be here for the moving out but he has to work tomorrow and probably won't be around for all of the moving in. My mother in law has taken the day off from work to come help me out with the movers - you know, directing them and stuff. I'm extremely grateful for this help. Decision making is not my forte. I tend to stare and get glassy eyed and confused. Alberta (the MIL) on the other hand, is a decision making machine. She's also very practical. My own mother is jetting off to Spain tonight to visit her family and my sister. It's her first time home for Christmas in 29 years, her only grandson lives there, and my sister is prego and needs some love from her mommy too so I don't begrudge Mom going one bit. I'm awful glad though, that I have my other mom here with me to keep the panic to a minimum.

My plan for tomorrow is to dive in and start unpacking right away. With Alberta there I should be able to stay on task, although I have lots of old clothes to try on.

Drum Roll Please

2008-12-12T20:47:00.004-05:00

So obviously when I said I would let you know in a few hours, I meant a few days. Not so swift with the updating over here.

Our appointment was at 2 o'clock on Wednesday. By 3 o'clock we were still in the waiting room and I was about to kill someone. Frank was patiently playing games on his IPhone while I eyed everyone else in the room, trying to figure out how many of them were still in front of me. Just before I lost it completely, they called my name and finally, we were in.

Everything was indeed fine with the Chicken. All arms and legs and fingers and toes were in place. The heartbeat was strong and the chambers of the heart were separated correctly. The brain was brainy and the spine was spiney. The Chicken was extremely squirmy, so much so that the technician even remarked that it was a very active baby. Some of the pictures are a little blurry because the child would just not hold still. I was being karate chopped and elbowed the whole time. One shot has the arm up near the face in full on karate chop mode.

After all the measurements and checks, the technician finally got to the good part and looked for the goods. We are expecting a boy! There was no mistaking it, all his boyness was on full display for us. Frank was so excited, he couldn't wait for the tech to leave the room so that he could start texting people. He did the happy dance a couple times and was just beaming. He's also taken to saying "Frank Jr Jr" every chance he gets.

It's pretty funny that in my family, there are 5 girls and two boys. My parents' first 3 children were girls, quite close together. My parent's first 3 grandchildren are all boys, not quite stairsteps like my sisters and me, but pretty close together. My nephew just turned 2 and my sister-in-law and I are due on the same day in April. My older sister (the mother of the 2 year old) is due again in May, but we don't know what she's having yet. It's a mini baby boom.

I've been worried because there hasn't been a lot of bonding with the baby on my part so far. I don't really know why. Being totally surprised by the pregnancy and then not having any real symptoms (not that I'm complaining!) has made it seem surreal and hard to grasp. Feeling him move so much, knowing when he's awake or not, finally having an actual pregnant belly, and finding out it's a boy has really helped bring it all home to me. It has also awakened me to the reality of holy hell, there's going to be a baby at the end of this! I'm going to be some body's mother.

The mother of a boy, no less. We're gearing up for a life of trucks and trains, matchbox cars and sports. This kid has an excellent chance of being musically talented too, given his genes, so perhaps there will be music lessons and recitals in the midst of all that rough and tumble boy stuff.

We're pretty excited.

Big Day

2008-12-10T13:34:00.002-05:00

We're heading out in 2 minutes for the big ultrasound. I'm worried that the chicken is still face down, butt up and we're not going to see a damn thing. As much as this kid moves around, who knows which way it's facing? I swear I felt a foot today on the right side of my belly.

I'll let you know in a couple hours.

Dream Weaver

2008-12-07T10:09:00.003-05:00

My brain has officially gone on strike, I think. It's demanding a decrease in the levels of estrogen in its work environment before even coming to the negotiating table. I put the tea kettle on and wonder what the hell that noise is 5 minutes later, I forget what I'm talking about mid-conversation, and yesterday, I swear I lost the ability to speak clearly for a few hours. I feel like I may need to start wearing a helmet soon, for my own protection.

As part of its labor action, my brain is creating the weirdest dreams ever. Last night I dreamed (dreamt? I never really know) that the baby had come early - no labor or anything, she was just home with us already - so the doctor wasn't going to see anything on the ultrasound on Wednesday but maybe we should go anyway just to find out why my belly keeps getting bigger and why I still feel movement if the baby is already here. My subconscious suggested that maybe there was another baby in there still.

While trying to solve this dilemma, I also kept oversleeping and forgetting to feed the baby every three hours and Frank had to keep asking me if I fed the baby. (Why every 3 hours? You'll have to ask the United Normal Brain Functions Union Local 31. This is their job action.) I also couldn't remember where I had put the baby down to sleep and was relieved to find her in a pack and play in the living room. The living room, by the way, of our current apartment, where this baby will never live.

Then I realized that I was feeding this baby formula and had never even tried nursing. (I should add that this dream baby appeared to be about 6 months old and was talking to me.) I was horrified by this and immediately began to try to nurse. It seemed to be going fine until the baby turned into my cat and started biting me really hard while I stubbornly tried to keep nursing.

That's all I remember. It was disturbingly real and freaky. I was really happy to wake and find myself still pregnant without a mystery baby in a pack and play in the living room.

It was definitely a girl in the dream though. As if that means anything. The BIG ultrasound on Wednesday will finally solve that mystery for us. I hope.

Meanwhile, I hope the brain strike ends soon. A girl can't function like this.

I Want a Hippopatomus for Christmas...

2008-12-01T19:01:00.003-05:00

I have a whole Thanksgiving/Chicken update in the works, but first a little anecdote about my awesome job.

I picked the kids up from school today, having not seen them in a week. When we got home, they were hanging up coats and chattering on and on. When I walked away from the closet the ten year old looked at me and said "you got fatter". Then she told me she brought me something home from school because it looks like me.

She brought me home a little action figure Gloria doll from Madagascar 2. Because that's what I look like right now. She thought it was a hilariously good joke. Ha ha ha. Jerk.

For the record, which I will soon back up with photos, I do not look like a damn hippo. I barely look pregnant. And if I had half of Gloria's ass, that would be remarkable.

Kids are awesome.

Thanksgiving Meltdown

2008-11-20T14:51:00.009-05:00

Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday of mine. It comes in a close third behind Halloween and Christmas. As a kid there was nothing better than waking up off from school on - let's face it - a random Thursday with the whole house smelling like turkey and stuffing. My sisters and I would stay up the night before with my mom breaking apart bread for the stuffing. It was more about chatting and goofing around than really helping. All Thanksgiving day we would kind of just hang around the house and eat snacks or go outside and play with friends. In the afternoon my grandparents and aunts and uncles would cram into our tiny Southwest Philly rowhouse and get down on my mom's awesome turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and other goodness. Mom always made creamed onions for my grandmom and lima beans for my granddad and I would share with them because I loved that stuff too. Then we'd sit around and watch football and eat pie with whipped cream. I'd doze off listening to my granddad remembering Thanksgiving football games from a hundred years ago and my Uncle Tim and my dad good naturedly driving each other crazy.

This is still Thanksgiving at my mom's. They moved out of the old neighborhood and I've never lived in the house they have now. There are different faces at the table as we kids now all have spouses or significant others. There are always a few college students who couldn't make it home and my mom makes sure her house is home to anyone who needs it. There are faces missing from the table. My brothers and baby sister are in California and my big sister is in Spain - and none of them will make it home. Both of my grandparents are gone but we still have lima beans and creamed onions on the table (mostly because I ask for them). Uncle Tim still takes pictures of food and has too much fun annoying my dad.

I love Thanksgiving for these reasons. I love to be in the kitchen talking about nothing and everything with my sisters and aunts, pretending to help my mom but really just eating cheese and crackers and drinking wine. I love to sit next to my dad and listen to him yell at the TV over a football game he doesn't really care about but still, "that's not the play you wanted!". The madness and the noise and the smells and dear Lord the STUFFING. Even though I've never lived in that house, all of that is home to me. I haven't lived at home for almost 10 years. I have my own home, a husband, and a baby on the way and still, being at my mom's on Thanksgiving is just being home. It's HOME in a larger sense than being in the house where I grew up. It's everything warm and familiar.

Thanksgiving this year is making my head explode, probably in much the same way as it does for most married people. It has never been an issue for us before because Frank was working or I was working or my parents were off visiting my far flung siblings or my mother in law had other plans. It has always worked out so that there has never had to be an actual decision about where to spend Thanksgiving. This year, not so much. I'm off for Thanksgiving and so is Frank. My parents are staying in town and doing it up, Frank's mom has no other plans and would like us to come to her house. There is also the matter that my parents will be out of town on Christmas so this is really the only holiday I get with them this year.

Obviously, I want to go to my parents'. What else would be the point of the Norman Rockwell picture I painted for you a few paragraphs ago? On the other hand, I haven't seen Frank's mom since the summer and he's her only child and dear God the guilt of not going to her house on Thanksgiving. (Not that she guilts me, because she doesn't. Ever.) I tried getting her to come to my parents' house - we're all family after all - but she didn't love that idea. I've been trying to work out some kind of dinner here, dessert there scenario but I can't get it to make sense because either I'm leaving my mother in law alone on Thanksgiving until dessert, or I'm going to my mom's already having eaten and therefore unable to eat all her delicious holiday goodness - because I certainly can't get away with not eating at my mother in law's Thanksgiving dinner. I really could do the second scenario because my mother in law likes to have her holiday dinners at like 3 in the afternoon so there would be plenty of time to get to my folks' 6pm dinner. But then we're just abandoning her after dinner.

We're all going to ignore the brattiness of my not taking into account where home might be for Frank and that maybe he wants to see his mother on Thanksgiving.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to hurt any body's feelings and I don't want to leave anyone out. I'm resisting the urge to just throw a tantrum and demand my way. Lora is having super-duper-boycott-Thanksgiving-family-stress-day at her house and that's looking like a pretty attractive option right now.

I just want stuffing and biscuits and my mom's couch.

Fine then

2008-11-14T11:54:00.004-05:00

So the ultrasound was Wednesday and clearly, we didn't get what we wanted because it's now Friday and I'm just getting around to updating.

The hospital where we go for the ultrasounds is lovely. The rooms are newer and well kept, the equipment seems to be very good, and everyone who works there is extremely pleasant and helpful. I'm encouraged by this because it's where the Chicken is going to be born. Even the doctor who comes in to review the ultrasound is super nice. It's been the same guy both times and he's funny and casual. He takes the time to talk to us and explain things. He chatted about what names we might have in mind and talked about his son's name. It's all quite nice and comfortable.

So forgive me, but I was totally annoyed by my experience with the technician. There were two technicians in the room because apparently the one doing the scan was new and in training. I would have really appreciated someone explaining that, even though I could figure it out by myself. The woman was very new to the system the hospital uses I guess so she was fumbling around a lot and the other woman was giving her direction. In the meantime, I'm laying there,all gooped up, having my belly jammed into by not the gentlest touch with the ultrasound wand. I can barely see the screen because she has it turned mostly towards her face, and neither of them are really explaining what I'm seeing. They didn't even get a picture of the whole baby for my sake. I could have been a training dummy for all the notice they took of me.

The good news is the cyst is completely gone. There is no sign of it anywhere. My question for the doctor is going to be; why then, does it still hurt? Seriously, even as i sit here now typing this, it hurts in that exact spot. My mom and sister both say that it's probably just a little tender still as the tendons stretch and take over that spot. Who knows? At least it's gone.

The frustrating news is the Chicken was face down, butt up, and vertical so we didn't get a look at anything. We did see the spine which looked...spiney enough I guess. The night before I was doing some dishes and I felt the funniest feeling in my belly, like a fist turning over. When the techs said the baby was essentially upside down, I realized that the funny feeling was the baby rolling over. On the night before its big show. I can't believe a child of mine would have stage fright but there it is.

After the techs left and we were waiting for the doctor to come in, we tried the flashlight trick to see if we could get the Chicken to roll back over. Frank has some crazy flashlight application on his iPhone but he was putting it on flash and police car and other blinky madness. I told him to stop giving the baby seizures. It didn't work anyway. The Chicken was still stubborn and upside down for the doctor too.

We go back in 4 weeks for the big anatomy scan. I hope Frank can make it. He's going a little nutty waiting to find out. Truth be told, I am too.

Wednesday was also the 16 week mark which I think means 4 months. I have to say though, that whole month thing is a little wacky. Does this mean I'm starting my 5 month? Am I 4 months pregnant? I'm sure if I stopped and thought about it for a moment I could figure it out, but I much prefer the weekly counting approach anyway.

The baby is about 4 inches long and weighs about 3.5 ounces. Fingernails and toenails are fully formed. The Chicken is now covered with down-like hair called lanugo, which should fall out before birth. Between Frank and me though, there's a good chance this kid is coming out pretty hairy whether the lanugo falls out or not.

At this point, it may become possible to feel the baby move - or turn completely around just in time to break Mom's heart a little. I've been feeling what I think are quickening movements for about a week now. It's a strange experience because it's so fast and so slight, by the time I realize what it was, it's gone and doesn't happen again. Earlier this week I got a tiny little poke and before that, just a few little bubbles popping on my left side. I try to lay really still and quiet so I can feel it but all I mostly feel is the blood pumping hard and then the rhythm of that puts me to sleep. There is movement in there though.

Small Update

2008-11-10T13:46:00.001-05:00

There hasn't been much actual information here. Sorry about that. I know you want to read all about what kind of produce the Chicken resembles this week. Here's a little update.

I'm halfway through week 15 and not much is happening. Well, happening to me. All kinds of stuff is happening with the Chicken, such as:

Baby D now measures about 4 inches long, crown to rump, and weighs in at about 2 1/2 ounces (about the size of an apple). She's busy moving amniotic fluid through her nose and upper respiratory tract, which helps the primitive air sacs in her lungs begin to develop. Her legs are growing longer than her arms now, and she can move all of her joints and limbs. Although her eyelids are still fused shut, she can sense light. If you shine a flashlight at your tummy, for instance, she's likely to move away from the beam. There's not much for your baby to taste at this point, but she is forming taste buds. Finally, if you have an ultrasound this week, you may be able to find out whether your baby's a boy or a girl! (Don't be too disappointed if it remains a mystery, though. Nailing down your baby's sex depends on the clarity of the picture and on your baby's position.

We have an ultrasound on Wednesday (at exactly 16 weeks) and I will be disappointed if we're not able to find out the sex. The suspense is killing me! The point of the ultrasound is not to determine gender or anything. There's a big ol' cyst on my right ovary and they want to take another look and see if it has changed size at all. I'm hoping for shrinkage but I'm not too concerned. The doctor says it won't affect the Chicken and as long as I can handle the pain (oh yeah, it hurts all the time), they'll leave it alone. I'm hoping for shrinkage just for my own comfort but more than that I'm hoping for the money shot. I'll be giving my belly pep talks that this is no time to be bashful for the next two days. Either show us the goods or you get the flashlight baby!

I had a doctor's appointment umm, almost 2 weeks ago. Anything that wasn't baseball that happened in that two week stretch of the playoffs and World Series is all so very hazy. It's like I was on a baseball bender - which I pretty much was. Anyway, the doctor's visit went well. I only gained 1 more pound in the 4 weeks between appointments, putting me up to 139. Frank finds that hilarious. He listened to the heartbeat again and poked around my belly. He said my uterus was up around 16 - 18 weeks rather than the 14 weeks it was, thanks to the cyst that ate Philadelphia. He said to get a flu shot and don't rent one of those baby dopplers because it will make us crazy. He was supportive of my resistance to the quad screen blood test, ultimately leaving it up to us. It was a short visit.

So we have the ultrasound on Wednesday, then the doctor again the following week, then another ultrasound the week after that for the big anatomy scan.

Speaking of comfort, my love affair with maternity pants is over. I'm still enjoying the forgiving stretchiness of the waistbands, but that's about it. The reality is, they make me feel all fat and schleppy. They're so baggy and saggy - especially in the rear - there's no way to look good in them. I'm always hiking them up to fight the droop. I'm still wearing them every day, but now I hate them every day. There's just no pleasing me, really.

Mush and Awe

2008-11-08T12:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not much for mushy. Or public declarations of love and fidelity. Sarcastic and withering are much better colors on me. On the inside though, I'm just a big pile of squish that cries at anything.

Frank and I are both this way, although him not so much with the crying. We're not big on being affectionate in public or gushing about each other to people. We don't even hold hands in public that often. A lot of friends and family - and strangers - sometimes don't get our relationship and I think this is at least part of the reason why. When we were engaged I never called him my "fiance" - there is no more annoying word on earth. We were only engaged for a couple of weeks anyway because we are so averse to sharing private stuff with people, we hopped a plane and got married in Vegas, just the two of us.

This is all to say that I'm about to take a moment and expose my squishiness and lay on a big pile of mush, so I'm giving you fair warning to skip this post if you're not in the mood for a gushing love fest.

When I found out I was pregnant, it wasn't like the movies. If I'm being honest, I was very upset and not a little depressed. I cried trying to figure out how to tell Frank, cried when I told him, cried when we came home from the first prenatal visit. I was in a total panic. I felt like a stupid teenager who got herself knocked up and lost her scholarship. There was no consoling me. All of this was not about the baby. Babies don't scare me. Rather, it was that our entire life was about to turn upside down and it was my fault because I ruined everything.

For over 3 years we've been living rent free (and utilities free) in an apartment provided by my boss. It's a one bedroom, 900 square foot deal with a garage right in the middle of the ritziest part of downtown Philadelphia. Needless to say, we've been having a lot of fun these past 3 years without much responsibility. I work long hours and he works crazy hours but still, it's been pretty awesome. We took a lot of vacations at a moment's notice and bought a lot of fun toys (for him) and shoes and handbags (for me) and saved up some money. Like I said though, the apartment is a contract stipulation of my job, which I'm most likely going to lose/quit because I can't/don't want to do this job with a baby at home.

That means I'm going to need a new job and we'll need somewhere to live and it all has to get done before a baby makes his/her grand entrance in about 5 months. I was consumed by terror, guilt for creating this situation, and did I mention sheer terror? I kept crying and apologizing and crying and freaking the eff out.

I fully expected Frank to join me in the freaking out, but he never did. At least, not to me. Instead, he sprang into action. He put up with approximately two days of my freaking out and then told me that he didn't want me to be sad anymore, that everything would be okay and that it was time to be happy about it.

We decided that the best thing to do was buy a house so we went looking. We both fell in love with the first house we saw so we made an offer and they took it. The whole process took a week. Holy everything happening so fast! He didn't want me to stress out about the whole home buying process so aside from giving me some papers to sign, he handled the whole thing by himself. Also, my credit isn't the greatest so it was better to leave me out of it anyway. He even went to settlement the day of the Phillies parade. The house needs some work so he's calling contractors, meeting with landscapers and electricians, even getting the house inspected for termites. All on his own, all on the first weekends he's had off in 3 months. He's getting up in the morning to scrape wallpaper and rip out paneling before going to work the night shift, or he's going to work at 4 in the morning and then going to work on the house.

I'm sure he's worn out from the stress and the worry and the running around on top of his work schedule but he never complains. He tells me not to worry about anything , he's on top of it. He doesn't want me worried about anything but work and being pregnant. If he could find a way to stop me from stressing out at work, I'm sure he would.

In the midst of all of this, Pregzilla hasn't been that much fun to live with recently. While I've escaped most of the nastier symptoms of early pregnancy like nausea and puking, the hormones have knocked me sideways. I'm an emotional disaster area and this too Frank bears without blinking. He lets me complain and be grumpy and snap at him without taking it personally and he does his best to distract me by making me laugh. He comes to every doctor's appointment, reads my pregnancy books and websites, and even rubs my belly when it hurts - all without asking.

I've never been much of a damsel in distress. In fact, I've always been pretty independent and have always insisted to do things myself but I'm blown away by this. Frank has always been the guy who stands up so others don't have to. It's the quality that led him to first join the army and then the police department. I've known him since I was 14 and I've always known this about him, but I'm still amazed by his insistence to be in charge of everything so that I don't have to worry. To me, it speaks to a level of devotion to our relationship and growing family that leaves me in awe.

It's not new behavior for him. This is the guy that gave me the key to his place and made room in his closet after only a few months of dating - at his suggestion, not mine. The guy who brought me to his house and fed me chicken soup when I had strep throat even though he was working the graveyard shift. The guy that I married after dating for 8 months. Even so, I'm falling in love with him in a totally new way as I watch him do all of this for us. I wish there was a better way to tell him how much it's appreciated.

Just Crappy

2008-11-03T16:55:00.001-05:00

I have this whole list of things to write about. They're all half written in my head and some are started in my blackberry and some are in drafts right here on Blogger.

I had plans today to write about my World Champion Phillies and my Granddad, who was a true fan and didn't live to see them win last week.

But I'm going to have to get to all of that tomorrow because today I want to complain.

I just feel like hell today and I'm pissed about it. I really need to just lay down but I can't because I'm at work and will be here until 10pm at the earliest (I've been here since 9:30am btw).

I'm experiencing that lovely thing they call round ligament pain and it hurts like hell. Shooting, crampy pain that comes and goes in my belly all day. I know that the muscles in there are stretching out to make room for Chicken Dinner and I'm happy he/she is growing and my belly is getting bigger but damn, does it have to hurt so much? It's worse when I sit hunched over a keyboard, and even worse than that when I'm driving. Those two activities basically make up my job description so it works out well.

I have a lovely headache, right behind my eyes. I took some (doctor sanctioned) Tylenol but I must be immune because it has not helped and even though the doctor said I can take it four times a day, I'm not doing that.

Today is also a day where my body must forget that we are in the second trimester now because every smell is making me want to just retch my guts out and be done with it. Being right in the middle of Center City Philadelphia is giving me plenty of opportunities to puke, too. Maybe it's the Tylenol

Something weird; the joints or whatever they are in my back and shoulders are popping. It starts as soon as I wake up and it's all day long. That, plus the back and hip pain is a fun combination. I'm also perpetually out of breath. Climbing a flight of stairs, walking, any form of physical activity totally takes my breath away. Today I took out some trash and it was as if I just ran a mile. It's like I'm 80 years old over here. How am I going to function when I'm heaving a big belly around?

And can we talk about daylight savings time? Why are we still doing that? Who benefits from sunrise at 5am and darkness by 5:30pm anymore? Are there farmers around without electricity that I don't know about? Does the government know that pregnant women with Seasonal Affective Disorder are not served by stupid daylight savings time? Ok self diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, but still!

I just want to be home, in pajamas, asleep. I'm feeling pouty because why do I have to go to stupid work when hello? growing a person right now? Can't I just be home? It's not fair.

I know. So bratty. I'm sorry. I'll be better tomorrow. Or at least I'll keep it on the inside. Promise.

The Slide Continues

2008-10-20T18:18:00.000-04:00

After all my protestations that I would not yet even look at maternity clothes, I broke down on Saturday and went to the Gap. The truth is, a sister just couldn't breathe anymore. The whole rig with the rubber band (and I mean a straight up rubber band whose previous job had been holding my mail together) and belly band was becoming pathetic. I was beginning to resemble a sausage, like one of those college girls newly introduced to a diet of beer and chicken wings. My jeans were even too tight on my chicken legs.

Anyway, I went to the Gap with no expectation that the pants would fit but I picked up a few and headed for the dressing room. I never, ever try clothes on and undoing the aforementioned rig was a pain but I had to do it. Low and behold, the damn things fit. The comfort was fabulous because it's not just the physics of jamming 10 pounds of flour in a 5 pound sack, putting so much pressure on an area that just feels weird all day is not comfortable.

The other surprise is that they look like regular pants. I was expecting giant elastic panels and no pockets but these have very discreet stretchy parts of the waistband that aren't even noticeable; and they have pockets and belt loops and everything.

Of course it was not the most practical purchase of my life, considering I spent $150 on 3 pairs of pants that won't fit me for more than 3 months, but the comfort makes it well worth it. I'm also told they'll be good to wear right after delivery. I'm secretly going to wear them on fat days too I think.

It's another strange moment for the girl who wasn't ready, though. One more indicator that all of this is really happening. Now added to my daily thoughts of "holy crap I'm pregnant" is "holy crap I'm wearing maternity pants". Weird.

Joy in Mudville

2008-10-16T13:42:00.001-04:00

Taking a break from all this baby talk and complaining, my Philadelphia Phillies clinched the National League Pennant last night, beating the stinkin' Los Angeles Dodgers and the insufferable Manny Ramirez in 5 games, in their own ballpark!

Frank and I stayed up for the whole game which was pretty good for us since it lasted until almost 11:30. Where we come from, it's tradition to go out on your front step and bang pots and pans and holler and carry on after a win like that. Unfortunately, we live in a yuppie neighborhood now where people don't do that. So we just cheered inside our apartment.

But oh, the joy of it! The Phillies haven't been to the World Series since I was 16 years old. No Philadelphia team has won a championship in 25 years. The last time the Phillies won - the only time the Phillies won - I was 3 years old. There have been 100 losing seasons of professional sports in my town. We are due for a victory.

The last time the Phillies were in the Series, Frank and I were in high school and actually had just started dating. He was a senior and I was a junior and we were together at a friend's 16th birthday party that fateful game 6 night when the Phillies lost the Series to Toronto. Here we are, 15 years later, together again, rooting for the Phils in the World Series.

Hopefully the outcome will be different this time and I can tell my kid he was there when the Phillies won it all. The way sports go in this city, it may be the only one we get in my lifetime or his.

12 Weeks

2008-10-15T20:54:00.000-04:00

We hit 12 weeks today and there aren't many developments to report. Chicken Dinner is growing and developing a lot and by our next ultrasound in 4 weeks we should see an actual person on the screen.

The hormones are turning me into a raving lunatic. I'm living in a constant state of rage these days; rage that only subsides when something makes me cry. That something could be a glass of water. My dog made me cry the other day because I thought she was looking at me with a sad face. I'm hiding the anger and craziness pretty well though. Luckily I get a lot of practice at controlling myself at my job, where human emotion isn't tolerated and my boss doesn't know anything yet. I did snap on poor Frank last night. He came home and I was already asleep so he woke me up to talk to me for a little while. We hadn't seen much of each other the past few days because of work. I was not happy about being woken up and I refused to participate in conversation and I think I may have bit his head off a little. Sorry Fish. I'm not much fun right now but I'm told it goes away soon.

My tailbone and hips have really started to hurt. They feel all loose and disconnected. I've always been bony in the hip area and now it feels like it. It especially hurts when I walk or drive. I tend to slouch on my tailbone when I sit and that really hurts. I've been trying to sit up straighter. Maybe my posture will improve.

It may be time to move up a size in the bra department but I think it may be a larger band size that I need, at least I hope so. What is the next size after DDD, anyway?

I've been having some pain in my lower abdomen/pelvic area which I'm guessing is just more stuff stretching and spreading out and making room for the Chicken. I'm getting the sense this is going to be a big baby and I am going to be a big(ger) girl.

I'm really looking forward to getting past the next two weeks and officially into the second trimester. Frank is looking forward to it as well so that maybe he'll have his easy going wife back for a little while.

Here's what's happening with the Chicken:

The most dramatic development this week: reflexes. Baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if I prod my abdomen, the baby will squirm in response (Frank spent a lot of time poking around my belly tonight so maybe baby got some exercise), although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder. Meanwhile, nerve cells are multiplying rapidly, and in the baby's brain, synapses are forming furiously. His face looks unquestionably human: His eyes have moved from the sides to the front of his head, and his ears are right where they should be. From crown to rump, the baby is just over 2 inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce.

Fat

2008-10-08T15:18:00.001-04:00

This whole first trimester experience is absolutely for jerks. Aside from the joys of numbing exhaustion, unpredictable nausea, the emotional fortitude of a toddler, and gassiness that would make a frat boy proud, the whole pants thing is a damned indignity.

My pants don't fit. No pants fit. My regular pants are a joke. I'm certainly getting Lora's money's worth out of the belly band she got me and I've given up all attempts at buttoning or even zipping my jeans in the morning. It's not just the belly, either. My hips are becoming another obstacle the pants can't surmount. I've always been about as narrow from the hips down as a person with a huge rack can be without tipping over so having hips at all is an interesting development. If I get a respectable set of hips and a slightly larger ass out of this I'll take back all complaints.

It's not just the fit. Having a waistband held together with a rubber band screaming for relief that's cutting into the gas that will not shift does not feel good on the belly. Chicken dinner may be deformed because there's no room in there for him.

I won't even look at maternity pants because I know they'll be too big. My belly still only looks like the recipient of too many french fries and there's no way I'm buying maternity clothes in size XS. I don't think there's going to be anything XS about me in the coming months and at this point XS will be too big.

( I know, boo effing hoo Hope, your size fours are too tight for you these days. What a crying shame. Shut up.)

I tried just wearing a bigger size in regular pants but that was not better. While there was a comfortable fit at the waist, they were like parachute pants everywhere else. I was very comfy but I'm sure I looked all slouchy and ridiculous. At work.

So seriously, what's a girl to do? The struggle to squeeze myself into my regular old pants is making me start the day feeling pissed off and disgusted. Can I just give up and start wearing stretchy pants? Not sweatpants necessarily. Don't they make pants out of some kind of stretchy material that a girl can wear to work? I know these pants exist. I see women wearing them. Do I have to go somewhere like Rainbow Shop of Dress Barn to find them?

When I was in college, the trendy thing to wear was black pants that were cut like jeans and made out of some stretchy polyester blend. We called them S.I.P.s for Sorority Issue Pants because all of the sorors wore them on the weekends. I wish I had those pants now. They probably wouldn't be in style anymore but I wouldn't care.

There's a LuLu Lemon yoga store near my house. Maybe I'll get some cute yoga pants. That might not be so bad.

Gag Rule

2008-10-07T11:10:00.000-04:00

My parents raised me without an ounce of superstition. My Irish father and Spanish mother, who themselves were raised with all kinds of old world hocus pocus and Catholic idolatry, brooked none of that nonsense in our house. We didn't even bother with horoscopes or astrological signs. Instead, they raised us to know all of that stuff was crap. As a result, I've never avoided walking under a ladder or thrown salt over my shoulder or worried that a salamander was going to spit on my head and make me go bald. Ask my mom about that one.

(I will say that I was scared to death of Banshees when I was a kid, but that was more about watching a movie that featured the scariest.Banshee.ever. than my dad relating lunatic stories to me. Even now a clouded over, full moon can give me the heebiest of jeebies)

I fear all that sensible upbringing was for naught because here I sit at 31 years old, superstitious as all get out.

I can't even make my mouth form the words "I'm pregnant". When I do have to say it, to doctors or nurses or friends who try to give me beer, it feels strange and untrue. I feel sheepish, as if I'm telling the biggest lie of my life. Like if I say it out loud, something terrible will happen and it'll stop being true.

I gave my parents one of the pictures from my first ultrasound and my dad asked if they could put it on their fridge. My answer of course was hell no! Then somebody might ask who that is and then people would know. My dad's response was, "Of course they will. That's the point of putting the picture up there". No way Dad, it's way too early. You can't tell yet. My mom totally backed me up.

What is this bizarre superstition - chiefly among women I would say, since Frank has been telling everyone on Earth and my dad's new favorite expression is "Hope's pregnant!"- about waiting until the first trimester passes before we admit to being pregnant? I know the belief is we wait until after the first trimester is over "in case something happens". But why do we want to keep any of it a secret?

Why do we insulate ourselves from the support of everyone we know at a time when we need it the most? My experience so far is specific to me of course, but all I can think about all day long is holy crap I'm pregnant. From the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep (which is a relatively short span of time these days), my thoughts are consumed with the person I'm growing inside me. Why is it logical to not talk about the only thing I feel like talking about? Is there some kind of shame in miscarriage? Some have argued that if you tell everyone and the baby is lost, then you have to tell everyone you miscarried and wouldn't that be terrible. I would think that if I were to miscarry - I can't believe I can even type those words considering the terror they cause me - I would want and need the support of everyone I know to help me get through it. If I don't tell anyone and that does happen, then I'm alone in my grief, which can only make it worse.

For these reasons and probably better ones that escape me, I'm calling bullshit on this theory and on myself for espousing it. I've found so far that it's kind of a lonely and scary thing to be pregnant. No matter how many of your friends have been there already, or how many websites/books you read, or how many bloggers you stalk until you become internet friends; no matter how understanding and supportive your partner is, it still feels like you're the only person in the world having this experience. I feel this way and I live in the same town as my parents, in-laws, and extended family. I can't even begin to imagine the loneliness my sister felt all the way over in London with no family around.

So Mom, Dad, put that ultrasound picture on your fridge. Call the Aunts and let them know. Tell anyone and everyone. I'll be doing the same.

The only person I'm not telling is my boss. That's about me being a chicken and I'll explain it later.

Reading Material

2008-10-03T13:49:00.001-04:00

I'm looking for a few good books on pregnancy and childbirth and all that stuff. I'm not a fan of the books that use excessive exclamation marks or a bunch of cloying crap about the wonder and miracle of it all. On my travels through the internet I've heard that The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy is a good one.

Any suggestions?

Temporary Sanity

2008-10-02T12:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we went for my first ultrasound and first appointment with a real doctor. Both experiences were very positive and I no longer feel compelled to burn down Pennsylvania Hospital's OB department. The ladies at the front desk, the ultrasound tech, and the doctor who came in to interpret the results were all friendly, cheerful, and even funny. I was extremely nervous about the ultrasound, terrified that something was going to be wrong. It was a comfort to be taken care of by such nice people.

The ultrasound was an emotional experience. It's been kind of surreal to know that I'm pregnant without any outward evidence to support it. To see that tiny gummy bear looking thing wiggle on the screen and know that it's inside me was incredible. The technician told us I was exactly 10 weeks along and gave us a due date of April 29. So nice to have some scientific facts this time. We go back for another ultrasound in 6 weeks and then another 4 weeks after that.

The visit to the doctor was equally positive. The doctor was warm, friendly, and had the bedside manner of a totally normal guy. I didn't even feel funny about him poking around because he was just so nice, he made me very comfortable. He engaged Frank in the conversation and answered every question I had before I could ask it. He also is very committed to his patients. He made sure to tell me that he'd most likely be there to deliver the baby but if he wasn't on call, it would be his partner who I could certainly meet beforehand if I wanted. He found the baby's heartbeat, which was a wonder, and did another ultrasound, which I could stare at all day. My favorite part of the visit was when he told me to eat whatever I want - aside from raw fish or meat - and if I gain 40 pounds, it's ok. Holler at your fatgirl! I have no intention of gaining anywhere close to 40 pounds but it was nice to hear a doctor be so laid back about things, rather than giving me a long list of don'ts. This doctor is my new best friend. I'm actually looking forward to my next visit in 4 weeks. I've never looked forward to a doctor's apppointment in my entire life.

Am I letting go of some anxiety? Not really. I'm still a basket case but seeing the baby has helped. I'm trying to take it one day at a time.

Fried Chicken and Babies

2008-09-18T15:44:00.000-04:00

I've been a patient at my gynecology practice for 2 years. It's primarily a midwifery practice with some backup doctors around. I liked being seen by a nurse midwife because it's a much more personal and less clinical experience than those I've had with doctors in the past. Every time I went for an annual exam, I saw a different person, which also never bothered me, although it is a little bizarre to exchange first meeting pleasantries with someone who is about to root around in your lady bits.

Frank and I went there together a few weeks ago for my first prenatal appointment and it's no exaggeration to say the whole experience was a nightmare.

My appointment was in the morning, when the office was just opening. It's a large practice and the waiting room was packed with pregos. The lady behind the desk was already yelling at people everyone who came through the door to sign in. When we were finally called back to the exam room, the very nice nurse/medical technician/Lincoln Tech graduate had the wrong codes on the form explaining why I was there. Codes that she kept repeating to me as if I knew what she was talking about. She then said she had to go find out why I was mislabeled or whatever and she would "be right back". We're left alone in the room for about 20 minutes. I fell asleep on the table and Frank tried really hard to keep his head from exploding.

Then a little old lady walks in and introduces herself as the midwife and asks me how my other baby is doing. I tell her I don't have any other babies. She then asks if I had the baby somewhere else and that's why she doesn't have it on the chart. Again I tell her that I've never had a baby before, but I'm working on one right now. She finally gets the message and moves on to asking us what we expect for this pregnancy and what kind of birth we want to have. I told her we have no plan, none of this was the plan, we're totally shell shocked here. She asks why we didn't consider abortion.

Are you kidding me lady?! We're both sitting here, wondering when the world turned upside down, and you as my health care provider ask me why I haven't considered abortion? What type of shit is that? I don't need any effing reverse psychology where you reveal to us that we've been ready all along! This isn't an after school special!

I calmly responded that we're over 30, we've been married for over 5 years, and while this wasn't the plan, we can handle it. Abortion isn't for us.

She then spent the next half hour counseling us on how we can do this. She just talked and talked and talked. Finally, she got around to asking some medical questions about family histories and then said she had to go see how many people were waiting to see me because I wasn't really scheduled for a prenatal visit. I hadn't even taken my pants off yet! Ten minutes later she comes back and says she does have to go but she'll examine me first. She uses some stupid little external Doppler stethoscope to look for a heartbeat and finds none. She actually examines me and tells us "that's about an 8 week uterus". She writes a prescription for prenatal vitamins, tells me to make another appointment in 4 weeks, and sends me down the street for some blood work.

Not exactly the experience I was expecting or looking for in my first visit. When we left the place, Frank very gently suggested that perhaps we should consider changing doctors. Like, getting an actual doctor. He said he was pretty sure that place was selling fried chicken out of the back office. I was surprised to find myself wanting a more clinical experience. So we made an appointment with the doctor who delivered Frank's son. He has his own practice and we'll see him every time we go. And he went to medical school.

Next on my list; the hospital. I am making appointments and touring some facilities because I am not sharing my room with some damn crackhead.

Fear

2008-09-15T13:10:00.000-04:00

Over the last few days I've become gripped with overwhelming, probably irrational, fear. When I first began to suspect I was pregnant and right after I found out, I was knocked out by some pretty bad nausea and the exhaustion was paralyzing. Two weeks later, the nausea is just about gone, except for an occasional wave, and the exhaustion seems to be manageable. All of which makes me terrified that the hormones are decreasing because I'm about to miscarry.

The rational explanation of course is that I'm adjusting to the hormones and nearing the end of my first trimester so everything is leveling out. If I were a little more objective I would realize that the emotional nuttiness is a symptom (seriously, the little girl dancing with the Phillie Phanatic made me cry the other day), as is wanting to fall asleep while driving and the weird cravings for peaches and my mom's chicken soup (not together, that would be gross).

Yet the fear still grips me. I could not fall asleep last night because I was so scared. I'm not having any miscarriage signs. No cramping, no bleeding, no back pain. Nothing. In fact, things seem to be progressing pretty smoothly. I can feel my muscles stretching and if I press on my belly I can feel the hard, grapefruit sized lump that I'm guessing is my uterus. There is no real justification for being this scared. My brain keeps reminding me that my mom had a miscarriage with her first pregnancy, but then she had 7 perfectly healthy kids. None of the other women in my immediate family have ever miscarried, including my own sister. There's no real family history.

I think part of it is how fast everything is happening. I have no time to catch my breath or wrap my mind around how quickly my life is changing. We're going to buy a house and move, I may have to change jobs, I'm going to own a person and be responsible for keeping him or her alive. Everything about my life is going to change in the next few months and the catalyst for all that change is completely beyond my control. This is a lot and I don't have the emotional fortitude to handle it so the freaking out continues.

It's also quite surreal to know that I'm pregnant but not see any real evidence. It's hard to process a tiny (now) human looking person growing inside my own body. Without any outward evidence it's like it's not really happening.

For all of you wanting gory details:

I don't look knocked up. My pants don't fit anymore but it just looks like I've been eating too much pizza and drinking too much beer. I now keep my pants closed with a hair tie looped through the button hole and around the button. My friend gave me a really awesome gift that I tried out yesterday and I have to say, it's a genius invention. I wish I knew about this years ago, for when my pants didn't fit just cause I really did eat too much pizza and drank too much beer.

My boobs are getting bigger, which is truly frightening. I got measured for new bras right before I got pregnant (actually, the week I got pregnant I'm pretty sure) and I was in between two cup sizes. I'm glad I went with the larger size. I have a couple more weeks in those and then I think I'll have to move on up again. I may choke on my own cleavage by the time this is all over.

As for Chicken Dinner:

He's barely the size of a kumquat — a little over an inch or so long, crown to bottom — and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce. This is the beginning of the so-called fetal period, a time when the tissues and organs in his body rapidly grow and mature.He's swallowing fluid and kicking up a storm. Vital organs — including his kidneys, intestines, brain, and liver (now making red blood cells in place of the disappearing yolk sac) — are in place and starting to function. Tiny nails are forming on fingers and toes (no more webbing) and peach-fuzz hair is beginning to grow on tender skin. In other developments: baby's limbs can bend now. His hands are flexed at the wrist and meet over his heart, and his feet may be long enough to meet in front of his body. The outline of his spine is clearly visible through translucent skin, and spinal nerves are beginning to stretch out from his spinal cord. Baby's forehead temporarily bulges with his developing brain and sits very high on his head, which measures half the length of his body. From crown to rump, he's about 1 1/4 inches long.

I'll get some belly pictures going soon. Right now there's not much to see.

The Universe is a Comedian

2008-09-08T18:17:00.000-04:00

My husband and I were so smug and self satisfied. "We're never having kids!" we declared. We loved our little life with our dog and our cat and our spur of the moment vacations and crazy work schedules. We never wanted anything to change. It's not that we didn't like kids. We just liked the kind that went home with their real parents after we were done playing with them. We didn't want to own any personally.

That was the excellent and well executed plan we had been following for over 5 years of marriage. Excellent and well executed until last week, that is, because last week two ept's told me I was pregnant. Holy crap. Not even wait two minutes for the line to appear pregnant, either. Nope. I got a full on, instantaneous, screamingly positive test. Twice. Two days later a grandmother of a midwife told us I was 8 weeks along.

That's when the freaking out really began.

We're not ready says my brain and Frank's brain. We don't own a house, my job is now in jeopardy, THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN! We worried for a couple of days. Then we decided that it was all going to be ok and that we would be happy and excited instead of scared to death and freaked out.

So here we are, expecting the thing we never expected: a baby.

I hope to document my physical and emotional changes as this pregnancy progresses. It should be an interesting ride.

2008-01-02T22:56:00.001-05:00

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