If you can’t say anything nice

I have been scarce lately because I have been foul. I have little if any niceness, creativity, energy, etc. I have been bitching excessively to anyone who will listen for at least the last week or two. It all boils down to this:

I have not yet accepted my fate.

I love my children. I am grateful for them. I would not have bred any differently. I DO NOT LOVE staring at smelly piles of dishes and laundry that never go away no matter how much time I steal to work on them. I do not love kicking a path through the myriad plastic what-nots that clutter every inch of floor space in my house. I do not love having 2 or 3 people talking or crying at me at once, plus a phone ringing, a pot to stir, a hungry cat bitching at my heels and a dog that does nothing to earn her keep but attempt to lick the sofa clean (it doesn’t work). I do not love unpredictable sleep. I do not love hauling ass every day from 6:30 AM to 9 PM and still feeling like I am treading water and sinking fast. I do not love sporadic and unpredictable assistance from my chosen life partner.

There is a reason I am an editor and not a sauté chef. I cannot keep 6 pans in the fire without burning something, if not everything.

With only a three year old in the house, life had returned to at least a modicum of normalcy that is now gone. I was so concerned with keeping Sam alive while I was pregnant, I didn’t spend much energy prepping myself for the inevitable slide back into utter chaos that would accompany a new baby.

Did I mention that I have a teeeensy bit of anxiety and OCD? I like life to be orderly and predictable, or at least medicated. Life is none of these things at the moment.

I am working on accepting it all and flourishing in it. I will, I know. In the meantime, yoga on Tuesdays, shrink on Fridays. I will not discuss marital particulars, but he and I will soon be working out a very modest shift of responsibility for one or two regular household duties. We will share, goddammit, whether he likes it or not.

Yes, They Are Yummy!

Fresh Baby! Get yer fresh baby!




Little big man Ethan in his Hugh Hefner PJ's. Ever the handsome gentleman.



PS~ We are all once again relatively healthy and able to touch our toes. Back to yoga tomorrow!

Pictures, Ho!

Let us use this post to forget the ugliness of the last and remind us that this mothering business does have a few perks (happy baby smiles will get you through an awful lot).

This is my final belly shot, as promised in the post with Sam's birth story (yes, I am a slow slow slacker, I know). The belly is noticably smaller here than it was before my water broke. How 'bout that sexy hospital gown, eh? There are other belly pics here and here, and Ethan's birth story is here.



Remember this picture? Well here's last week's version of the same. What a little porker! I love it! Sam has finally grown out of his laundry basket bassinet and even slept in his crib for a few nights before grossness descended upon us. As soon as he is feeling better we will have to start sleep training. (If you think I'm cruel and evil for "sleep training," I don't want to hear about it. I'm a much better mom when I've had 8 hours of sleep. And that's just the way it is.)



And lo, the angels sing... (Heather, how cute is the hat? thanks so much!)

Vomit!

I started today with a lovely bath in chocolate milk vomit, all over my fuzzy bathrobe, my p.j.'s, my socks, and yes even my hair. That was fun, with an odor amazingly reminiscent of the infamous Hershey's kiss vomit. I'm still trying to get that out of the ottoman. An hour later, after Steve went to work, I found myself sitting in the bathroom with a garbage can between my knees while the baby cried for breakfast in the bedroom and Ethan threw up all over the couch while crying, "mommy, mommy, where are you?" THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN I COULD JUST LEAP FROM THE NEAREST BRIDGE. So I called my sweet husband and told him he'd better get his sweet ass home fast 'cuz I was in way over my head (actually it sounded more like, "I'm sick... sniffle, sniffle, gasp... please come home... sob, sob, snort... I can't... sob, sob... I need... sob... -- you get the picture).

Just to recap: Ethan has bronchitis AND some funky 24-hour stomach thing that he and I both must have picked up at the pediatrician's office yesterday. We hung out there for a good hour and a half waiting for Sam to pee so they could test a urine sample (negative), so I'm not surprised we picked up more cooties. Sam has either rotavirus or some other fun, multi-week diarrhea goodness. I can deal with all of this if I'm not puking too, really I can, but that additional ick pushes it into the region of utter unfairness.

Ouchie

Ethan has bronchitis. Sam has rotavirus. I can walk, but i can't bend down and pick anything up.

Woohoo!

I'll post happy pictures tomorrow to distract us all from the ick.

She-Rah

Here is Anne Lamott kicking butt.

In honor of Valentine's Day (actually we forgot) Steve is watching the kids tonight while I go to my first two-hour hot yoga class since Sam was born. Care to place bets on whether I'll be able to walk tomorrow?

And on the Third Day, She Hath Lost Her Spine

So, whatever happened to the battle of wills, you ask? Well, I will tell you. The kid had a fit for an hour and a half. AN HOUR AND A HALF. During which time I calmed him down three times and sat and hugged him, only to have it start up again when he mentioned and was denied the evil box of flickering light. Whenever he was writhing on the floor in agony over the horrid injustice committed by his shrew of a mother who unfairly demanded he pick up his toys, I still told him every so often that I loved him and I was sorry he was having such a hard time. I also got the dishes done, two loads of laundry folded, and two glasses of wine consumed. It was noisy, but it worked. Finally, I just gave him dinner and put him to bed and we both tiptoed gently around the pile of puzzle pieces scattered on the floor.

Day 2: Ethan asked to watch TV. I told him sure, we could watch TV, but first he had to put away the puzzles he dumped on the floor. In his happy cheerful precious little voice he said, "OK mommy. I'll put them away. And I won't cry at all!" Thank goodness. Then the phone rang, and mommy made a tactical error. I answered the phone instead of attending to Ethan. When I got off the phone 5 minutes later, his heels were dug in deep and he had absolutely no intention of cleaning up. Let the 45 minute tantrum commence.

Day 3: Ethan asked to watch TV. (did I mention this was in the presence of Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa?). I said yes, go ahead, watch TV, and let us never speak of this ugliness again.

Where he gets his stubbornness, I will never know.

The Fourth Trimester

Dear Sam,
Today is your three month birthday (actually it was four days ago, but I’ve been busy, and you don't know what day it is anyway). I am just so proud of you I can hardly stand it. You are growing big so fast.

When I hold you upright on my shoulder, you still have the gentle curved back of a newborn with your arms and legs tucked under you, but I know you won't do that for much longer. You will nuzzle your little face into my neck and when I’m convinced you are unable to breathe you make sweet little grunting noises. Your hair is growing back in as soft velvety fuzz. The deep valley between your bottom lip and your chin is not as deep now that your face is filling out.

I noticed your hands the other day and saw that the tiny wrinkles of your thin newborn skin are almost all gone, replaced with thick fleshy little paws with dimples where your knuckles should be. Your legs are finally getting fat with the beginnings of yummy little Michelin man folds.

You say ooh and aah and goo. You are an incredible flirt. You smile and even laugh. And oh what an incredible smile you have. When you are particularly pleased with something, your nose sprouts a crinkle from eye to eye that makes me faint of heart. In short, you are thriving. You are a joy.

I love you so very much. I can't wait to see who you turn out to be.
Love,
Mommy

PS~ Daddy says hi.



So I suppose after three months I should write up Sam’s birth story before I forget every last detail. My memory is hampered by the lack of video or very many pictures of the event. We were remarkably unprepared. I haven't thought back about the experience much before now because it was so bittersweet.

I was on bed rest until 34 weeks. The moment my doctor pronounced me off bed rest, I left her office and went across the street to Toys-R-Us to get whatever scraps of baby gear I needed (okay, so it's easy to spend a bundle on scraps). Thank god I did because the next night my water broke. I was in the shower drying off when all of a sudden, splat! Now I ask you, for an OCD clean freak, could the universe possibly be kinder to me than to allow my water to break when I was already standing in the shower?? No mess! No waddling or public embarrassment!

Steve heard me gasp from the other room and knew immediately what it was. He came in to check and for a moment we both pretended we didn't know for sure that was what it was. Well, maybe not, right? Splat! Wrong, oh so wrong. We were both a little sad and scared for another minute or so because we knew it was too soon, but then we said, well ok, let's go have a baby!

We called the ob's office twice before we remembered to leave our phone number. Ah well, you have to go to the hospital when your water breaks, so why were we calling anyway? We arrived around midnight. Because I wasn't having contractions yet, we were in a lovey romantic stupor – teenager giggly and staring into each eyes enough to make the nurses smile.

About the water breaking... there is A LOT OF WATER in a pregnant belly. By the time we got to the hospital and took this picture *, my belly was visibly smaller than it had been. It was just continuously pouring out of me in great gushes any time I changed position. Because Sam was 6 weeks early and I was GBS positive, I had to have i.v. antibiotics for 8 hours before they would induce labor. This brought about the only negative thing at all about the birth (besides of course the big one about it being a month and a half early). I had to spend the night trying to sleep with my water broken. I didn't know this, but you don't run out of water. It keeps replenishing itself, which means it kept pouring out of me. I would fall asleep only to be awakened over and over again by the sensation that I was wetting the bed. Not so nice.

So in the morning at 8 am, they started the pitocin. They were kind enough to allow me a hearty breakfast of graham crackers, peanut butter, and cranberry juice. My doctor said when I started to get uncomfortable, have a nurse check me, and if I was 3 cm, I could get an epidural. Let me take a moment to sing my doctor's praises. She sees no reason whatsoever why a woman should have to suffer unnecessary pain during childbirth. And she is funny. She absolutely rocks.

This brings us to the nurse better known as beaded-glasses-chain-wearing-evil-bitch-nurse. At around 11:30 I said, "I feel a bit uncomfortable. I’d like someone to check me." Wherein beaded-glasses-chain-wearing-evil-bitch-nurse commenced to lecture me on the drawbacks of performing a cervical exam on a woman whose water is broken. "Yes, I know it can introduce infection," I said kindly, "but I’ve had 8 hours of antibiotics, and no one has checked me since 12 hours ago when I was 2 cm. I can guarantee you I am 3 cm by now." again with the lecture, and worse, a chastising tone and a looking down the nose through the stupid beaded chain glasses. She asked me what my pain was on a scale of 1 to 10. Now, I never say 10. I don't know what the worst pain of my life was, and frankly I don't care to remember pain. It wasn't that bad yet, but the point was I didn't want it to get that bad, I wanted my god damned epidural. I told her a 4. She gave me a look reserved for particularly slow and irritating children. I said "I don't have to suffer, I just need to be 3 cm." Again she declined. I told her fine, I understand your concern, but I want someone to check me in the next half hour or I’m calling my doctor. Beaded-glasses-chain-wearing-evil-bitch-nurse decided it was time to busy herself elsewhere. Once unsupervised, the kind sweet goddess nurse then checked me, pronounced me 3 cm, and called anesthesia. Blessed be.

It turned out to be very good timing. I got the epidural around noon. I was not in a lot of pain so it wasn't scary or frantic trying to get the epidural in, but then 10 minutes afterwards my contractions picked up a lot. I couldn't feel them at all. I could feel my belly get hard, and I could see the line on the monitor spike, but no pain. She gave me a walking epidural so I could still move my legs around. It was nice.

Half an hour later, hmmm... I think I felt that. Yes, I felt that one a little bit too. I was feeling twinges of pain at the very end of the contractions, but I didn't want to complain and get too high a dose in response. With Ethan, you could stick a fork in my calf and I wouldn't have known. It took two hours to push him out and I shredded myself because I couldn't feel it. So I didn't get the nurse, I just told Steve and my mom. Hmmm, how odd, I can feel that one a little more.

A few minutes later I told them not to talk to me when I was having a contraction. A few minutes after that I told them not to talk to each other. It took them a few contractions to understand that their talking might soon become a threat to their physical safety.

Fifteen minutes later I was moaning through contractions so I wouldn't hold my breath. That epidural took a huge edge off it, but I got a much better picture of labor this time around. Steve got the kind sweet goddess nurse who came in to check me. I told her I thought it was going to be sooner rather than later. She suddenly started moving very quickly. In between bouts of moaning, I felt fine. I told her I knew it was low priority, but is there any way she could get me a mirror? The room was filling with people and the contractions were getting so close that I started panicking a little bit. It just started snowballing. The mirror just gave me the opportunity to say, "oh, man, those are new stretch marks," but not much else. It went so fast I didn't have a chance to look again.

Somewhere in there right at the end, Steve said we could name the baby Sam. He had been resisting it, but tossed it to me all teary-eyed as a "hang in there kid, you're doing fine." At 2:32 PM, after 4 pushes, Sam was born. They put him up on my chest for maybe 20 seconds (for which I was very grateful). I heard someone ask me if I wanted to give him a kiss. I did. And then they took him. I didn't get to hold him again for 3 days. Most of the crowd went to the NICU with the baby and it was quiet again.

So I guess I can remember details after all, huh? I wish we had videotaped. I wish we had more pictures. I wish there was a picture of me holding Sam before he was 2 weeks old. I wish I had roomed in the hospital instead of commuting for two weeks while he was in the NICU. I wish he had been born full-term. but... BIG but... we are so lucky and grateful and happy to have him. I loved being pregnant and I loved childbirth, but I am done, oh so done. I’m savoring this one as much as I can.


*I will have to post it later because my husband took it with him on his laptop to a business trip in Tampa. Honey, please come home soon, the kids are eating me alive in your absence.

An Aries and a Leo Walk into a Bar...

I'm currently having a battle of wills with my 3 year old.

"Pick up your puzzle and put it back in the box and then we can watch tv."

"I caaaaaaaan't, i need heeeeeeelp!"

So far it's been 45 minutes. Which one of us do you think is more stubborn?