Surviving the Domestic Jungle

Who needs a costume for tonight when you could just go as a pregnant freak? I swear the way people treat you when you are pregnant is so black and white! No gray area!! I find men (who I dont know) are always willing to help me or let me go first in the grocery line or basically let me go first for anything. Very nice, very gentlemanly and polite. Then there are the creepy men who look at you weird. I had this man come up to me once and tell me all about how he loved pregnant sex. Needless to say, I was shocked, disgusted and horrified! I got out of there, politely, and never went back. It was a McDonald’s play-land where my daughter was playing. Pervert. Anyway, there are those men who find a strangers pregnancy sexually attractive. I don’t really understand it but to each their own. Then you have the women who ask you 4000 questions and touch your belly and are basically way too much. They are harmless and don’t usually bug me but sometimes your just not in the mood. Ive seen t-shirts for pregnant women that say “Im due____, Its a _____, and I feel great!” Makes it easy!! I personally don’t want to display everything about my baby on my body but I understand why some women would want to! Anyway, then there’s the people that just ignore the fact that you are pregnant and leave you alone and I think I like those people best. I’m not a freak who wants to be stared at or treated differently. I’m still ME, I’m just in a little different body. People forget that its still you and you are still the same person. That’s what I find most challenging about it all. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy perks like pregnant women parking or someone helping me lift something but as far as being treated like I’m useless, I can do without that. You don’t change who you are as a woman, you just change physically and for most of us, the change is mainly on the front of our bodies. Bigger boobs and bellies and perhaps booties but all in all you stay mostly the same. You don’t grow extra limbs or anything!! The men who don’t sleep with their pregnant wives are real asses in my opinion. “The baby makes it weird” is the lamest excuse ever to reject your wife carrying your baby! Key word is YOUR in that sentence. Why should a woman have to feel like some sort of cyclops because you guys think your trophy winning “member” (its not as big as you think it is guys!!) is going to bash in the babies head! Give me a small break on that one! Men have been making love to their pregnant wives for centuries and not one of those men (as far as I know) did anything to any babies. Believe it or not, Mother nature or God or whoever, planned it all a little better than that and again, You are not as big as you would like to think!! Ugghh those men drive me nuts. No wonder so many women get cheated on when they are pregnant with some men having the mindset that it is OK to reject their wives and continue to take care of their needs. Talk about crappy to do that when you wife is at her most vulnerable emotionally. Anyway, before I get all worked up and annoyed, the lesson of the day is to treat pregnant women like they are human beings and not freak shows! Be good to your wives and always make them feel attractive because trust me, they don’t and they NEED you to reassure them! And if you see a pregnant woman out tonight, don’t run screaming, say hello!!

I hate to sound like the vanity queen but boy do I hate gaining weight while pregnant. I have only gained 12 pounds in 6 months which is good but 12 pounds seems like 45 when you add the belly! Its hard for me to ‘let go’ and accept the new ‘curves. It is completely vain to worry about it because I am growing a baby and shouldn’t worry as long as I eat well and exercise and no matter how low I feel about my looks, I still eat crap I shouldn’t so I kind of lose the right to whine. I should clarify its not like I sit around eating Twinkies but I will occasionally eat more of something or have something I shouldn’t with the old excuse ‘Im pregnant!’ It just makes the guilt worse because I know I validated bad behavior using my growing child as the excuse!!!!! Shameful mommy!! I remember seeing myself naked right after I had Avery (my oldest and I had gained 75 pounds) and oh my god I never want to look that way again…EVER!!! After Hailey I was pleasantly surprised how I looked. I mean I wasn’t a bikini model by any means but my stomach shrank back very fast. I lost 2 pounds a day for a week and then only had a couple more pounds I had to work at getting off and my body was no worse for the wear. My pregnancy with Avery ruined my body. If I had controlled myself like I did with Hailey, I probably could wear bikinis without feeling like a tiger!! One day Avery asked me if my stomach was always going to look that way. Ahh kids and their BRUTAL honesty. If they completely change the way they do tummy tucks I might consider one but for now a huge incision from hip bone to hip bone does not sound like much fun. Actually it sounds tortuous to me. My skin isn’t really that saggy at all but it certainly doesn’t look like it did before kids! At some point you just have to accept that you aren’t 20 anymore and accept your battle wounds. I do accept mine but I find it hard to accept feeling fat. I eat very healthy and force myself to waddle along for 30 minutes every night and I feel like that does wonders. Walking has helped my booty become harder and I have read it helps with birth but weight gain and pregnancy is inevitability. I always see these young girls who are having babies and they are wearing their regular jeans and have huge bellies! Bitches!!!! My pants couldn’t fit over my ‘pregnancy bum’ (My bottom always gets bigger while pregnant and it usually is pretty profound to begin with! No matter how small I am I always have a booty!) without cutting them up and then sewing myself in them! Those girls drive me crazy! How do they not get hips?? Oh well, as you can tell I am struggling with the changes going on, on the exterior of my body. The internal changes are great and his little kicks are turning into huge kicks that wake me up! I love feeling my baby kick and knowing hes growing and feeling him have the hiccups! So weird to feel someone having hiccups inside of you! Just as annoying as when you have them yourself!! Just writing this makes me want to go eat something………..

Tonight is a television night I am actually excited for! A while back (maybe a year or year and a half) I watched this show on the History channel called “Ancient Aliens” and was completely captivated by it. It basically talks about things in our past that just do not make sense without there being some sort of interference by aliens. I for one am a huge believer in Aliens and cant understand how people couldn’t think they exist! If we are the only “intelligent” life out there then that is a very sad thought to me. I also think it is very narrow minded to think just because you haven’t met one face to face means that they aren’t there…..somewhere. I guess the best example of there had to be some help, would be the great pyramids of Giza. Yes, it is possible that humans did all the work and I believe they did but some of the technology they had and the mathematics required and the sheer man power needed is mind boggling. Which brings me to my next thought which is if we were these great, genius, innovative people who knew about hygiene and mathematics and were aware of the night sky and tracked the stars etc. then why did we plunge into the dark ages. Now granted the time period between the pyramids and the dark ages is substantial but the question I ask is why did we just forget everything we learned? That’s kind of what Ancient Aliens touches on. They try to explain things that just don’t add up. The first episode mainly focused on Eric Von Daniken’s book “Chariots of the Gods” which asks the questions of why the gods flew in machines or aircraft of some sort. They are gods! They don’t need a machine to fly in!! There are a ton more questions he asks and he is a very interesting man and they covered so many topics such as the Nazca lines,Baghdad battery and Enoch. If you have never heard of these things look them up! Its pretty interesting. Anywho, my point is, tonight is the premiere of season two and I cant wait to see what else they touch on. If anything it is interesting to learn about the history of this world because more and more I believe what we know of it, is not really the whole story. Its a very interesting story and I hope one day that the WHOLE truth comes out whatever it maybe. Now, for the people who bring God into and say that belief in Aliens negates a belief in God need to look up the Vatican comments about this topic. I was surprised that they acknowledge aliens and acknowledge that it does not take away from a belief in God. Google it if you don’t believe me but definitely watch this show just for the possibility that what they are saying is true!!!! If there is one piece of advice I could give everyone out there, it is to never stop learning about your world and to never stop questioning things!! Always have an open mind and watch Ancient Aliens tonight on the history channel!!

Yesterday all I heard about was this Marie Claire article attacking “Fatties” and how gross it is to watch them making out on TV. I’m going to attach a link so you can read the article if you have not already. I read it and I think the writer was a little harsh but at the same time had a point. I personally don’t care if you are fat, thin, gay, straight or anything else, I don’t particularly like watching anyone but myself make out! When it comes to TV and movies, it is almost expected and I don’t get offended by it at all. One of my favorite shows was “Roseanne” and neither of them were physically fit!! Basically this woman made headlines and her article was not received warmly. I get why it was because calling people “fatties” or “gross” is not exactly nice but I think her overall point was that promoting obesity is not a good image to portray. I believe that this country has a huge problem with weight and I agree with her that just accepting it is a problem but I also disagree with her because obese people are slowly becoming the norm in this country and the television show she was referring to is just portraying what is reality. More and more we will have gay people as well and more and more blended families. Actually blended families have been on TV since the Brady Bunch and maybe before but you get my point. Normal doesn’t exist and finally tv is accepting that! At the same time, I get the writers point and her saying that you can lose weight and don’t have to just accept being overweight. I think she went about it all wrong in her delivery but if you dissect her writing and get down to the issue she is addressing, I have to agree. Obesity in the country is getting out of control and it is fixable! What do you think about this article??

http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/overweight-couples-on-television

Occasionally I catch this show called “I didn’t know I was pregnant” and to be honest I thought it was all nonsense at first. I mean, how can you not know??? When Im pregnant my belly gets huge and there is no way I could miss the kicks that move my whole stomach and the sickness at the beginning is undeniable. I have watched a couple of episodes and now I am a believer that this does actually happen to women. The thing that I wonder about is they all say they had no symptoms. No nausea or cravings or moodiness etc. I am a big believer in the power of suggestion and it got me wondering if pregnancy symptoms are all in our head because we are told that we should feel a certain way. The women who were blissfully unaware have no symptoms so I wonder if pregnancy symptoms exist at all! How can a woman who is pregnant, like any other woman, not have one single symptom? I do believe some women ‘play up’ the whole craving thing and the moody thing but I don’t think any woman likes to play up the throw up thing! I guess my question is, if women are aware they are pregnant and have symptoms and women who don’t know they are pregnant have no symptoms, do symptoms really occur? I often wonder if we are so programmed to believe things a certain way that we cant possibly imagine it any other way. I could not imagine being one of those women and going into labor without knowing I was pregnant. How terrifying and traumatizing! Id be worried I hurt my baby!! I guess women had babies for centuries without any prenatal care but still, in this day and age, it is available and we are also programmed that we need it! I for one will never change that programming. I love doctors and think they have a very hard job and without them, life would be…well…shorter!! Anyway, the more I think about my pregnancies and their symptoms, the more I wonder about all of this. If it weren’t for my big belly and morning sickness maybe I wouldn’t know. I dont really have cravings and I am a little moody but I am moody in general! I never have heartburn and occasionally my back hurts but again, it does when I am not pregnant sometimes. I guess it could happen to anyone but regardless of symptoms, my belly is undeniable! I am not an overweight person so my flat tummy goes to extra large very quickly but I could see how an overweight woman might not notice a pregnant belly. I guess this could happen to anyone but I really do wonder about the symptoms and are they real??

I am not one to have the luxury of being able to watch tv during the day. I am too busy plus the kids dominate it so I pretty much just have given up on it until now. I record this new show called “The Talk” and it is really good. It is kind of like “The View” but without all the fighting over political issues. Its focused more on motherhood which is what I enjoy about it. I do enjoy “The View” but rarely watch it because they all scream over each other and it is drama, drama, drama! “The Talk” is way more mellow and nobody is screaming and all the guests they have had so far they barely talk about what they are promoting and mainly talk about mother issues so it feels like the guests are being more real than if they were there to only plug their newest endeavors. I really enjoy all the ladies, Julie Chen (very smart, classy lady), Holly Robinson Peete, Sharon Osbourne, Sara Gilbert and Leah Remini (who I have been told a bunch of times I remind people of her character Carrie Heffernan from King of Queens). They are all very different and all offer different perspectives which makes for interesting conversations. You can tell they are still finding their footings but I think they will end up being successful! I hope they have a long run because it could really become a great show! Check it out!!

I have no patience. It is a serious character flaw to be honest. Waiting is damn near torture for me. I love instant results and instant gratification! They say the good things are worth waiting for and I do believe that to be true. Being pregnant you wait 9 months and I think that is necessary and I don’t mind the wait. Its seems like forever when you are pregnant but when you are done it really didn’t seem like it was that long. I think I just get so excited about things like for example taking trips and booking them a year in advance. Oh that is painful! One whole year of waiting is just an awful thought. I like the more spontaneous things like “hey you want to go _______ this weekend?” A few days is manageable for me. Although being a mom is not really conducive to spontaneity. As a mom you need to plan a year ahead!! Still, I don’t like it. I know that waiting and being patient is a necessary part of being an adult but it is hard for me. I am a sufferer of no patience. I guess I should clarify that it is only patience with certain things. With my kids I am very patient when they are acting crazy! When there are good, exciting things that I am wanting, its hard. I have one of those minds that never stops going. I analyze things to death and maybe that’s why its hard for me. My mind just cant be like “have patience and soon enough you will know”. My mind is like “Well what happens if this should happen and what about the days leading up to this or that and why did it happen this way and not that way and what if I tried things that way” and I hope you get the idea. Its occasionally a pain in the butt to have a mind like mine but at the same time I like the way my mind works because I am generally able to rationalize most things and put things into perspective and I also am very organized! I guess I am a type A personality. No, not I guess, I am a type A personality! Both my kids seem to have little type A tendencies too which I am not sure if that is genetic or just from having a mom that is. There are so many things I am waiting on hearing back on and all are good things ultimately and the overload is a lot for my mind. One thing, I can handle. Two things, ok but hard and three or more is borderline torture! Soon enough I’ll know right?!!

So today is a big day in our house! Its Avery’s 6th birthday and she is very excited about it. Avery is a birthday LOVER! She talks about her birthday all year and whenever its my birthday, I let her blow out my millions of candles! She always wants to have a candle that says her age on her birthday so soon enough I will have enough numbers to make any age!! She woke up this morning and asked me if she looked taller and was convinced her feet were bigger. Birthdays when you are a child are so special and then you become an adult and they kind of are depressing so I always try and make them fun for her. I wanted to add something I wrote when I was writing a book. It never came to be but this is an excerpt of Avery’s birth. It is long but worth the read:

My birthing experiences with my girls could not have been more different. Both special in their own ways, but very different. Pregnancy with my oldest daughter, Avery, was pretty easy. I was a little bit sick at the beginning and threw up one time only because I didn’t keep enough in my stomach. If I got hungry in those first couples of weeks, things get ugly really quickly! The only thing that really affected my life was how tired I was. I was exhausted constantly. I would go to bed at 8 and wake up at 8 and be exhausted by noon. I grabbed naps everywhere I could.  I refused to touch caffeinated drinks and so I was pretty much relying on the nutrients from my food to keep me going. Now the problem with the nutrients from food theory was that I ate crap and more crap. I would eat healthy stuff but it was finished off with JUNK!   So, as long as I didn’t have a cup of coffee, the whole cake I gobbled down in ten minutes was fine! Ah pregnancy logic. I never really had cravings for anything. Just anything with sugar! Sugar is wonderful. I had always watched my weight and monitored what I ate but now, all bets were off. All the things I hadn’t ate since I was a kid were now in my cupboard. It was heaven everyday. Within 12 weeks I had packed on 25 pounds. That was just the beginning of the weight gain. I packed on about 10 pounds a month after that. I was ridiculous. Somewhere in my head it made sense to eat thinking that the weight would just fall off. How many of us have been told that lie? “You’re young, it will fall off” or the ever present “Breastfeeding makes you lose weight quickly.” Um if I was breastfeeding 5 grown men I maybe would have! I must have been a 1007 years old because nothing fell off me. Everything fell from where it used to be located on my body but the weight stayed there. I should have known better but I didn’t and ate without consequence. Well, in my diluted world there was no consequence but I found out later just how much consequence there was.

The first time I heard her heartbeat it really hit me that I was pregnant. I knew I was and I certainly didn’t feel well but until that moment, I didn’t believe it.  Without the big belly, it just didn’t seem real. I hadn’t felt kicks and the only belly I had was a gut! Hearing that little beat was amazing. Every time I heard it afterwards it calmed me. It was my baby and she was doing well! I was so excited to find out the sex. Some people can stand the wait but I am not one of those people. I was counting down the days until I could find out what my baby was. I had that ultrasound during the time where you had to drink 4000000 gallons of water before you got your ultrasound. That was literally torture. I drank a ton of water and was practically in tears over how badly I had to pee. I was worried that if I peed that I wouldn’t get my ultrasound. This was my first pregnancy so I was not sure of the ins and outs of ultrasounds. All I knew was that the moment I had been waiting for might potentially be ruined by my inability to hold my bladder. I went up to the front desk and said I really had to pee and asked what would happen if I did. She said go take a cup and pee to a certain point and that that would be ok. So, I grabbed my thank god somewhat large cup and relieved myself a bit. Of course as luck would have it, they were running behind schedule so I ended up doing the cup peeing thing twice that morning. By the time I got into the room I was calm and no longer in pain and ready. Ready to meet my baby!

I pulled my shirt up and the lady squirted the goo on my belly and there was the baby. She was perfect. I was the most amazing experience in that room with the lights turned down watching my baby move around and kicking and living her little life in the womb. At this point I couldn’t feel her kicks really because as it turned out my placenta was located on the front of my belly which made it very difficult to feel anything until she was bigger and stronger. When the lady said, “it’s a girl” I was almost in shock. I always thought I would have a boy first but once I heard those words, I knew I really wanted a girl. I was beyond excited. It was a fantastic bonding session. I got a bunch of little pictures that to me were the cutest things ever but to everyone else were more like inkblot tests. What do you see?! I posted all the pictures on my fridge and started imagining what my daughter would be like, look like, and think like! There were so many things I wondered about. Each week I would look up and track her development. I became so educated during that pregnancy. I googled everything! There was nothing that I didn’t know about pregnancy. I had purchased a few books and just absorbed everything. I researched every pain and symptom and spent a lot of time reading about labor. That scared me but I decided not to get too worried until the end being that some women say it wasn’t that bad and others say it is absolutely the worst thing in the world. Now that I know about labor and childbirth those woman that say it doesn’t hurt that bad need to shut up! Of course it hurts and it is painful!! LIARS.

The real challenge that was upon me was naming my baby. Now, she was not only my baby. She had a father who very much wanted a say in his babies name and the funny thing is I never considered that when you name a baby, you must eliminate all the ex girlfriends names. This was irritating because those were some really cute names but oh well. I didn’t want my baby to be named after some one her dad thought looked great naked or something! There is enough variety out there that I could do without all that stress. Let the games begin. I like to think I could name my child something really original and creative but at the end of the day I couldn’t commit to something like that. I wanted something original yet common enough where my child isn’t mercilessly picked on. I didn’t want anything overly feminine or nature based. At this point I have no clue what my ex husbands wishes were for her name. He just said no to everything I loved and suggested only names I literally hated. Needless to say we did not see eye to eye what so ever. We came up with one name and referred to her as it for quite a while but something about it just didn’t sound right. At the risk of hurting feelings and offending people, I am not going to well, name names! Finally as time was winding down and my pregnancy was finishing up, we decided. I told my ex husband that I had had it and wrote down about 10 names and told him to decide from the list. Those were his only choices no if ands or buts about it. He of course chose a name I had said months ago that I loved and I had got shot down and now it was back in action! YEAH! We had decided on our baby’s name! I felt great about our choice and when I heard it I knew that was my daughters name. I probably grabbed three chocolate bars to celebrate with!

There were so many elements to pregnancy that I was not expecting. I was not ready for being so emotional and getting angry so easily. I was not prepared for the changes to my body and I was certainly not ready for how much I didn’t feel like me anymore. I felt like I was trapped in a suit and that my body no longer belonged to me. Everywhere I went, I was a conversation piece and got asked the same few questions: when are you due? How far along are you? Boy or girl? I was beginning to get tired of all of it. Luckily my due date was not that far away. I was ready to go through the big scary delivery. We had taken the Lamaze class but that was pointless in my opinion. I couldn’t see how breathing a certain way would make my vagina feel less pain when the time came. Now that I know a tad better, I know that it doesn’t take away pain but rather give you something to do while your being ripped in two. The Lamaze class really was not all that educational for me considering I was the Google queen. I knew pretty much everything about the whole process. I could have taught that class!! I was just terrified of the pain mainly. There was a definite sense of relief knowing the epidural was an option! I had contemplated natural delivery for about 13 seconds and decided that it was not for me. I had also decided that I would do everything I could to not have a c-section. I was very against having that. Being cut open just sounded so barbaric to me. In an emergency situation of course I would have been fine with it but I felt like my Doctor was pushing it on me. I understand that it makes their lives easier and I have sympathy for that but what is best for me and my baby was my real interest. Dr’s get paid a lot to have their dinner interrupted by patients. My real sympathy goes to the nurses! They are the “bread and butter” (so to speak) of the operation (not that operation but just in general). They do so much work and don’t get nearly enough recognition so thank you to all the nurses out there. Of course doctors are equally important but when it came to my birth experience, I felt like my doctor didn’t have my best interests at heart. With all this fear and pressure, I’m not surprised how giving birth actually went.

I went in on a Friday morning (my due date) to be induced because my daughter was a pretty big baby and they weren’t sure about how much of a problem I would have pushing her out. I didn’t get my dramatic movie delivery but, I was still about to meet my baby so I was ok with it! I got on my snazzy little robe and then settled in my bed. They started the Pitocin and all was going well for a while. Then things started to hurt. I sat there as long as I could then it got more and more painful. I had heard that being induced made labor harder and more painful but I didn’t have anything to compare it to. It just hurt like hell. They couldn’t give me the epidural and every time they examined me I wanted to kill someone. They could try and be a little gentler! Finally, I asked for any drug! I would have smoked marijuana at that point! I was desperate. I was young and I was letting the pain get the better of me instead of focusing and breathing through the pain. They gave me whatever the heck it was they gave me in my IV and it was worse. All I could do was lay there in pain without the ability to react to it. It was horrible! I vowed I would never take anything in an IV again. After the IV injection, things are blurry. I do remember getting my epidural and that went well and then after that I was out. I slept for most of the night. I was really very sensitive to drugs like that. Heck a Tylenol can make me tipsy! I would wake up and look over at the nurse who sat next to me her whole shift monitoring the paper that came out of the big machine the baby and me were attached to. Excuse the medical terminology! Basically it was printing out contractions and heart rates. She did not move from that spot. See what I mean about the nurses! Anyway, it was very soothing having her there knowing someone was watching over us so closely. I felt safe. She was an amazing person. Geez maybe I imagined her. I never though of that but I was so drugged who knows. Either way, seeing her was a big comfort.

Finally the time to push came. I had heard that you pushed like you were pooping and that was really what you do! No wonder so many women poop on the table! I was no exception. That’s all I will say about that. After 2 ½ hours of pushing, my daughter entered the world. I had developed a fever while pushing so there was a staff of “baby drs” along with the nurses and a doctor (not mine, she came an hour before I gave birth to tell me she had to go) I literally felt like there were 15 people staring at my huge vagina with a head sticking out of it. Thank god for my mom. My ex husband was not doing well with all the blood and grossness and he kind of backed off and my mom was right there with me. She got to see everything, which I think, was special for her. To see her daughter giving birth to her daughter and the mother daughter cycle beginning again is pretty special. My baby was whisked away to be checked over because of my fever. There was a chance I had an infection that I could have possibly passed on to her. In my non-doctor opinion, you do anything that hard for 2 ½ hours and your body temp might elevate too! I told my mom and ex husband to go with the baby. I was terrified of baby stealer’s in the hospital. I had make the mistake of reading some article of some lady posing as a nurse and stealing a baby. Nobody was stealing me! I had literally gained 75 pounds while pregnant.  So mom and ex husband went with my baby and so did all the nurses and doctor related to the baby part and as soon as I was stitched up (yes, I had an episiotomy.….OUCH!) I was all of a sudden all alone in the room. Literally all alone. I just lay there feeling very unattached to what had just taken place. I didn’t get to hold her. I got to look at her. It was not a movie at all! No one prepares you for anything other than the movie situation. You are supposed to get to hold you baby and ohh and ahh and have your bonding moment. I never understood why they took her from me that abruptly. I could have held my baby for 10 minutes! It would have been ok in my opinion.

My mom finally came to my room and said it was very sad to see me lying in the bed looking out the window all by myself. I almost cried because that was how I felt. I felt sad. She went and got a nurse and they rolled me to the nursery so I could see my baby. My mom was my superhero for that. Normally they would have wheeled me to my room to recover in for the next couple of days but my mom was like “take her to her baby” and they did. They wheeled me in and brought the baby in her little plastic bed on wheels thing and I got to see her. It was brief but it was something. When they wheeled me away, she started crying. It broke my heart and mom swore up and down it was because she knew it was me and she needed me as much as I needed her but modern medicine wouldn’t allow it. I cried. When I got to my new room, I was put in the bed. I was still numb because of the epidural and couldn’t walk yet. The nurse told me to tell her as soon as I started feeling any pain and she would bring me something to help. Well, I didn’t realize how quickly a little bit of pain would turn into an awful amount of pain. I frantically pushed that button thing to get my nurse to come and shot me up with morphine because I was in borderline unbearable pain. She came and gave me something (Vicodin maybe?) and then said I had to go pee. This woman made me get out of bed and literally take 20 minutes to walk 10 feet bawling the whole way. That was the most painful walk of my life. My life was miserable for those few days. I was not a happy patient and my nurses were not nice nurses. One nurse was a very large lady and at some point in the night her booty had bumped my IV (yes I was still on one and receiving antibiotics for my slight fever from the day before) and it pumped into my arm. I woke up the next morning and looked at my arm. I was like “I know I did not get THAT fat!” My arm was the size of my thigh. I must have pushed the nurse-calling button 30 times and they came and removed the IV and said a heating pad would help. I was like, “great, can you maybe get me one?” The nurse said, “oh we don’t have those here.” What the heck?? This hospital was irritating me. She told me to elevate it and that it would drain. I had to wonder just where it would drain to? Least of my worries at that point.

Between my very swollen and snipped vagina and huge boobs and baby being 2 floors up I was miserable. Well, take a shower right? It will make me feel better right? Water does equal life and I was needing a little life at that point. I don’t know what man designed the lay out of these bathrooms but there was a full-length mirror in mine. This should be illegal. I’m seriously considering writing congress to get it outlawed!! I stood there staring at myself naked for the first time since giving birth and oh my goodness was this a sight. I was almost 200 pounds (I started at 115 so this is quite a shock) and had stretch marks that I was unaware of and had huge boobs and that dark line down my stomach that looked like an alien blob. I was almost in tears. Yes all those snacks and junk food tasted great at the time but I was regretting them now. I could not believe what I was left with after giving birth. I was hiding behind that belly the whole time and had no clue what was behind it. I decided to not get to down about it and took my shower and pulled it together enough to go see the baby. The rest of my time there was spent shuffling up and down the halls getting to and from my little girl in the NICU. Again, because of my fever they wanted to monitor her and she was this 8-pound baby with the babies that were tiny enough to hold in one hand. I felt so strange even being there. I felt like we didn’t belong and all those tubes on my baby didn’t belong there and the IV she had in her little bruised hand didn’t belong there. There was a 3-month-old baby next to Avery that was the size of Avery’s thigh!! I felt badly when those parents were there looking at their baby and I am practically holding a toddler.

I was so happy when we got to go home. Neither of us ever had an infection. The only infection was the experience. I don’t mean to keep complaining but I was naive to think that the birth experience always went smoothly and perfectly. After all I had read, there was nothing about how the aftercare nurses would be or how you would feel in the NICU looking at your baby with bruising from needles. No book talked about all that. I was blindsided to say the least. When I got home that day that was the first time I really held my baby. The first time I really got to stare at her and enjoy becoming a mom. That was also the first time I realized she was all mine. Oh crap! I got insanely scared at that point but somewhere along the line the mother “instinct” took over and I just did it. I was the happiest, most tired, fattest, scared, thrilled new mom. My world and life officially changed forever. I could have never fathomed how different life would become. Everyone tells you that everything changes but you never really understand that until it happens to you. My life before my baby didn’t matter and barely existed in my memory. Now I looked to the future and our life together. Each day was a learning experience and I gained more and more confidence. When I gave birth to my daughter, I gave birth to myself. My eyes were open for the first time to the idea that there is something way bigger than me going on. The hospital experience may have been awful but becoming a mom was the most important thing I had ever done. Becoming a mother also introduced me to 24/7 fears that have never gone away. I figured that it would fade as she aged but no it doesn’t.  Being a mother means being terrified everyday. Everyday without fail I figured out something else that I had to be worried about. Her breathing, her poop, her development, did she have a fever, was my breast milk good enough, was she hot, was she cold, how often should I bathe her, was her shampoo the right brand. I call this insanely worried about every detail behavior “first time parent syndrome”. We all suffer from it. We spend way too much money on a bunch of different contraptions like swings, and jumparoos and bouncy seats and the best cribs and the fancy car seats and the white clothes all to find out that the baby likes laying on a blanket you already have, cries every time you put them in that designer seat and throws up every time they bounce around in the jumparoo. By the time you have 3 or 4 or 5 children, they are lucky to get a potato sack and bobby pin!! That first baby though, its good to be them. Everything is brand new (in most cases) and perfect fresh out of the box! No other baby had thrown up in it or had a diaper explosion in it or chewed it and left their teeth marks. They don’t have any competition and are always the center of attention. My daughter was the first grandchild on both sides and is still the only one on her dad’s side. She has been spoiled since day one and since her grandmother on her dad’s side had three boys, she gets extra spoiled. I think it is a good thing for her since her little sister was born and she had to share pretty much everything since that day its nice she gets to be the shining star somewhere.

I had never felt true unconditional love until her. I would happily lay down my life in an instant and that was a weird feeling. I thought I loved my ex husband but that was not even close to the love I had for my sweet little baby. Not even close to a fraction of a half of the love I had for her. This tiny little person dictated everything in my life from the moment she was born. Cars I purchased and clothes I wore were all because of her. Places I went and how late I stayed up and what kind of foods I ate (due to breast feeding) were all because of her and her needs. I knew I would die in a second to save her life but at the same time I developed a fear of dying and leaving her. Add it to the list of things I worry about every day but through her I realized my own mortality. I tried my best to keep my fears at bay and just enjoy every precious moment watching my best little friend grow.

So this is my 100th post and kind of a milestone for me! I cant believe I have that much to say! I have definitely enjoyed having this blog and it is kind of like an old girlfriend who you can call up at anytime and just chat. Its a relationship just like any other relationship and we have our moments where we don’t get along! All in all I am very happy I have it! I may have to celebrate with some cake…….YUM!

On a different note, my daughter Avery went to the park last night and got smacked in the face with some ride on dinosaur thing and to add insult to injury (literally) it is her first picture day tomorrow! So far her nose is just swollen and a little bruised but not too terrible and I am hoping by tomorrow it looks normal. It reminds me of the time when she was 3 and in daycare and the night before picture day she took a black sharpie and drew all over her face and came down and said “I’m a lion!”. I laughed at first then I realized it was picture day in less than 12 hours. In the tub!! We scrubbed and scrubbed and luckily the little bit that was left didn’t show up in her really cute pictures. I’m going to start locking her in her room a couple of days before picture day so nothing happens to her! Poor kid! I bet her nose hurt like hell when it got hit but she is a trooper and we did Ice and Tylenol and have been gentle putting her shirts on and off. Either way she will be her gorgeous self!

The other night I went to my daughters girl scout meeting and it took an interesting turn of events. It was my daughters second meeting but my first (her dad took her the first time) and there was a meeting with the parents because the troop had become too big and they were going to separate the 1st graders and the kindergarteners and they then needed a new troop leader for the kindergartners. My daughter is a kindergartner so I was on the list of potential volunteers. My friend (and my daughters best friends mom) had talked about it before the meeting (she had a heads up that it was happening) and we were both like NO WAY! She had a big project coming up at work and I have to give birth and neither of us wanted to commit to it. Well, needless to say, the guilt kicked in and we both volunteered to take the training. I figured it couldn’t hurt to just take the training. Anyway, I had a mountain of paperwork to fill out for my daughter so I started to do that while the meeting continued. Then I was asked if I would be in charge of the paperwork and because I was busy filling out my paperwork I figured why not? Im pretty organized and can keep track of paperwork so I was like ‘sure, sure’ and went back to my paperwork. Then the meeting ended and this woman came up to me to introduce herself and tell me if I needed any help she was available. Turns out the person who does the paperwork is the main troop leader. Well just fantastic! I did not want to commit to leading these kids and its not because I dont care but it is just not a good time in my life for extras. I was kind of angry that I had agreed to something without even knowing what it was so I talked to the woman who held the meeting and she assured me that 5 other moms had volunteered and that I would have plenty of help. Still not comforting but this lady was not taking no for an answer. I guess we will see how it all turns out but dont expect me to take a bunch of kids camping or be selling cookies at the grocery store! Ill do my best with it but if it adds unneeded stress I am just going to talk to that woman again and tell her no. Sometimes you just have to say no for your own sanity!!