The Boob Thing

Boo Boo had a first grade project in where she was asked, amongst other questions, to list 3 facts about herself. She chose that she was born in Seattle, WA, that her birthday is on Christmas Eve and after that she was stuck for a third fascinating factoid. I suggested that she add how she was going to be a big sister, and she shook her head no.

“The other kids will just talk about the boob thing.”

“The WHAT?” I said

“The boob thing…..you know….they always talk about the boob thing. It’s gross.”

She was horrified to learn recently that she had been breastfed. She calls it “the boob thing” with her eyes averted and her arms crossed.

I almost opted out of doing “the boob thing” this time though. For purely selfish reasons, I’m worried about the longevity of my ta-ta’s. You see God preformed a small miracle for me the last time I breastfed. Usually a year of "the boob thing" will effectively wipe out your hooties. I remember when my breasts were engorged in those first weeks after delivery and I looked down to see that one boob was the size of my head. Each pore so stretched and enlarged that it looked like the surface of an orange peel, and I thought “Oh no, they’ll never be the same……” And they were never the same....they were BETTER!

I don’t know how that happened. After weaning they dried up to look like a couple of fried eggs. We’re talking National Geographic and I was devastated! But then, within six months time, they literally bounced back and were better than before. I couldn’t have wanted for better looking hooties. Some one had sprinkled the magic booby dust on them. A for real deal modern day miracle.

All that said, it would be completely self-serving of me to deny this next baby the countless and undeniable benefits of breast milk just because I want to keep a hot looking rack……but you best believe I considered it.

And I’d like to go on record and address those who cringe a little at “the boob thing”. Certainly no other experience in my life has quite so reminded me that I am a mammal, but it is indeed a sweet and natural thing. It is not sexual or pleasurable in anyway, whatsoever (it actually hurts like a son of a bitch) and I don’t have enough time or energy to list the immeasurable benefits of breastfeeding here, so just quit being weird about it. I don’t advocate mom’s whipping out the teet in crowded restaurants but other than that….. let’s give “the boob thing” a break already.

The boob thing is a GOOD thing! But good luck trying to tell Boo Boo that.

OH, as for her third fact? She wrote "I have the best mom".
(And I have the best kiddo!)

Busy Baby Bee

My baby widget (the spinny baby graphic to your right) is upside down. How appropriate since I think the real baby has flipped as well. I felt her hiccups in the lower half of my abdomen yesterday and it now feels like I’m being punched in the bladder, rather than kicked. You’d think the punching would be better than the kicking but you would be wrong.

It’s recommended that I keep track of fetal movements at this stage. 10 movements in and hour is a good sign that all is well in there. My baby moves 10 times in 10 minutes. Not every single hour but ….this baby is very busy!

I try to imagine how she must be keeping herself entertained. All the super important things she has to do in there. Tying the umbilical cord in knots, then untying them. Random spells of River Dancing. Searching for new places that she has yet to push, kick or sock me in. Scratching off the days on the uterine wall.

She likes to get up to all this ruckus most rigorously between 12 AM and 3 AM so I’m anticipating a lot of late nights with the newest little pumpkin face. And oh, I can’t wait to see that face!

One Baby Shower in Pink

Do you measure the success of your baby shower in the amount of goods you rake in, the amount of guests that attend or the amount of compliments you receive? Because I wasn’t looking for tons of gifts, I don’t have many girlfriends down here and I sure wasn’t expecting to be showered with praise but as we sat around Annixa’s kitchen table nibbling on red velvet cake (courtesy of the lovely Miss Lauren) these ladies dubbed me radiant and debated over which movie star I looked like.

Those are some good friends!

Special thanks belong to Miss Annixa (who doesn’t even read this) for being yesterday’s hostess and being such a great friend to me during the last leg of my pregnancy. Such a great friend that I have gone so far as to forgive her for drinking the Kool-Aid and becoming a Fox News fed Republican. She’s that great a friend, ha-ha! Truly she is, and she made sure the whole affair was superb.

My favorite photo came late in the afternoon when Baby Daddy crashed the shower and posed with me. One shower reveler, who’d never met him before, watched us banter for awhile and beam at each other and told me privately what a beautiful thing we have, B.D. and I.



I couldn’t agree more.

Next Week?

“Next week?” asked the sweet little Asian lady doing my pedicure yesterday.
“I’m sorry?” I said, indicating I didn’t understand her meaning.
She pointed at the enormous growth under my shirt and repeated herself.
“Next week?”

“Oh!” I said “Oh no. Um, next month….or so.”

I’m not leaving the house anymore!

8th Month Photo

Alas....a sighting of the Great White Bell.
Week 32

Week 32: Itchy & Scratchy

Officially 8 months along now! And the beach ball I swallowed itches more and more every day. Do you know what that means? It means my skin is stretching. You know what happens when your skin stretches to proportions that accommodate a small planet? Well, depending upon the elasticity of one’s skin, or lack thereof, it could mean stretch marks. The dreaded stretch marks.

I got off pretty easy last time. Three or four lines on each hip that faded fairly quickly. No grooves, gouges or roadmaps on my stomach. But holy cannoli am I BIGGER with this baby. My giant hubby insists this is because I’m carrying his equally giant dinosaur sized baby. Maybe. Whatever the reason I gained all the weight I was supposed to by month 6.

Whoops.

This happened to me last time too. You’re medically advised to gain no more than 30 pounds. That 30 pounds usually melts off very quickly after delivery. I gained approx. 60. I went from 135 lbs (which I already thought was terribly fat at 24 yrs old…….such a moron) to 196……I stopped looking at the scale at 196, the week I delivered.

I promise you that’s where I’m headed again. I don’t think I’ll ever tip the scales over the ominous 200 mark but…..never, ever, ever say never-never.

The interesting thing is my doctor has said nothing on the subject of my weight gain. My former OB had made me feel lousy for it. “You can’t gain 10 lbs a month” she’d said (and I’d thought “Oh you wanna bet?”) and even though I did just that I thankfully returned to my original size….eventually. But I wonder if this doctor, this time around, doesn’t bother admonishing me because of my age. Does he know something that I don’t? Does he assume my body is now a lost cause?

I should ask him, but I’m too chicken! Because this is the part where my youth screams “WAIT……I’m too young to die!”

Ye Olde Pro

Besides sometimes seeming (and feeling) like an old vet at all this pregnant mommy stuff it surprised me just how much I’d forgotten about the days leading up to and following the big event. Then I remembered I was half comatose in my 9th month and out of my freaking mind in sleep deprived delirium the first two weeks of my daughter’s life….so it’s no small wonder a few details have escaped me.

I forgot, for example, that B.D. leaves the OR with the baby while they sew me up. I forgot that he is to stay by baby’s side that entire first day because I won’t be competent enough to be left alone with her (they’ll have me drugged on something close to morphine). I forgot that he has to spend his nights on a crappy cot next to my hospital bed. I forgot if or when I get to shower…..or how I’m supposed to even do that as a stapled together, crippled mess. I forgot about the birth certificate, social security card and first photos, all done right there in the hospital while I’m damn near out of it.

I’ve been taking a refresher course by way of two TV shows on TLC, A Baby Story and Bringing Home Baby. With A Baby Story I find that I cry every time they have the baby……even though I KNOW they’re going to have the baby. It’s the whole point of the show. There’s never an episode where they DON’T have the baby. It’s called A BABY STORY!…..and still, I tear up every single time the baby is born. I could be across the house in the laundry room, have the television on just for noise, be passing by the living room on my way out the front door, hear the “waaaahhhh” of the baby being born and BAM…..salty tear city.

Because I’m the silly hormone monster.

Bringing Home Baby serves to remind me of the reality of it all. It’s a show that documents the parent’s first 36 hours home with a newborn. Their haggard faces following the first night home says it all. We’re going to be fortunate enough to have my mom and mother-in law there to help entertain and care for Boo Boo (formerly known as Doo Doo). I count myself especially blessed because my mom isn’t the naggy know-it-all type and my mother-in-law isn’t the disapproving dictator type. They’re both terrifically lovely AND…. get this…..they get along!

Point is, we won’t be left wanting for helping hands and a great deal of it will come back to me, like some foggy dream I once had. And what B.D. doesn’t know I can help him with. But I sometimes wish I wasn’t so experienced. It would have been nice to have had my first child with him. Not that I’d give up my Boo Boo for love or ridiculous amounts of money, but how nice if he’d been there for her birth. Both of us being brand new at this thing called baby, rather than me appearing to be an old hand at the prego trade.

But oh well. Nothing is ever ideal, at least our little family comes awfully close.

Get in ma' belly!

Every few days some one asks me "Where are your belly pictures? I want to see your belly!"

The answer is that I don't really have any yet. But my daughter took this way flattering one last night....



...which accurately depicts how I plan to spend most my time from here until December.

Hotel Baby

We took our hospital tour last weekend. Our tour nurse was warm and welcoming. This way to the OR, this way to your room, be sure to take advantage of our continental breakfast and enjoy your stay.

This hospital isn’t as nice as the one I delivered my first kiddo in but it is WAY better than what had been described to me by the locals. I was told to expect drab, extremely dated décor and to have to share a room with another laboring/recovering mother. To my great joy they’ve remodeled in the last few years and ladies are now treated to their own space. THANK GOD!

Our tour led us to the nursery. As is the custom in modern times most babies room in with their moms so there weren’t many little ones to ogle. One small newborn lay under the UV lights of what looked like a mini tanning bed in order to treat it’s jaundice. Another larger baby was wriggling under the care of a nurse while a young woman watched enrapt outside the nursery door window. At that moment our tour guide asked if we knew the gender of our child and when I answered that it was a girl the young woman at the nursery window turned toward us, pointed at the wriggling infant (the one not getting a tan), grinned at us and said “Yeah, he was supposed to be a girl too.”

At this the darling hubby’s eyebrows shot upward and his eyes positively twinkled with the possibility. Earlier in the tour, outside the doors of the operating room, the nurse had explained to me that I could change my mind about having my tubes tied at the very last second, if that’s what I wanted. The doctor will essentially ask me, last minute, if I’m sure. Baby Daddy joked that he’d take that opportunity to knock me unconscious and tell the doc that I’d changed my mind.

A joke…..except that he’s kind of serious. I’m not sure he’s 100% comfortable with the idea of never having a son. Even though I’ve made all the compelling arguments against us having 80 kids…..or even just 3. Even though he has been surrounded by girls his whole life and really ought to be used to it by now. Inundated with them almost. From several great aunts in his early years, to a close relationship with his mother and sister, maternal aunties, a high majority of female friends including his best friend...…..OF COURSE his children will be girls too! But of course.

But I guess there is that who-knows-what percent chance that we’ll walk out of our stay at Hotel Baby with an unexpected son. And that wouldn’t be terrible. That wouldn’t be terrible at all. He'd better look good in pink though.

Eeek!

Oooookay, I’m scheduled for surgery. Eeek!

I’ll be having a c-section two days before my due date. That ups the chances that I might go into labor before the set date. Eeek!

I don’t know what to do in labor. I don’t know what labor IS. I didn’t have labor before. I don’t WANT labor now! Eeek!

In any event, I get to meet my baby soon.
EEEEEK!
(That's a happy "eeek")

Let Ye Without Sin....or Sense

My regular wandering through the internet brought me to one woman poo-pooing other women for choosing to be induced or opting for c-sections to “fit their schedules”. I was compelled to ask her if she was aware of just how many women used to die in childbirth? If she knew that c-sections are statistically safer?
And I reminded her that maybe mothers make the decisions they do with the health and safety of their unborn child in mind, rather than as a matter of convenience.

I already abhor overly judgmental people (they're usually the world’s largest hypocrites) and unfortunately I’ve often times found no greater concentration of them than in the land of motherhood. I’ve actually sat across the table from a woman going on and on about someone else’s child using a pacifier while their own child sat next to them GNAWING THE WOOD OFF THE TABLE!

It’s just amazing to me.

Week 30: It Really is Beautiful

Nine more weeks and we'll call it quits on nine long months. I may schedule surgery as soon as this Thursday. My baby shower will happen in about three weeks and my best friend of the last fifteen years, the fantastic Miss Teague, will fly in for the occasion. VERY excited about this. Appropriate since I wouldn’t be pregnant right now if weren’t for her. She introduced me to my husband.

But a little over four weeks ago I woke up and didn’t want to be pregnant anymore. Neither did I want be to married anymore. And I sure as hell didn’t want to live in Arizona anymore. A minor panic attack, which slid downward into something of a depression. And my, did I feel guilty about being depressed. I have NOTHING to be sad about! But I was.

I searched “depression during pregnancy” on-line and found very little help or comfort. One article read “For most women this is the happiest time of their lives…………but for YOU…..” But for you……the aberration. That’s how I read it. Because that’s how I felt.

Every time a friend told me “Oh I just looooove being pregnant” or “Aw….I wish I were having a baby!” or “You look sooooo cute, you and your baby tummy!” I just truly thought one of us had to be insane, and I didn’t think it was me. I felt guilty, so guilty, for not being in looooooove with my pregnancy.

I passed a few weeks like this, went to Disney Land and got over it. So I guess it really is the happiest place on earth.

I still feel as though this whole experience is slipping by without any discernible significance. That I’m taking it for granted somehow. That I’m not enjoying this, my last pregnancy. It’s rushing by and I’m merely along for the ride, shifted into zombie gear.

But then.....

Last weekend while preparing for a bath I stood sideways in front of the mirror, naked, to really take in the new temporarily extended outline of me. The changes in my face, my arms, my new "HELLO D-CUP" breasts, my hips, my tush. While I was at this examining my husband walked in, smiled at me, stood behind me, wrapped his arms around me, resting his hands on my swollen stomach, leaned his cheek atop my head, met my gaze in the mirror and said “It really is beautiful”.

I could have cried. I closed my eyes and soaked up the moment instead.

It really is beautiful.

Rosemary's Baby

Did I say the next two months?
10 more weeks to be exact.
Wowza.

Last night, while lying in bed, the baby moved in such a way that you could see her turning in my abdomen. If you’ve ever seen the ground rolling wave-like during an earthquake it looks similar to that. I tapped B.D. on the shoulder, got his attention and pointed toward the action. Upon watching the skin of my tummy slowly undulate up and down his eyes, already big and brown, grew wider and wider as he slowly slid backward and hid behind a pillow…..one crazy cartoon eye peeking over it.

I laughed so hard I almost fell out of bed.
I suspect my darling hubby is starting to panic…..quietly of course.

He plays it cool for the most part but whenever we see a tiny baby at the market, at a restaurant, in a friend’s arms I can see the fear in him. “They’re so LITTLE” He says, “So helpless…..for so long”. He’s never been around babies really. My daughter was three years old when he came into her life. She was potty-trained, well mannered, disciplined and durable. And though he is most definitely an experienced dad by now (and deserves a hundred million accolades for being such a fantastic one) he has no skills with the wee babies….. this totally freaks him out.

Me? How am I absorbing it? I’m a little rusty with babies, myself. It’s been almost 7 years. But I know how it just comes to you. I remember I didn’t want to leave the hospital. I wanted a nursing staff on-call, at my finger tips, just in case I f*cked up somehow. I remember being so scared to diaper her, so scared of her first bath, so utterly “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I’M DOING HERE! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” But it passed. I know that the act of caring for this baby won’t be so scary this time.

What frightens me are any and all gruesome possibilities. I worry about everything else. All the many ways it can go horribly wrong. All the awful stories you hear, they haunt me day and night. I’m even too suspicious to elaborate……I just pray.

And my six year old Doo Doo Monkey? How is she dealing?
She’s just excited.
Purely and simply.

She is the only worry-free, panic-free, hang-up free entity in this house.

I mean, we’re ALL excited in our way. It’s only that B.D. and I have the “enormous responsibility” part of the equation. Doo Doo Monkey just gets to hang out and watch sister grow. I haven’t had to address any signs of jealousy from her yet and if or when I do I have a feeling it will be minimal. She’s so mature for her age, so kind-hearted, so considerate of others, such a sweetie ……….not like an only child at ALL. Trust me, I know.

And precisely because my Doo Doo is so good, and always has been, is why I joke with every one that my next child will surely be Rosemary’s Baby. That I’m working with an unknown set of genetics here and anything can happen. There’s just no way I’ll luck out twice, right? And that’s okay. As long as Baby Lily is healthy and relatively happy I’ll care not if she’s a little turd.

Holes

They stuck me full of holes this week. They tell me this is the last time, until surgery that is.

My doctor insisted I be injected with a dead virus. I normally shy away from the flu shot and usually manage not to contract it, but I trust my doc so……*shudder*.

They took a few more vials of blood. One antibodies test related to the above, one glucose test (again) and….something else? I don’t remember. And I don’t have to. There’s an entire chapter in every pregnancy book on absent mindedness. So for the next two remaining months I have an excuse for how I regularly am.

Then there’s this, I’m Rh Negative. As are 15% of all women. I could go into a lengthy explanation but…..ugh, that’s too hard (everything is hard now, if you hadn't guessed). Very basically my negative blood factor would respond to the baby’s positive blood factor (and baby daddy is a positive blood type) as a foreign entity and my immune system would react by attacking it. Nice, huh? So for this there's a little somethin'-somethin' called RhoGAM.

I got a shot in the ass and called it a day.

Week 28: "It's the Fiiiiiinaaaaal Countdown...."

My body now resembles that of a gummy bear.
And I don't know that I care anymore.





-"Sunning in Oceanside, CA - Sept. 2008"-