For the curious

For those who might be wondering what living with a baby is like.

Imagine a person with no self-control, no manners, and the inability to speak articulately.  Basically, a drunken sailor.

A very cute drunken sailor.

Shameless Nepotism

Wherein I post some information about my sister Kelly's Etsy website: Lilah Grace Creations.

If you are going to a baby shower in the near future or looking to pimp your infant's wardrobe, then this is the place for you.

I especially like the cupcake washcloths. For whatever reason, just looking at anything presented underneath the visible film of a bakery box makes me drool. You could probably put dog turds in one and I would think, "Yummy!" Then I would think, "Wait, that's dog shit!" But then I would think, "Oooh! It has sprinkles..."

Luckily, for you, my sister isn't selling dog shit cupcakes!

Instead, if you click this, you can see what she is selling.

See, Kelly? This is what happens when someone asks me to advertise something for them. I talk about poop.

Yeah, you're welcome.

4.5 months

It's been 4 and a half months since Sena entered the world. I have been pretty good about taking pictures every week, but not very good about posting them.

So here are some I took this morning.





My sister Kelly makes the hair bows and clips and has just started selling them on her Etsy website. I must say they are beautiful and very well made. They would make great baby shower gifts for girls. For those who don't already know about Etsy, it is a great place to find beautiful, handmade gifts by creative entrepreneurs. You give your money to them instead of a giant corporation.

Hah! Take that, Target!
Just kidding, Target. You know I love you.

You can check out her website called Lilah Grace creations.

Labor Day: Part 2

So we arrive at the hospital at midnight. Thankfully, it is only a short drive up the street from where we live. Despite that, I almost rip the handle off the car door during the contractions. I say things like, "Fzzzzzzzzz! Schussssssseeeeeeet! Hurrrrggh..." I think I'm supposed to be doing some breathing exercises or something I learned, but for some weird reason, when I am in pain I tend to stop thinking of the things I'm "supposed to be doing". And do things that are a little more primal.

Like groaning and shrieking.

Matt says something like, "Do you want me to drop you off at the front?"
For some reason I am horrified by the idea of being left alone. No matter that I will have to walk uphill to the hospital from the parking ramp. This seems preferable to being left by the ER with the gunshot victims and possible O.D.s "No!" I say. "I can walk."

I do walk. Slowly. Like a drunk peg-leg pirate who has been at sea for two years and just walked down the gang plank into town. I have to stop once. Of course we are near the ER, right next to a parked cop car. For some reason I feel like I shouldn't stop here. Someone might ask me what I'm doing. Though it is pretty obvious what I'm doing. I'm leaning my head against a brick wall and moaning, while Matt grips my shoulders. Thankfully there is no one outside while I'm treating the building like it's my own personal wailing wall.

When it passes I shuffle quicker past the ER and to the main entrance of the hospital. From there it gets a little blurry. Somehow I tell the security/info. person who I am and why I'm here. Duh.... They call over to the birthplace and say they are sending someone to get me. Then I sit in a wheelchair and a woman in the waiting area says, "Congratulations..." She smiles. I think I grunt and stare at my shoes as I sit in the wheelchair. I feel like I could walk over to the other side of the hospital but there is a lot of construction going on and don't want to get lost and end up having to deliver the baby in some janitor's closet.

So I sit in my chair.

Soon a person comes to get me. I do a double take. I was expecting the person to escort me to be an orderly; an athletic type person. Those are the people you usually see on TV, right? Big, burly, bouncer type guys capable of handling difficult situations. Or spazzed out pregnant ladies.

The lady looks to be about 80 years old and weigh about 100 pounds. Tops. How in God's green earth is she going to push me over to labor and delivery? She doesn't look like she could push her own oxygen tank down the hall. Matt is apparently thinking the same thing. He immediately grabs the wheelchair and start pushing me down the hall while Driving Miss Daisy escorts us to the East Building and the elevators.

We take the elevator up to the fourth floor and enter the birthplace. No one is around; it is quiet. A nurse checks me in and then I go to triage where they will see how I am "progressing".

The pain is getting even worse. No longer donkey contractions. They have progressed to Holstein strangling capacity. They check and pronounce that I'm at 3 cm.

This is bad.

3cm means diddly squat. I need to get to 10cm. Which means I need to go 7 more. Seven! How long is that going to take I ask? About 1 cm per hour is normal, they tell me.

So in effect they are telling me I have 7 more hours of wanting to die every few minutes. Seven hours. Contractions that would choke a Clydesdale at every five minutes, and last a good minute a piece. Let's do the math on that. 12 minutes of contractions every hour. Multiple by seven.

Eighty-four minutes of torture. Just to get to the point of pushing. Pushing something the size of a watermelon out of my wee-wah. I imagine that feels even better.

No thank you.

I wonder if I still want to do it naturally, though at this point there seems to be nothing natural about feeling like someone is taking a rusty box cutter to my insides at the same time some invisible Anaconda is coiling itself around my small intestines. Then the big one hits.

Everything goes purple. Violet. I see orange stars and green dots. A revolting cold sweat breaks over my body, my forehead, my upper lip, and the wave of nauseating hot sick heat is cascading over my body like a tidal wave. Somehow I'm supposed to surf this wave and breathe through it. But my surfboard breaks halfway through and I'm pummeled down by a force not unlike a wave. A wave of festering garbage. Public outhouses on humid August afternoons. Slimy moldy green pastrami sandwiches stuffed with cigar butts. Falling face first into a steaming cow pie buzzing with flies. Teenage boy's sweaty socks stuffed in my mouth. Dick Cheney dancing in a sequined thong.

Basically, the most disgusting things I can think of.

I'm going to throw up.

I think I say it. And the nurse can see it. She gives me a plastic barf sack as my mouth fills with saliva.

Right on cue, I empty my stomach into the bag. All the pork chops, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Sayonara.

This is the point where I ask for the epidural.

Up next, the final frontier.

Labor Day : Part 1

Today marks 1 week of my daughter's birth. She's been here a WHOLE week; it's hard to believe. It's also hard to believe how fast a day goes by when you seem to be doing nothing. Nothing other than feeding and changing diapers and saying, "Go to sleep little baby..."

Despite her having a real name I've been calling her the following:

Peanut head
Pumpkin head - and its corollary: Pumpkin doodle
Squeak monkey
Poopiebaby
Piggiepie

and Smalls

She is small. But loud. And strong. And can fill a diaper like nobody's business.

So far this past week has been busy. People visiting. Her first doctor's appointment. Going outside for a walk around the block.

I knew she was going to arrive before her due date, so last Friday I had a hunch after I visited the doctor. I cleaned out my desk. Typed the very last page of the novel, and printed it out. Then I went home and cleaned. Friday night I had mild contractions. I knew what they were; it wasn't a result of eating too much chili.

The next morning they were still there. So I spent the day doing all the laundry, vacuuming, and mopping of floors. I scrubbed the bathroom and the kitchen sink. I was rushing around like a squirrel on Meth. Faster, faster, more, more. Gotta get it done before... I was acting as if I would never again be able to clean my house or fold towels or have things put in order, ever again, which for a person like me is like telling a boozer they'll never have another taste of whiskey for the rest of their life.

That afternoon we went over to visit the nephews and have dinner. Pork chops and mashed potatoes. Pumpkin pie. Around pie time (6 pm) the contractions got stronger.
They went from being a cramp that was annoying, to a cramp that could hurt a small farm animal. Say a chicken or a duck. Bad enough to make me close my eyes and change my breathing.
I knew it was going to get worse.

Around 7:30 I told Matt I wanted to go. Go home. I didn't want to be in a situation where I would frighten my in laws with my drunk trucker swearing. I wasn't quite sure what I was capable of or how bad it was going to get.

In the car I said to Matt. "Whatever I do, ignore me. Just concentrate on what you're doing."

During the fifteen minute trip, the cramps progressed from Chicken/duck strangulation to Goat/Pig. I think I actually moaned at one point. A loud, ugly moan. A moan that would make someone think, "Someone is eviscerating a very angry donkey."

And by the time we got home and I was laying in bed, rolling around like Linda Blair, the contractions had progressed to something that would eviscerate a donkey.

I tried my breathing. It worked. Sort of. Time seemed to lose meaning. It narrowed down into segments of 9 minutes. Then 7 minutes. Then 6 minutes. The labor sheet I had received said that the contractions should be about 5 minutes apart, very uncomfortable, and last an hour.

Is donkey evisceration the same as being uncomfortable?
I'm going with yes.

I called the clinic and talked to the midwife. She said if I wanted I could go to the hospital and have them check.
At this point I was wanting to pop out of my skin. I didn't want to be at home anymore. I wanted the hospital. Where there were professionals.

Matt asked me if I wanted to wait any longer at home. I think I could only say, "I want to go. Now!"

So we went.

By now it was almost midnight.

Our neighbors were outside, sitting around the bonfire and drinking wine. I staggered to the garage and got in the car. As we drove past I knew they knew where we were going.

It was baby time.

Up next: The hospital

Baby Moo's Nursery

Here are some pictures. For the most part it is done, or I should say, it will do for now. I like how the tree mural turned out; I may add more art work on the walls/closet if I feel the motivation.

I'm not sure what the color scheme is here. Hodgepodge? Is that a scheme? I kept the walls the color I had them before; pale silver blue. I repainted the dresser white and tan. The rocking chair is dark sage green. The crib bedding was a gift from my mom, and the crib is actually the one I slept in as a baby.

We decided to leave the full-sized bed in the room (pushed up against the wall). I imagine for the first few months I will be sleeping in the bed or possibly in the chair, so it made sense to use to leave it in the room even though it makes things a little more crowded. It also provides a good spot for all the stuffed animals. The three framed pictures above the bed are original illustrations from my book. The panda bear has been mine since I was eight years old. And the Raggedy Ann doll is even older. That I got as a present for my first birthday. She looks pretty good for her age!

Waiting

Tomorrow will be 39 weeks.

I'm still in denial. Every once in a little while I will forget myself. And then all of a sudden I'll look down and be reminded. A baby. A baby is coming. Any day. Any hour. Any minute it could start. And there is nothing to do now but wait. Wait and see...

And go to Target to buy things like a humidifier, CO detector, infant gas drops, and batteries for the swing. Plus necessities like chocolate Gelato and frozen fish sticks. Because it's not like I don't already spend enough money supporting the Target Corporation. It's a love/hate thing.

So I wonder...Is this how the people in those little wooden barrels drifting toward the edge of Niagara Falls feel? I'm in my little barrel and everyone else is standing on the shore, hooting and hollering and cheering me on like drunken frat boys who think that this is the "best idea ever!" YOU CAN DO IT!

But they're not the ones going over the waterfall. In a barrel. By themselves.

This might seem like an idiotic analogy. I suppose it is safer today. You get a rubber raft instead of a barrel. And a life jacket. Maybe some really lovely drugs to make you forget that the roar you're hearing up ahead has no mercy for you. You got to go. There's only one way out. So you think to yourself: I can do this. Other people have done this. People do it every day.

So you bobble toward the misty edge and trust that if you do go under, if your barrel smashes apart and you are flung into the whirlpool, somehow you'll pop back up again, still able to swim.

And when you crawl and heave yourself up on the bank, people will throw a towel around you, slap your back, and call you a champ.

There won't be any medals. But still, I'm looking forward to meeting my new prize.

37 weeks

Today is a big day. At 37 weeks, Baby Moo is officially full-term. Which means she could arrive at any time now and it would be okay. Biologically speaking, that is. I'm still wondering if I'm ready.

I realize this is a monumentally stupid thing to be wondering.

I have my bag packed for the hospital. The camera battery is charged. The car seat is in. The blankets and towels and sheets and onesies and tiny socks have been washed, dried, and folded.

I still have not written a birth plan, and I right now, I don't think I will. I have some ideas in my head about how I would like things to go, but I realize that is really not up to me. And I've decided I'm fine with it. My sister-in-law, who is a labor and delivery nurse, said something interesting to me last week. "Whenever we have a patient come in with a birth plan longer than two pages, we immediately get the operating room ready."

Translation: Those who think they can control the outcome are the ones usually in for a big ass surprise.

I do not want to be one of those people. You know, THOSE people. I imagine these are the same people who stand in line at Starbucks and say, "I'd like a venti, half-caf, mochachockalocka with 2.5 pumps of vanilla and .5 pumps of caramel, no-foam, double whip, with 7 curls of chocolate on top. And two shakes of cinnamon."

I don't think that order even makes sense, but I hear crap like it. It always, ALWAYS makes me want to scream, "You'll get coffee! Black! And you'll like it!"
Or at the very least I would like to see the poor barista snort a wad of phlegm into their recycled coffee cup and say, "And an extra loogie shot for YOU!"

That never happens.

So...I'm going to try to go with the flow. Childbirth wise, that is.

And this Saturday I plan to be in New London, Minnesota to do a book reading and signing for Luella. I agreed to this about two months ago, and now I'm wondering about the wisdom of my decision. Things should be fine; it's not like I'm driving myself out there. My in-laws will be chauffeuring me.

Although if anything does go down, my father-in-law will discover exactly how fast you can drive a Toyota Prius before its teeny-tiny Polly Pocket engine will burst into flames. Teeny-tiny flames and little wisps of smoke. Haven't you always wondered that?

Honestly, I'm all for economical automobiles and conserving gas. But if you are in labor and trying to get to the hospital, you don't want a clown car whose engine you can't even hear when you turn it on. I'm serious. Have you ever been in a Prius? You can't hear the freaking engine. You can't even tell the car is on. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

What does inspire confidence? A Mustang. Specifically, a Shelby Cobra with a Twin Paxton Supercharger, 800 horse power and 400 lbs of torque. Not only can you hear the engine when you turn it on, you can feel it vibrate through your whole body, right into your bone marrow. All the way into your spleen.

So here's hoping I don't go into labor this weekend while doing my book reading, and then having the unfortunate task of explaining, "Hey Looky, kids! Babies aren't really delivered by the stork!"

And then turning to my father-in-law and saying, "John, fire up the Prius, we need to burn some rubber back to Minneapolis."

There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

35 1/2 weeks

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago, but I have not gotten around to posting until now. The nursery is about finished and I plan on taking pictures of that as well.

Until then, enjoy the giant belly.







I'm getting to the point where it is no longer cute and funny. It is just cumbersome and giving me heartburn. At my last doctor visit it was confirmed she was head down and about 5 lbs. 6 oz., give or take. I went in for an ultrasound because the doctor thought I was measuring small at 35 weeks. It was more difficult to see her on the screen because she's packed in their pretty good, but the tech did get a picture of her face as she turned her head and looked at the camera.

Say Cheese.

31 weeks

31 weeks and counting... only 9 more to go, unless baby decides she wants to show up early, which, with the way she is constantly kicking and punching me, it sounds like that could be a real possibility.

I keep telling her to "Stay in there, baby!" but she probably won't listen. Another sign she is related to me.

So we have had a flurry of activity getting everything ready. The floor guys came yesterday and now I have a brand-new (looking) shiny oak floors in the bedroom. We ordered our rocker/recliner on Labor Day and will be picking that up on Sunday. Plus, I have approximately 1,000 diapers.

What else am I missing?

Oh yeah, the will.

You know, the will that everyone is supposed to have. I asked Matt, "Do we need a will?"
"I don't know. Do we?"
"Probably. We own stuff. Plus, who will get the baby."
"Mmmmmm....yeeeeeeaaaah," was his reply. Which translates to, "Yes, I'll get right on that. In about eighteen years."

I mean why would he spend time thinking about something important like a will when he is compiling his ultimate fantasy football team. That takes a lot of time and energy, you know.

Then he says, "I think we need to move."
"Huh?"
"Move."
"To where."
"Either southwest Minneapolis or Edina."
I snort, "Yeah, that's where most people want to live. If you can afford to."
Now, I wouldn't mind living in either of those places. But EVERYONE does want to live there. Because it is NICE. Edina has the best school district, hence the reason to move.
"Minneapolis schools suck," said Matt.
"They're that bad?"
"Yep. Baby Girl isn't going to go there."

So now I have that to chew on. As if I don't really have enough to think about already. Because right now is a really good time to buy a house. It's just not a good time to sell one. Plus, all the work I've done on my little house has made me quite attached to it. Especially the yard. Oh the garden...eight years in the making and it is starting to take off. The hydrangeas, the lilacs, the apple tree. I take great pleasure in seeing what I've created over the years and I kind of want to stick around to see how it turns out.

Document

I recently bought a journal that I plan to write in everyday after the baby is born. Yeah, I know, good intentions. The journal will be addressed to my daughter, and what made me think of it was when I was going through my own baby books. My older brother's was the most complete, my book somewhat less, and poor Kelly's book was just about blank. But that's the way it goes when you have three young kids all running around at the same time.

I remembered sitting there holding the book and staring at the words and just feeling like I wanted to KNOW more. The things I did. What I liked to eat. How I liked to watch my mother vacuum while I sat in my play pen. Little things like that. So I bought a nice journal and I plan to TRY to write something every day, even if it's just a little blurb.

Then I saw this.

What a fantastic idea.

Piggy Flu

By now most people have heard all about the piggy flu, or H1N1. It's not actually the swine flu, but I like to say "piggy". Since school starts next week, and the campus will be inundated with thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of people, the university has been gearing up to prevent what they think could be a massive outbreak.

Normally I would not be concerned.

I can count on one hand the number of flu shots I have received as an adult. Two.

I have never had the flu.

I've had stomach bugs and food poisoning and colds, but never the flu. And the more I hear about what it's really like, the more convinced I am that I really don't want it.

Plus, the baby Moo is coming soon. And I have to decide what to do because little tiny babies cannot get flu shots.

Which means everyone else has to.

When I told Matt this, I might as well have told him that he had to eat a turd sandwich. "But I hate needles!"

"Me too. Too bad."

"But I never get sick." It's true, he doesn't.

"Too bad, you HAVE to get one. I think it's two shots."

"TWO SHOTS?"

"Plus another for the seasonal flu."

"Whaa-haaa-aat?"

"Three shots." I tell him this more than once, just to get him used to the idea.

I was just reading the latest recommendation this morning that pregnant women are supposed to be among the first in line for shots, which also has me concerned. What kind of reactions might these shots have? They haven't been tested and they want to give them to pregnant women. Last time I checked, pregnant women are the last group of people that should be treated like guinea pigs.

So then I wondered if I should wait until after the baby is born. Now or later? I suppose this is one of those questions that parents are always having to decide: Which is the best thing to do? You can get all the information you want, a lot of it conflicting information from different sources, but then in the end you still have to decide, see it through, and then be responsible for the outcome, whatever it is.

Good God, I think this means I'm an adult now...

Baby Class no. 7 - Just Feed It

Our class last Wednesday night was all about breastfeeding.

Boobs. Boobies. Bodacious Ta-Tas. Dirty Pillows. Fun Bags. Breastasizzes.

Matt asked what we were learning and I said, "It's Boobie class."

"Boobie class?"

"Yep, all about Boobies."

"I like Boobies."

So we learn all about the great things of breastfeeding your baby. Huh, so that's what boobs are for, I thought. I grew up thinking they were for something totally different, namely to make boys act stupid.

Actually, they still do that.

Then we get to practice on our baby dolls. My baby doll didn't like me very much. I was not comfortable holding it in the cradle or cross-cradle hold, and I ended up not sure where to put my hands and arms. If it had been a real baby I'm sure it would have tried to bite me for being so incompetent. I managed to do the football hold (Yay sports!) because that was the only one that felt natural to me, pretending the baby was a football. Hello, my name is Mindy and I'm a man!

Matt practiced too; it was only mildly annoying that he was better at it than me.

So there we all were, breastfeeding fake dolls when a lady wanders in the room. "Is this the place?" she asks, a little confused.

Well, it's definitely a place. A surreal place. She looks at us as we are pretend massaging our boobs (Matt tries to help me do it because he likes to be hands-on) and looks a bit startled.

"This isn't AA?" she asks.

"No," says the instructor. "That's down the hall."

She looks relieved and leaves. She will probably want a drink later, I think, after seeing our show.

Then we go through the different types of breast pumps. She turns them on, the big electric ones make a groaning sound, and I'm instantly transported back to Uncle Ronnie and Aunt LaVonne's dairy farm. I used to get up at the crack of dawn to go in the barn and watch my great uncle milk his cows. I used to think I was helping but I'd mainly sit on hale bales and pet all the barn kitties. One year I even saw a calf get born.
Well, that machine made the exact same noise as those milking devices that were hooked up to the cow's teats. The same heave and whoosh; it was downright bizarre. I realized when it came down to it, I would end up doing the exact same thing as all those Holsteins I had helped feed those early mornings on the farm.

While I'm contemplating this I look over and see that my husband is attempting to suction his boob through his T-shirt using a manual breast pump. He has created enough suction to pucker the fabric through the nipple cup, and he is giggling like an idiot.

Boobs!

24/12

This picture was taken about four weeks ago, when my sister was visiting, and in it you can see the difference between being 24 weeks pregnant (me) and 12 weeks pregnant (my sister).







We are standing in front of the arbor that my dad had recently built for me as a birthday present. Or I should say, project no.47 that he has completed on my house since I've moved into it, eight years ago. Thanks, Dad!

27 weeks

The belly button is out. I've decided to call it Clarence. Clarence is obnoxious; he demands attention. He just STICKS OUT THERE. I was thinking about putting a band aid over him, just to shut him up, though I may need to resort to duct tape. I don't know how much worse he will get, some part of me keeps expecting it to go, "Pop!" and stay that way. Forever. Just like when your parents told you not to cross your eyes because they would stay that way. Permanently.

Clarence is much more obnoxious than Stanley, whom I haven't seen in awhile. Stanley is my chest hair. My dark black, extremely manly chest hair that grows in the exact dead center of my chest. He is about a quarter-inch long and no matter how many times I pluck him out with a tweezers, he manages to find a way to grow back.

Except now. It's possible that as a result of all these freaky hormones in my body that I'm not manly enough to grow back my chest hair anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he is gone for good.

I kind of miss Stanley.

Other things about 27 weeks:

Now I'm entering the last trimester.

So far my fingers and toes and ankles have not swelled up and I'm hoping it will stay that way. I don't really aspire to look like a Macy's parade balloon.

All my tests are fine so far. Last week I had to do the gestational diabetes test, which means I had to drink (really fast) a big bottle of gross orange soda and then sit an hour without barfing it up and wait for them to check my blood.

As I sat in the waiting room outside the lab I read through several magazines. The waiting room was busy; since it is a University hospital there are clinics everywhere. I was sitting by the women's clinic and the neurosurgery clinic and watched all kinds of people come and go, when two older women came in and sat down. One disappeared right away for something and the other sat right next to me while she waited for her friend.

I was reading a magazine and laughing. I was laughing because the subject was on song lyrics that people consistently sing wrong.

Remember the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi? The line where she sings, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Some thought it went:
"It tastes very nice, the food of the parking lot."

There were some really good ones and I just couldn't stop laughing. Then I was trying not to burp up my orange soda. I felt I had to explain to the woman right next to me that I was not crazy so I told her what I was reading.

She started laughing and said, "Oh you're probably too young to know this but there is an old song called 'Forever in Blue Jeans'".

I nod. "Neil Diamond."

She looked surprised. "Oh, I thought you'd be too young to know that."

I don't tell her that I love Neil Diamond, my mom played Neil Diamond records in our house, and that 'Cherry Cherry' is one of my favorite songs on my Ipod. "Oh," I say, "I know Neil Diamond."

"Well," she says. "I always thought the song was 'Reverend Blue Jeans.'"

We both start laughing.

"And when I was a kid in church, you know that old song 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me?"

"Yeah?"

"I always sang it as 'Rotten Tomatoes, left for me!'"

I had my own confession to make. "It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the German expression was 'Auf Wiedersehen'".

"Oh?"

"I thought they were saying, 'Our feet are stained.'"

I've never laughed that hard in a waiting room before.

OINK & MOO

So I went for another doctor appointment yesterday.

I tipped the scales at 160 lbs.

It's the most I've ever weighed; I wasn't sure how to feel about that.

I wasn't surprised. Especially considering what I had eaten that day:

Two pieces of whole wheat toast slathered thickly with peanut butter (chunky organic)(6 am)
Coffee with skim milk
Vitamin

banana (8 am)

Babybel cheese; 5 cherry tomatoes (from the garden) and 10 Triscuits (8:10 am)

Blueberry acai yogurt (weird, but good)(11 am)

Grilled chicken sandwich on wheat bread with avacado and lettuce (11:30)

Nectarine (11:30)

Small bowl of strawberry, pineapple, and melon chunks (11:30)

Granola bar (12 pm)

That was all I brought for lunch that day and by 2 pm I was hungry again, excuse me, the BABY was hungry again. And kicking me. And bopping me. "More Food! More!!!!" It is a demanding little bugger.

So I went up to the little deli market in Blegen Hall and bought a large skim milk, an egg salad sandwich (weird, but for some reason it looked good to me) and a chocolate raspberry pastry bar of some kind.

I ate it all and felt like a blimp.

Then I left at 3pm and was walking across Washington Avenue bridge when, low and behold, a Jimmy John's worker was hawking free Jimmy Johns sandwiches! FREE! SANDWICHES!

"Would you like a sandwich?" the girl asked. "We have turkey and ham & cheese."

Would I like a sandwich? Does the pope wear a weird hat? Are beans green? Um, yes I would like a sandwich. "I'll have a turkey." I say.

She eyes my bulging belly. "Would you like another? You can have two."

"Oh, that's okay. One's fine," I say, too quickly, deciding that eating TWO sandwiches would be very piggy.

I eat my sandwich as I waddle off to my appointment. Then I slug down my water bottle as I sit in the waiting room.

And then I get weighed. When I see the number I am both impressed and appalled. "Whatever," I mutter to myself.

The appointment is fine. I'm practically a textbook case, utterly average in every respect.

While I'm waiting I text Matt and tell him how much I weigh.
Then I want to know how much he weighs.
He doesn't know but guesses around 175-180.
I tell him that I'm gaining on him, but then he asks why would I want to do that?

I have to think about it. I don't really know, some sick thing in me wants to be able to say I outweigh my husband and could crush him like a bug with my big giant roly-poly body. I would be like Jabba the Hut. He would FEAR me.

Then I realize there is something desparately wrong with that line of thinking.

When I leave I grab a packet of graham crackers.

Baby Class No. 3 - Dumb and Dumber

Last Wednesday night our baby class took a tour of the labor and delivery floor called the Birthplace. It looked pretty nice; although the head nurse looked slightly distressed when she saw our group and someone said, "We're all here to deliver!" Her mouth fell open and I think she may have had a mild stroke before she realized it was just a tour. I guess that evening had been pretty busy, baby-wise.

The rooms looked decent, the beds were all fancy; you could maneuver then in just about any configuration. There were bathtubs for all rooms and, of course, flat screen TVs.

After our tour we watched another birth video - I think they are trying to desensitize us to the idea. We also talked about birth plans and did relaxation techniques for labor comfort.

About birth plans. I previously thought it was stupid. I mean, how to you PLAN something you really cannot plan? I thought only high-strung, high-maintenance, freaky type-A women did that. They typed up a 10 page book and put it in a three-ring binder to give to the nurse. Upon which receiving it, the nurse rolls her eyes and says, "Yeah right, lady." Then she laughs, coughs (nurses in my imagination always were old and wore those white hats and cardigans and chain smoked Pall Malls) and dumps the birth plan in the trash.

But then I actually started reading stuff about it. And reading about other peoples' experiences. Add that to the fact that nowadays you really need to be your own health care advocate and you CANNOT walk into the hospital being some naive Pollyanna. Doctors and nurses make mistakes. All the time. And if I don't speak up and say what I want, or maybe more importantly, what I don't want, then I really don't have any control over the outcome.

At the end of class we practice our relaxation techniques. The lights go down and we practice deep breathing. I'm sitting against Matt, who is leaned up against the wall, and I'm concentrating on inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. It is very quiet.

Then Matt farts. A real fart, not some little puffer. It reverberates off my yoga mat, sounding like a distressed elephant trumpeting across the savanna.

My concentration is gone. So far gone. It's not coming back. I'm shaking silently and crying and I feel Matt shaking against my shaking and there we are in the corner, twitching like some crackhead version of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Because I should stop laughing means that I cannot stop laughing and I sort of wet my pants in the process. I try to think of something else but I end up having to pinch myself hard to calm down.

Everyone else does a good job ignoring us.

I realize later that everyone else probably thought it was me.

24 weeks

Today is week 24 or 6 months of being pregnant. I've really inflated in the past month; the belly is out of the closet. There's no point in hiding it, and I keep staring, wondering when the belly button is going to pop out.

Matt is obsessed with the belly. He talks to it. The belly. Not just the baby.

So last night was a second baby class, where we got to talk about the first stage of labor, the phases, and we had to split into groups and write down our fears/concerns about labor on big sheets of paper.

Me, being the morbid freak I am, really really really wanted to scrawl my number one fear on that big piece of white paper. I wanted to write "DEATH!"

Instead I wrote something lame about labor being totally unknowable and anything can happen.

One girl's concern was mean hospital staff. Being mean. I hadn't even thought of that. I figured if anyone was going to be a crazy mean bitch in the delivery room, it was going to be me.

Then we talked about drugs.

DRUGS! Yippee!

I always thought I'd be the type of person to roll on in to the hospital, plop into a wheelchair and tell the nurse, "Give me the morphine. The good stuff, you know what I mean (wink, wink)."

But the truth is I hate needles. I can't stand to watch them inject me or draw blood, something that has been done three times already. When I look at a needle my eyes feel all fuzzy and start twitching and my head feels like it's going to float away from my body, my arms and legs feel like they are going to jump right off my torso. I have a very physical reaction of feeling like I'm going to explode into a million cold and shivery pieces. Not in a good way, either.

I couldn't watch the tape showing an epidural. If anyone had been watching my face you would have thought some torturer was jamming wooden splints under my fingernails. Matt is like this when it comes to eyeballs. He can't stand watching someone get poked in the eye. He won't even touch his own eye, he just screams and curls up like a hedgehog if you point your finger anywhere near his eye socket. One time we were watching the Simpsons and one of the cartoon characters, Itchy, got poked in the eye. With an arrow. Matt screamed and flipped over the back of the sofa, trying, I suppose, to run away from it. A cartoon.

So I'm not watching this epidural; I'm trying not to think about it, and I start to wonder how much pain it would take for me to want one. People talk about the pain of childbirth. They say it is very painful, but then I wonder, what kind of pain? A pain like having your foot severed with a rusty saw? A gunshot in the stomach type pain? Your fingers slammed in the car door type pain? A pain that some small creature is trying to force it's way out of your body by splitting it open? I just don't know, and I suppose it doesn't matter how other people describe it because who's to say what it will feel like to me?

Will I be able to grit my teeth and stand it? Some people do.
Will I beg for an epidural despite my fear of needles? Some people do.
Will I tell my husband to go jump out the fucking window when he tries to hold my hand and tell me I'm doing great? Some people do.

I sometimes wonder what I'm capable of, both good and bad, and now I realize that pretty soon I'm going to find out. And the more I wonder, the more I'm thinking I'm going to try to do it the old-fashioned way. And see what happens.

But don't hold me to it.

Grandpa and the Mule

I have many things in common with my dad. Same hair color. Same eye color. Same near-sightedness. The same ability to flame up with righteous indignation about all the morons in the world who running around being stupid. Doing stupid things. Making stupid rules. Stupid people...they're everywhere! And no one smart is doing anything about it. Dammit!

My father will listen to political talk radio just to hear himself scream at the blowhards, who are ALL STUPID IDIOTS!

I can get pretty worked up about all the stupid people too, until I remember one small little detail.

I'm stupid.

I did so many stupid things when I was a kid I can barely believe I'm still alive and have all my extremities. For a while I thought it was just me. Then I learned I descended from a long line of relatives whose famous words are, "I don't know...It seemed like a good idea at the time."

So when baby girl is old enough to start being really stupid, I will have to tell her the story of my father (her grandpa), who even though he seems pretty smart now, was really just a stupid kid once, too.

It's called: Grandpa and the Mule

Baby Girl,

When your grandpa was your age (eight-years old) he and his friend Peter decided to go for a bike ride. In those days (the 50's) eight year-old kids didn't have any cell phones or video/computer games or parental supervision of any kind, whatsoever. Really, a lot of people didn't even have T.V.s, I know, hard to believe. And there would only be a few channels to watch if they did have T.V. Yes, yes, it was absolutely terrible. Kids back then had to entertain themselves. Outside! So your grandpa and his friend decided to ride bikes. They rode their bikes (without helmets) eight miles out of the city. On the highway. And eventually they came to a farm. A farm with horses! And your grandpa decides he's going to ride one of those horses, because well, isn't that what horses are for? So he climbs the fence and walks up to a horse. Except it isn't a horse. It's a mule. What's a mule, you ask? Well, a mule is kind of like a horse, except smaller and meaner. So your grandpa walks right up to the mule, grabs its mane to pull himself on and the mule turns his head right around and bites grandpa. Right in the stomach! Can you imagine getting bit in the stomach by an angry mule? I know, it sounds terrible.

So your grandpa, who has no cell phone to call his parents (and wouldn't if he did, because he would have gotten into big trouble for being so stupid as to try to ride a strange mule), has to ride his bicycle home, one-handed, blubbering and clutching his stomach in pain, and you can bet that was probably the longest bike ride of his life. Luckily, the bite didn't break his skin or he'd probably have to go to the hospital. Instead he had huge teeth marks on his belly that turned black and blue and stayed like that for a whole week.

So did you learn anything from this story?

That's right, don't ever try to ride a mule.

Why don't you go ask your grandpa to tell you about the time he sprayed his high school gym class with the fire extinguisher and got suspended....

Birth Class No. 1, or Babies for Dummies

I went to my first birth and parenting class last night at the hospital. Unfortunately, I went alone.

Since Matt had recently signed up for the overtime shift at work, he got stuck with an extra four hours of work. It's funny how that happens the one night he is supposed to BE WITH ME FOR SOMETHING IMPORTANT, isn't it? That didn't happen when he wanted to go to the Twins game last week with friends. Oh no, that night he didn't have to work late...

No, I'm not bitter.

So I waddle into Fairview hospital last night all by myself, hoping that there will be at least one young un-wed teen accompanied by her mom so that I don't feel like a complete loser. I start inventing new (better) versions of my life so people don't assume my no-good, cheatin' husband emptied my bank account and ran off with some 22 year-old cocktail waitress, leaving me to go to childbirth class all by myself.

Of course, when I get there, there is no un-wed teen mom. Just nine, nice and normal looking couples, all married, and ALL husbands are present.

I grab a cookie and write down my name and due date on my name tag and try to look really happy as I lurch myself into my chair. I silently curse Matt and his dumbass supervisor who assigned him four hours of overtime when they knew he had to go to baby class. Now I understand why people go "postal".

The child birth educator introduces herself. She looks really nice and sounds normal. I was half expecting some weirdo, hippie earth mama in flowing robes wearing some big crystal necklace and instructing us how to find our inner woman power and explaining that our uteruses are the center of the magic of the universe while we sit in a circle and chant by candlelight.

She is wearing an outfit from the Gap; I'm totally relieved.

The class wasn't bad at all and didn't really drag by like I thought it would. We went over some basic anatomy, introduced ourselves to the group and talked a little how we were feeling so far. Apparently, I was the only one who wasn't really enjoying pregnancy. One woman went so far as to say this was the best she ever felt and really loved every minute of it, while I slunk down in my chair and tried not to bite through my bottom lip.

We watched a birth video, which was not as bad as the birth video I saw in Mr. Pollock's seventh grade health class. I remember that horrifying event with vivid clarity. It left a big impression. Not a good one. It didn't help matters that the people in the video were extremely unattractive. I mean, I don't expect porn star quality, but the woman on the tape looked like the prize winning Holstein at the state fair. The man wasn't much better. Health class was always right before lunch and of course that day they were serving sloppy joe's in the cafeteria.

So this video wasn't nearly as grotesque but still kind of gnarly watching the baby come out. Then they talked about something else I hadn't thought about.

The Placenta.

The placenta is a disposable organ your body makes. Your body makes an ENTIRE ORGAN. Not only does it make an entire person, but a whole other organ just to feed that person. That was wild. I had never thought of it like that. It made me think about my body in a whole new way. Don't worry, I didn't start chanting...

Matt finally shows up at the end when we are practicing some relaxation techniques. On the drive home I tell him about the placenta.

"Did you know the hospital will let you take it home if you want to."
Matt is aghast. "Why would you do that? Why?"
"I don't know."
"What do you do with it?"
"Well, I heard some people eat it."
"EAT IT???"
"In some cultures."
"That's sick."
"It looks like liver. I wonder what it tastes like."
"Gross."
"You could slap it on the grill with garlic and butter."
"Mmmmmmm....Placenta."