No sleep till… Brooklyn?

My six week “internet break” is officially up. If you are still here,  I appreciate you bearing with me while I spent some time focusing on my family and adjusting to ( and recovering from) the new baby.

Who is awesome, if you were wondering. I mean,  except at 3 am when hes awake again after getting up at 1 am for no apparent reason. Then: not so awesome. But mostly, he is awesome and snuggly and he has the fattest little feet that I just LOVE to squish. I’m just in love with him.

How can I not be? Seriously.

So, I can’t promise that I’m going to be posting anything that requires brain cells anytime soon, but I am working on getting back to writing. I promise.

P.s. Happy Hanukkah.

One month

The baby is four weeks old today.

Yesterday, I took him for his one month checkup. When the doctor asked me how I was doing, I started crying.

I came home with meds.

I’ve been crying for weeks.  It has nothing to do with the baby though. He is perfect. It has to do with lots of other things.

I turned 30 last week. By itself, that’s not so bad. But my entire side of the family forgot. I got ONE card from them, and only because I accidentally reminded the person, who admitted she had forgotten.  No one called. Or came by. In stark contrast, Every member of my husbands family called, and sent each of us a card, (we share a birthday, remember) They really are wonderful, and I am so incredibly grateful.

But it just made my family’s failings that much more obvious.

No one called on Thanksgiving either.  And the only people that have come to see the baby are my husbands parents and one family that we are friends with, who we spent Thanksgiving with.

I’m very thankful for the wonderful people we do have in our lives, but very, very lonely and sad right now, and I can’t seem to shake it. Or do anything to change it. And I just had a baby so I’m even less able to deal because of hormones and lack of sleep.

So here’s hoping the meds help.

How am I doing?

I just went to Target with a cloth diaper shoved in my bra. Because my milk- you know- the drug filled stuff that I can’t actually use- won’t go away. And I had to go buy a different kind of evil poison formula because the baby decided at about 3 am yesterday that he no longer approves of what we had been using. And, no, I don’t have nursing pads, because you don’t need them if you aren’t nursing, right?

Last night, I went to change a diaper and in the two seconds between one diaper coming off and one going on he managed to shoot poop several feet, covering me from about the waist down.

And, sleep… well. You know.

But despite all this, I’m Happy. Content even. I dont know if its age, or circumstance or what, but I’m enjoying this baby much more than ever before.

Even the dog can’t resist that new baby smell.

 

Random Cute Baby Pics.

The Boy: The short version

We went to the hospital Wednesday morning. I was already about 4 cm dilated when I arrived.  They hooked me up to an antibiotic because I’d been tested positive  for Group B Strep. At around 10 am, they started the Pitocin. Things went along fine for a few hours, and around 2pm the doctor came back and broke my water.  I was still just a little over 4 cm, but starting to get uncomfortable, so I asked for an epidural. Around 3:30, they hooked that up, and upped the Pitocin a lot. I had a very relaxing hour, and then I started feeling odd pain on one side of my body. The nurse kept telling me  it was “just pressure”.

After about an hour of that, ( I was about 7cm at this point) they FINALLY went and told the anesthesiologist, who then came back and upped the medicine, to no avail. He told me to give it 15 minutes and then he’d re do the catheter it if it still wasn’t working.

He left, and the Doctor came in and started breaking apart my bed.  Apparently I didn’t have 15 minutes. After putting my own legs up in the stirrups, which apparently drove the point home that HEY MY EPIDURAL isn’t working – to the nurse- I was told to push with the next contraction. At this point, I was in the VERY BAD PLACE but instead of freaking out like I did the last time around, I decided that I was going to be DONE NOW. So. I pushed. And pushed. And pushed. Literally. Three times. And he was born.

 

It never gets any less terrifying

A week from now, if not sooner, I will be giving birth to my fourth child.

After you have had approximately two kids, people start assuming you are a professional. You go to the hospital and the nurses don’t even bother to explain things anymore. “Oh, you know what you are doing,” they say. “This should be easy by now.” they joke.  As though giving birth is something that could ever just become second nature.

Sure, I’m less likely to call 911 when my newborn hiccups because holy shit did you see how her chest just caved in like that? Is that normal? I also probably won’t sterilize everything in the house this time around, be afraid to dress him, or refuse to even touch his head out of fontanel piercing paranoia.

Doesn’t mean I’m not still terrified of labor. Doesn’t mean I don’t want them to explain things to me and perhaps comfort me from time to time. I mean, sure, I DO know what I’m doing in some respects.  More so than some of the first-timer’s anyway.  But every labor is different and, lets face it, it’s an incredibly hard, and somewhat terrifying task. No matter how good the reward.  No matter how many times you have accomplished it.

That’s why nature made it so that the last few weeks are so simply miserable, I suppose, because let’s face it, most of us, when it gets close to the end,  we get to the point where we just want the baby OUT. NOW.

But, I know for me,  at that last minute, when the contractions start up and you remember that pain,  and you suddenly remember in detail just what exactly you are about to go through, well, I admit it, I changed my mind.

Nope, sorry, I’d rather not have a baby, thanks. I’m just going to go home now, OK?

Hah.

So here I am, at the end of this journey, about at the point of discomfort where I’d go through anything to just NOT be pregnant anymore. But not quite. A little more scared than a first timer in some ways, I think, because, damn it, I had some REAL contractions the other day. And I remembered.

And my inner dialog went something like: Oh shit oh shit ohSHIT. I’m not ready!

And the universe replied: Ready or not…it’s coming.

Worst Nightmare

Unless you live under a rock, you are probably at least peripherally aware of this story, about yet another child, a girl named Somer Thompson who disappeared while walking home from school on Monday. She was found dead yesterday in a dump in Georgia.

This story has hit me hard.

I know, this kind of thing happens all too often, and most of the time, isn’t even a blurb in the headlines. The sad fact is, people become victims every day, and far too often, those people are children.

The reason THIS  particular story is getting to me so intensely is because this happened in our county.  Our neighborhood. Within mere miles of our home.  I have friends with kids who go to that school.  There are still fliers with her face on them taped to the stop signs on our street.

My own child has been talking about it with the other kids in her school. She’s aware of what is going on, because it’s impossible to avoid. She told me this morning how yesterday the kids talked about kidnappers having knives and sharp things because they want to kill kids.

She also said she wanted to help find this girl, because otherwise she might die.  She wanted to join the throngs of people who have come from everywhere to search for this child. She came up with this completely on her own, mind you. Told me that we had to help find her, so she could be safe and not dead. Because if she was dead, her mom would be sad.

And this morning I had to tell her that the girl did, in fact, die.

I really, really did not want to have to have that conversation with my six year old this morning. Or ever.

How do we deal with these things when they come so close to home? Do we downplay them? Lie?  Do we use them as teaching examples, to stress the importance of safety and “stranger danger”? Do we just accept that these things happen, no matter where we live, and we must always be vigilant- we must live in fear- to some extent?

I just don’t know.

All I do know is that my heart goes out to this family. I just can’t fathom how someone could hurt, kill and then throw a child away like trash. It’s unthinkable.

It’s a parents worst nightmare.

No.

I haven’t had a baby yet. Thanks for asking.

I’ve spent a lot of time- well, killing time- with things like “imaginary Facebook farming” and “pretend fish tanks”, which really, tells you what a loser I actually am.

I also signed the consent form for the kid to get the HINI vaccine. I cringed a little as I did it, but in the end, the same reasoning I applied to MY decision to get the shot, applies to her as well.

Of course, now it looks as though I may not get the shot anyway, because by the time my OB gets it, I won’t (please gods) be pregnant anymore, and therefore not high priority enough. So all that stressing was essentially for nothing.

Then, today, the kid comes home from school covered in snot and running a fever. Which means we will all have the swine flu by the end of the week anyway.   Sigh. I’m going to take a nap.  Someone wake me in 2 weeks, ok?

Yep. Still pregnant.

I’m at that phase when people no longer have any hesitation about making random, (largely inappropriate) comments about my pregnancy, their own pregnancies (and labors and mucus and sibling rivalries)  and well, anything else they deem might possibly be relevant.

I nod and smile at the “Wow, how are you?” ’s and the “I bet you are ready to have that baby, huh?” I suffer through strangers groping my belly with a smile for the most part. I’ve done this before. I know there’s something almost magnetic about a very pregnant woman. I understand that people can’t help telling you their own labor stories when they encounter someone about to give birth. It’s like some kind of hormonal turrets.They just can’t help it.

But there are some things that should not be said.

Suggesting, that perhaps the doctors made a mistake, and asking if I’m sure there is only one baby… well.  That I could do without. It does not help the crazy any. Especially when it comes from a nurse.  Just when I’d finally stopped Googling “hidden twin” too.

Also, telling me that your six year old burned down the house when you brought the new baby home, because she was jealous is probably something else that’s better left unsaid.  (Mostly because I’m going to come home and post on my blog about how your 6 year old should have been put on some serious  meds and please keep her away from my cats, k?)

Sigh. Almost done.

It’s a pity party and you’re all invited, but it’s not like you are going to come anyway because no one likes me and I should go eat worms.

I’m having one of those days weeks months where everything has just been wearing on me. It started with the throat-infection-turned-thrush-that-didn’t-die-for-a-month, then the gods threw in a kidney stone, some endless false labor contractions that stillfuckinghurtanyway and my semi-self imposed isolation and family/friendlessness and did I mention my dog pissed on me? I spent four hours the night before last just sobbing. Uncontrollably.  And the day before that. And last night. And this morning in the shower.

I’ve been trying to just suck it up for weeks now and deal with it, because I KNOW it’s hormones, mostly, combined with a little residual crazy and multiplied by life and pain and normal crap that I should just ignore. But I can’t. So I’m venting.  That’s what blogs and Twitter and Facebook are for sometimes. So I apologize in advance for my whining, but hopefully I’ll feel better afterward.

I haven’t talked to my father in over a year this time. It had been longer before, but then he ditched that wife, and he like, needed me for a few months. Until, apparently he got another wife. Now he no longer needs me, so can’t be bothered to send  a card for his grandkids birthdays or you know, my Wedding. Or check on me when he learned that I had a serious illness.  Or call me when he’s told by another relative that he’s about to have a grandson, and oh yeah, he lost a grandchild too.

My Aunt called to let me know that she told him I was pregnant.  And about my loss. And he had…no reaction.

That just made my week.

That-plus the baby shower my awesome friend was awesomely awesome enough to throw for me, because she knows we don’t have anyone here, only almost no one can come. Three people. Including her. Because everyone else has lives, and friends and family and… I suck.

That’s this afternoon.

I know it’s not personal. Most of me does anyway. I mean, our awesome group gave us an amazing wedding, which was more than anyone could ever have asked for. They all have legitimate reasons for not being able to make it today. I don’t blame them. I’m just sad, because it’s really hitting home how isolated I am. How alone we are.

Since the wedding, I have pretty much seen no one. Talked to no one. One person calls me regularly, and she lives in Texas. Four people made it to the kids birthday party. The last several events I have tried to plan have just…fizzled. Everyone has older kids,  all busy with school and various sports/classes/rehearsals as well as family and friends outside of this little group to socialize with. We simply don’t. We moved here, joined this group, and I got sick almost immediately after. I haven’t been able to meet anyone else, and we have no family nearby.

I’m feeling very lonely. And depressed.  And I realize more each day, I’m about to have a baby, with no support system nearby. Sometimes I wonder- What was I thinking?

I don’t know what to do. I have tried joining other groups but so far, they have all been dead ends. I don’t know how to even make friends anymore.

How do you meet people?