Love & Marriage

Posted on January 10, 2012 | 11 comments

Love and marriage… go together like assorted maxi pads and M&Ms?  Somehow I don’t think that is what Frank Sinatra had in mind when he said “horse and carriage.”

But that about sums it up as far as I am concerned.

The other night I stood in the hallway between our bedroom and our living room.  Our beautiful new king sized bed in our lovely bedroom called my name.  But my husband, sitting on our new couch in our new living room… he looked pretty cute, too.  We are still newlyweds, afterall.  The siren’s call of our bed won me over so I inquired “Will you come and sit with me for a minute?   I’ll be asleep in five minutes.”

He rose from the couch and went to get me a glass of water.  Grabbed my Tums off the kitchen counter as he returned, placing them both next to my side of the bed.  He climbed in to bed next to me and began to laugh.  “You know we have only been married for nine months?”

Without even thinking how it might be received I blurted out “It seems like SO much longer than that.”

He smiled and said “Well, I am glad you feel that way, too…”

It has been a whirlwind of a year.  Last winter we were finalizing wedding plans.  And a year later we are in our new house, married, our daughter climbing on to the school bus at the base of our driveway every morning, waiting on the birth of our baby.

If your life has to resemble a Talking Heads song better “Once in a Lifetime”  (And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife and you may ask yourself— Well…How did I get here?) than “Life During Wartime” (This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, This ain’t no fooling around, No time for dancing or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now!!!)

So, what does this have to do with maxipads and M&Ms?

The other evening I tucked Em in to bed and snuck back downstairs.  In to the medicine cabinet in our bedroom I went.

There was a time in my life when the master bedroom medicine cabinet was a treasure trove of good times.  Need to sleep?  Wake up?  Get happy?  Chill out? Get psyched?  I gotcha.

And now this.  I paused as I opened the door and snapped the picture above.  And then I listened for little feet before I snagged the bag of M&Ms that MQD had hidden for me.  Had to make sure that no one would bust me ripping the bag open.  There in my medicine cabinet is everything I need to feel great. Big maxi pads, small maxipads, lanolin for sore nipples, breast pads for leaky boobs, my favorite face soap… and a bag of peanut  M&Ms.

It’s no secret I am not exactly feeling great lately.  I am DONE being pregnant.  Finished.  Ready to trade the low throbbing all day pelvic bone pain for the pains of labor. Ready to hold this baby in my arms, instead of between my thighs (or at least that is how it feels, so help me every time I get up I feel like a baby is sure to fall out and hit the floor, if only it were that easy.)

But this morning… this morning I felt great.  Super.  Awesome.  Like today is gonna be cool. It might even be okay if I stay pregnant through the next TWO or even THREE days… because the M&Ms… they are multiplying. I don’t think it is magic. I think it is Love & Marriage.

 

Love & Marriage

I love you, MQD.  It has been one hell of a ride, these last nine months.  We laughed when we started looking at real estate that we were out of minds to get married,  have a baby and buy a house all in one year.  But give us a few more days… and we’ll have made it.  Relatively unscathed.  I know I am no picnic.  And I know it might have felt more like Wartime than Once in a Lifetime at times… but the best days are still ahead of us, sweetheart.  Hang in there, we got this.  And keep stocking the medicine cabinet. xxoo

11 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Elephantitis of the Ankles

Posted on January 8, 2012 | 3 comments

“My feet look like elephant feet.”

As I struggled to get out of the car I dropped something.  For the 800th time today.  “I’m a mess,” I mumble to no one in particular.

From the back seat Em chimes in “And you can’t stop saying shit.”

Without missing a beat MQD says “You’re already Mother of the Year, only eight days in.”

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , ,

All Through the Night

Posted on January 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

Eventually I had to leave the late 1970s behind.  As inspirational as they may be.

This morning’s revelation is brought to you by 1984.  Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s  So Unusual” was crucial to my development.  Of course “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was a big hit, but it was “Time After Time” that really touched me as a kid.  Even as an eight year old I liked to sit in my room occasionally and wax poetic.  Throwing myself to the ground passionately as I sang along “If you fall I will catch you…”

But not until I had Emily did “All Through the Night” go through my head over and over again.  Night after night, dare I say it, time after time.

All through the night
I’ll be awake and I’ll be with you
All through the night
This precious time when time is new …

The last few nights have been sleepless reminders of her newborn days.  The tossing and turning of pregnancy is tolerable.  There are moments, sometimes hours of deep sleep, peppered with trips to the bathroom and uncomfortable rolling over and rearranging of pillows.  But there is sleep.  These last few nights, however, have been long trials.  Preparation so my body can remember it’s amazing ability to function on “rest.”

Last night I encouraged MQD to go ahead and head out to see our friends.  His Saturday night outings may be few and far between in the coming months.  I climbed in to bed alone and could feel the impending discomfort of another sleepless night. The thought crossed my mind that I won’t probably sleep all through the night until I had a baby in my arms.  And then I had to laugh. Because surely I will not sleep then, either.

But last night.  Last night I slept.  With my baby in my arms.  All through the night.   I had to wake her.  And hold her hand as she stumbled down the stairs.    She climbed up in my bed and was asleep almost instantly.  But not before she said “I love you, Mommy.”

And I love you, baby girl.  Thank you for the good night’s sleep.

Always.  You will always be my baby girl.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , ,

Welcome Back…

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 4 comments

A recent trend on facebook has people looking up the #1 song on the American  Billboard the week of their birth.  1976 was a great year for popular music.  Earth, Wind & Fire, Queen, Parliament, Paul McCartney, The BeeGees, The Who, Thin Lizzy, Neil Sedaka.  There was something for everyone.

So, I googled and waited patiently.  Expecting to find a long forgotten hit song or maybe an old favorite, a KC & The Sunshine Band song if I was lucky.  I have laughed along with many of my friends as they have posted the song from their birthday week, some of which have been more foretelling than their parents might have guessed at the time.

And what did I find?  John Sebastian’s Welcome Back.   Yup.  A TV theme song.  At first I wasn’t thrilled that it was a song to celebrate the return of Gabe Kotter to the classroom that heralded my birth.  (Although a soft spot for Vinnie Barbarino and the rest of the Sweathogs surely exists in me.) But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s perfect.

And even more perfect that I listened to this song last night.

Because I am ready to welcome someone back to my life.  I don’t buy in to all the spiritual new age woo that you might think.  But that which I do believe, I believe with my whole heart.   And if there is one thing that I know it is that your children, they are and have always been yours.

Genetically speaking, of course, they could belong to no one else, but I think the parental bond goes beyond genetics.  Even more than I believe MQD and I were meant to be together (and I do think that forces stronger than my desire to have a perfect blind date brought  him to me) I believe that he and Emily knew one another before this life.  I look at the way she looks at him, and the way that he loves her with all of his being and I see it.

The moment Emily was born, the first time I looked at her it didn’t feel like we just met.  I had known her all my life.  Just as she had been waiting for me, for the right time. To come back.

Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.
Who’d have thought they’d lead ya…
Here where we need ya…

Well, I did.  I knew they’d lead her to me.  Just as I know that Baby D is right on time.

This morning I woke from a dream a little startled.  In the last 36 hours Baby D has dropped and I can breathe.  And I can sleep.  And apparently I can roll over a tiny bit more to one side than I could before because when I woke, pillow between my knees like a good pregnant sleeper I was just slightly more turned towards my stomach than I have been in recent weeks.   And for a moment instead of worrying that I was no longer pregnant I thought “Where’s the Baby?”

It happened.  Baby D became a baby instead of a pregnancy.  The other day it was KC’s cheesy ballad “Yes, I’m Ready” that made me think I was finally prepared.  And this morning, it was ABC’s Welcome Back, Kotter that made me know it’s almost time.  Just in case there was any doubt I am truly a product of late 1970’s pop culture.

So, c’mon, Baby D…. your dreams and mine, that’s your ticket out.  We’re here.  Waiting to welcome you back.

 

 

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Breaking News…

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 6 comments

Sometimes I can be a little bit of a know-it-all.  And I imagine that makes living with me difficult occasionally.  I really try not to act like I am the Great Knower of All Things, constantly imparting my infinite wisdom.

Sometimes I really struggle with being seven years older than my husband.  I pull gray hairs from my head and I see his under 30 smile and I wonder what he sees in me.

And very occasionally these two facts combine and create a perfect moment in time.

MQD was born in July of 1983.  So when Billy Gibbons revealed  a global truth to the world that summer … MQD had just been born.  He was probably not listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40.  So, it’s possible he doesn’t know that “Every Girl is Crazy ’bout a Sharp Dressed Man.”  And I am not about to tell him.

 

Side note: MQD, it is not only your bowtie that had me weak in the knees this morning (or this 800 pound kid of yours I am lugging around in my innards.)  But for the billionth time since we have moved in to our house I started to prepare to leave for work and the time had come to find my keys.  And there they were.  Hanging on the key rack.  I am pretty certain I have never hung them there.  So, lest you think it is only your “Clean shirt, new shoes…” that keeps me “runnin’ just as fast [ I ] can” in your direction… I’m not that shallow.  I also love you for keeping track of my keys.

6 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense

Tagged , ,

Pregnancy Brain

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 12 comments

This morning I snapped a picture of the bag I packed last night. Packing the bag to take to the birth center has me a little flipped out.  I am not a girl that prepares for things ahead of time typically. And I most certainly do not pack in advance.  I like to start packing at 11:30 pm, somewhere around the middle of the second bottle of wine, for a longer trip.   Or while everyone is getting in the car I like to rush around and throw some things in a bag as I race out the door for  a long weekend.

So once I get packed, it means it is time to go. Or at least that is how my brain works.

So, as I prepared to leave the house this morning I made sure to take a picture.  Because I could have the baby any second.  I could  go in to labor.  Today.  Because I am packed.  Which means it is time to go.

And I thought about that as I made coffee.  As I put my lunch in my lunch bag. As I started the dishwasher.  As I locked the side door and said “Hop in the car, Fish.”

And I started to kinda mentally map out a little blog post about how the bag in our bedroom was giving me the creeps.

And maybe that was what I was thinking when I started to back straight down my driveway.  In to a ditch.

Straight down my not exactly straight driveway.  In to a ditch.  And a tree.

I sat there for a moment.  Stunned.  And then I started to laugh. Well, that’s some Pregnancy Brain right there.  Is there really any need to debate whether or not it is a real thing?  I can’t even back out of my own damn driveway? This was certainly better blog fodder than a picture of a black Eddie Bauer gym bag.

I was calm and cool until  while on the phone with MQD a woman stopped and looked at me, with pity, and asked me if I was okay.

And then I fell apart.  And I cried and told MQD I didn’t know what I was going to do.  That it was cold outside!!!  He calmly told me to go inside . Our house. Since I was in the driveway.  And call AAA.

Of course, AAA. I forget about AAA.  Because I do not prepare for things.  Like minor car troubles.  Or needing a tow.  Or going in to labor.  But I guess I do now.  Because I have a bag packed.  And a picture of our AAA card saved on my phone.  Texted to me by my patient husband.  As I tried to figure out how I was going to stay warm.  While standing in my driveway.  Staring at my car.

The chances are pretty good I won’t put my car in a ditch any time soon.  Since I have the number for AAA in my phone now. So, I wait.  And try not to think about the fact that since I have a bag packed…. I might never have this damn baby.

 

 

12 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , ,

A little bit creepy….

Posted on January 2, 2012 | 3 comments

In preparation for attending Baby D’s arrival in to the world Emily and I have been watching some birth videos.  This morning I told her that she doesn’t have to be brave, she can just tell me what she really thinks.  “I think I want to be brave, but it might just get too creepy.  Like when the vagina just grows and grows… because you know it is going to have to get HUGE.”

Creepy?  I’ll give her creepy….. the kid is a shark.  She is growing a second row of  teeth BEHIND her baby teeth.

But I still made her cookies and let her flop on the couch and watch Annie on the iPad.  I mean… it IS kind of creepy.  All those HUGE vaginas.

Maybe there is room for me under that blanket…

 

3 Comments

Posted in Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , , ,

Yes, I’m ready….

Posted on January 2, 2012 | 1 comment

My love for KC of KC and the Sunshine Band does not extend only to his hits.  This morning I awoke (to a pile of sharp Emily elbows and Fisher breath and a cat howling at me, but that is neither here nor there) with a song in my head.

An often overlooked KC & Teri De Sario duet, “Yes, I’m Ready.”

I don’t even know how to love you
Just the way you want me to
But I’m ready (Ready) to learn (To learn)
Yes, I’m ready (Ready) to learn (To learn)

To fall in love, to fall in love
To fall in love with you

And I am.  What changed between yesterday and today?  I am ready to catch the leaks.

The first time you become a mother you are encouraged to pamper yourself and focus on your pregnancy and your post-partum period.  Celebrate this new phase of your life.  This time I felt like there was no need to do that.  I am a mother already.  And I know better this time than to think I need to buy every baby item under the sun, so the pile of Baby Stuff is much smaller.  I thought that was what was making me feel like I wasn’t ready.  The unknown gender of Baby D makes shopping for newborn clothes virtually impossible.  We own everything yellow that has a duck and a giraffe on it already.  And really, that’s more than enough.

And yesterday I realized what I was missing.  I needed to be prepared to catch the leaks.

Yesterday afternoon I assembled an army of old friends.  A package of pre-fold diapers to catch the slime that oozes from a baby constantly.  A package of flannel receiving blankets to put down in my bed.  I washed and dried and brought back to life my Lily Padz and a dozen sets of reusable cloth nursing pads.  I made a pile of underwear that I know will end up covered in blood.  All alone in the Target I stared at nursing bras designed for sleeping, camisoles with snaps and pajamas that button up the front.  I stood in the feminine care aisle longer than anyone in my family would have tolerated until I could remember whether I liked wings or not.  Until I recalled that an absorbent core is really just like having a plastic sack of jelly in your underwear and that I hated those.  I stashed those little packs of Kleenex in every purse I own, next to my bed, near the couch.  Because I know how quickly I will cry over the next few weeks as I fall head over heels in love again. While leaking from everywhere but my ears.

And now I’m ready.  To fall in love.  And to catch the leaks.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , ,

A Recipe

Posted on December 30, 2011 | 6 comments

A recipe for the upswing…

Favorite glasses, black tshirt, dark blue jeans, the earrings you were married in, an enormous cocktail ring, ten and a half hours of sleep and a smile.

Off to the midwife, fingers are crossed that what I think is a  baby butt jutting out of my abdomen really is… and then I can rest easy that Baby D is no longer relaxing sunny side up.  <— an informative link about spinning babies and posterior positioning.  If I can cross wicked back labor due to an occiput posterior baby off my list of things to worry about I am not sure what I’ll worry about next… but I am sure I will think of something.

ADDENDUM:  I must wear my desire to worry right across my forehead.  The one with the lines, as so graciously pointed out to me by Emily.  My appointment with my midwife was quick.  Weight and blood pressure in line with what they should be, Iron is looking good, negative for Group B strep and Syphilis so we can skip out on antibiotics for me and for Baby D.  We had a quick chat and then she had me hop up on the table.

I asked, quite casually I thought, if it was a good time to start seeing the chiropractor in an effort to make sure Baby D was in an ideal position for labor.

She smiled and said I was welcome to go to the chiropractor if I wanted.  Her words exactly as she placed her hands on my stomach “So, what are you gonna worry about it if I told you that your baby is already in a perfect position?”

I told her I’d surely think of something…

 


6 Comments

Posted in Family, Pregnancy

Tagged , , ,

I feel stupid… and contagious…

Posted on December 29, 2011 | 7 comments

Bi-polar.  Mood swings.  Mentally unstable.  Melodramatic.  Unfuckingbelievably bitchy.  These are all ways to describe being 37 weeks and 4 days pregnant, I am afraid.

It was last night that I said I was smiling, right? That was me.  I am almost certain of it.

Because that girl that slid her back down the wall, crumbling in to hysterical tears because her husband mentioned there was shitty water pressure and almost no hot water, that girl that shrieked that she won’t be treated like a second class citizen who isn’t even allowed to take a god damn nine minute long shower… she wasn’t smiling.  And maybe she had a right to have her feelings hurt a little, maybe he didn’t use the nicest tone of voice, but he had just woken up, too.  And she is not the only one with a lot on her plate right now.

The smiling girl was watching her from the outside.  Powerless to stop her hysteria.

Pregnant with Emily I had the full blown Crazies from time to time, but my life was so upside down then that it felt justified.

The last time I can remember feeling just like this I was about 15.

This feeling, like no one has ever been this tired or this scared or this overwhelmed or this unsure what could possibly make her feel ready to face the next chapter…. it can only be likened to being a teenager.   The belief that NO ONE has ever had it THIS BAD.  That NO ONE understands you.  Somehow in the moment I am sure that other women have had babies without ever feeling like THIS.  Just as I was sure that every adult I knew as a teenager managed to become one without EVER having to be 15 the way I had to experience it.

Only as a teenager I was totally self-absorbed.  This time it is like there are two selves.  The Crazy Pregnant Self and the Mom/Wife/Kelly Self that desperately wants to shake the Crazy Pregnant Self and say “Stop yelling at this man and let him help you!”

And I can hear it echo in my head now.  “help you, help you, help you….” I don’t know how to do that.   And yet in the darkest hours of the night I slide my head on to MQD’s shoulder and say “Promise me you will take care of me.”  And always, always he says “I will.” And for just a few minutes I really sleep.

When Em was tiny I poured my heart in to her. And I stopped taking care of me.  This time I hope I can do a better job of looking after me, too.  And not in that Cosmo/Redbook/Glamour magazine “Light a candle and take a long bubble bath, pamper yourself with luxurious bath products.  Get a manicure.” way.  Just in a simple take my book with me to the bathroom and sit on the toilet  with the door closed and the seat down and my pajama pants still up and read my book and drink a cup of coffee and ignore the “Do you know where my book bag is?” from the other side of the door.  And trust that MQD will find it.  And feed Em breakfast.  And brush her hair.  And the baby won’t develop a flat head if it sits in a swing for nine minutes.

Because that nine minutes can make the difference between sliding my back down the wall and crumbling to the floor come mid-afternoon or not.

For about eight months I have worried off and on that I won’t know how to love Emily and a baby and MQD.  That I will not have the strength or the stamina to love enough, that somehow I will let them down.  And now in the final hour instead of finding an answer to that question I am just adding another person to take care of in to the mix.  Me.

I have a knack for making simple things complicated.  All of this “Love yourself, let people help you, take care of you…” I think it is simpler than that.  Sometime I think I just need to grow the fuck up.  Because I am not actually 15.  Even if it feels like that sometimes.

Pouting. Not actually 15.

7 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged , , , ,