Big Baby

04.23.13

filed under (SUB)URBAN , El PREGO , PAGING NURSE GENEVIEVE , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WILDLY HAPPY

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I am super duper pregnant.

And how are YOU?

I am now officially 39 weeks pregnant.  In case you missed my hint that I was feeling really really pregnant.  This is the stage where I legitimately begin to fear that the baby might NEVER COME OUT.  It’s irrational, but it does not make it any less real.  In fact, this morning, while tying my shoes, I began to cry because I felt that he had actually moved up closer to my throat than down closer to my, well, vagina, to be quite blunt.  And I actually stopped, pushed gently on my stomach, and said “CHILD! YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!”

And nothing happened.

There is a mom at Henry’s preschool who is also pregnant.  I believe she is like 6 months.  And every time I see her at pickup, she looks so uncomfortable and miserable and I feel for her.  So I always check in and ask how she is and give her space to just vent a bit.  Venting is so therapeutic. And today she sort of grimaced and said in a teary voice “Well, I’m pretty uncomfortable.”  And it was the only time I’ve ever wanted to just blow my gasket at her.  I wanted to be like “Look in my throat.  See that foot?  Tell me again that you are uncomfortable.”

Please don’t judge my judging her.  I know it was unfair.  I know that 6 months pregnant is also uncomfortable and that everyone’s pregnancy is different and all that.  But OMG, I needed to be Queen Bee in that moment.  And I just was NOT.

Other things that are currently going on in my life are as follows:

1) I’m pregnant.  Oh wait.  I already said that.

2) Both Sam and Craig came down with some horrible flu like illness that had them completely wiped out for the past several days.  Everyone is mildly panicked that I am going to get it right as I go into labor and that I’ll be vomiting and pooping all over the place while having a baby.  Which will be inconvenient, but I suppose if that happens, I will live and have a great story sometime down the road.

3) I am trying to wrap up loose ends at work before my maternity leave, which I was recently informed they may like to keep permanent due to some possible structural changes and that I should just wait and see how it goes.  Cross your fingers that there is a place for me down the road.  I like my job.  I like making some money.  Honestly, the whole thing has been very awkward and confusing for me. But one must not dwell or stress, especially when one has a baby about to crawl out of her mouth.  Life’s too short, and this is clearly something I have no control over.  Lately, when I realize I have no control over a situation, I drop that shit like it’s hot.

4) I have to take the final for my statistics class between now and May 4.  I need to study for it because statistics, in case you were wondering, doesn’t make ANY SENSE AT ALL. I like statistics about as much as I like having a baby try to climb out of my throat.  I should have studied tonight, but I didn’t.  I watched The Office and I watched A Baby Story instead.

5) Craig and I are buying a house in Indiana and will be moving our family there in June.  I am about to resume my status as a Hoosier.  We are technically going to be a smidge bit closer to Chicago than where we currently reside – even though we will live in another state.  It is a beautiful home.  And I am thrilled to be moving into it.  We’re going to have a lot more space.  We’re going to have a basement which I always kind of wanted.  So there’s that.  Each kid gets their own room.  It has a basketball hoop in the driveway.  It’s an 8 minute walk to the grade school and it’s a 40 minute drive to my parents.  I am sort of over the moon about the house.  In fact, at the inspection, I took over 100 pictures of it.  Though I do think our timing is probably not the most convenient — as I’m pretty much going to be popping out a baby (from my throat, most likely), coming home from the hospital, and then figuring out all of the moving things — you know, cleaning carpets and painting and what furniture we need, and packing, and finding a new preschool, and, well, you know the drill.  All of it.

I think that’s it though.  That’s pretty much it. Hardee har har.

Life is so good right now, you know.  Other than the awkward job situation, it’s all just raining blessings!  There are so many good things happening and I do feel incredibly lucky and grateful.

But I am also exhausted.  I am overwhelmed. I am a hormonal hot mess.  And I am so very ready to meet my new son.  To hold him and kiss him and introduce him to his brothers who are climbing the walls to see him.  To change his diaper and give him his first screechy bath.  To rock him to sleep.  To read him Goodnight Moon and cry with him during the middle of the night when he won’t go to bed.  To take him for walks in his new neighborhood. To mother him.  I’m just so excited.

I am hopeful that the next time I post, in about 3 months I assume, I will be able to announce the birth of my beautiful new son.  Wish me luck.  My midwife said some disturbing things to me today.  I won’t repeat the most disturbing thing because my parents and my inlaws read this and I don’t know that they could ever fully recuperate from the image that she painted for me.  The second most disturbing thing she said was that she thinks this may be my biggest baby yet.  Which… just… OMG…Sam was 9 lbs 10 oz.  So, wish me luck, guys.

I hope you are well.  I hope you are happy.  I wish you luck, too.  Good luck in whatever is your next bold and dashing adventure.

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Statistics

03.15.13

filed under El PREGO , PAGING NURSE GENEVIEVE , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WILDLY HAPPY

Oh statistics, you are the pits o’ hell.

It’s going to be so cool when, in pursuit of my nursing degree, I get to start studying things that remotely resemble nursing.

Because Poisson and binomial distributions and factorials and all that jazz seem unlikely to come up.  I mean, I know I’ll need to know how to do math, but do you think I’ll need to know what the cumulative probability is  of getting the mean less two standard deviation’s worth of changes to wikipedia’s website during a minute is.  Because my point is this: that is what I spent all evening figuring out.  I can tell you that information.  And that makes me so sad inside. It’s information that feels extraneous to my nursing needs is what I’m saying.

But I got my heinous homework done for the week, and now tomorrow, I get to put the baby’s room together.  Oh yes, I do.

I folded a pair of his new socks today.  And they are SO CUTE.  OMG.  TINY BABY FEET.  Craig sort of burst my bubble and goes “you know his feet will never actually fit in those socks because we make gigantic babies whose feet come out looking like giant hams.”  But STILL.  BABY SOCKS!!!!!

Craig is super stressed out because the bassinet I bought off Craigslist instructs us to spot clean or handwash only and I’ve told him I refuse to follow those instructions and will be washing it in the machine on gentle cycle.  As if I’m going to spot clean that thing.  I don’t know what that other baby that used it before my baby was doing in there and I’m not taking my chances.  I was all, dude, let’s just do it on gentle cycle. It’ll be fine.  I like to live dangerously.  He is horrified that I plan to do this.  But he’s learned to live with the horror for the most part. Life with me can be tough.  Just like Poisson distributions.

I’ll let you know how it comes out.  I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Shall we figure out the cumulative probability that I’m going to ruin the new bassinet in the wash?

Yes?

No way Jose.  I’m done with my homework suckas.

The baby seems to only have discovered part of his living quarters and he spends his entire existence curled up in what feels like a really tight little ball on the left side of my body.  I urge him to spread out and cut me some slack, because it can be sort of uncomfortable the way he insists on putting all of his mass into this even smaller space than is necessary.  I give him gentle pats and nudges over to other more spacious areas in my abdomen, but he refuses.  I raise such stubborn people and it is a complete and utter mystery to me how they came to be that way.

 

 

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Can’t Hack It

02.11.13

filed under El PREGO , MAD PARENTING SKILLZ , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE , STUFF THAT MAKES ME WILDLY HAPPY , UNCATEGORICALLY RANDOM

I woke up this morning feeling like I couldn’t come out of a stupor.  I mean, I just couldn’t wake up properly.  Henry sort of snuggled/wrestled me and I flopped around just sort of going with it and hanging on to sleep as long as possible.  Sam gave me a hug and when I wrapped my arm round him I felt that he had changed partially into his school clothes — which is a major victory for him to do so without being prompted several times so I gave him some extra pats on his bottom.

I hauled myself out of bed and made breakfast.  I let Henry push down the lever on the toaster.  He pulled out the little guitar we brought home yesterday for the baby’s room.  He played me a really loud song while I padded around the kitchen absentmindedly.  He reminded me that this was HIS toy and that HE was still the baby and I just patted him on the head thinking, “Oh boy, are we gonna have a time of it when this little guy comes.”

I finished making breakfast and went and laid back down in my dark room on my cool bed and texted Craig good morning.  He took my car to the dealership today to deal with the flat tire I got yesterday in Indiana.  He texted me that the car didn’t have a flat tire but that someone had let the air out.  And they think it might be because of my Obama sticker.  And he thinks it may be time to take it off.  To which I replied, “No way.  This aggression will not stand, man.”

I’ve got so much to do today.  I have so much to do every day, frankly.  And  I know that this is pretty much most human beings on earth, but today, I feel particularly burdened by it.  Between being a stay at home mom who does all the shopping and a lot of cleaning and cooking and a hell of a lot of mothering, and a student of the dreaded statistics (which OH. MY. GOD. What a hideous, heinous class) and my job responsibilities which have been hectic and sort of “put out the fire” of late, and upcoming rehearsals for a show I’m re-directing, and the Saturdays I spend judging speech tournaments, and the Sundays spent house hunting, and prepping for baby threepeat, and being nearly eight months pregnant… I just feel pretty taxed.  I feel lucky, but damn it, I feel taxed too.  I am aware that we are all sort of on our own and don’t really understand what the other is going through.  That most people are overwhelmed and feel like they have too many responsibilities and that if someone else stepped into their lives they couldn’t hack it.  And I imagine a lot of us are right.  The truth is, you couldn’t hack it in my life, and I couldn’t hack it in yours.

Anyway, I picked myself up out of bed and took Sam to school.  Henry brought the guitar and continued to play us songs until I begged him to take a break and then Sam and I discussed what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth she collects.  Our hypotheses: She gives them to little babies (ew), she uses them as decorations in her house, she uses them to build her house, or the teeth have magical properties and she uses them for potions.  Then we discussed where she lives (either Asia, South America, the North Pole or on an undiscovered island somewhere.)  He got out of the car and disappeared into his unknown day and Henry and I came home.

I put on Cars for him and he snuggled up in my lap saying “I’m your baby, mama! (oh boy) and I told him “you sure are.  No matter how big you get, you’ll always be my baby and I’ll hold you and rock you as much as you like.” And then he kissed my belly and said “hi little brother” and then I wish I could tell you that I cried or something but what really happened is he hopped up and got his cars to play with and I went in the kitchen and made peanut butter toast and, quite frankly, I postponed about 1/2 of the things on my to-do list leaving me a good solid manageable list of things to do today plus a big pile of guilt.

Onwards we go.  I hope you are having a good day.  I hope you are not overwhelmed by your tasks (even if they are good tasks) or by something much more ominous and scary and meaningful than an interminable uncompleteable task list.   Hugs and kisses and snuggles to all the little babies who’ve grown up. I hope someone reminds you today that they couldn’t hack it being you.  Because they couldn’t.

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