What My Facebook Status Updates Would Have Been If I Weren't Afraid of Offending Some Delicate Sensibilities

I think the title pretty well explains this post... Not such a biggie for my friends to read this, but I have some family who might think I was veering into post-partum depression. Or would call my parenting into question. But semi-anonymity is rampant here, so enjoy!

• Here's my doppelganger for Doppelganger Week. We are twinsies not so much in the face, but elsewhere. You go ahead and guess. Kudos to Ms. Hendricks, though, because I don't think she is currently breastfeeding.
• Baby X totally whizzed all over one of the adults in this house. And it wasn't me! Current score: Mommy, 1, Daddy, 3. This is not a game that anyone wants to win..
• MCV has a sharp pain under her left eye. Unless Baby X developed a vicious right hook and slugged her during one of her nursing sessions last night, she thinks she may have to investigate the possibility that this guy has taken up residence in their house.
• MCV has been watching waaaaaaaay too much true crime television. She is worried that she is damaging her newborn by exposing him to all the horror life has to offer at such a tender age.
• Gigantic bosom + breastfeeding = ridiculously difficult to find a nursing bra with the appropriate coverage and support. To paint a picture for you, it is stunning that I can walk upright. Thank goodness for these fine folks. I mean, REALLY, why aren't there more stores like this? I've got a YEAR or so of this ahead of me. Support is clutch. We're talking cantilevering here, not just fancy straps. Once again, I am grateful to be alive in the age of the interwebs.
• MCV is wondering why the hospital didn't send her home with a couple of pairs of these? They tossed a bunch of the other recovery supplies her way, so why not something that you can't buy at the local drug store?

Uh, so that's it for now.

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Wow, so that happened. What do I mean by "that?" Well, there was Christmas, and New Year's. Oh, and I had a baby.

It's been a very busy six weeks.

I'm officially a mother of three now, which is just crazy. Not crazy because I've had a tough road to hoe or anything. It's not like anyone's going to make a Lifetime movie about me and how, through the power of motherhood, got my life on the straight-and-narrow. With only a few indiscretions, I've lived at the corner of Straight and Narrow my whole life. Nah, the crazy for me is that many of my thoughts seem way teenagery. Seems weird that someone who gets all kinds of excited about a breakfast of toaster strudel Diet Coke is actually in the process of raising children.

Well, I guess right now Super Ninja and I are raising two children. We are teaching the Boy (who will be known henceforth as the Older Boy) and the Girl all kinds of lovely stuff, like doing as they are asked, not speaking sarcastically to us (even though I secretly love five-year-old sarcasm, just not when it's directed at me when I've made a request to get the dirty socks off of the sofa), and responsible homework habits.

The Younger Boy (i.e., our newborn) is in the eat-sleep-fill-a-diaper stage of life. No "raising" occurs during this stage, right? Although, if you'll allow me to get squishy on you, the Younger Boy is learning that he can always, always depend on Milk Woman and Diaper Man, as I like to refer to the adults in this house...

Anyhoo, I wanted to get the blog announcement out of the way so that y'all aren't totally confused when I start posting about psychedelic yellow diapers this kid produces. Be ye warned, those are on the horizon, but I have to go attend to a squalling infant presently.

See ya!

T-Minus Six-ish Weeks and Counting...

I say six-ish because my OB/GYN mentioned something about inducing me a week early. See, my second pregnancy ended in my water breaking at home at midnight (surprise!) six days before my due date, and my daughter being born three hours later in a different hospital than I intended, by a different doctor, which in turn resulted in no epidural or anything like that. Did I mention that she weighed over eight pounds?

I think I still have a little PTSD about that situation. One thing I learned with the Girl's birth is that "water breaking" doesn't sufficiently cover what went down. You've probably seen a movie or television show where a woman's water breaks, right? You hear a little spatter, and the mama-to-be seems surprised. Oh my, she seems to be thinking, did I just wet myself? Or was it something else?

THERE IS NO WAY THESE TWO THINGS COULD BE CONFUSED.

You know those images of a bunch of kids who open up a fire hydrant in the depths of a gritty summer? THAT is what it is like. A tsunami of liquid evacuating from your body. And the weirdest part is that this painless, seemingly unending gush of amniotic fluid releases itself and you possess no shut-off valve. Mostly everything else that exits various parts of your body does so with you acting as the prime mover, so to speak. Even (sorry for the squeamish) menstrual blood is generally accompanied by some cramping so you have some awareness of what's happening with your body.

This is the first in a series of lessons that you just don't have any calculated control over what's happening to you during birth. Your body just takes over and is all, "Okay, dummy, time for me to handle this now. You just go ahead and watch a movie or something to pass the time." The best you can do is manage your pain and push when your doctor tells you to, but even that is something that you have to figure out as you go. You can't really practice pushing, you know? Sure, you can, ahem, exercise the necessary muscles. But this is a production for which there is no rehearsal, a game for which there is no practice. You just get out there and GO.

I'm not sharing this to get mileage out of the only real war stories I have. Mostly, I'm trying to plan for this next one so that we can welcome the (hopefully less than nine pounds) guy with as little sturm and drang as possible. We're about twenty minutes closer to the hospital for one thing, which is a bonus. And then there's this induction thing, which will help us plan a date, time, and firm childcare options for the Boy and the Girl.

Of course, it also takes a little bit of the romance out of the whole thing when you pick a birthday. But man, I would really rather not encounter bloody amniotic fluid at midnight again.

I Think the Baby Punched Super Ninja Last Night

I was lying down and feeling the grapefruit-sized ball that my uterus has become, and invited Super Ninja to give it a poke. This hardening of my belly (under all of the soft bits that my wispy doctor has been encouraging me to shed for several years now) is the first tangible evidence of the pregnancy for Super Ninja. Heretofore, the evidence has been behavior-based, such as my falling asleep at 8:30 p.m. while putting the Girl to bed, or turning a delightful shade of green when I catch the aroma of (my former lifeblood), coffee. So anyway, Super Ninja cupped the rounded (rounder?) part of my lower abdomen, leaned over, and said "Hello baby!"

And the baby punched (or maybe kicked) him.

He asked me, "Was that you?" And I had to think for a second, because honestly, the quickening flutter is barely distinguishable from a stomach that is grumbling because it is working REALLY HARD on that asparagus you had for dinner. But this was a direct, localized thump, which took me by surprise. I wasn't expecting to feel anything like that for another couple of weeks. Since this is the third pregnancy, though, it's apparently not unusual to feel things sooner.

My doctor DID tell me during my last exam that I was measuring large. Humph. It's a statement of fact, sure, but I don't know that anyone enjoys being told that they are measuring large. Unless he is a dude and his inseam is being measured. Otherwise, measuring large usually = bad. In this case it could just mean that I'm further along than originally calculated. Or that I'm having a huge baby. Or that I'm having a baby with a huge Irish head. We're going to cross our fingers and hope that it's just that I'm further along.

I'm due in mid-January, which is actually a stellar time to have a child, I think. No one's going to expect someone to travel with a newborn in January. People can come visit me all they want so long as they don't mind the explosion of baby gear all of the house, and they are willing to hold the baby, change a diaper, do my laundry...

Oof. Flashbacks to the laundry. See, you THINK it's just newborn laundry. How much can that be, right? The clothes are TINY. So even if you need to change the baby's clothes four times a day, that's still just a tiny heap of clothing, right? WRONG! Because you are not accounting for your OWN clothing that the baby soils when s/he spits up on you, whizzes on you, projectile poos on you, the changing table pads, the carpets... Oh, and if you co-sleep and the diaper is a little gappy, well, that's a whole load right there.

Anyway, THAT, my dear tens of readers, is my way of telling you that Super Ninja and I are having another baby. Oh yes. THREE. You might ask why we are having a third child when we have already successfully spawned replacements for ourselves on this here terra firma with the Boy and the Girl. The answer's simple: we needed insurance that we'll have a place to live in our dotage. Chances are better that a child will take us in if we have three, right?

Nah, just kidding. I think most couples have a notion of how many kids they think they can handle, and (if they are rational beings) they allow for a healthy dollop of experience to confirm or curtail that notion. And after having two children, we decided that three seems right for us.

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

My apologies for disappearing on you, dear readers. Both of you. The holidays pounced on me and my opportunities for blogging have been few and far between. Add some dodgy connectivity in a Cleveland suburb, and voila! A paucity of posts. Besides, what am I going to tell you? That I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with my in-laws, and further enjoyed the in-laws who visited us in our tiny manse? Oh, and that it's a mortal lock that I'll be stressed out by my blood relatives' get-together this Sunday? Pah. Boring.

Here's what we need to talk about:

The BabyKeeper. WHY DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS WHEN I HAD MY FIRST BORN? Clearly, this is the responsible and caring way to handle your kids when your hands are busy.