Pyscho Mommy

Day Three shall be known as the Day of Crying.

Last Monday I literally spent the entire day crying.  By dinner time, my eyes looked like golf balls.  And although I knew that my tears were at least partly due to crazy-time hormones, that knowledge did not help abate my waterworks.

I cried over three things, mainly:

1)  Breastfeeding.  More on that later.

2)  Moo.  Not because she hasn’t been angelic this week – she has been adjusting very well, so far.  Things might change when he’s less of a blob and more of a toy-grabbing drooler.  But I cried because everything was changing.  Our happy little Mommy-and-Moo world was over, the one where we devoted all our time and attention to each other – the one that she’ll never even remember.  I’m not sure I can explain why this broke my heart so much.  I’m thrilled that we’re now a family of four.  But the finality of the end of our family-of-three era just crushed me.

Later I remembered that it’s not about me.  When Herbie and I were talking about having another child, I thought a lot about how grateful I am to have a sibling.  Life without my sister?  A lot less giggling, no late-night talks, no completely random jokes that only make sense to us…  But once I got pregnant, I just thought about me and my relationship to this little one, forgetting that we’re giving Moo a marvelous gift.  I get to watch them fall in love with each other, and looking forward to that helps me feel a little better.

3) I love this little boy so much.  And I already love Moo so much, and all that love, combined with dangerous levels of ebbing and flowing hormones, capsized my heart.  And on top of all that overwhelming love comes all the fears – every peaceful moment seems to offer an opportunity for my imagination to go crazy.  Ahhh, everybody’s asleep.  Wait, did we lock the door?  What if a crazed gunman busts into our house right now?  What would I do?  Grab the baby and run into Moo’s room, barricade the door with something, hide in the closet?  What would I use as a barricade?  And so on…until of course I check to make sure the door is locked.

A week later, I have a lot less tears.  But I still feel just as fragile.  I want everything to get back to normal, and then I remember that “normal” is over.  We’re a family of four now, and we’ll find our new normal as the weeks go by.  Good God, we really are a family of four!  Wow.  Oh damn, more tears…

Uhhh…Contractions…Maybe?…Not?

When Moo was born, my water broke.  We went to the hospital and nothing happened, so at 2 a.m. they started me on Pitocin and a few hours later, WHAMMO! the contractions started full-force.  There wasn’t much build-up. 

So this time around, I don’t really know what to expect if my water doesn’t break.  I woke up early this morning with back pain and cramps, and certainly it felt like a very mild version of what I remember from Moo’s birth.  I lay there, excited, planning when to call the relatives, wondering when I should poke Herbie in the shoulder and tell him it’s time…then the feeling went away…and didn’t really come back.

Well, it sort of did, off and on throughout the day in no discernible pattern.  Nothing to time, exactly.  So are those fake contractions?  No big deal?  Nothing to get freaked out excited about?

Help me out, moms.  What was it like for you?  Suddenly I feel like I’ve never been through this before.

Baby Robots

What to do while I’m waiting for the baby to arrive?

Have my mom come over and paint robots, of course!

Moo’s Oma and Opa were kind enough to get her out of the house for a bit, but when she came back, she really, reeeeeeally wanted to help, so we gave her a corner to paint.

I almost don’t want to cover it up with the crib!

Thumpity-Thump

Because I am, ahem, 36, firmly ensconced in the dreaded OVER-35 category, I have to have special monitoring during these last weeks of pregnancy.  So yesterday at my doctor’s appointment, I was led to a soft-lit room with the biggest, cushiest easy chair I’ve ever seen.  Before I saw that chair, I resented being singled out as potentially high-risk just because of my age (I’m not old!!), but ohhhhhhh man that chair was comfortable.  Then the nurse strapped the monitors on my belly, turned on the machine, and I could hear my little man’s heart thumping away madly.  Suddenly I realized that I got to sit in a quiet room, by myself, in a comfy chair, listening to my baby for 20 minutes.  Awesome.

I’ve been so exhausted this week and kicking myself for it – feeling like somehow I’m being wussy, like I should be able to just get over it, get UP and clean the damn floors.  But listening to him go thumpa-thumpa, I remembered that there is an almost fully-grown little man inside of me, and I carry him around everywhere I go, while at the same time trying to keep up with a 3-year-old.  So yeah, that’s exhausting.  Sorry, floors.  I’ll get to you eventually.

Then he started moving around, kicking at the monitor, and his little heartbeat spiked, from thumpa-thumpa to wooka-wooka-wooka, and I panicked a bit, in a feeling very familiar from when Moo was first born and I obsessed over her every single exhalation.  I wondered if those spikes were normal…I wondered if I should call the nurse – no call button!  They trapped me in the cursed comfy chair!  Then Dr. Schwartz poked her head in and glanced at the print-out.  “Wow, that’s a happy baby,” she chirped, and disappeared again.

Exhale.

Right-of-Way

Can we all agree that a woman who is eight months pregnant has the general right-of-way in all things?

The only person I can think of who would have right-of-way over an 8-months-pregnant woman is an 8-months pregnant woman with a broken leg.

I mean, I’m pretty sure this is the one absolute time of my life where absolutely everybody should hold the door open for me, and shimmy to the side in narrow grocery aisles, and let me go first if we both get to the checkout line at the same time and have a comparable number of items.

And YET.

And don’t pretend you didn’t NOTICE that I have a huge giant baby belly, lady.  I can see it written alllllll over your face when our eyes meet momentarily – you think, “Oh shit, I should let her go first.  But I am an impatient evil cow, so I’ll just pretend I don’t notice.  I’ll just smile slightly and move ahead of her like that’s a totally normal thing to do, yeah.”

YOU AND I BOTH KNOW WHAT HAPPENED HERE, LADYBITCH.

8 months = right of way.  Period.

…Good God, the hormones…they may be taking control…

Four Things

1.  The other night, Herbie and I were lounging on the couch, eating popsicles and watching “Castle.”  It was that time of night when the baby starts redecorating (“Hmm, I think Mommy’s kidney would work much better over here…” KICK!), and so I had my shirt up and was rubbing my belly, trying to reassure him that all Mommy’s vital organs work quite well in their current locations.   As I patted, I examined some very twisty stretch marks right over my belly button that I find oddly fascinating – I don’t like them, but I’ve grown to accept them like you do a scar –  I will probably always have these small marks to identify me forever as a mother.  In a moment of boldness (I am not usually a belly-barer), I pointed them out to Herbie.  “Wow.  Well, actually, they look a lot like these other ones over here,” he said, pointing to the underside of my belly, where I can’t see.  Great.

2.  I’m feeling embarrassed to live in Arizona.  If it weren’t for our parents and a couple close friends, we would be outta here faster than Sheriff Arpaio can call a press conference.  My beautiful home state keeps getting less safe and more conservative, and I DON’T. LIKE IT.  Sometimes I read the news and feel the desperate need to bolt northwesterly, yet here we are digging ourselves deeper into the community, with preschool and a new baby.  Moo hates the bright sun here – maybe it’s a sign.  How do we convince all our loved ones to move to Oregon?

3.  “LOST” SPOILER ALERT!  I don’t know if I can blame it all on my hormones, but the second I realized that Jin and Sun were going to die (when Jin gave Jack that meaningful, “just go” gaze), I burst into sobs.  And then sobbed uncontrollably through the rest of the episode.  I wept over their tragic marriage, their doomed reunion, and their fictional orphaned daughter.  Herbie held my hand, and then at the end, we wondered whether the Losties should have perhaps taken 5 seconds to ask the captain of the submarine if there was some sort of trash chute, through which one could possibly eject a bomb and thereby avoid killing half the cast?  SOB.

4.  Potty-training continues to go…nowhere.  We had a Naked Day last Saturday, and Moo was delighted to run around nude, while we waited and waited for her to pee herself, at which point a bell was supposed to go off in her head and she would declare, “Oh!  I do not LIKE peeing myself!  I shall go on the potty instead!”  Turns out, she really doesn’t mind peeing on herself.  The other day my mom (happily returned from London!) was changing her diaper, and Moo mentioned that sometimes she pees her panties.  (We also let her run around in her panties once, thinking she’d hate getting her cute fairy underwear dirty…not so much.)  “Oh noooo,” said my mom.  “As you know, I am the Queen of London, and I proclaim that we do not pee in our panties!”  My mom and I giggled, and Moo looked at her nana like she was crazy.  Then the next morning when I was changing her diaper, she looked at me very seriously and said, “The Queen of London says DO NOT pee in your panties!”  Hmm, maybe what we need around here is a little more monarchy and a little less democracy…