Phrase Most Often Heard Around My House Between 8:00 and 8:15am

"You just NEVER get used to the smell, do you?"

Actual Conversation Just Held In My House

Me: (casually) "Did you know there is a Lego in the guest bathroom sink?"

The Man: "DON'T TOUCH IT!!!!!"

Me: "Um, why? Because I haven't, er, um, or anything."

The Man: "Because she dropped it in the toilet."

And then I just walked away from that one. There's really no way to explain to "The Internets" in a way that makes sense (and doesn't make them think DHS needs to be called) that your husband holds your kid while he pees simply because the stream of pee hitting the toilet makes her giggle. Although I will admit he asked the other day at what point "that needs to stop". Um, like TODAY WHEN SHE DROPPED AN EFFIN' LEGO IN THE TOILET THAT I TOUCHED. ER, THAT I DID NOT TOUCH.

Son of a LINCOLN LOG

Just found a Lego in the sink of the guest bathroom.

This is beyond "un babi".

WHO IS DOING THIS?

The Real Mother Goose

My surrogate parents gave me a book of the old fashioned "real" Mother Goose rhymes when I was pregnant. The Man and I have started reading to Parksie before bed each night and occasionally we pull it out to read a favorite like "Sing A Song of Sixpence" or some other such nonsense.

Tonight we make it to page 62 and find THIS. And, despite being an ADULT, I can't get through it without giggling NOR can I read it to my child:

LITTLE PUSSY

I like little Pussy,
Her coat is so warm,
And if I don't hurt her
She'll do me no harm;
So I'll not pull her tail,
Nor drive her away,
But Pussy and I
Very gently will play.

Later in life I will have to explain the danger of "pulling the Pussy's tail" to my offspring as I'm pretty sure this is what led to her existence.

Dear Parks,

Your cousin Joy recently gave you a lovely bag of jumbo-sized Legos that totally captivate your attention on most days. Your father and I have taken to calling you "Peg Leg" as you now crawl around the house with at least one piece clasped in a sweaty hand and every time you crawl forward we hear the "thunk" of the Lego piece hitting the floor. I kind of like this as I think the next step in this process involves you getting an eye patch and parrot. Eye patches are cool.

The one main problem I seem to be having with the Legos is their seemingly alien ability to reproduce like Gremlins…or rabbits on Viagra (I was going to say like “white trash in Scott County” but those people own weapons and aren’t well educated. In short, they scare me just as much as Republicans and Tea Baggers). Every time I turn around there are NEW Lego pieces scattered around the house. Recently, your dad found one sitting perfectly in the middle of the cat food bowl. (I REALLY don’t want to know how it got there or the behaviors that followed you placing it there) There are two on my night stand. There’s one currently sitting under the TV, one on the side of the front porch, two pieces on the fireplace mantel, one in the middle of the hall, approximately three in the bathtub, and I just pulled another from in-between the couch cushions. I’d like to thank your cousin Joy for this glorious addition to our household as I’m pretty sure she sent them down here while silently screaming “SUCKERS” under her breath as they had finally escaped the nooks and crannies of her house. I’m also going to be sure to pay her back for this favor by purchasing at least seventeen different toys that each make a really loud and annoying sound for both of her children at Christmas. I want to make sure the family love is shared equally.

Last night, completely engrossed in playing with the three that interested you the most, you insisted on bathing with them. One held in each hand, you giggled as the other one floated around the bathtub. You were so distressed at being removed from the bathtub without them that your dad had to carry you back in the bathroom, hang you over the side of the tub, and let you gingerly retrieve them so you could continue “thunking” around the house. I don’t mind the “thunking” as its sort of like having a bell on a cat and no matter where we are or what we are doing; we always know when you are on your way. This has the added bonus of letting us know when to hide the breakables and the vodka. Much like when Cousin Charles comes to visit.

Last weekend your baptism went down without a hitch. “Hitch” being defined in this family as a panic attack. It was touching and simple and beautiful and filled with people who loved you. The priest centered most of the ceremony on the wonder of being a child and learning to see the world with child-like eyes instead of, like, Jesus, and Satan, The Prince of Darkness, (not that we didn’t have to rebuke him. We did) of which I was very appreciative.

The only thing that slightly concerned me was that the priest looked at me and SMIRKED when he asked the question about the “glamour of evil” and “Satan, the Prince of Darkness”. And this is not a man that SMIRKS. SMIRKING is left for me most of the time. When he asked the question, I was only looking at him because I knew if I looked at your Auntie (and godmother) Elizabeth that I was going to do much more than SMIRK. I was going to GIGGLE INAPPROPRIATELY. And this, I could not do. Your great-grandmother was there. She is both deaf and blind and, well, I’d like for her to go to her grave knowing her granddaughter can make it through a thirty minute Christian ceremony without disrespecting the Baby Jesus with a SMIRK. Obviously, this priest cannot. Due to this, I think he and I will get along just fine in the future. Unfortunately, his SMIRK led to increasing paranoia about him reading this blog.

HOW DID HE KNOW ABOUT THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS, PARKSIE?

That, I cannot answer. Maybe he does have a direct line to God through the Pope. And, if he does, I’m terribly screwed. Or, maybe you and he have been having conversations on the side that you haven’t been telling Mama about. Because, sure as I’m sitting here, when that man asked if we “rejected Satan, Father of Sin and Prince of Darkness” you said OUT LOUD in front of the entire room, “I DO”. And then, everyone in the room nearly fell over and shit their pants at the same time. This was a huge surprise to all the participants-including your parents-as minus "Mama", "Dada","Kit-Tay" and some minor babblings that sound somewhat like a cat being strangled, you can't yet speak English.

Your outburst finally allowed your Mama to release the inappropriate giggle she’d been holding in for the past five minutes and then I just GLOWED WITH PRIDE. I had to stop myself from standing on the side of the baptismal font and screaming, “SHE’S A GENIUS. I TOLD YOU, GODDAMNIT!!” But then I thought the “goddamnit” part would be especially inappropriate for your great-grandmother to hear. ( Not that she could. But that doesn’t really matter)

The priest even stopped the ceremony and said, “Well, that’s a first.”

I wanted to retort, “That’s just because you’ve never baptized one of my offspring. We’ll surprise you occasionally with the crap that comes out of our mouths. Just ask my mother. She’s the one standing right over there in the corner shaking her head and making the sign of the cross.”

Thankfully, you saying “I do” was a lot better than your head rotating and green vomit spewing from your mouth. Those were my original, and as it turns out, unfounded worries.

You were delightful. You smiled. You even giggled when he poured water on your head. I REALLY wanted to pop a Lego block in there so you would feel more at home but it turns out you didn’t need it. You WERE at home. You charmed everyone. I was so proud I seriously considered tattooing your face on my arm.

Afterwards all 25 of the family and friends went to eat lunch to celebrate your dedication to The Sweet Baby Jesus, Savior of Mankind, and your Aunt Mary snapped this pick of you deciding what you wanted to eat.



Turns out you wanted strawberries and sweet potato fries. Well, you wanted those right after you took a huge bite out of the actual menu.

Good choice.

Love,

Your Very Proud Mama

How Mama Got Her Groove Back...

I don't have to tell anyone that's actually given birth to a child that there is a period afterwards where one feels very....UN-groovy. Your body has just been used as a growth pod. There are strange marks and skin hanging off of it. And, your boobs? Well, let's just say that they got an all-expense paid vacation to Mexico, picked up your ass at the airport, and hit the first flight south.

When you are pregnant you are so FULL. Not just of baby, but of fluid and life and glow and, in my case, macaroni and cheese. There is such a richness...almost a plushness to this FULLNESS. Everything is round and perfect and stands up and one ALMOST doesn't mind weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of a small rhino. Because, all the round parts of that rhino are so...so...I'm just going to say it-SEXY. This was one part of pregnancy I didn't mind. The roundness. Now, hauling all that "roundness" around...totally different story. I’m pretty lazy in general. Hauling around 65 extra pounds of lazy wasn’t pleasant. Just ask The Man.

I didn't mind being pregnant and getting bigger. I didn't mind the belly. I didn't mind the booty. And, I sure as hell didn't mind the boobs. It was the first time in my life I'd ever actually had anything someone would refer to as "boobs". Previous to that there were small raised bumps on my chest gloriously manipulated by many Victoria's Secret push-up bras. My boobs pregnant were MAGNIFICENT. I gloried at them and even told myself to go ahead and start mourning their disappearance sometime during the eight month as I knew, alas, they would not be here for much longer.

But, for as much as I prepared myself for the actual physical pregnancy aftermath, it was WAY WORSE THAN I EVER IMAGINED.

I don't say this to scare anyone off from having children in general. There are some women, some FREAKS OF NATURE, that pop back after being pregnant and return to wearing their pre-pregnancy clothes within 8 weeks. We hate those women. Do you hear me? WE hate those women. They convince other people that six weeks after giving birth you should be up, out, wearing spandex, and bemoaning that whole two pounds you have left to lose. BULLSHIT.

It wasn't that I wasn't somewhat forewarned. Co-workers and friends will tell you that before I ever got pregnant I announced pretty readily to anyone that would listen that I was NOT going to be an attractive pregnant lady. I was going to be a MOOSE. I knew it. I was going to be Catherine Zeta Jones. (As beautiful as that lady is...she becomes a moose when pregnant. Just look at pictures). My nose grew, my feet grew, and GROSSLY ENOUGH, my ANKLES grew. Like, EW, right? Unfortunately for me the fat ankles have yet to correct themselves and they might be something I actually have to deal with for the rest of my life. Would I give up my daughter for perfectly thin ankles again? Well, that just depends on what day you ask me.

Then what the hell is this post about, you say?

"Getting your groove back? That's not done with fat ankles and droopy boobs!"

Well, no, it’s not. I totally agree.

What I am writing about here today is a little something called "Hope". I know lots of people have been selling that in the past few years and I'm happy to jump on the bandwagon.

For the first three months post-partum, I was still trying to get used to the fact that I wasn't pregnant anymore. YEAH, GIN. AND CIGARETTES. AND LOTS OF CAFFEINE! WHOOT! You know, the usual. I was like a recovering addict leaping off the wagon and covering myself in sin. Look at all the things that I can do!! WHOOOPIE!!

The only problem being that I couldn’t really “do” them at all because I was being awoken every hour by a screaming infant who wanted a boob in her mouth. So, that phase was more like “Extension of Pregnancy: Months 10-12”. I also couldn’t move around really well because I was still dealing with post C-section pain. There was no real attempt to get back in shape or lose any of the SIXTY FIVE POUNDS that I gained. The motivation wasn’t there. And on days when I’d gotten about five hours of sleep and there was a little “motivation”, there was also probably some cake or something laying around. And my favorite pajamas. And a new episode of Criminal Minds. And maybe that screaming infant we had tied down in the corner.

Hence, the fat ass-ness continued.

The really fun part of this whole phase was that, due to my c-section scar, I’d put in an emergency phone call to my mother approximately 12 hours after being home from the hospital and requested “panties”. LARGE PANTIES. In fact, bring me the LARGEST PANTIES YOU CAN FIND. She obligingly showed up with ten pair of white cotton full-coverage high-wasted Hanes briefs. I’d actually never SEEN panties this large. Didn’t know panties this large existed. In fact, they bummed out The Man worse than me as I hadn’t worn underwear for ten years prior to being pregnant. He went from loving a commando girl to someone wearing panties that could genuinely serve as a purse, if need be.

I believe these are what most people call your “big girl panties”. Fittingly enough, I was a BIG GIRL. I needed these panties. And even as I cringed every day putting them on and pulling them up until they almost touched the bottom of my bra, I marveled at how they didn’t rub my incision and provided some modicum of “empty belly control”. And by “empty belly”, I don’t mean I was hungry. I mean there was now a lovely flap of skin that shot out over my incision. The skin that had once stretched over a fully formed human child. The belly that was now “empty” of the fully formed human child.

When I finally returned to work, I was so exhausted from caring for an infant from 5pm until 8am and then caring for mentally ill children the rest of the day that self-care was not something of which I really CARED. I wanted sleep and I wanted that sleep to be in a bed that didn’t smell like formula or one where I was fighting for space with The Man’s seventeen-foot-long super spider legs and an infant that liked to sleep tucked under my arm. And, while we are on the subject, maybe a shower that lasted longer than 37.6 seconds.

Working out fell into the "WTF?" category. Like, WTF? I'm supposed to get up, move around, and SWEAT on PURPOSE. No thanks. I just spent 28 hours of my life sweating trying to push a watermelon out of my vagina. I'm going to take a little break here and just sit down a minute. Maybe stop paying so mucy attention to my vagina and a little more attention to the television...and ice cream sandwiches. The Man bemoaned the vagina part but gladly took part in the ice cream sandwiches.

So, then I reach the six months milestone and I see myself naked one day (still wearing my HUGE BIG GIRL PANTIES) and finally decide that something must be done. I cannot wear these panties for the rest of my life. The Man was beginning to degrade them daily and I UNDERSTOOD. Not only were the panties getting me down but I was still wearing maternity and nursing tanks under my shirts. I was going downhill fast. I was becoming “that woman”. That woman that has a kid and then everything goes away and all of sudden I turn around and I’m a natural brunette who isn’t wearing fake eyelashes and my feet haven’t had a pedicure in an entire year and I look like a Hobbit.

I REFUSE to be that woman.

I won’t say I immediately jumped on the “let’s get this shit done’ bandwagon and started running five miles a day. Please note preceding statement about being LAZY.

But, as with most major life transitions, I started small.

I bought three pairs of LITTLE GIRL PANTIES and a brand spankin’ new push-up bra.

I almost felt fancy. ALMOST.

I won’t say that I feel like I’ve gotten back to “pre-pregnancy” shape at all. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. But, I will say that I’ve lost twenty-three pounds of that “empty belly.” And this weekend? I invested in some REALLY LITTLE GIRL PANTIES and a BLACK PUSH UP BRA.

So, you know, it’s coming along.

Next month? As painful as it is to announce…working out.

They really are right when they say it takes an entire year to get your shit back together. Because my shit was all over the place. Now my shit is held in, sucked in, tucked in, and…. one day I dream of it finally getting in to those size 29 Blue Cult jeans I have sitting at the top of the closet.

Right now, those are still two good lungs full of air from fitting. But, I’m thinking in a couple of months, if I lay down flat on my back and hold my mouth right, I might be able to zip those som’ bitches up.

I also wouldn't be surprised if you come over to my house while I'm cleaning only to find me dusting the furniture with a pair of extremely large white cotton BIG GIRL PANTIES.

I hate things not being put to good use.

Why The Man is The Man

Because he changes so many poopie diapers that when my daughter squatted, grunted, and dropped a little package of joy into her diaper yesterday she stood up and said, "DA DA".

I need some pampering.

O Manicure, Pedicure! Wherefore art thou primping?
Deny thy daughter, and refuse thy self;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll continue to be a calloused Mom-beast.

Dear Parks,

Yes, I am aware that I didn't post for say...four to fifteen days (remember that whole counting thing we talked about earlier?). Mama's been busy shoving things you want to chew on between the couch cushions and "hiding" them in creative places that she later can't remember. As a side effect of that, I now can locate around 1,348 pieces of oversized colorful Lego blocks you take pleasure in hurling at the walls, but the remote control to the DVD player and two hair clipees? Still missing in action.

"Hurling" was last month's developmental skill. That's a fun one, right? I don't get any "milestone" about which we are supposed to get excited that involves you throwing anything you might be holding as hard as you can at the wall. I mean, its not like we give you Bic lighters and bottles full of gasoline on a daily basis, but if we would have known you were going to develop this "hurling" skill we maybe would have rethought the decision to teach you to wash the crystal wine glasses. They are expensive and Mama's already broken three.(If you have any questions about this, please refer to previous post regarding your mother's skill level at walking)

You turned 11-months-old on Sunday and your father and I celebrated the occasion by attending church. No, it didn't fall down, burst into flames, or get struck by lightening. And, well, "technically" we didn't "attend" church. We attended a class required by the church for you to be baptized.

After much and lengthy discussion, your father and I have decided that you will be Catholic. My argument? It's MUCH easier to be born into the Catholic faith than to become one later. The Methodists that your father claims rights to will take anyone, at anytime, with no pre-required courses or class work whatsoever. Wanna be Methodist later? They'll practically ride over to the house, dunk you in a bathtub, and announce you a believer post haste. They're like the Mormons-except they believe in something that actually exists. Plus, Catholic people are cooler. I promise. (Just look at your mom and Uncle BT.)

Although, I will admit the Catholics are almost throwing around baptisms like the Baptists these days. It was MUCH easier to get you baptized Catholic than I thought considering you were conceived in sin, born into a marriage not blessed by the church, and quite possibly (due to your recently aquired ability to voice your displeasure at being removed from a enjoyable activity in such a way as to alert neighborhood raccoons) a messenger of the Prince Of Darkness himself.

But don't worry, we'll get rid of him this weekend. Your father and I (and your Auntie EB and Uncle BT-as your godparents) have to promise to "reject the glamour of evil and Satan, The Prince of Darkness" in your steed at the baptism.

Your Auntie EB asked if "rejecting the glamour of evil" meant she could no longer watch "True Blood". I informed her that was something she'd have to take up with a man more well-versed than me-the one upstairs. If he says "yes" we both are going to have some hard, hard thinkin' to do. We aren't giving up Sookie for just anyone...even though you are super cool and stuff.

My favorite part of the abovementioned phrase is the "Satan, The Prince of Darkness" part. I like how they qualify his title...you know, just in case you didn't know. Just so you won't get him confused with "Satan, The Director of Cruise Activities" or something like that.

Also, I love the COMMA. "Satan COMMA The Prince of Darkness".

PAUSE RESPECTFULLY, PARKSIE.

But, after Saturday, if "Satan, The Prince of Darkness" comes after you, you will have "Jesus, The Savior of Mankind" on your side. (That and your father can do a MEAN Daniel-Larusso-style crane kick in a pinch)

I'm really nervous about your baptism as the church normally dunks six-week-olds into fonts while they are sleeping-or at least halfway milk-drunk from feeding. You, my dear child, no longer sleep or exhibit any signs of "milk drunkeness". In fact, your walking skills exhibit all the signs of "alcohol drunkeness". The priest suggested "timely scheduling" of the baptism as for it to be "conducive" to your compliance. I had to stop myself from helpfully suggesting the age of 35. I really dont' know any 11-month-olds who "schedule" their compliance. In fact, I've known you almost a whole year and the only thing you really "schedule" is your 8pm high pitched request for someone to dump you in bed with a bottle of Jack-spiked Good Start and a new episode of "Bones" on the television. (Wait, that might be me.)

I'm taking his statement to mean that he wants us to dose you with Benadryl, or heroin. Whichever is more readily available. I informed him at the "pre-meeting" that I could not promise you wouldn't dive head first into the baptism font upon its first appearance. That you might have a few requests...Like, could he let you toot into it and then giggle? Maybe have a few rubber duckies floating in it? A full body massage with Burt's Bees baby lotion when you were done? You are used to this over-the-top spa treatment at home whenever there is an activity with water involved. There is also usually lots of splashing...and maybe some pee (I can't SEE the pee but I just assume you get the same urge everyone else does immediately upon sitting in warm water).

I've been racked with anxiety all week wondering what we are going to do about this whole “pouring water on the head” thing. Eventually, I realized I was just going to have to hand it over to God. How freaking ironic, right? So, Parksie, I hope Jesus makes you act right this weekend. Please don’t fart in the baptismal font.

Your GG bought a cake and everything.

Love you Tooter Bug,

LG, The Mother Of Parks

Shit My Cousin Says...

"Your kid will shit in the tub one day. And, you just better hope its a whole terd..."

Just Strange in General.

I was just sitting on my porch and noticed a twenty pound raccoon on my neighbors roof. I was freaking out that he was just sitting up there until I saw him scratch around, hunker down, and take a big ole pee. So, then I figured out it was probably a she, right? I mean, do male raccoons lift their legs or do they all hunker? Who knows? I don't.

Right afterwards, she jumped down, crossed the side yard to my driveway, perched on my second porch step and stared at me for a full two minutes before ambling down to the street. I was racking my brain for any sort of superstition that directly addressed face to face contact with raccoons and I found none.

Surprisingly, the raccoon probably wasn't the strangest part of my day.

But, I remind myself that the baby is safe in bed, the dishes are washed, the laundry is done, and maybe on some days that's all you get before a raccoon pees on your head.

The Birth Story: The Conclusion

So, I sat on the bed and waited.

I sat on the bed and waited for the nurse to come back, load me gingerly into a wheel chair, and burn rubber down the 60 feet of lineolium between me and my kid. She was 18 hours old and had yet to meet her mother. I was frightened FOR her. I can't imagine how freaked out she was. I don't like going into new convenience stores because of how scared I am about "not knowing how that one WORKS". Can you imagine popping out into this crap with the only place you've ever known being a warm and squishy and somewhat quiet place? (I say "somewhat" because she is MY kid and she did hear me prattle on for approximately 9 and a half months.)

I know that studies and most psychologists will tell you that kids don't remember a whole lot about anything until between the ages of two and three. BUT, psychology will also tell you that the ability of a child to attach in a healthy manner and sustain long and fulfilling relations is developed in the first two years of life. You know what that tells me? That although babies don't retain details of certain happenings and circumstances, that there is an impression made upon their brain that unconsciously guides these future abilities. Actually, there is. Because a babies brains are still forming up until, I don't know, around 21, I think? (Which is why teenagers make such ill-informed and stupid decisions, by the way) Being away from their primary caregiver creates a stress hormone called cortisol that can actually permanently alter brain connections. All I can think about is my kid laying down there having no idea what in the sam hill just effing happened to me? Hell, I'd like to meet her so we can at least commiserate.

In short, I wanted my child because I REALLY didn't want to pay those therapy bills later. If I'm going to pay for therapy, I'm going to make damn sure its because of something that I did.

So, I sit and wait for this nurse to show up with the wheelchair so she can take me to the NICU. And we wait. We wait for about an hour until she comes in and says one of the most morally offensive statements that I've ever heard.

I ask her, "Where is the chair?"

She very happily says, "OH, you don't need one! She's been in the Well Baby nursery since 8am. So we are going to just roll her on down here and she's yours. She's perfectly fine!"

I have to resist the urge to vomit on her. Or maybe take off this puppy pad I'm wearing and throw it at her face. I don't even know what to say at this point. I mean, I KNOW what to say...but I'm pretty sure it would have security called and then it would be just a wee bit longer before I HELD MY DAMN KID.

So, I take a breath and act excited and practically scream at the nurse to BRING HER THE HELL DOWN HERE ALREADY. And I sit and I wait. I sit and I wait with my mother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law and my husband to see my baby for the first time. It felt foreign and strange. I was excited and apprehensive. Its not unlike waiting on a blind date to pick you up. People have kind of told you about him, given you descriptions of him, but you don't really KNOW him. And, besides that, I had NO IDEA what she'd be wearing and if my corsage matched, you know? I was nervous.

The nurse finally wheels in this plastic bin-not unlike a large tupperware container-holding my baby. She then spends ten minutes explaining exactly how not to KILL HER. I don't listen to a whit of it and am vibrating with excitement. And, well, here's a two minute video about how that went. (You will notice the grandmother's attempting to stay away and give us our space and failing very sweetly at it.)



During this entire two minutes and seven seconds of video I wanted to scream, "SHUT UP AND HAND OVER THE BABY AND NO ONE GETS HURT." I think I handled it beautifully and came off looking happy and composed, no? I think the fake eyelashes definitely helped. The video stops right when the nurse is about to make me "sign" for Parks-like she is a UPS package-and I finally get to hold her.

I looked at her. She was staring at me. The nurse called her "very alert" and told us "She has a set of lungs on her." I feel angry that this woman knows this about my child and I do not. I do not know anything about her except where she liked to kick my ribs and how much she enjoyed chocolate and peanut butter and oranges.

My first impulse is to strip her naked and check her out-like a head of cattle. I immediately announce this to everyone in the room and begin taking off her clothes and just LOOKING at her. I begin lifting up her gown and taking off her socks and hat.

Look at those HUGE FEET.

Where did all that black hair come from??!??

She has dark cobalt blue eyes that are almost strangely grey. I've never seen a color like them before.

She has all her fingers and toes and legs and arms and ears and she cries. Full and loud. And I love it and I want to hear it more.

But, wait....she totally has hair on her butt. I excitedly point it out to The Man and tell him our child definitely has an Italian throw back gene from my side of the family. Then we lament on how long that will take to fall out. It is THEN that I realize what it feels like to be a parent.

Because I love every single hair on that butt.

Not that I'm not totally excited that it finally fell out. But, in general, I would never find a child's hairy butt attractive. The thought that I found mine "cute" tells me a lot about what this whole parenting thing is going to be about.

I spent another three days in the hospital recovering. Friends had told us to take advantage of the Well Baby nursey while we were there so we could sleep at night. I was so traumatized by her birth she never left my room except for their "checks". She layed beside me in her tupperware container and slept. I breastfed her every two hours and stared.

After three days, the nurses came down to discharge us and this is when I quickly found out what the OTHER part of being a Mom means.

She'd had an IV port in her arm the whole time we were there. They had given her IV antibiotics in case the reason the fluid on her lungs was due to an infection. Their tests later came back and said there was no infection and it was just fluid. They "couldn't really explain the cause." Like someone just accidentally left some fluid laying around and, WHOOPS, there it is! In your baby's lungs! WOW! Glad we found that, huh?

They had left the IV port in the whole time we were there and I couldn't even look at it. When she was with me I tucked the newborn pocket of her sleeve over that arm and acted like it didn't exist.

At discharge the nurse was going to remove it and as I sat there waiting on yet ANOTHER wheel chair to take me out of the hospital (these wheel chair people have really got to get their shit together), she asked if I wanted to "leave the room" while she removed it.

"Leave the room? Why? Nah, I'll stay in here." I had no idea what she was talking about.

She turned to take out the IV and Parks started screaming and I saw blood and my stomach turned. I looked out the hospital room window and laid my head against the glass and wiped uncontrollable tears out of my eyes.

I got it then. I'd never felt more vulnerable or scared in my life.

And then we took her home.

A wheel chair actually showed up and two women, one steering me and another steering a cart with our bags, wheeled us out of the hospital right after they told me I could "take anything that was in the room because I'd paid for it". So, we loaded up on diapers and wipes and slippers and pads. Right before we got to the car I remembered the heavy terry cloth bathrobe that had been hanging on the back of the door. I had totally forgotten it.

I spent the next two weeks of her life mad as hell that I'd forgotten to steal the bathrobe out of the hospital room bathroom. I'd EARNED that robe. Actually, I sometimes still get mad about that robe-ten months later.


As for her? Ten months later that sweet angel turned into this hot mess of crazy!



And that, my dear friends, is definitely MY child.

The Birth Story: Part Two

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love."---Washington Irving


Around 8am my doctor comes to make rounds and-despite my horrendous burning abdominal pain-I’m somewhat NOT a bitch because I’ve been allowed to drink an entire cup of coffee for the first time in nine months without any guilt about gestating a fetus. I swear, sometimes I disappoint myself with how the tiniest crap can amuse me. She, unfortunately, is not wearing four- inch gold lame heels. Today they are lime green sling-backs with pointy toes and she’s curled her hair perfectly and is wearing contacts and lipstick. Obviously, unlike mine, her evening took an upward swing after we parted ways at 9:00pm the night before.

She checks my legs and calves as I’ve had on compression boots all night to prevent blood clots after the surgery. She says they look fine and will be off by noon or so. I show her my incision and she says it looks good as well and asks about my pain. I tell her the Percocet is working fine. She then tells me that I can go to see my baby just as soon as I can sit in a wheel chair. But, OH WAIT, before I try to do that she wants me wheeled down to radiology for an x-ray because of my chest wheezing and raspy cough. She then tells me that the neonatologist will be around in a bit to update me on Parks. I’m less excited about this as The Man has been sprinting down the hall with his super spider legs every twenty minutes this morning to check on her and then report. I married a good man. It was because of him that I was very well informed of her status and the fact that she was completely fine as of 7:30am and was just requiring observation for another couple of hours until they discharged her from the NICU into the Well Baby nursery. His actions during this time period are about the only things that kept other people’s eyeballs in their sockets and skin on their arms. That and the Percocet.

I’ll go ahead and admit that this whole “x-ray-before-you-see-the-baby” part is my entire fault. I’d had a nasty sinus infection that turned into bronchitis towards the end of my pregnancy. I’d refused medication at that point because, hell, I hadn’t taken anything thus far and I didn’t think it was going to kill me to live with some nancy sinus infection until she was born. I hadn’t been able to shake it for about three weeks despite continual neti pot use and lots of coughing, hacking, and blowing. Unfortunately, the doctor seemed to think it was killing me. Someone said something about “pneumonia” . Whatever. We don’t get “pneumonia” in our family. We just get a snotty nose and lay down for a week. People are such alarmists.

Unfortunately, my doctor didn’t believe in my family’s way of doing things and demanded the chest x-ray be performed before I went to see my baby as “she was still in the NICU” and all.

Looking back on this situation it is amazing to me that I wasn’t spitting fire and tearing off people’s heads at this point. People that know me will also be shocked that I was quiet, compliant, and did what staff told me. When I think about it now, I can tell that I was in complete and total shock. One thing you will learn is that there are two reactions when people go into shock. They will either do exactly as instructed or they will lose their shit and freak out. I’m just not the “freaking out” type. It just doesn’t happen. So, I went along.

Finally, about an hour after my doctor made the proclamation, an orderly pushing a bed wheels into the room and requests that I STAND UP AND GET ON THE BED.

What the living hell? I inform him them they’ve just separated my lower half from my top half and things are not quite held together that well yet. You know, the glue hasn’t dried and stuff. But it sounded more like, “I JUST HAD A C-SECTION 11 HOURS AGO. ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME? “He looked scared and ran and got a female nurse. Typical. Between the two of them, and one other aide, they managed to shimmy me onto the gurney with only a small amount of me screaming and muttering curse words under my breath. After which I immediately apologized and they forgave me. All twenty-eight times.

I am wheeled down the hall. We go past the “Well Baby” nursery and I look in and see four babies. We pass the door to the NICU and I know she is in there. The closest I’d been to her in 14 hours after living with her for the past ten months. I got sad. I started crying. The Man wipes my face and the orderly asks if I’m ok. I tell him an abridged version of the story. He tells me he will try to make the trip to radiology quick. I put on a brave face and start making jokes. That’s what I do.

The Man follows the gurney down to the bays used for people waiting to get into radiology. They have televisions that come over from the wall and we watch the news and pretend to talk about it. I cry on and off and we joke and freak out and talk about how weird this whole experience is and keeps on getting. The older man beside me is crying and shaking and I am reminded of how I never want to be old and I think about Parks and I cry. I then saw two nurses get into a semi-impressive cat fight and I realized how this is just a “day at work” to them and I think about my days at work and how you get used to the suffering. We wait for what seems like forever and then I am taken, begrudgingly, by the nurse that lost the cat fight into the x-ray room where I am curtly pulled up and told to stand and walk up against the wall.

I look dumbfounded at the nurse and almost start laughing because she has to be joking, you know? So, I just look at her and don’t move with a half smile on my face and she repeats the instructions a little louder. Like I just hadn’t heard her. I finally speak and want to say something eloquent like, “IF YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT AGAIN I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN, FIND YOUR CHILDREN, AND TATTOO PICTURES OF LADY GAGA ON THEIR FOREHEADS.” Instead, I kind of mumble, “I, uh, just had a c-section, um, a baby, you know? Like, um, twelve hours ago? And, well, I haven’t, um, stood up yet? And, I have these boots on my feet?”

“It’ll be fine. Get on up and walk over there to the wall and stand against it.”

She unhooks my boots from the power source on the bed and leaves them on my calves. I gingerly stand, holding on to the bed rails and she nicely offers her arm. I begin hobbling towards the wall she indicated and within seconds I feel it.

I KNEW IT. There is a wetness filling the inside of the compression boots and I can feel it on my legs and eventually under my feet.

I am so embarrassed and there’s nothing I can do. It starts light but as I look down I see the trail of blood following me and getting wider and deeper and it is when we finally make it to the wall that I motion to the nurse (who is looking forward this entire time) that either Freddy Kruger just visited this x-ray room, or I’m currently bleeding out on this here floor here, ma’am. I say it and I start to kind of giggle and I realize that I am FINALLY losing it. It is that hysterical giggle that escapes the lips in waves and you try to tamp it down because you know the situation isn’t right but there’s nothing else to do. Every other emotion seems fruitless. I have cried enough. I cannot scream loud enough to justify how this feels. There is nothing left. I will die if I do not laugh.

She looks at me funny and I return it just as sassy and say, “I’m sorry. I do this everywhere I go.” She didn’t laugh and walked into a side room and walked out with five green towels that she threw at my feet.

“That’s okay honey. Not a big deal. This happens all the time.”

I make a mental note to not have surgery at this hospital. I then make a mental note to tell God when I fall out and die here from blood loss that this woman is an insensitive bitch who deserves AT LEAST the fifth level of hell.

I stand on the towels and she places the plates in the correct position while I continuously drip onto the floor. She takes four plates and then just as brightly requests that I walk back and sit down on the bed. Knowing the level of pain to expect, I’d gotten faster at moving. No one helped me as I got to the bed, swung my legs around, and grasping on to a pillow, held it to my midsection where my stitches were placed while I settled back down on my back.

I was rolled out of radiology into the bay where The Man was waiting. He saw the look on my face and the blood covering my legs and the boots and got worried. He asked what happened and I told him. He was so mad he was about to go find my doctor. I stopped him because I wanted it to be OVER. I convinced him to sit in the radiology bay while he seethed and we heard the nurses’ station paging our orderly for the next thirty minutes. It was around 11am.

After watching more news in silence and talking about the absolute absurdity of our situation, the orderly shows up and rolls me back to our room. He casually asks about the blood on the compression boots and I just say “knife fight in radiology.”

My phone then rings.

I pick up because I see it is my father. We do not visit that often and I had not seen him since Christmas. We have never been especially close, but he’d been trying more in the past few years to keep in touch. I ask him where he is. He says, “I’m holding your baby.”

This is where The Man asks the hospital about their policy of giving someone Xanax…large, large amounts of Xanax to someone currently taking the level of Percocet that I am on. Or maybe just one of those shots in the neck and some restraints? Padded room? A riot shield? My husband was desperate.

My face turns red and I sputter. I cannot talk and I choke up and I act like I can’t hear my father on the phone. I scream I’ll be in my room in five minutes and hang up. I turn to The Man and before I can get a word out he just says, “I KNOW”. I know he knows but I have to tell him anyway. I tell him to leave me and run up to the NICU as fast as his super spider legs will take him and to tell them that NO ONE is allowed to see my child until I am allowed to see my child. I think I even use the term “bitch slap”. This is not normal cursing policy for me. He says that he will as soon as we get back to our floor.

I then say the “F” word a really whole, whole lot. I said it so much the orderly looked concerned. The Man, understanding the gravity of what had just occurred, looked very, very concerned.

I arrived back in my room to find my father, with his ever impressive timing, standing there with my step-mother and my six-year-old niece. I am angry. I am a gruesome mess of a sight. I am covered in blood and have matted hair and red eyes. I am angry that he does not know enough to keep a six-year-old out of my room. I am angry he did not ask permission to visit. But, mostly, I am angry that he has held my child and I have yet to meet her.

He asks me how I am doing and I immediately burst into tears and decide to actually tell him.

“I am HORRIBLE. I HAVE NOT SEEN MY BABY. I JUST WANT TO SEE MY BABY.”

I’d pretty much been repeating these two sentences one right after another for the past 16 hours. Yelling them one more time at him wasn’t really going to hurt anything, you know? And right before I collapse into a sobbing heap on the bed, I see him back slowly out of the room and mumble something about “hormones.” The Man holds me and kisses me and makes it better. We lay in the bed for a few minutes until a nurse comes in for my next dose of Percocet. She then tells me that I am allowed to go see my child but that since I’m completely covered in blood, they are going to send some aides down to bathe me before I go to the nursery. Defeated, I lay back in the bed and The Man and I stare at the Disney channel and I finally figure out who The Jonas Brothers are for the first time. Surprisingly, I don’t HATE them. A few minutes later two elderly ladies in scrubs walk in wearing gloves and looking all business-like and full of late- in-life sass that I usually appreciate.

They removed the bloody compression boots and helped me out of the bed. I wouldn’t take their hands because I’m hard headed and I’ve always been that way. I was going to stand. I was going to take a shower. I was going to do whatever the women told me to do if it meant getting me in a wheel chair and down the hall.

The older nurse purses her lips approvingly and says, “The young ones don’t stand up so soon. They’re afraid of the pain.” And right before the wave of burning stabs beat across my abdomen, I was able to squeak out, “They said I had to stand up to see her” and then I took a step toward the shower and realized how many and varied are the shapes that types of bodily pain can take. I stopped and took a breath and they asked me if I wanted to sit down. I just looked at them as I still couldn’t decide if I was going to be offended by the nurse’s obvious statement about my age. I ultimately decided that since I lived only four blocks from the hospital, I could pretty much come back and punch her in the face later-at my earliest convenience. NOW, not being that time. It is a sad, sad day when you know a 65-year-old woman could take you in a fight.

I walked to that shower like I hiked the last two miles out of Mt. St. Helen’s when my calves were screaming and my feet were numb from the previous ten miles half-way up its north face. I put one foot in front of the other. I saw only the shower and I said, “left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right” Because sometimes, when things hurt, the only thing that will get you through it is reminding yourself of the actual physical steps it will take in order for that pain to stop. There is only an end goal. And that goal becomes all that matters.

Right when I thought I wasn’t going to make it, despite my determination, the last dose of Percocet kicked in.

My Percocet Haiku
Percocet my love
There is nothing greater than
When the nurses bring me more.

Don’t get me wrong. There was still a high level of pain. I just no longer felt the need to hold my right arm in front of my stomach thinking that my entrails were going to fall out at any moment. Thank the Lord for small favors, right? No longer afraid of evisceration, I could actually balance with one hand and hold on to furniture with others. And I finally made it. Fifteen whole glorious feet.

I dropped my hospital gown and for the first time in a LONG TIME was naked in front of two people at once. I’m talking so long it might have been at MY birth. I look down at my deflated belly and it feels both empty and full of heat at the same time. It feels separate, no longer a part of me. It didn’t help the strange detached feelings that I could touch most of it and was actually unable to physically feel it either. I was completely numb from my belly button to the tops of my hips. I’d never felt so “undone” before. Pregnant, yet, Not Pregnant. Mother, yet, Not Mother. I instantly understood staring in the bathroom mirror looking at how strange that belly looked that I was in the “middle” of something. And, well, one cannot get done with being in the “middle” of something until one simply gets through until the end of it. I’ve endured enough significant events in my life to understand this. So, I commit to getting through to the end.

I carefully and slowly sat on the bench so thoughtfully placed in the shower and the two women began hosing me down with detachable shower heads. I was naked. In front of two strangers. Being hosed down. With hoses.

They were hosing blood off of me. The water ran pink down into the drain and I instantly understood why they tiled the bathroom stall a light natural mauve. I sat there and-because I am a therapist and will forever have an internal gauge concerning human interaction-I wondered if this event was shaming. Or, as she helped me wash my hair, strangely tender? When I genuinely think about it, isn’t true caretaking bathing another person? There are very few people one usually bathes in their life, you know? Your children, your spouse, and maybe-down the road-a parent. But, this wasn’t a relative, and while I totally appreciated the clean hair, I’m still leaning toward defining that situation as a bit fucked up. ( I was even trying to use a non-curse word there and I couldn’t. There is no other word for it.)

And, since I’m never just satisfied knowing my OWN opinion, and that combined with the fact that the last dose of Percocet had just kicked in, I ask the aides, “Its it weird to come to work every day and see strangers naked?” And, at that moment, I REALLY wanted to know. Because I don’t have to see people naked at work. I’ve seen openly psychotic people. I’ve seen extreme physical aggression, cursing, hyperactivity, but never just straight up butt-nakedness at work.

She laughed and told me no. I grabbed my belly protectively from habit and got sad.

I tried to stand up from the bench and realized sitting down for the shower had been the easy part. Now I required drying. Drying they left me to do alone. And, since I couldn’t really bend nor MOVE a whole hell of a lot, I ended up standing in the bathroom and staring in the mirror. After about five minutes I decided I wasn’t going to do that again for, oh, about six months until all that crap straightened itself out. No reason to depress myself now.

I then dried off the best I could, wrapped the adult diaper they left in the restroom they referred to as a “pad” around my crotch, threw on the netted underwear they left to hold them up, and waddled out of the bathroom to lay on the bed. To the amazement of The Man, I then applied make-up, false eyelashes, and blew dried and styled my hair.

The Man didn’t understand why I was bothering. I knew there was no use in explaining that in order to get up and get down that hall, I needed all the ammunition I had. I’d just completed about half of it.

I then sat and waited for the nurse. It was about 1pm on June 17, 2009.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Birth Story: Part One

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write this. I find it fitting that I choose my first “real” Mother’s Day weekend to chronicle my daughter’s birth. While the 48 hours I am going to write about will be forever seared with the wondrous experience of her entering this world, they were also colored with pain…and guilt…and lots of tears. I’m going to warn you that as funny as I try to make this story seem, there are still parts of it that are painful, extremely NOT funny, and even gory. In my attempts to inject humor, I endeavor to remove the pieces of this trauma little by little.

(I will also note that I do not write this as a treatise or statement towards the current state of women’s healthcare or obstetrical experiences in this country in general. I will note that I went into my birth experience educated about the overuse of c-sections, the benefits of natural birth and all of the things that come with watching Discovery Health for seven straight months, reading several books, doing countless hours of internet research, and memorizing the “Business of Being Born”. I STILL chose traditional medicine because-when it came down to it-maybe I was raised in a society that didn’t teach me to trust my body enough and to trust doctors more. Or, as you will see at the end, maybe it was an already keenly formed sense of mother’s intuition. Whatever it was, it worked out. My daughter is here-happy, healthy and full of life. I escaped with the only outward scar being a four inch slit sitting extremely low on my abdomen that is already so faded you can hardly see it. I also escaped with a vagina in its original and pristine working condition. So, I guess there is always going to be a trade-off, right? Anyway, no diatribe’s here. Just a story about how something worked out the way it worked out.)

Being pregnant is almost like being 13 again. You have no control over your body and you are pretty aware that-just because you are a woman-some weird shit is about to go down with it and it’s all going to originate from an extremely private area. There’s a level of embarrassment there. It’s like walking around announcing to the world that “HEY, I USED MY VAGINA AND IT WORKED.” There is always the underlying assumption when walking around pregnant that you are definitely someone who has had sex within the past eight months. Unless you are Mary the mother of Jesus-and I’m not talking about our cat. The only Biblical Mary that’s ever been uttered in the same sentence with mine was the one with the last name Magdalene. And I’d never been prouder.

Sort of along the same vein, The Man and I refer to the patrons of “Babiesrus” as “The Largest Collection of Non-Virgins in the Tri-County Area.” As such, I was a glistening display of heathen activity.

There aren’t classes on being pregnant. You just get pregnant, read some books about how it generally works, and then figure out what that means to you and your body. It is a VERY physical condition. Yes, there are emotional parts and that whole thing about there being a BABY in there. Like a WHOLE NEW PERSON. But, I will honestly admit-in true Virgo fashion-I’ve never been particularly squooshy about babies. I don’t cry at weddings… or baby showers for that matter. I’m just not that type of person. As far as I was concerned, pregnancy was the way you got at a baby. That baby then turned into a kid who grew into an adult whom would then build you a nice guest house out back when you were old and incompetent and needed someone to make your gin and tonics for you. That’s how the world works.


I won’t go into the details of my entire pregnancy except to say that the bulk of it was extremely uneventful and exciting and painful and suck-y and interesting and mind-blowing and weird all at the same time. Every week something new was happening with my body. Mostly my vagina. But, still…weirdness. I even SMELLED weird. Not bad….WEIRD. There were days I hated it, days I didn’t mind it, and some days that I actually loved it. These feelings only really lasted until about 30 weeks. Then the total thing sucked and I was wishing that when man evolved from chimps we had kept the 7-8 month gestational period and not insisted on that whole extra month and a half of extra time purely to facility further brain development. P’shaw. We don’t need all that! But, I finally made it to 39 weeks.

As far as The Man and I were concerned she could arrive at ANY MINUTE. Every time The Man ran to the convenience store to buy the cigarettes he was smoking end upon end due to the stress of her impending birth, I knew he secretly thought by the time he returned he would find me spread-eagled in the middle of the living room floor holding a screaming infant still attached by its umbilical cord (technically, The Man had officially lost his shit 3 weeks previously when I started scrubbing the inside of the bathroom closets because they were just HIDEOUSLY DIRTY. He had heard that started right before the baby up and fell out). I was THAT pregnant.

I looked it as well. I was 2cm dilated and 90% effaced at 37 weeks. I weighed somewhere in the range of a small rhino and had started experiencing that really entertaining and attractive late pregnancy symptom of face swelling and nose growing. As ugly as I was, and the more my ankles looked like hams, the closer we assumed she was to making her appearance. In fact, we had two “final” celebratory dinners during week 37 AND week 38. After her no show, we just started celebrating nightly at home with lots of macaroni and cheese and grape-flavored Kool-Aid. I did this because I knew that once I had her, I really could no longer justify eating Kraft macaroni and cheese. With barbeque sauce. Because, just, GROSS and….GROSS. ( I will readily admit that I definitely enjoyed the American world of pre-packed and processed food during my pregnancy.) I had been somewhat crazed about organics and gluten for six months previous to being pregnant, so I’m pretty sure The Man was pretty happy about the nine month spate of me eating like a good healthy red-blooded American. I gained 65 pounds. I had never been happier.

My pregnancy seemed to actually level me out. Previous to it I had the tendency to be a neurotic and anxious drama queen. There was a definite serene-ness to me during pregnancy that I had never had before, and don’t really have after. If I hadn’t absolutely hated that whole nonsense NO GIN policy during the whole thing, I’d have been absolutely radiant-until the 7th month. During the seventh month something happens that no one REALLY talks about. That’s when you start peeing yourself when you sneeze and having to wake up seventeen (NOT JOKING) times a night to go the bathroom just to squeeze out two freaking drops and switch sides because your hips are somehow both numb AND screaming in pain at the same time from laying on one side for, say, ONE WHOLE ENTIRE HOUR. I went to bed at 8:30pm and stayed there until 8:30am and maybe got six hours of sleep a night. When people used to comment about me not getting any sleep AFTER she was born I had a strong urge to punch them in the larynx. Actually, for the entirety of the last two months, I had the strong urge to punch most anybody in the larynx. Especially if you talked to me and it made sound.

So, by 39 weeks I was pretty damn effing tired of being pregnant. I had delusions of being pregnant forever. I constantly thought every twinge was IT. THE BIG EVENT. The doctor’s monitored me. I was having no contractions. I was not progressing. I was frustrated, hot and tired because I was ready for her to be out. But, if she didn’t want to come out, I was going to let her stick around as long as she wanted. My doc would extend to 42 weeks and I had convinced myself that I could be pregnant that long if I had to. I didn’t WANT to. But, I was willing to do it.

Due to the fluid I had accumulated my doctor was keeping a very close eye on my blood pressure. It had been pretty freaking fantabulously perfect the entire pregnancy. It fluctuated between 115/65-120/70. My BP was good. My pee tested clean for whatever the hell they check it for. So, she let me continue. I put on 15 pounds the last two weeks. I could no longer wear shoes. My face and nose were freakishly large. I couldn’t lie on my back at all without feeling like I was suffocating. People at work were starting to look FRIGHTENED when I showed up in the morning. People refused to get on elevators with me. Waiters starting joking the MINUTE we walked in the door to be seated. But still, no baby.

I went to my 39 week appointment steeling myself for the same report of “no further progress. Go home and call if you start to feel contractions.” Instead they checked my blood pressure when I first arrived and it was 158/89. I’d never actually seen a “concerned” look on a nurse’s face before this moment in my entire life. I peed my pants a little.

My doctor came into the room and calmly told the nurse to let me “rest” for 20 minutes and they would check it again. She then proceeded with the same cervical checking procedure of the previous three weeks that pretty much consisted of The Man cringing in the corner while my doctor inserted her entire forearm into my nether regions and I tried not to scream and claw at her eyes. After what seemed fourteen hours, sShe peeled off the required glove and affirmed what I’d already known. No progress.

She then left the room and we waited ten minutes until the nurse came back in. Another blood pressure check. It hadn’t fallen significantly. My doctor entered the room and informed me that it had dropped enough for her to allow me to return home but that as far as she was concerned, between the swelling of my face and lower extremities and the sudden uptick in my blood pressure, this pregnancy was on borrowed time. She very business-like made me an appointment for the following Monday night to “check-in” the hospital at 7pm to be induced. Like it was Holiday Inn. The Man and I agreed simply because I knew enough about preeclampsia to know it was nothing to mess around with and I was carrying all the hall mark signs of it.
So, The Man and I packed our bags, took off from work, enjoyed our final, final, FINAL dinner out as an “childless” couple and checked into the hospital at 7pm on Monday, June 15, 2009. That is the day this blog begins.

Since I’ve blogged that whole part in detail, I will summarize for the lazy by saying: I went in. I got naked. They hooked me up to fetal monitors and inserted a string with a hormone called Cervadil attached to it and left me for the night to watch bad horror with The Man while I tried not to dislodge the string every time I peed.

The next morning I got an enema, they broke my water, and this whole party got started.

I was given an IV of Pitocin and it wasn’t long after that I began experiencing contractions that were somewhat like being beaten with a 2 X 4 while also being stabbed in my back. They were fast, they lasted a long time, and there was only a minute between them. I had read enough to know that Pitocin contractions were pretty much a son of a bitch because they don’t build like normal contractions. They just start at the part where a woman in labor begins screaming, “I HATE YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU EVER DID, WILL DO, AND THOUGHT ABOUT DOING. MY BODY IS RIPPING INTO FOURTEEN PIECES.” I got to that point quickly.

I endured 17 hours of unmedicated labor total. They refused to give me an epidural until I reached at least 3 cm. The nurses, who complained of my extremely high cervix, kept telling me I wasn’t there yet. At this point I was prepared to slip them around five thousand dollars to EFFING LIE AND SAY I WAS 3 CM AND DRAG IN AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST OFF THE STREETS. I was willing to accept forged South American Medical School diplomas and tell whoever it was to GET ON WITH IT. THE PART WHERE PAIN IS RELIEVED. DO THAT PART.

I had come into the hospital at 7pm the night before and it was now 3pm.

I had my mother on one side and my husband on the other. Each one held one of my hands. Their hands were purple from the squeezing. I had a box fan sitting on a chair at the end of the bed blowing on me full blast as I sweated bullets and writhed. I cried and actually told both my mother and The Man that “This can't be natural. There is NO WAY this could be natural. I can’t do this. I want to go home” They had the foresight not to laugh. I will say seriously that I think this was extremely difficult on both of them. It was freaking intense. My mother was having a hard time not crying just watching me go through this. My husband was having to take a break every twenty minutes or so just to walk outside and catch his breath.

My doctor finally made rounds right after 3pm and did her own cervical check. She said I was 3 cm and could have my epidural. I wanted to tongue kiss her and name the baby after her. The nurses told her that I’d “been brave.” I wanted to kick them in their crotches and pull out handfuls of their hair. EFF YOU AND YOUR BRAVE. I WAS SURVIVING. One of them was name Angelique and if I'd had more drugs I would have referred to her as "Devilique" to her face.

As soon as the doctor approved the epidural, I saw The Man and my mother visibly relax. NO SIR. I pulled both of their hands and begin sobbing, “What if the anesthesiologist is with another woman? What if he’s in another wing and can’t get away? What if he’s in surgery and it takes him an hour to do this. I CANNOT DO THIS ANOTHER HOUR. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. MY VAGINA IS ON FIRE. I AM ON FIRE.”

My mother helpfully suggested that she thought he would probably be there within the next fifteen minutes. I hastened to remind her that I could DIE IN THE NEXT EFFING FIFTEEN MINUTES AND HE BETTER GET HERE IN THE NEXT THIRTY SECONDS OR MY BLOOD WAS ON HIS HANDS.

I then inquired about the ability of the hospital to give me heroin.

Forty seconds later, as I begin to hyperventilate, he walked in the door. I wanted to tongue kiss him too but I restrained and immediately sat up, turned around, dropped my gown, and told him to get to it. It was the quickest I’d ever shed my clothes for a man in my life. I didn’t even feel a prick until he said, "that should take full effect in about ten to fifteen minutes" and I slowly felt a warming numbness creep down my right leg and I sighed and told him I loved him. He laughed and told me he got that a lot and walked out of the room. The nurses waited an hour and then checked me. I was at 5. Hallelujah and the Baby Jesus! I was progressing. I progressed quickly over the next two hours and at around 5pm the nurse told me that she thought I was ready to push.

This is where shit gets surreal. As I had pretty much prepared myself for the entire experience BUT the pushing. Yeah, I’d gone to child birth classes and everything. But, as with most of my schooling I just assumed I was smart enough to figure that part out on the fly. So, when she told me to push…I pushed. HARD. I pushed hard and harder and harder. I sweated and grunted and grasped on to hospital bed rails as three strangers and my husband stood with their heads bowed staring at my vagina.

If I would have been un-medicated I might have cared. At this point I did not. I could have laid down in the middle of State Street with my legs in stirrups as long as this baby would GET OUT OF MY BELLY. What I’ve also failed to mention during this story is that sometime around 3pm I had spiked a fever. It had been rising about half a degree every hour. An hour into pushing I was around 102 and shaking uncontrollably from both the fever and the epidural. I was tired. I felt the exhaustion of the fever beginning to drain me.

I pushed for another hour.

At 7pm the nurses had determined that my daughter’s head was stuck at what they refer to as “zero station” or my pubic bone. She had descended through the birth canal but her head was not making it under the lip of my pubic bone. The nurses contorted me. Forced me to sit straight up and pulled me forwards. They did pretty much everything they knew how to do for 50 minutes to get her to drop further. I was miserable.

Around 7:45pm, the doctor came in. Now she looked concerned. Parks’s heart rate had jumped to over two hundred during the last two contractions and I was still running a fever of 102. Right before she walked in the room I was defeated. I looked at my dear, dear husband and told him that if the doctor walked in and suggested a c-section to jump up and high five her. Tell her I was all in. In fact, to tell her that she didn’t even have to worry about a bikini cut. She could cut me from one end to the other as long as this baby got out of my belly within the next hour and was okay.

She suggested a c-section. I looked at her and said, “let’s go.” I fell back against the bed and let out a huge sigh of relief. I had not one ounce of fight or pushing left in me. I wanted it to be done. I had been in labor a full 24 hours. I had not eaten in 26.

By 8:00pm I was being wheeled into the delivery room. The Man was hauled away to don scrubs. Right before he left, looking shocked and scared to death, I hurriedly reminded him of our conversation concerning unexpected events in the delivery room. I only had one rule that I had repeated over and over again during my pregnancy after reading a book encouraging parents to plan for the unexpected. FOLLOW THE BABY. He told me he remembered and he squeezed my hand, kissed me, and left. I was on my own.

I arrived in the delivery room and was given a full spinal block. I complained to the anesthesiologist that I could still feel my left leg. I was petrified. Neither my husband nor my doctor were in the room. There were strangers readying a baby warmer and newborn supplies. They were draping sheets and swabbing me quickly and efficiently. I felt apart from the whole experience. I can honestly say that I had no true understanding of a surreal experience until that moment.

My doctor walked in. She was wearing regular green hospital scrubs, no nonsense reading glasses, and four-inch spiked gold lame heels. God, how I loved her for that. I will forever tell my daughter that the woman who delivered her was so freaking bad ass she did it wearing scrubs with four inch gold lame heels. I once again told the anesthesiologist that I could feel my left leg. No on paid attention. He informed me he was going to give me a dose of IV Valium. He should have just gone ahead and said was he wanted to say, “I’d wish you stop whining. Hell, we’re only cutting you in half and removing a living being. Get over it.” Instead he plunged the stopper on the syringe and I immediately fell back against the table head rest and my eyes went wide and unfocused.

The Man comes in. He immediately notices that something is wrong and asks me as much. I cannot even answer. I mumble and the doctor says, “First incision 8:04pm.” I feel this violent tugging and burning and I grit my teeth and wait for it to be over. I finally feel a huge weight lift up and out of me and the doctor mechanically intones “Time of birth 8:11pm”. She then shoves a purple greasy baby over the green draping around my head and shows my daughter to me for one second. I nodded my head and had no feelings whatsoever.

One minute later I hear two simultaneous announcements, “She has HUGE FEET.” And “Seven pounds and one oz”. But I don’t hear my baby cry. And I’m scared.

I finally hear a small and struggling rasp and I feel some modicum of relief. But, the Mama in me knows this sound isn’t right. Someone brightly says, “She’s not breathing too good. Hear that grunting? That means she’s having a hard time breathing. We are going to have to take her to the NICU. Give her a kiss.” I numbly kiss this strange gasping, grunting infant on the cheek and she is whisked away. With her goes The Man-as instructed.

I once again hear my doctor's semi-monotone voice, “I’m putting your uterus back in.” And despite still having enough of a sense of humor in my drug induced state to actually ENJOY the absurdity of that statement, the pain and burning sensation that followed closely after knocked any possible feelings of mirth from my body. Jesus. Effing. Christ. What is that burning? I’m on fire, people. How can no one here see that my stomach is on fire. I feel stitching and fire and I grit my teeth and remind myself that woman have done this for years. I cry silently because I’m a good Southern girl and I don’t want to anesthesiologist to get mad at me for having FEELINGS again.

I feel small tugging as I am stitched up and my doctor pokes her head over the draping to tell me that she is “almost finished” and that “next time we won’t have to go through all this nonsense. We’ll just schedule you a c-section and you will be in and out” and I wonder if, despite the four inch heels, she actually OWNS a vagina.

I hate her and I hate everything about this place. But, in about two minutes, I discover that I THINK I REALLY LOVE MORPHINE.

They hook me up to a pump and roll me into recovery. Where they proceeded to tell me nothing but alarmist information about the daughter I had just given birth to but had yet to really meet. My husband was not there. My mother was in the room holding my hand as I just sobbed and asked over and over again, “BUT IS SHE GOING TO BE OKAY???” while no one-because they didn’t want to get sued-would tell a ten minute old mother that her ten minute old baby was going to be okay.

They wheeled me to the mother/baby wing without a word and left me in a room alone with a morphine pump and instructions to only “hit it every 15 minutes”. No one listened when I told them that my stomach was on fire. I hit the button so much the machine automatically shut down and the nurses had to come restart it five times-scolding me each time. But never asking about my level of pain.

The Man comes in to show me videos of my newborn that he has taken in the NICU and ran down the hall and downloaded to the computer. I cry and can’t see her because she has an IV and oxygen prongs in her nose. I pull out my laptop and I google “baby not clearing fluid on lungs after a c-section”. Because I’m THAT kind of woman. And if no one will talk to me, I will find it for MYSELF, damnit. I read countless articles on how c-section babies frequently don’t clear their lungs well as moving through the vaginal canal forces the fluids from their lungs. The articles tell me that this usually heals itself within 24 hours of birth. I calm down. I tell The Man. He runs back to the NICU to get an update from the nurses and take more video. He reports that the nurses were still not reassuring but just said she was “a little better” and I watch the videos until 3am and cry and beg for my baby. I finally sleep fitfully from 4am-6am until shift change.

A new nurse came in and actually LISTENED to me when I told her that I was getting no relief from the morphine. She actually asked me to DESCRIBE the pain. What a novelty in a hospital, right? I told her and she immediately deduced that morphine didn’t work on me and removed the pump from my arm. She gave me two percocets and within thirty minutes I felt the first true pain relief I’d felt in over 36 hours.

I continually asked to see my baby. They told me I could not.


TO BE CONTINUED (I figured this was ENOUGH for one post. Sheesh. But, just wait, things get both funnier and worse)

Thankful, Baby

1) That she stopped being so excited she was mobile and could crawl that she started wanting to cuddle again.

2) That although her most favorite words are "DA DA" and "Kit TAY", she reserves saying "Mama" for when she is hurt, feels she has been wronged in some way, or doesn't feel good. It makes me melt. It also makes me realize that she sees me as her protector. And that, my dear, dear daughter, is what fiercely forces my heart to continue to keep beating.

3) She sleeps now. At least most of the time

4) She can giggle so long and so hard that I can't help but laugh with her. It is pure joy. It should be the sound that wakes up the human race every morning. There isn't a bad way to start the day when the first thing you see and hear is a baby giggle.

5) She has a raspy laugh that reminds me of a 1930's jazz singer that works in a smokey club. And that's so damn cool I can't even stand it.

Dear Parks,

So, here we are. Two days down and.....well, several more to go. Sorry I can’t be more exact, but I don't count well at all. I don't do ANY kind of math well actually. That's why I currently work in the humanities field. Your mother only made 2 "B's" in her entire school career-from kindergarten to graduate degree. One of those "B's" was in the 5th grade when we were studying fractions. I just didn't understand them. And, I can honestly tell you that I still do not give two WHOLE craps about whether or not I have two PARTS of freaking anything-unless we're down to 1/5 of a 1/5 of gin. Then I just know we're screwed. Especially if your Auntie Elizabeth comes to visit.

The other “B”, you ask?

Well, let me tell you a little story about that other “B”.

It was 1995. Oh yeah, I’m going THERE.

Picture it… flannel button-up shirts from J Crew, lots of hiking boots, copious amounts of Cobain-induced angst-ridden poetry, and a ridiculously whole lot of “Indigo Girls” listening.

Your mother was 19 and a sophomore in college. Her life….it was a-changing.

Previous to 1995 your mother- while cool in her own special way- was still the same sack of nerd that graduated from high school thinking having a beer on Saturday night at “The Edge” (NOT a bar, mind you, but a back road that went off behind one of the levees surrounding the Mississippi River) with twenty other of my classmates was a HEATHEN and UNACCEPTABLE thing to do. Your mother owned her VERY OWN COPY of the 6 VHS tape series of the original BBC filming of Pride and Prejudice. That kind of nerdy runs deep and doesn’t disappear very quickly. I went to college with a lot of the same ideas. As such, my freshman year was extremely “vanilla”. Because your mother really didn’t know any other way to be.

It took me until my sophomore year to figure out that if you didn’t go to class, PEOPLE DID NOT CARE. Your head wouldn’t spontaneously burst into flames and your skin turn inside out. They wouldn’t call Nana and she wouldn’t come prance me around the quad wearing a placard reading “SLACKER”***

(Take note: You are NOT ALLOWED to skip class in college, young lady. Because, unlike Nana, I WILL come prance you around the quad with a placard reading “SLACKER” and I’d add “AND SHE HAS BIG MOLES IN WEIRD PLACES” just to freak out any cute guys that, like, TOTALLY have crushes on you.)

Slightly into sophomore year, while living on my sorority hall, I started hanging out with the “bad” girls that lived at the “End of The Hall”. We even called ourselves the “End of the Hall” girls. We were the WILD girls. We were the girls that bought 40 oz beers and took back roads and wrote poetry. We skipped class and drove to New Orleans for concerts with no place to stay. The Earth had opened up and your mother had found her coolness. It was drinking wine out of a box while breaking into people’s farms just to chase their chickens. It was listening to “Least Complicated” with the windows rolled down and screaming spontaneously written poems into the flat darkness. It was Delta Joie De Vie.

It was sometime during these semesters that you mother learned the art of funneling beer, napping through most daylight hours, and the intricacies of the University’s mandatory minimum attendance policy. It was while “learning” these policies that I discovered a grade could be dropped simply for lacking to show up to a certain percentage of classes. Unfortunately, I had a 2pm elective that hit right in the middle of the required daily nap that kept my inner poet alive on the roads at night. This class was KILLING my “joie”. I remember attempting to separate my face from my pillow most Wednesday afternoons around 1:30pm and it seemingly magnetically being pulled back to the coolness of the pillow case. It was too much responsibility for any one person to be expected to handle. So, I eventually stopped even trying. Sleeping blissfully, I let myself give up any guilt attached to my cutting.

Due to my lack of showing up, my grade was reduced from an “A” to a “B” and there was nothing I could do about it. I even tried telling the teacher the one about having to have an ovary removed due to THE LARGEST CYST ANY DOCTOR HAS EVER SEEN. You know, the one that worked TWICE on my psychology professor who wore purple Birkenstocks and thought all female organs were sacred and should be worshipped on corners. This teacher, on the other hand, was 73-years old and still wore booty shorts to class that-with a suntan pair of control top hose worn underneath-made her legs look still half-way to rocking. This was not the type of woman that swooned when one used the term "vagina" freely and spoke damningly of female goddess exclusion from mainstream religion. She had frosted hair and tanned extensively. She wore red lip stick and lots of spandex tops that glittered subtley in the light reflecting off her silver tipped hair. Honestly, she made me throw up a little in my hand. Although, the times I did attend class I really can’t tell you if the strong urge to vomit was from the 70-year-old wearing the booty shorts or the actual alcohol I had ingested the night previously. I’m going to blame the 70-year-old. But, that’s beside the point.

I tell you this long and somewhat pointless story so that you will laugh less-and respect your mother more- when you hear the actual NAME of the class that I made a “B” in. A task so FOUL, I obviously found it just as difficult to figure out as fractions.

The class was aptly named, “Walking 101”.

It was a class in which one walked.

In circles.

Around a gym.

For one hour.

Basically what I’m saying is that in your tenth month of life you seem to have mastered a skill your mother had issues with at a college level. As the typical new parent’s response to their child’s mastery of something they find extremely difficult, I’m going to say the one thing I’ve been dying to say since you were born, “YOU ARE A GENIUS! I EFFING KNEW IT!”

Love,
Mama



***Not that Nana ever did that. Nana doesn’t make scenes…unless it’s unintentional and she’s just trying to prove someone wrong. Then Nana will make a scene. We’ll discuss this more later the first time she takes you to a car dealership, holds her hand up in front of the salesman’s face BEFORE HE UTTERS A WORD and says, “Are there any WOMEN that sell cars here?” Then, when I mortify you in public at the age of 16 you will understand it’s genetic……and medication won’t do a damn thing for it.

And So It Goes...

I sat down at the computer intending to post. Because I thought, "hey, you know what? I'm going to do that thing where I promise to post every single day for the whole month." There's even a website that is named for that-I think. If I hadn't had a baby and lost several million brain cells due to estrogen overload, I probably could tell you what the name of that website is. But, a I did have a baby and lost unmentionable amounts of very important brain cells due to surging hormones and lack of sleep, I can't right now.

Rest assured I will research it and get back to you. If I even remember that I promised to research it.

But, back to the topic at hand. I sat down at the computer this afternoon intending to post. Instead, I called The Man and we ended up having a 45 minute "discussion" about which one of us sucks the worse.

This is a pretty clear snapshot of how things are working around here now. You know, the things PREVENTING the posting. Well, that AND "Criminal Minds", AND a biting 10-month-old who is extremely clingy and currently fully immersed in something the books call "separation anxiety phase". I call it "FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKK." But I'm pretty sure Dr. Sears isn't a fan of that.

Despite these plethora of distractions, today I have made a promise to post every single day this month on either this blog or on The Butterknife. I AM going to do it. Just because you said I couldn't.

Unfortunately for you, this piece of crap actually counts as today's post.

See you tomorrow.

Dear Parks,

I'm obviously going to stop promising to write more often as your very presence in this house demands that I pay more attention to you than the rambling and often incoherent thoughts that I have about you, me, or your dad. It’s been two months without a peep out of me (mostly because I’m dealing with your peeps). But, that’s really no excuse. I will admit that I find it difficult to explain how your dad and I are handling the often confusing reality of waking up with a ten and a half month old that farts on cue and then claps and giggles afterwards. I am convinced this has a lot more to do with karma for some of my previous transgressions in life than your actual emerging personality. Although if this IS your actual emerging personality, me and you, kid, are going to get along just fine. Waking up and having to ask your dad if that sound I heard was him or you amuses me greatly. And, at 6:00am…amusing is good.

In fact, you get funnier every single day. It’s amazing to me this little person you’ve turned into in the past two months. Even though I think I say that every single month. It’s totally true EVERY SINGLE TIME. You learn things so quickly it just astounds me. It scares me a little and it makes it harder to let you be away from me for extended periods of time. I never thought it would actually get more difficult to leave you behind on mornings when I have to run off to work but it definitely has. I’m usually scared that by the time I see you in the afternoon you will be walking perfectly in high heels, smoking cigarettes, and espousing the ever-endearing phrase, “WHAT. EVER. MOM.” Because that’s how fast all of this all seems to be going.

(No doubt when you are two and absolutely horrible I will wonder why it all isn’t going FASTER. But, that’s your mom, I’m never happy and I always assume the worst. I was just having a conversation with your cousin Joy the other day about how I assume that every day is the day that I will find out that you have CANCER. Or, that I do. Or, that your father does. But that’s why they make medication.)

I find myself more torn each and every. It’s not just that you seem to have gotten over that very annoying “baby” thing of crying for no reason-although that’s rocked as well. It’s just that you’re absolutely cool as hell. Its how you sit up, point at Jesus and scream, “Kit TAY” and it sounds just like “Nell” saying “Tay in da winn”. You’ll have to forgive Mama for that comparison, but the stomach virus I had last week facilitated a new watching of “Nell”. And, let me tell you, I don’t know if I was delirious from all the trying NOT to vomit, but “Nell” made a hell of a lot more sense to me at this age. It also cleared up a lot of language acquisition questions I had concerning you and why it is you pick up a toy, reach out as if to hand it to me, and say “Mon deui.” It’s because you are speaking French taught to you by an imaginary hearing-impaired au pair your father and I haven’t hired.

Our lives have evolved into a constant re-assessment of how far from the floor breakable things in the house should be placed. This happens every single week. Sometimes your dad and I don’t realize that we have grievously misjudged your massive height until we are wrestling with a 25lb ten-month-old to pry pennies out of its mouth and ceramics out of its hands. I leave the living room for 3.7 seconds and I re-enter to discover that you’ve now grown enough to reach THAT THING. You know, THAT THING. THAT THING that Mom probably paid good money for that is lying in the floor broken, covered in slobber, and missing important buttons. THAT THING.

Over the past few weeks, we have placed lots of THAT THING into the extra-large closet we often refer to as “the attic”. I assume these trinkets and purely decorative items will one day be removed from their hiding places and assume their positions on the coffee tables, side tables, buffet tables, bookshelves, and all the other pieces of furniture you’ve recently decided to thoroughly investigate because there might be a reachable crack large enough to hide at least one ball of cat hair you can eat. The name “baby proofing” is so innocuous for what you are actually doing. Because I truly feel that “baby proofing” is more about removing all the household items in your home that-if you were off balance, barely speaking, and unable to turn corners well-could kill you. (FYI: This is easily accomplished by getting nasty drunk and attempting to walk around your home without getting at least one bruise.) You’d be surprised how many household items could cause death under those circumstances.

I also don’t understand how it is that you seem both immediately recognize and want to chew on the EXACT THINGS THAT WILL KILL YOU DEAD. If anyone ever asks me if my child would rather eat chocolate-covered bunnies dipped in rainbows or electrical cords…I can quickly give the correct answer. My child would prefer an electrical cord, please. Or maybe a quarter. Save those chocolate-covered bunnies for the wussies. We don’t have any of those in this family. We’d like to digest forged metals and things that conduct life-ceasing currents.

This is also the month where I’ve decided that I’m going to have to talk to God about the whole “eight teeth before one-year old” thing being extremely unfair. In the past week you’ve decided that leaning over to hug Mama isn’t as exciting as leaning over to hug Mama and then biting the freaking hell out of her chest. I really have no idea how to break you of this habit. I don’t believe in spanking at this age and it’s only after screaming “no” in my most MEANEST VOICE POSSIBLE and then watching you giggle and clap that I realize how creative non-beating forms of discipline are going to have to be.

You then sometimes follow that clap with a string of forcefully stated consonants and vowels that usually makes me want to pump my fist and say “hell yeah!” I have no idea what you are saying, but the conviction with which you espouse it impresses me. Talking in general is something you’ve definitely ramped up in the past month.

I talk to you a lot more now too. I tell you everything that we are doing. I announce when I am putting your shoes on your feet. I tell you when we are putting a shirt over your head and when we are about to wash your hair while you are taking a bath. Sometimes, when you are screaming I tell you that I am going to the kitchen to get a nice tall drink of wine and that if you want any attention from me you might as well stop making all that noise and start crawling after me. You usually comply. This lets me know you are a hell of a lot smarter than we give you credit for. Mainly for two reasons:

1) You understand the importance of wine in this family

2) You realize that no one likes whiners in this family and that if my Papaw ever catches a-hold of you he will tell you that he has “shrapnel worse than that in his EYE.” ("that" being whatever injury-emotional or physical-that has precipitated the whining)

YES, IN HIS EYE.

But, a Korean also jammed the butt of his rifle into Papaw’s forehead severing a few important brain connections.

I am now at the point in my mothering where I want to start showing you things just to see how you react. I’m totally interested in how you would respond to certain new foods, or places. I want to take you places that I think are cool and tell you about them. I want to play hooky just to lie on the couch and toss you up in the air and get you to mimic funny noises that I make. I want to spend more time with you.

I can honestly say that I can’t WAIT until you can speak English.

Love,
Mama