The Pregnancy…..#2

In January of 2010 my husband and I had a chat about the fact that we did want 2 kids, we did want them pretty close together and if we were going to start trying #2 after Connor turned 1 (in Feb), what was the point of NOT trying for another month. For those of you that don’t know, when we decided to have Connor, we were pregnant the next month. So we figured that surely lighting would not strike twice and we were in for a longer road to getting pregnant. I am sure you have already guessed what happened next (or read my last blog and did the math-in which case you think too much) anyways, yes, by February I was telling my husband we needed to swing by CVS for a pregnancy test. Actually we were walking around in the mall (because that is what parents of young children do on a Friday night) and I said just that “honey I need to stop by CVS while we are here to pick up a pregnancy test”.

For the record, buying those things is never a comfortable transaction. I would actually put it up there with buying condoms and ky. Of course buying all of those together would be even more awkward, but I digress.

We went home, I pee’ed on the little stick that night, we waited while Connor crawled all over us on the floor, and a few minutes later…boom….we are soon going to be a family of 4. And I cried. They were not tears of joy either. Yes, having 2 was my idea and yes, I was the brilliant one who wanted them close together. But the minute that test came back positive I realized I had just changed Connor’s life forever. I changed everything about him with one random night of sex (really, just one, we have kids after all), and I actually felt really bad. I was just surprised with myself, wasn’t the emotional reaction I was expecting but hey, pregnant women are crazy so….

The timing was ok, but not great to have a positive pregnancy test. I was just about to head to Punta Cana with the hubby for an all expenses paid business trip that was basically a 5 day open bar party in the sun. Let me emphasis the open bar part. Crap, shit, crap….. f*ing pregnant. And I’m in the weird spot of being pregnant where I not going to tell anyone about it because heaven forbid something happen. Yippee. But that just was what it was and let’s just say, I got a lot of reading done on the beach.

When I got back I figured it was time to call the Dr. and get the prenatal care going. Since this was round 2, I really wasn’t all that jazzed about the 8 million Drs. appointments where they basically tell you your doubling in size and ask if you have any questions. And I had decided to change practices to one I actually liked (sorry AWBW, you sucked). I had my first appointment, the nurse seemed very nice, I pee’ed in the cup, gave my 10 pounds of blood and off I went without a single thought other than ‘really, only 1 cup of coffee a day?’.

To this day I will never forget where I was when I got the phone call from the nurse saying she was just following up on my test results. I was at work, knee-deep in a huge technology implementation, and stepped out of my office for 2 minutes to take the call. She was casually reading off my results, iron a little low -take vitamins, normal, normal normal, Oh, you tested positive for toxoplasmosis……It was obvious we were both getting the news for the first time. My file ended up in the ‘call back vs. send letter’ pile and she was reading it as she called me. When I asked what the positive result meant, she didn’t know. Now I want to get something very clear here, this particular nurse was an angel to me. I thank God everyday it was her to made that first phone call, and that she was the one who figuratively and literally held my hand through many many many months of not knowing what was going to come next. And I do not blame her for not knowing what that positive result meant. All I know is about 15 minutes later, her, myself & Bill were all hitting up Google pretty hard and what we were finding wasn’t good.

To explain everything about Toxo would take links, a science lesson and, well, time I just don’t have right now. Someday I will fill you all in, but let’s just say it is very rare and because it is very rare, there is not a lot of real concrete information out there about it. We had a long haul of specialists, blood tests & an amino before we really even started telling people we were pregnant. I wouldn’t wish our experience on my worst enemy, but as I said, I will write more about that later.

Everyone told me the 2nd time around you would feel everything more…more tired, more sick, more headaches, just more. And they were right. On top of all the emotional stress we were going through, I was twice as tired, twice as achy, twice as hungry, just flat-out twice as everything vs. the first time around. However, on the bright side, the pregnancy also went by twice as fast Of course the last few weeks were pure hell, but I just don’t think anything will ever fix that other than having the baby early which is not the right solution. So instead we just bitch like maniacs to anyone who will listen. Lucky me one of my girlfriends was due around the same time so we bitched to each other a lot…..frankly by 9 mths no one else gives a crap about how uncomfortable you are any more anyways.

All in all it was the longest, quick 40 weeks of my life. And since we are only having 2 kids I can honestly say, I am ok with never having to go through it again.

Blowin’ the dust off the old blog…

Ah where to start. Well, quick update, which isn’t really an update because everyone who reads my blog is also my friend on Facebook, but what the hell, gotta start somewhere, right?

Back to the not so update, update. Baby Bonk & other Bonk related activities may be adapting a new name soon, ‘Baby BonkS & other Bonk related activities’. Yes, we made another one. Elisabeth…sorry, EliZabeth (more on that later) Cathryn (not Catherine-again, more later) Bonk (at least I got that one right) joined our family on 10/17 at 11:17pm. We call her Ellie or Elle and honestly, she’s a good baby. I thought Connor was a good baby but now see that he was actually a huge pain in the ass. Maybe I was the pain in the ass and he was just taking after me, who knows, but really she is an easy, fun baby.

Connor is making all the right adjustments to big-brotherhood, you know, cramming toys in her face and calling it ‘sharing’, screaming at the top of his lungs when you are trying to talk to anyone other than him, giving her toys (usually HER toys)only for the shear joy of taking them back as quickly as possible. Yup, totally normal stuff. The good news is when she cries, he tries to comfort her, when she laughs he thinks its funny and laughs, too. So all in all, having two is kind of fun, in a madhouse sort of way.

I guess the funniest part of this whole experiment is that fact that Bill and I grew up as only children. Bill is an only child and I have a step sister who is much older than I am (my nieces are 18 & 15, to give you some idea of the age gap). As I watched Connor slowly implode on himself right after Ellie came home I realized that as prepared as we thought we were for handling 2 kids, neither of us factored in that we had no experience with siblings ourselves. Whoops. So I blog. Because I had no f*ing clue what I was doing when I had my first child and now I have now f*ing clue what to do with 2. This should be fun

Ode to Marlboros

The mom quietly sneaks into the shed, as she eases the door closed behind her as she lets her eyes adjust to the darkness. She climbs over the mower, rake and other lawn equipment that was haphazardly put away in such a manner that could lead to a total collapses at any moment. She reaches longingly into an old paint can and pulls out a dented, slightly dusty pack of Marlboros….matches, matches….screams start coming from the kitchen, she doesn’t have much time now….Ah, here is the lighter she left behind for just such occasions.Flick. AAAHHHH……….

We have all seen that scene on TV, in a movie or a book. The mom that just needs a break and sneaks something…..a smoke, chocolate hidden in the back of the freezer. I have always thought these moments were funny, endearing even. Now I get them. Like really, really get them. Let me give you a little snap shot of my day.

Connor wakes up 1/2 hr earlier than usual and is very fussy. I go get him and try to get him to go back to sleep. Minutes after walking around his room with him resting his head on my shoulder, he sits up, looks me right in the face and projectile vomits. Great. But of course I didn’t get the hint (for those of you out there wondering how I missed it, shove it). I did finally get him back to sleep, only to wake up 30 minutes later-BUT in a much better mood. This is the part where the early vomiting episode should have been mentally noted and reviewed - 15 minutes later he is happily drinking his 8oz baba while I make coffee. About 5 minutes after that he hands me his empty baba and promptly vomits almost everything he just ingested all over the kitchen. The reason I say ALMOST everything is about 30 minutes later he finished the evacuation of his stomach in the living room. This time I thought I was prepared, I stepped on to the hardwood floor before he started throwing up. Well, I guess I didn’t step far enough because the poor kid puked with such force he managed to reach our couch 4 feet away. It was only 9am.

The rest of the day pretty much followed suit, luckily with a little less vomit, but still a lot of stress. I mean think about it….you are cover in puke, the baby is covered in puke, the floor is covered in puke, where do you start?

Finally by 7pm the little man is in bed and I have devoured a bowl of cereal and you know what I REALLY want. A drink. A good stiff cocktail, vodka please. But I can’t even consider it. Bill is not home and the chances of Connor waking up tonight are….high, to put it mildly. So putting on a little buzz to unwind from a hellish day is just not a good idea. And that got me thinking about those women on TV, sneaking out back to have just a few puff’s of a cigarette. It’s the middle of the day…they have kids running around like gnomes on crack….a drink is out of the question. But what can they do? As an ex-smoker myself…oh how I relate! Now the question is, how do I convince Bill to build a shed?

To do, to do, to do

I just want to take a second to vent about something that drives me nuts. I can’t ever seem to get through my ‘to-do’ list any more. As I sit and write this quick little blurb, there are about 10 different things that really need to be done around the house and for work. I remember a time when I would sit down at the end of the day and every thing was DONE. Now I keep a running list in my head (and if I’m lucky on a piece of paper in the kitchen but #1 item on the ‘to do list, you guessed it, write shit down) of what needs to get done during naps, during lunch, after bedtime and tomorrow. I don’t have any profound words about this. I am just stating a fact. There is always something to do, and it will remain this way for a long long time. But if life has turned into some sort of hamster wheel that just keeps spinning, why the hell aren’t I skinnier?

A long overdue tribute.

In case you haven’t figured this out, having a baby makes you think….ALOT…and it makes you think differently about everything. Some things are just instantly thought about differently, like going to the store, but I have found some things come to light in their own time and in their own way. One item that I have found myself thinking about a lot more than I use to was mortality.

I knew, know and now really know that even the thought of your child dying will drive daggers into the heart of any parent. I knew this before having Connor but now I feel it. Just the thought is amazingly painful. I am not going to dwell on this because it is not the point of this blog and it really is just too painful to even contemplate or discuss.

For those of you who don’t know, my mother died when I was very young. Six years old to be exact. An age where you aware of the world around you, but don’t really understand it. Most of the time when I tell people this they say they are sorry to hear that, to which I reply ‘it’s ok, my dad reconnected with a past love and they ended up getting married not long after my mom died. My stepmother is great and she raised me’. This response usually gets past the awkward moment and the conversation moves on.

My response is not untrue. The woman I loving call ‘mom’ did raise me and loves me as much as she possibly can. And being a parent now I have to give her some serious props, she had just finished raising my sister (and by finished I mean my sis turned 18) and was now looking at doing it all over again. I don’t think anyone in their right mind wants to go through the teenage years with a girl twice. But she did and her and my father created a pretty darn good life for me. So good that I spent little to no time ever really thinking about the woman who gave birth to me. Who changed my diapers, wiped my baby tears, rocked me to sleep, toilet trained me, yeah, that woman.

I am sure part of the reason I didn’t think much about her was my age. Teenagers and young adults just don’t have the emotional capacity to think about much of anything except themselves. Sad, but true. The other reason I now think, know, I chose not to think about her much was because I was pissed.

I have never really thought of my birth mother in a good way. She drank and smoked…alot…and although she never did anything to hurt me, even at my young age I knew she had a problem. I told myself if she HAD lived my life would have been much different and chances are I would not be as successful and well-rounded as I am today. Maybe it’s true, maybe not, my crystal ball has been broken for some time now. But what really made me mad is that she died. She didn’t take care of herself or love herself enough to change her life style to stick around for me. She died of cancer, and from what I remember it was not her first scare with cancer so she must have known she needed to change things, right? So for the past 25 years I have been flat-out mad at her, not giving her an ounce of the respect she deserves for being my mom for the first 6 years of my life. I have lost touch with her side of the family and really truly just ‘moved on’.

Well, maybe not. The thought of not being a part of Connor’s life hurts. Just the idea of not seeing him make his first friend, play his first football game, go to his first dance is painful in a way that is only trumped by the thought of something happening to him. Having to hope that people will tell him about me, and for him to have to see my face in pictures, not every day when he wakes up is awful. And it has made me think of my mother in a whole new way.

I keep going back to one of the last memories I have of her, sitting in her hospital bed in the middle of our living room (because her time was ending and hospice had let her come home). I was engrossed in some cartoon TV show and the nurse, or someone said, ‘Tiffany, I think your mom is trying to say something to you’. I remember brushing it off and barely turning around to see what she was saying and the someone saying ‘she is telling you she loves you’. I probably got up to give her a hug, or tossed a ‘I love you, too’ over my shoulder, having no idea until now what she was really saying. She was saying ‘I love you and I will miss you’. She knew, as she laid there watching me, that my life would go on without her. That she wasn’t going to see my go to prom, or get married, or have my first baby. I honestly don’t remember how long she was home before she died, it seemed like months, but I bet for her it was a lifetime. Every day being  a little more painful than the last knowing that she wasn’t going to get the chance to be a part of my life anymore. Yet choosing to fight the cancer that was eating away at her body for just one more day with me.

Mom, I’m not mad any more. You may not have been perfect, but you loved me with everything you had. I never doubted that, but now I understand it. I’m sorry it took me so long to recognize you and although I will never put aside the love and feelings I have for the woman who raised me, I won’t put your memory aside any longer either. I’m sorry I did for so long but will make up for all the lost time by remembering the good stuff. Thank you for looking down on me from heaven and always being in my heart.

I guess I’m lucky, I have 2 moms to love me, one is just doing it from far, far away.

I can’t hear you….

I think every parent can agree that there is a lot of advice out there on everything from how to diaper your kid to the do’s and don’ts of feeding. You name it, there is probably a book, blog or professional opinion on the matter. Matter of fact I bet if you were to look up product reviews, baby products would be one of, if not the most, widely reviewed area of products on the market. EVERYONE has an opinion.

All these opinions can become kind of like static in your brain when you are a new parent. You are so concerned with doing everything right, not creating any bad habits, oh and surviving, that every piece of advice is taken in, chewed on and considered for use. It is amazing our heads don’t explode. Really. And after all this you still don’t have any clue what the hell you are doing. WTF.

But some how, your babies do. Or at least mine seems to. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Connor is some sort of boy-wonder or anything. It has just seemed like he comes to things on his own and in his own time. Example, sleeping through the night. Well this was easy, I just had to bring him to bed with me. Major no-no in the world of parenting and if you tell non-parents about it they practically shrink away from you like you have a disease. For one, I think almost every parent does it at some point and two, it’s wonderful. You’re going to be up with your baby anyways, why not be awake snuggled in bed together? When he was ready to get in to his crib and we found an agreeable way to make it happen, away he went. This was at 4 months, not 4 years, and I shed more tears about it than he did. Pacifier, Connor liked his paci before bed. It made him feel good. And about the time I thought ‘geez I should probably try to get him away from the paci’ he just decided he no longer wanted it. No tears or frustration, he just simply didn’t want it any more.

The most recent ‘I’ll do it when I am darn good and ready’ moment came at the most unexpected time. I was in Florida visiting my parents and a friend of the family was baby-sitting Connor. She had a great time with him and when it came time for bed followed the routine we always do (book and bottle) but he wasn’t asleep. Now here is the part where we usually rock him or walk him around until he starts nodding off and then put him in his crib, some thing I knew we had to get away from but hadn’t really decided how. Connor, as it turns out, decided for us. My friend put him down, he played for a few minutes and went to sleep. Not a single tear shed. He was just ready. So what he was closer to 10 months when it happened instead of the 5-6 like all the books said. Screw ‘em, I got to hold my baby just a little longer each day and all the horror stories I had heard with the CIO and Ferber methods could be forgotten.

I’m not saying there won’t be tough lessons to teach as life goes on. I guess I just have to remind myself to stick my fingers in my ears and say ‘la la la’ every once and awhile and just listen to my child. Just because society, a book, my friends or a professional feels a certain timeline should be followed or bestows upon me some piece of advice doesn’t make it right. Or at least right for us. So……………. ‘la la la la la’ I can’t hear you.

blogging interrupted.

As you may have noticed my blogging has been rather sparse since Connor was born. Trust me, it’s not a lack of material. This whole parenting thing poses lots of questions, thoughts and humorous events. It’s due more to the constant interruption of my inner monologue.  

You see back before I was a mommy I could drive, shower, watch TV and do about a dozen other things and write my next post in my head. I would write it, edit it, and after I felt like I had mulled it over enough I would finally sit down and type. From there it was usually just a read through or two and I was done. My posts were usually funny and conveyed just was I was thinking about whatever topic I had decided to write about.

Then Connor came along.

First I thought that my lack of writing was a time issue. And it probably was for the first few months. Infants are all-consuming and any free time was spent doing things like sleeping and eating. But thankfully that doesn’t last forever and now, almost 11 months later I am just getting back into blogging and finding myself running smack into a huge writers block. Where the hell did that come from? I have so much to say, yet when I sit down to say it all that comes out is ‘blah blah blah, grammatical error, blah’. What the fuck.

Then it dawned on me, in the bathroom (pretty much the only place I can think peacefully for more than 2 seconds and that is only when my husband is home or if I’m at work) no wonder everything I have written lately is unfinished or lacks that ‘zip’…I can barely finish a thought, much less a blog in my head! Let me give you an example.

Grocery Shopping:

Old Tiffany-go to the grocery store with a few items in mind and # of meals needed for the week. Paruse isles to get ideas and then put together meal plan on the fly.

New Tiffany-put pad and pen in kitchen to write down items as we run out. Review list prior to going to store. Review cook books and etc. for meal ideas (because I can no longer think up anything to make). Add needed items to list. Review list again. Put list in order of isles at the grocery store to minimize time needed to complete shopping trip. Plan time to go to the store around nap & eating schedule. Once ready to go, get the diaper bag/purse ready. Double check that it is complete (diapers-check, wipes-check, snacks-check, toy-check, wallet-check). Make sure floppy seat & reusable grocery bags are in the car. Get the kid…..make sure I have the list…make sure I have the diaper bag….ok, now I am ready to go to the store.

Sounds a little extreme, I know. But you only have to go to the store once with no list to figure out that you will come back with a bunch of baby food and nothing for you or your husband to eat.

This is my life now. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. And after 11 months, we have a routine and it works so there really isn’t that much stress to it. But I am always thinking, planning, double-checking things……which has left me zlitch time to write a blog in my head. Oh I’ve started many. I’ve even gotten as far as drafting them on wordpress. Why aren’t they posted, you ask? Because I can’t seem to goddamn finish them. I have no endings because my thoughts, my internal writer, gets interrupted, refocused you could say, on something much more immediate like poop on a daily basis.

So here I am again…..writing….blogging….but with no closing, no final thoughts or words of wisdom for future moms. I guess I’ll just end with this, don’t take you inner monologue for granted. Even IT will get interrupted when you have kids.

Did my arm shrink? Or is my butt just getting farther and farther away?

*I found this in my drafts. It’s obviously from when I was pregnant and I think the humor of it makes it worth publishing*

 

I am going to chalk this up to another thing that people don’t tell you about being pregnant, but something I find very entertaining. I guess we all take being about to wipe after peeing for granted, I mean who really thinks about it? Well lately I do. As I get bigger and bigger I find I have to move into new yoga-like positions just to reach down there! I have never been more thankful for those bars in the handicap stalls.

Back to sleep….

If you have had children in the last few years (or even if you haven’t) the term ‘back to sleep’ has probably been drilled into your head at least 1000 times. In your childbirth education class, at the hospital after labor, EVERY SINGLE DR’S VISIT you are reminded to put your baby on its back to sleep. I must say, I was confused. Not about putting Connor on his back to sleep, I got that, but why it was drummed into my brain over and over and over again. Perhaps I should back track a little here……

When you have a baby sleep is a VERY BIG DEAL. How they sleep, where they sleep, when they sleep, how much they sleep, all things you will find yourself thinking about constantly. My baby is a pretty good sleeper, as long as he is sleeping on top of you. He’s not picky, I think he would sleep just fine on a total stranger, along as they are warm and don’t mind walking around for a minute or so til he starts to nod off. Its sweet and nice and all that good stuff but can pose some pretty big challenges as well, like having a life. I mean you can’t eat, sleep or poop very well with an infant sleeping on you (although I have tried to do all three with varying degrees of success). So my husband and I have been trying for the past month to change this habit and get our son sleeping in his crib. This is not an easy feat, a crib is not warm, doesn’t smell like mommy or daddy and most of all doesn’t have a heartbeat. Yes, you can fake all of these things, but he hasn’t fallen for it yet. Its down, sleep for 5 minutes, cry, up, rock for 2 minutes, back down and repeat. At night I don’t even fight it, he just sleeps with me. Through out all of this I have been putting Connor to sleep either flat on his back or slightly on his side. He never sleeps well on his back and he sleeps only slightly better with something wedged under him to put him a little on his side. But still we don’t get more than 30 minutes during the day. This kills me because I KNOW he needs more…how you ask, well he will take a 2 hour afternoon ON ME!!! And trust me after that he is one HAPPY baby.

So, we return to ‘back to sleep’. Why, as I was wondering, is this drilled into our heads with such vigor? Shouldn’t it be something you are told once and then just go with for the safety of your baby? Well folks, I think I just figured it out. Yup, you guessed it……they sleep better on their stomaches. At least Connor does. Now before you crucify me as a bad parent let me tell you that I have a video monitor AND I am typing this in his room as we speak. This is the first time I have ever put him down tummy first and I am not 100% comfortable with the whole situation, but I will say this…..he is sleeping like a rock. And we are going on 1 1/2 hours of good napping. Well crap, so after weeks and weeks of trying every method in every book I could get my hands on other than letting him just sit in the crib and scream until he shits himself (and I did try that once, which is how I know if he gets upset enough he shits himself) the one way that he sleeps the best is the way I was told never to let him sleep. Surely I am not the only parent to figure this out, which is probably why they tell you so many times never to do it. It would be interesting to see the pattern of books written and over interest in infant sleep after the ‘back to sleep’ campaign started. Did it sky-rocket? We were all put to sleep on our stomaches, were we better sleepers? Or the same? I honestly don’t know the answer but I do know now that Connor wants to nap and can nap for longer than 30 minutes, how do I get him to do it on his back? Or do I?

8 months and 3 weeks…..wait, what?

Yup, that is what my baby center weekly e-mail said in my ‘my baby this week’ e-mail “Your 8 month old: week 3″. Holy shit, I was still wrapping my head around that fact that my little man had hit the 8 month mark, now your telling me that mark is 1/2 over? It seems like we brought Connor home just last week, but at the same time like he was always here. Every day has been a new and amazing adventure but they are just speeding by so fast. So fast it seems like I never have time to write them down any more so I thought I would write a quick update post to catch everyone up.
For starters, Connor is officially a ‘man on the move’. About 2 days after he started to crawl he began looking for anything and everything he could use to pull himself up to the stand position. This was not the timeline mommy had in mind but after a week of trying to stop him I have given up and just try to make sure he doesn’t crack his head open when he forgets that he can’t actually walk. I forget that we aren’t born with ‘fear’…or at least my kid wasn’t. He’ll pull himself up on you, then turn around and let go in an effort to walk away. Sheesh kid. You could CRAWL over there ya know.
We are also exploring the world of food. So far he seems to like most anything I put in front of him, but does have a few favorites like yogurt & applesauce. He also loves his puffs. He likes to chew, which means I probably should be giving him something else to practice ‘eating’ with but I’ll be honest, I’m not ready yet. I have this feeling that I am going to spend the rest of my life being ‘not ready’ for his next steps.
The most recent development caught me really off guard but is also my favorite. Tantrums. Yup, some where a long the way Connor has figured out that there are things he likes and doesn’t like and, through tears and kicking his feet, he can voice his opinion. It usually doesn’t change anything, I am still not going to let him eat my phone and yes he does have to have the tray on his high chair when he eats, but watching this display of will is actually really amazing. When did this kid get an opinion!?!
All in all, life is good. I like the groove we have gotten into as a family and even though every day is a challenge, its a challenge for all the right reasons and in all the right ways. I don’t know what my next post will be on, the role of mommy (aka wonder woman) or something else that strikes my fancy. But for now, here is your update. And nap time is over so…..