Mom to the Screaming Masses

New Baby Day for Julie

My friend Julie is having her baby today.  She's having a boy after two girls. 

I remember specific things about the births of each of my kids. 

My first was born during a really awful storm.  I had him at a teaching hospital and I had hands in me that I'd never even met.  I had every intervention I could except a C-section.  Lots and lots of pain drugs.  The Hubster left in the middle of my labor to go to work and get his paycheck.  After this birth, I lost so much blood that I almost needed a transfusion. 

Baby #2 was my longest labor, 42 hours. It was also the one where my doula that I'd hired backed out on me, saying that she was too tired and thought I had hours to go.  (I'd called her when I was in so much agony I couldn't take it, and my daughter was born about 8 hours later.)  No drugs.  Hemorrhaging here as well.  Born at 4 in the morning.

Baby #3 was born 3 weeks early, induced for growth retardation.  No pain drugs.  Just the pitocin to go into labor.  Teeny tiny baby.  (Hemorrhaging here too....)  Born in the afternoon.

Baby #4 was born two weeks late, having to be helped out in a big way.  I was 36 weeks and 4 centimeters and hung out there until week 42.  I had my waters stripped three times, and finally got the pitocin at week 42 and he came out in 4 hours. (Here as well - sense a pattern?)  No pain drugs.  Born in the afternoon.  Posterior presentation.

Baby #5 was my best birth.  I started labor naturally, stayed home in the tub, and had my best friend at the time go with me as a doula.  She was awesome and I had a new midwife, who rocked my world.  I felt like it was a very empowering time for me.  Bled out again, used a different medicine and the results were amazing.  Didn't spend the next three months in need of iron supplements and naps.  No pain drugs.  Born right before midnight.  Posterior presentation, stuck there for a while, but I went hands and knees and my midwife rotated her.  She came out on the very next push when I was hanging half off the table, in the middle of flipping over to my back.   My midwife helped me take a shower, actually washing me when I was too weak to do so, which I still think was the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for me.  The Hubster went out and got fast food for all of us, including the midwife, at about 12:30.

Baby #6 came quickly on the heels of #5 and I was induced because I had a horrific case of bronchitis and a sinus infection.  Pitocin with no pain meds.  Yet another case of bleeding, but this time the midwife from the previous birth used a different, untried med, and the bleeding was minimal.  Born at lunch time.The nurses saved me a lunch tray, and I don't think a cheeseburger EVER tasted as good as that one did.

I've had six babies and each of them was different.  If you have had babies, what do you remember?  If you haven't, do you remember something striking about the birth of a sibling/friend/neighbor?

I wish the very best for Julie!  I'm so excited for her and her family!

Complete is such an awesome word

Vastly overrated, yes.  But awesome nonetheless.

For today, I have crossed the following off my list:

• 2007 taxes  - completed and ready to be filed tomorrow
• financial aid packet - still needs to be delivered to Fed Ex in the a.m.  BUT DONE!
• 5 reenrollment/parent volunteer/various other classifications of the packets filled out and turned in
• New application for Riley - two pages, plus birth and baptism certificates, social security card, shot record and physical forms - all that is missing is a letter for an IEP, which I'll get in two weeks
• checkbook balanced - I do this every two days, but I've missed a session or three in the past week
• laundry caught up
• garbage bagged up and taken out
• five bags ready to deliver to the thrift store
• van emptied out of cups/food/wrappers/spare socks/cleats/water bottles/important papers
• missing progress report located - among the tax papers

Tomorrow my preschooler has Hibernation Day - they are to attend school in their pajamas with a sleeping bag and pillow, prepared to watch movies and eat snacks all day. I'm in LOVE with this idea.  I badly want to have a Hibernation Day!

So I was pondering something while at work.  You know how women make faces when they apply mascara - opening their mouths and lifting their chins, with eyes half closed?  (Shut up, I know I'm not the only one!)  I noticed one of my co workers today doing the same thing I do while pouring water - holding her hand out to the side.  I have ZERO idea why I do this - although I think it may have something to do with a saying of my dad's.  I never EVER understood it, but he'd say, "Pour it like you mean it."  Like I mean it?  I almost always miss whatever I'm pouring into, I must mean to make a mess. 

Do you make any kind of unconscious compensation like those listed above?  (I know, how would you know if it was unconscious?)  Humor me.  I can't pour with my hand down and I can't put on mascara with my chin down - I've tried. 

Things I just DO NOT understand

• How perfume can smell so great in a bottle and give me the worst headache
• How ribs can taste sooo good and be so bad for you - The Hubster's birthday dinner
• How my husband can be 53 years old today - this is not possible - the man looks my age (38, in case you need a refresher)
• How much time and energy it is taking me to do the taxes
• and the financial aid paperwork, which must be filed by Feb 1
• which is in 2 days - what happened to January?
• How I managed to breathe today after my daughter dumped my huge cup of iced coffee all over the interior of my van
• How easy it was to eat Ice Cream Cake for breakfast
• Why I have another headache - possible relation to the taxes listed above?
• How much paperwork I have to fill out for next year's schooling - I'm petrified that I'm going to lose something vital
• How much money I am spending on groceries lately
• where is all the gray in my hair coming from?
• grumpy people
• people with attitude
• fake people
• how I can be proud of my son for standing up for something that he believes in, something that needs to be fixed, and still be so annoyed with him
• did I mention the taxes, and the paperwork?  And the birthday?  Can't swing a cat around here without hitting a birthday....

To Sleep, maybe, possibly, sort of

I think that the commenters who said that my inability to sleep had to do with stress were spot on.  Seriously.  I was IN bed at 8 Friday night - sorry, but my son skipped Scouts - he was consoled with a late (to him) watching of Disney Channel's Minutemen.  I took some Tylenol PM, much to my oldest's chagrin (are you using DRUGS, mom?) and was asleep by 8:15. My daughter came in to watch What Not To Wear, and I never even knew it.  I felt somewhat better this weekend, but I can still feel that a nap would be AWESOME.  I'm hopeful that this week will be a bit easier on me.  When I don't have the energy to go running, you know it's a sucky time for me.

What I really wanted to talk about was my kids and sleep.  I read a post over at Arwen's, in which she asked if anyone had a baby that wasn't sleeping through the night by age 15 or so months.  Me, me, me, I shouted at the screen, pulling a Horshack and waving frantically.  None of my kids ever slept.  In fact, it was like clockwork for us - babe would sleep really badly until the age of two, we'd take naps away thinking that'd make the nights go a bit better, I'd fall pregnant, and babe would begin to sleep through the night.  Just in time for me to be unable to sleep due to pregnancy, at a time when I was clearly in NEED of that midday nap.  It was a long, cruel dozen years.  I slept with all my kids, a fact which friends said made the kids want to stay awake, but they slept even worse away from me.

When Riley was diagnosed, one of the areas of concern for us was her sleep.  Or her lack of sleep.  She'd sleep an hour or two at a time, and wake howling.  I'd spend 45 minutes calming her down, only to repeat the scenario multiple times during the night.  She NEVER slept, never napped. We tried all kinds of stuff - lavender, a white noise machine, melatonin, calcium supplements, rescue remedy, warmed flannel sheets, a special blanket, bundling her.  Nothing really helped.  Once we began therapy, I had hopes that she'd sleep, but it was a long 6 months before she did. 

But one night, she slept through the night.  I didn't.  She was three years old.  I woke several times in a panic, thinking I'd heard her. She slept six entire hours.  She still doesn't sleep a lot.  She'll come get in with me around 4 in the morning and futz around, wanting to hold my hand and stroke my hair.  She just doesn't seem to need sleep.She'll do well in the military, I think.

The older ones, though, the ones who I was told would NEVER sleep by themselves because I'd ruined them by cosleeping and not making them learn to sleep - those kids will sleep 12 or more hours at a stretch.  I only wish I could sleep that long!

My mom swears that I took a nap until kindergarten and my sister slept for 12 hours at a time as an infant.  I must have gotten the defective non sleeping kids.  What about you and yours? 

How well would your spouse do?

I know that you have probably seen this before, but it struck a chord with me today.  I know that my husband would do fairly well, but he'd struggle a good deal.  In fact, when I leave the kids with him and go away - for example, to Blogher - he's so cranky when I return.  He appreciates me more (for about a week, but hey...)  The rule of NO FAST  FOOD would be the ultimate test for him.

Please note: this is all in jest.  Do not email me telling me how stupendously your spouse - or you, if you are a guy, would do.  It's a JOKE.

THE NEXT SURVIVOR SERIES

        Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids
each for six weeks.  Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance
classes.

        There is no fast food.

        Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house
clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook,
do laundry, and pay a list of "pretend" bills with not enough money.

        In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries
each week.

        Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and
relatives, and send cards out on time.

        Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a
dentist appointment and a haircut appointment.

        He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to
the Urgent Care.

        He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.

        Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned
house, planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

        The men will only have access to television when the kids are
asleep and all chores are done.

        The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself
with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails
polished and eyebrows groomed.

        During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe
abdominal cramps, back aches, and have  extreme, unexplained mood swings
but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

        They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time
at; least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

        They will need to read a book and then pray with the children
each night and in the morning, feed them, dress  them, brush their
teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

        A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each
father will be required to know all of the following information: each
child's birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. 

        Also the child's weight at birth, length, time of birth, and
length of labor, each child's favorite color, middle name,
favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest
fear and what they want to be when  they grow up.

        The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last
man wins only if...he still has enough energy to be intimate with
his spouse at a moment's notice.

        If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and
over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right
to be called Mother!

Gah

The hardest thing about working so much with so many kids is the reality that I can never get it all done.  I know lots of people who work full time, lots of people who work part time, lots of people with kids, and a few with a lot of kids.  But, at the risk of making this all about "poor, poor me", holy crap am I tired of trying to get it all done and be all for everyone.  I'm not kidding when I say that the to do list is longer than my arm. NOT that I'm saying that ANY of you don't have it hard - we all do.  Life is stressy for all of us.  I just feel like I'm in a pressure cooker of (somewhat) my own making right now. 

Seriously, it made me deliriously happy when I came home from work today - actually, a trip to the doctor right after work for one kid meant that I wasn't home until after 5 - and I saw that The Hubster had cleaned the kitchen.  The rest of the house was totally trashed, papers and toys and coats and hats strewn all around, but the kitchen was CLEAN.  Have you ever looked around at everything that needed to be done and wanted to sit down and either a) cry or b) go to sleep for an entire day?  I was on the elliptical this morning at 5:30 and my trainer said, "What is wrong with you?  I've never seen you dragging like this!" 

Yup, it's so not pretty to be me right now. 

Let's see - my one kid has a field trip tomorrow and the field trip shirt is GONE.  I know it was there and it's just vanished.  My book proposal languishes on my desktop, I have to do taxes by the end of the month to apply for financial aid, I'm back to buying groceries piecemeal and too frequently, and as a result spending way too much money.  Laundry is clean but not folded and sleeps on the sofa.  My feet are scaly and the toenails are in SERIOUS need of polish remover.  I have GREAT gray coming in right down the middle of my head and no time to color it.  I haven't slept in four nights - no special reason, but I keep waking up over 10 times a night.  I filled up the gas tank in my jeep, and the 15 gallon tank took 14.97 gallons - talk about waiting until the last minute.This weekend includes a science fair project, another project, helping my son study, soccer games, dinner out at church (yay!), and about 72 other piddly things.

Stress.  It'll get me every time.  What's stressing you out?

___________________

New post up at Zwaggle - come on over and give me some love!

Body Image and 3 things

Reading over at Chantal's place, I was saddened and at the same time heartened to read of her struggles with body image.  Saddened because she's really struggled, and heartened because I have felt the same way.  Body image is a hard, sad thing.  I hate how women struggle with their bodies, how much weight plays into the way we feel about ourselves, how our hair can make or break a day, how we feel that we are "bad" people if we eat an extra piece of bread.

She writes: 

Having said all this, when you get right down to it, I just have to get back to the place I was before. Yes, there are scars from four pregnancies with four above-average to monstrously sized children. Yes, I have natural curves and will never be stick-thin. Yes, I have an ass and yes, I have boobs. I like both of them.

I was wondering how to make myself feel better, and besides continuing on this same course, the only thing I can do is to be honest. To spell it out for anyone who will listen.

Other than the fact that I have had six normal size kids and no scars from their births, I can pretty much say I agree 1000% with this. 

I am 5 feet 6 inches tall.  This morning, I weighed 131 pounds.  I have dark brown hair, very thick and wavy - a fact that I try to blow out just about every morning.  I have big, green eyes with dark eyelashes.  I have very muscular legs and I'm slowly building my arms.  One day, I'll have really great arms.  My body successfully carried and nursed six children.  I have been happy with the fact that I lost 80 pounds.  Even though I have gained back 2.  (Hey, I didn't say I was thrilled...)

Like Chantal writes, these are the things I like.  There are lots of other things I don't like - the girls don't stay where they belong (sorry, guys, a little TMI), I still feel like I'm heavier than I'd like, I'm not thrilled with my hair, I have stretch marks and my eyelids are starting to droop a bit, unless I walk around with a permanent state of amazement and lifted eyebrows.  I'm going to try to stop thinking about those things, and focus on the things that I like.  Why do we always focus on the negative? We all need to eliminate the negative thinking and think POSITIVE.

SO, your turn. I want each of you to tell me three things - or more, if you want - that you really like about your body.

And DON'T make me feel like I did a bad thing, being so honest.

Bullet Points of Randomness

Tomorrow:  officially The Most Depressing Day of the Year.  How will you celebrate?

Feeling:  Very tired - 45 minutes with the trainer plus 30 minutes interval training on the elliptical

Happy Because:  Lunch out with friends.  Also, hello, Mexican Hot Chocolate?

Today I:  Went shopping for other people in my family and bought nothing for myself.  Was surprisingly calm about it.

Laundry:  As up to date as it can be, meaning there is a load in the washer ready to go before I go to bed

Something I know:  Dinner for the next three nights

Currently reading: The Jane Austen Book Club - can't get over the fact that one of the main characters has the same name as one of my daughters.  Not really enjoying the book.

Wanting:  A beautiful black dress to wear to Vegas on a work trip in April with The Hubster

Favorite gadget:  my iPod

Thankful that:  the school year is at least half over

Wondering why:  no one in my house can hang up a coat, put away a pair of shoes, stick hats and gloves in the cubbies.

Care to fill in any of these with your own answers?

The Results of the Great Snow Storm of '08

There was a storm coming.  A HUGE, massive storm, forecast to give us up to - and possibly beyond - 8 inches of snow.

Remember the scene at the tail end of The Wizard of Oz, where it is discovered that the Great and Powerful Oz is not all that, but a big fraud?  Yeah, I can relate.

Behold, the snow.

The smallest snowman ever. 

And so the Countdown Begins

I live in an area that gets very little snow.  I remember as a kid having one huge snowstorm that dumped over a foot of snow.  One time.  We may get a dusting every year or so, a measurable amount every five years.  Most often, any snow forecasted turns to rain.

If there is snow in the forecast, it becomes a NEWS EVENT.  Programs are interrupted for "special news bulletins".  Meteorologists work overtime, loosening their ties and rolling up their sleeves as a sign of their fatigue.  Grocery stores empty of bread, toilet paper and bottled water - if we lose power, at least we can still poop.  Batteries, snow shovels, and sleds fly off the shelves.  Salt?  Forget it - it's long gone.

I'm watching the news right now, and the first two stories have been about the upcoming "WINTER STORM".  All State troopers are all call for the weekend.  We are cautioned to keep a snow shovel in the car, in case we are snowed in.  I can just see me shoveling out my 15 passenger van.  The snow would be melted by then. 

How much do you think we are forecast to get tomorrow night?  3-8 inches.  In New York, it's a laughable amount.  Here, it's a sign of the apocalypse.  I'm not holding my breath - ever since I was a child, I've been disappointed by wild and crazy forecasts, only to have the snow turn to rain. 

But, just in case, we have SEVEN snow sleds in the attic.

Oh, and guess where my son is?  Camping outdoors for the weekend.