Bless you.

Quick post from the road: 

Rob is home for the weekend so that we could venture to Chicago for a friend's wedding.  We were approaching Indiana when we stopped for lunch and a bathroom break.  I had my turn, then Rob went in to get the food while I put Ethan back in his car seat.  He started to spit up, that really nasty chunky cottage cheese type of spit up, so I reached across his car seat for his duffle bag to grab a burp cloth.  Seemed simple enough.  So there we are, me reaching and searching over top of him and we are basically face to face.  All of the sudden, he sneezes.  Now, my child can't just sneeze once -- he sneezes three times in a row.  You wanna know where that cottage cheese puke from his face ended up? That's right.  All over me, my face, my mouth.

Enjoy that for your weekend.

I got something in my eye...

Alright, those who know me know that I mostly use cloth diapers on my son.  And they ROCK.  I love, love, love them.  Even experiences like the one I'm about to tell you about wouldn't make me love my cloth diapers any less.  

Now those of you who haven't seen a cloth diaper since 1934 are probably wondering why the heck I use cloth diapers, and where I might have been since disposable diapers were invented back in 1940.  Well for your information, cloth diapers are pretty much exactly like disposables these days except you can throw them in the washing machine and re-use them.  They even have velcro!  Now you're probably thinking, "OMG you put POOP in your washing machine???".  No, not really.  They have these handy little diaper sprayers and you hold your nose and carry the dirty diaper into the bathroom and spray it off into the toilet and flush.  That's where that kind of stuff goes, ya know.  

poop spraying thing-a-ma-bob

So there I am, spraying shit that could not have possibly come from this little tiny baby into the toilet, using great care to not splash anything out.  I stop spraying for a moment to get a better grip on the diaper, and resume spraying.  Except while flipping the diaper around, I was also subconsciously flipping the sprayer around.  Anyone who has USED one of these sprayers knows that they have quite a kick! I'm guessing you see where this is going, and you're probably right.  It was like a power washer of toilet water straight to my face.  It blasted the shower curtain, which bounced the toilet water off and onto my shoulders and back because THANK GOD our shower curtain is water-repellent - can't have that thing getting wet of course! 

The silver lining in this, and I know fellow moms can relate, is that it was only like 3:30 in the afternoon and I still hadn't showered so at least a coveted shower hadn't gone to waste! 

I will NEVER

Before having a baby (heck, before even getting pregnant!) there was a long list of things I would NEVER do.  And damn all of you awful mothers who do these things!  This is just a short list:

1) I will NEVER have an induction unless I'm 42+ weeks late and/or there is a legit medical reason

• LOL.  I ended up requesting an induction at 40 weeks and 3 days, simply because Rob was scheduled to leave for Army training just a week away and I wanted him there.  Shit happens.

2) I will NEVER get an epidural or a c-section

• I never actually said I would never get an epidural, but I did strongly want to avoid one at all costs and I truly believed I could labor and delivery without one.  I like to still believe that I was right; I did make it to the pushing stage with no pain meds (after laboring for TWO DAYS on the maximum dosage of pitocin) and then the epidural I did get only worked for 45 minutes and I pushed for 4 hours.  But holy crap contractions hurt! Why doesn't anyone tell you that! (Oh yeah, they DO tell you that...).  Want to try and labor without one? Want an epidural? Go for it.  Those 45 minutes that mine worked for were pure glory.  Oh, and then I had an emergency c-section.  

Pre-Pitocin, still holding on to my hippy "I can do this!" ideas

And...a little later.  Maybe 5 hours in? 35ish more to go...

3) I will NEVER give my baby formula.  Breast is Best!

• I actually did alright on this one.  However, Ethan was born with a tongue tie and wasn't able to latch correctly.  So for the first week (until we could get the tongue tie taken care of), I pumped while we fed him with a syringe and supplemented with formula.  And low and behold, it didn't kill him! And all that time everyone was leading me to believe that formula was poison...We did get back to exclusively breastfeeding, which I continued for 6 weeks.  It was hard.  REALLY hard, and I would even say at times it was more painful/difficult than contractions on the max dose of pitocin.  At 6 weeks I started pumping and giving him a bottle a day.  And then some of those bottles turned into bottles of formula.  For a long time, we were really happy with doing a bottle of formula a day! Around 3 months, Ethan got really sick and started losing weight even after he was all better so he now gets around 3 bottles of formula a day and I nurse him for the rest of his feedings.  And I like it that way! As long as you're feeding your kid age-appropriate foods, go you!

4) I will NEVER let my baby "cry it out"

• For the most part, I still feel that way.  But there have been times where it was either stick him in the crib for a few minutes or run myself into traffic.  I always choose the less messy option.  And when he decided at 3 months that he no longer wanted me to rock him to sleep and started kicking and screaming at me instead, but preferred me to just lay him in his crib and let him cry for a minute then suck his thumb and then fall asleep, I was okay with that.  If he ends up killing me in my sleep 15 years from now, go ahead and blame it on that if you'd like because I honestly don't believe I'm doing him any harm.

5) I will NEVER feed my baby solids before 6 months

• Tell that to Ethan when he started trying to grab my cheeseburgers out of my hand at 3.5 months old.  In all seriousness, I know that isn't a "ready" sign.  But he did show the actual signs of being biologically ready, and coupled with his recent weight struggle and the advice of his pediatrician, we introduced veggie/fruit purees at 4 months old.  And he did awesome, and loves them.  So there.

mmmm, solid food.

What were some things you said you would NEVER do, but changed once your little bundle of joy/pain/noise/happiness arrived?

There Go My Plans

I have always been a planner.  I have always had a timeline and order of how I wanted to do things, for anything in life.  And my timelines have ALWAYS worked out just like I planned.  When I feel like a plan is starting to change, I feel an immediate need for a couple Tylenol and a bottle (or two) of cheap gas station champagne.

Then my husband and I got this (what seemed to be an) awesome idea to have a baby.  We had talked about it for awhile, decided when the right time would be, and then we went for it.  Well, just shy of a year that felt like 10 years later, I was finally pregnant.   Cue plans of pleasant doctor appointments, celebrating with my friends and family, shopping for cute baby clothes and items, shopping for and wearing cute maternity clothes (did you know they don't make them so frumpy anymore? I would prefer maternity clothes over regular people clothes any day!), growing a perfectly round belly, and all of the other exciting and happy things that come along with being pregnant with your first child.

And then once I hit 5 weeks pregnant, it was like I got hit with an Amtrak.  I remember stuffing my drawer at work full of Jolly Ranchers and saltines and peppermints and lemon candies, Gatorade, ginger ale, ginger supplements.  "So this is morning sickness," I thought.  I made it through one more week of work, and then I was cooped up in the hospital with IV's in my many collapsed veins, on a constant 24/7 flow of medication cocktails, suffering from Severe Hyperemesis Gravidarum.  Only 3 days the first time, 7 days the second time, then 2 additional times during my third trimester.  I was on a liquid diet for longer than anyone should be on a liquid diet.  Vomiting on average 15 times a day, I lost 17% of my entire body weight within 1.5 weeks.  Not cool, bro.  At 3 months, I was able to get out of bed and continue on PAST the toilet for pretty much the first time.  Before that point, I don't remember a whole lot.  I have vague memories of my husband washing my hair over the side of the bathtub every week or two because I couldn't shower, being so sick of watching re-runs on HGTV, wanting to hurl furniture at my dogs because they were taking full advantage of my inability to discipline them.  But that day that I finally got out of bed was like I was born again! I threw on some clothes, put my hair up in a puke-scented messy bun and we went and sat outside where our friends were having a cook out.  I even ate a cheeseburger! I regretted it for hours afterwards but that was the best cheeseburger of my life! We even commemorated the experience with a photograph.  Of course, I had planned on taking a photo every week from Day 1 so by the end of pregnancy I could see the entire transformation, but that didn't happen.  

Day of the Cheeseburger (20lbs below pre-pregnancy weight)

My plans for my pregnancy changed pretty early on, and it was a sign of things to come.  The Severe HG continued through my entire pregnancy, throwing up all the way until the very moment I delivered. We were living in SE Alabama while Rob was on military orders and we should have been there to deliver our son (we ended up having to move to Pennsylvania when I was 37 weeks pregnant).  After taking so many strong medications and no prenatal vitamins since I was 5 weeks, I wanted a natural childbirth.  I ended up over-due, induced, in a 40+ hour labor (with no pain meds until pushing time, and even then my epidural failed after about 45 minutes, I might add!), pushed for 4 hours, and then an emergency c-section resulting in the birth of the most beautiful, somehow healthy, baby boy.

So all of that has brought me here; with an almost 5 month old infant, many changed ways of thinking, and most importantly with the understanding that there might as well be NO planning when it comes to having a baby!