People Write Songs About Them

REGULAR underpants. You can run in these.

For some reason, I woke up around 4 am this morning and just could not get back to sleep, which meant, of course, that Ellie slept “late” until 7:30am. I was working in my office when I heard her door open and she glanced at me and kept on truckin’ her little self past me and all the way downstairs. I listened for a minute and then heard, “Mommy! MOMMMMAAAYY! I had an accident.” I went downstairs to find her standing in front of the potty, undies about mid-shin, in, NO KIDDING, 3 feet of pee. She just started sleeping without Pull-Ups a few weeks ago and this was her very first “accident” although I did ask her why the F she walked all the way downstairs to pee instead of using her bathroom. She is so lucky. She’s 3 and has her own bathroom. I don’t even have my own bathroom.

So I decided to head off this morning’s tantrum by suggesting we take a shower to get washed off and because she loves to take showers. I should point out that Ellie is quite the keen observer of all things that exist ever anywhere at all. She can be very complimentary, too, and I’ll take that wherever I can get it. A few weeks ago we were getting into the shower and she reached up, poked my chest and said, “I LOVE your big boobies.” HELLO. It’s been DAYS since I’ve heard that. “Well, thank you, baby, that’s very sweet.” And then, “um, Mommy? When I get 20 could I have big boobies, too?” Ask your father.

Once we’re actually IN the shower, Ellie grumpily asks me if I could please stop blocking the rain. Every 6 seconds. Because, apparently, my big fat grown-up ass hogs all the water. So basically I have about 2-3 minutes to fully complete my showering routine before Ellie decides I’m finished now (“Mommy, could you get out now?”) and continues with her shower. I stay in the bathroom with her the whole time and get dressed and ready while spending the next 30 minutes trying to convince her to get OUT of the shower. I am mostly not successful in this endeavor. Ellie started this morning’s shower off by purposely hitting my unclothed bottom with her forehead and saying “bonk bonk bonk” and then “butt butt butt” and then requested I do the same to her. Seriously. With my forehead. On her butt. Okay, yes, I did it.

After I was kicked out of the shower, I put on the standard bra and undies (and by that, I of course mean MATCHING ones, from, like, somewhere other than Target or Walmart) and am putting lotion on my face, when Ellie yells from the (clear glass) shower: “Mommy!” Yes, baby? “You have a wedge.” I turn around and look in the mirror. “Okay, thank you, baby.” A minute later: “Mommy! You still have a wedge!” So I explain: “They’re made this way on purpose, sweetie.” She considers that for a moment. “Oh. It looks twisted.” And that was it. I decided to assume “twisted” referred to my underpants and not my big fat grown-up ass.

 After a somewhat unrelated mini-tantrum, we’re in her room and she puts on her underpants, sticks her bottom out and turns her head to look at the back of her undies. “Mommy, I have on THESE kind of underpants. What kind are those called?” It’s not like it’s a bad word, so I say, “this kind is called a ‘thong’ and grown-ups wear them.” Which is when she walked behind me and plucked my thong like a violin string and started singing, “thongy thongy thongy.” Holy crap, you guys. My baby’s gonna be a songwriter!

There’s a ring of debris around Uranus.

I scratched my baby girl’s bottom last night. No. Not the cheek. Not the outerlying cheekal regions. Not even the innerlying cheekal regions. THE HOLE ITSELF. What can I say? I was bored.

Recently we’ve had ever-lengthening sessions of back scratching; she’s very demanding, awaking in an instant from almost-sleepage if I dare remove my nails from her back a second too soon. I’m pretty much willing to do anything possible to get her to go to or stay asleep, so I acquiesce. She’s been a terror the past few weeks so it’s like walking on screaming eggshells, but she was actually bearable at the doctor’s office yesterday and after her new antihistamine, kind of ready to go to sleep for once last night. Normally when I scratch her back, she’s all “datch my back. DATCH MY BACK, MAMA. datch my ba-a-ack.” Sometimes she’ll pop up, review which arm I’m using to datch and select: “use DAT one.” So I switch and use dat one. This can go on for an HOUR. Rarely she’ll ask Daddy to put her to sleep or back to sleep and he’s back in 5 minutes. HOW? “I just don’t scratch her back.” WTF?! How can you deny that angelpants? How are you not scared of her? “I just lie down on the floor next to her bed and she falls asleep.” WTF ever.

So yesterday afternoon she had a major poop IN THE POTTY LIKE A BIG GIRL and we made sure to extra clean the “area” while she was in the bath. The eczema’s always been a problem and the pediatrician recommends using only water. Usually we just wash her hair with organic baby shampoo that’s also infused with flecks of gold and the skin cells of angels apparently because it’s $9 a bottle, but after major poopage we go deep. As soon as she pops out of the bathtub her tiny hand goes straight into her butt crack. If I had a dollar for every time I yanked her hand out of her bottom and said “get your hand out of your bottom, please” I’d be napping right now. Given just about any circumstances, I’d choose napping. On the 11.7-ft walk to her bedroom, she scratches about 14 more times and fights, fights, fights putting on her diaper. Finally she leaps onto her tiny toddler bed onto her belly and pitifully wails at me: “datch my bobbum, Mama! datch!” Mama rushes to datch her bobbum, on the cheeks. “NOOOOOoooo, IN IT, IN MAH BOBBUM!” I venture further, hoping “in” vs. “exact target” will suffice. At this, she grabs my finger, pokes it IN IT and makes me datch.

They say it happens when you first lay eyes on your child or the way you feel when your baby gets sick for the first time. But I think it truly  happened last night. I am officially a Mommy.

Who knew southern Maryland doesn’t suck?

So we moved to southern Maryland in January for my husband’s new job as a contractor with the Navy. After all my bitching and moaning and whining about how I SO DID NOT want to move to Maryland (when he was still in the Navy and this base was a distant possibility), I have to admit that I love it up here. Really and truly love it. I would think it totally blew if I was single and wanted to get my drink on every weeknight since I’m pretty sure the local nightlife consists of the snack bar at Target or getting buzzed and teasing the area Amish-folk. The only crap thing I’ve noticed is that people aren’t very nice. Or pretty, but that’s another story. I guess being raised in the South where everyone chats and takes their time and customer service is expected and offered, I’m a little taken aback by the surliness of the clerks and cashiers and waitstaff around here. I’m considerate, I’m thoughtful, I’m a good tipper — why are you being so mean to me? Back in Atlanta or SC or FL, I would’ve demanded to see the manager or asked why I was being treated so rudely. Here I’m just happy when they don’t full-on glare at me and with my tendency to befriend the human strays of the world, I overcompensate with smiles and thanks. I think from now on I’ll tell them all they can suck it (tm Kathy Griffin).

Neighbor kids taunting my kid on the beautiful new deck.

OH, my point was that I love it up here, and the main reasons are the weather and Stuff To Do. In Pensacola it was so MF hot every single day that I didn’t even want to take the Bean outside because we’d both be covered in a film of sweat by the time we got to the car 6 feet away. Just another of my pleasant, endearing characteristics I passed along to my offspring. So it’s June, almost July, and holy CRAP, it’s still getting into the 60s at night! Are you kidding me? How freakin awesome is that? And my handyman husband just built us an AMAZING deck and we can actually enjoy it all year round because it’s not a furnace out there! and my child won’t boil in 38 seconds just from standing outside! We live in a really big neighborhood with tons of trees, a pool, walking paths and recreation fields and in our cul-de-sac alone there are about 15 kids under the age of 10. Bean loves to run around and be chased by the older kids and also likes to travel the cul-de-sac and pilfer any ball she can get her tiny chubster hands on. (Hey, PROVE it’s not our ball, kid! Yeah, send your mom over!) Plus, we’re still like 10 minutes from a few different beaches and water sources, plus within an hour or so of all sorts of museums and zoos and aquariums. Did everybody already know that the reason you have kids is To Find Them Stuff To Occupy Them Until It’s Bedtime Again? That’s the key to the universe.

Did hell freeze over yet?

Should NOT have had those last 10 chicken wings.

So the girl who cleans my house is pregnant. YES, I pay someone weekly to clean my house. To me, it’s worth it not to have to worry about the gremlin-sized clumps of cat hair peppering the floor and covering every household surface. We hired her when I was about 4 months pregnant and had a hard time standing up for longer than a few minutes and I also consider it an investment in my marriage — I ain’t cleanin and we get pissy with each other when it’s messy, so it goes a long way toward ensuring domestic bliss. She does the dishes and EVERYTHING! But now that she’s pregnant, I can’t watch her clean without feeling guilty as crap, so I usually go grocery shopping while she’s here. But I digress…

So she’s pregnant and young and she and her husband already have a “spirited” almost 3-year-old boy and they were NOT planning this one. She was upset last week when she told me, worried she’d have another boy when she doesn’t feel she has a handle on the one she has. No insurance, etc. So when she told me today she was having a girl, I was SO excited for her. I have a serious issue with throwing things out, especially if they’re in perfectly fine or better condition, so I love, love, love it when I can give something to someone who can really use it and really appreciate it. And I so seriously overbought for the Bean when I was pregnant, so our house looks like Babies R Us. As it stands now, we are NOT planning on having another one. I know she’s only 7 months old, but with such a crap pregnancy and labor/delivery, it’s not even something I can consider right now — I mean, she’s still getting up twice a night! My point is, and I do have one, that for a very brief nanosecond, I thought to myself “should I keep these clothes just in case we have another girl?” BOOM! There it was! Out of nowhere — and then I just told myself I was being my frugal (cheapskate) self and handed over the goods. Oh, wait — HERE is my point: for posterity and in order to correctly reflect on the crapfest that was my pregnancy/labor/delivery/postpartum depression, I have decided to create a timeline of the events that led up to the birth of the cutest baby girl in all the world.

• May 19 – 22, 2005: Attempts to get pregnant (awwwww, yeeah!), get off anti-depressant (more on that later)
• Weeks 1 to 3 – sore boobs. REALLY SORE boobs.
• Weeks 1 to 40 – stuffy nose. REALLY stuffy nose. Can’t breathe. Lotsa snot. Go through large box of Puffs Plus with Lotion per week. Called Rhinitis of Pregnancy. It BLOWS. heh heh.
• Weeks 7 – 11 - uncontrolled vomiting. Diagnosed as hyperemesis gravidarum, a specific type of morning sickness affecting 1 out of 1000 pregnant women (because I’m special).
• Weeks 9 – 29 – headache. That’s it. One headache that lasted 20 weeks. I took the max dose of Tylenol every single day (8 extra strength)
• Weeks 13 – 40 – joint and muscle pain that got exceedingly worse by the week. Could barely walk by week 33 and at other random times throughout pregnancy. Was told this is due to Relaxin hormone. aka “F Your Shit Up” hormone.
• Weeks 19 – 40 – undiagnosed high blood pressure/extremely elevated heartrate issues (not diagnosed until week 36, more on that later). Had to be rescued twice from hair salon by extremely worried and patient husband because of near-fainting. Mama got to look good.
• Weeks 13 – 40 – random external tearing “down there” and subsequent bleeding and scares. For no damn reason!
• Weeks 15 – 40 – intense heartburn. Who cares if you can eat whatever you want when you don’t stinkin want anything?
• Week 39 – finally convince crapola Navy Hospital to induce me to spare me the debilitating heart and blood pressure issues. We go in at 6 pm on a Tuesday, smack some Cervadil on my cervix and labor begins. Pain so awful by 4 am that they give me Fentanol that makes me so woozy and spacy that I feel drunk. Epidural at 9 am that stops working even though I’m told I just have a low tolerance for pain. Still only dilated 3 cm. Midwife sticks an internal monitor on the baby’s head and another to measure my contractions. “OH, wow, you ARE in some pain, huh?” Still only 5 cm at 4 pm and epidural STILL not working. Contractions every couple of minutes. Starting at 5 pm, midwife lobbies surgeon for c-section (of which I am terrified. TERRIFIED) and contractions every 60 – 90 seconds. No epidural. After my temp spikes to 101 and so does the baby’s (and her heartrate is up to 220) and STILL NO MF EPIDURAL, they start agreeing to a c-section. Which doesn’t happen until 12:35 am in the MF morning! After a brief panic attack while my privates are being groomed for surgery, and STILL with contractions lasting 60 seconds one right after the other, I’m rolled into the OR, where the anesthetician dude gives me 4 TIMES the normal amount of drugs and then tells the surgeon to stick the incision site with extra lidocaine “just in case.” I’m still having contractions, still trying to do the breathing and vaguely aware of my husband somewhere behind my strapped-down arms. Even though I cringe and gag at the thought of being sliced open while awake, I know this is best for the baby and am trying to remain calm and not vomit on myself when I feel the “pressure” on my stomach. All of a sudden my pelvic region is pierced — WRENCHED — with stabbing, burning pain. I scream “I can feel it! I can feel it!” to which the surgeon answers “where?” and I yell “on my pubic bone! oh, my God!” and then confusion and then the next thing I know, I hear my husband say “I’m going to check on the baby.” Apparently, I’d already been given the max dose of drugs and the dude gave me an amnesiac (after asking my husband) that would knock me out for “at least an hour.” 20 minutes later is when I woke up and heard my husband say he was checking on the baby. Not only did I miss being there for the birth of my tiny little baby and hear her first cries, I woke up while they were STILL STITCHING ME UP. The hell that was the days that followed in the hospital and then the depression will have to come at a later time — my baby’s getting ready to be home with my baby!

I’m supposed to be working.

Describing the impact on my life of having a baby and learning to parent is not something I can even begin to encapsulate in just a few words. I guess the main purpose for this blog is to fulfill my need for a centralized, organized outlet for my jumbled thoughts, musings and rantings about being a mommy and a wife. Plus I talk too much and my husband is getting sooo sick of faking interest. And lately, not even faking interest. Just nodding in my general direction.

 ANYWAY, I had a pretty horrific pregnancy/labor/delivery/bout with postpartum depression, and talking to a counselor helped about as much as all those baby books helped prepare me for motherhood, so I hope to write some self-pitying, cathartic posts about that for the enjoyment of all. That is all. Ciao for niao.