What the experts don't tell you about motherhood

1. Being pregnant is hard.
Hormones. We're talking serious influx of hormones here. There are extra levels of everything that makes women moody. Not only that, but there are certain hormones released that make your body do weird things. Like towards the 3rd trimester your joints will ache - especially in your pelvis. It's your body's way of loosening things so a baby can squeeze out. With all the hormones, pregnancy is hard not only on the pregnant, but for everyone nearby. Watch out baby daddies! Be prepared for some serious PMS-type emotions and crankiness because everything hurts.
There is the "morning sickness" that people don't tell you can last an entire pregnancy or can hit at the most inopportune moments. It can be general nausea or it can be wretching your guts out. Add to that the heartburn and what you eat during pregnancy can become difficult. You could be one of those women who can eat nothing but one particular brand of breakfast cereal - for the entire pregnancy. It could be that favorite foods can no longer be stomached. For some (lots?) the smell of cooking meat is especially disgusting. Or maybe you do have real cravings. I have to keep a jar of green olives in the fridge just in case. And I'm susceptible to suggestion. Like if someone mentions peanut butter and jelly, I have to immediately stock my cupboards with the supplies and I'll eat them for a week or two straight.
Then there's the exhaustion. Your body is producing serious miracles of growth and it takes every ounce of energy to make them happen. You've got a parasite sucking out your nutrients (seriously, that's why you HAVE to take a multi-vitamin during pregnancy) and making you desire (no, NEED) extra sleep. Every pregnant woman I've known has needed to take naps toward the end of pregnancy. There's just no way to get all the sleep you need at night. Especially if you have other kids.
Last but not least, pregnancy can be downright painful. I'm not talking about labor and delivery. I'm talking about the pregnancy itself. Think about it. At the end, you've got a watermelon-sized thing attached to your front that can wreak serious havoc on your back. The gravity and sheer size of your parasite and its housing require that you sit differently, stand differently, walk differently, and even sleep differently. And it's not like it's something you can get used to. This thing is moving and growing constantly. Babies instinctively want to stretch out and test boundaries. I had a midwife tell me that her 5th baby kicked and punched so much that it destroyed her appendix and she had to have an emergency appendectomy during the pregnancy. I've known women who claimed to have baby feet lodged under their ribs almost to their armpit. My babies seem to take pleasure in pushing a certain balloon-type organ that needs to be emptied regularly. And don't forget the joints. Not just the pelvis loosens during pregnancy. The hormone that loosens the ligaments of the pelvis works everywhere. All joints loosen up. Thus falling as a pregnant lady is too common. Be careful.

2. Being a parent is hard. Motherhood is spectacularly interesting and boring at the same time. It's exhausting of mind and body. It's hilarious. It's heartbreaking. It's scary and thrilling.
This winter my 3-year-old split his eyelid open on a piano bench he had moved into grandma's kitchen. Serious drugs and 8 stitches later, I brought him home all covered in blood and happy as a clam. A month or two later, my 15-month-old walked through the not-quite-dead ashes of a bonfire and got serious burns on her foot. My husband and I both cried as we held her down and the doctor pealed the dead skin off so the stuff underneath could heal. It took her almost a week to be able to walk again, but now just 3 months later you can barely see the pink discoloration on her foot.
Last night my 8-year-old niece took my kid to the playground near our picnic so he could play on the slides. Hannah monkeyed around herself, but fell from the top-side of the one of the big winding slides - breaking her arm. I felt guilty in my relief that it wasn't my kid this time around.
Every morning my little girl goes to her big brother's room to wake him up so he will play with her. The glee in her voice when she sees him and tries to wake him up just makes me want to squeeze her, but she only has eyes for him. He tenderly takes her hand to walk down the too-narrow hallway or to walk to the car from the grocery store, loving to help out in keeping her safe.
My little boy tries so hard to be a good boy. To be big and helpful and strong. When he got in trouble for whining too much last night (wanted to stay at the park all night) and he cried and cried and got sent to bed without his popsicle, he tried to convince us that he should be able to stay up. This tender little boy, only 3 1/2 years old, valiantly choked back the tears and told us he was done. I believed him, and my resolve to be consistent with his punishment made me want to cry too.

These little monsters, that can mess up a room way more quickly than I can keep it clean... these huge personalities stuffed in tiny bodies... they make me laugh and cry, bring me sorrow and joy, hope and despair.
Parenthood is absolutely nothing like what I expected, but it really is everything I hoped. Better in so many ways. It is by far the most heartbreaking and rewarding thing I have ever had the privilege of experiencing.

Bragging

I'm pretty sure I got the cutest kids ever. They're well-behaved most of the time even, but really they're just so freaking cute that they astound me on a very regular basis. This photo courtesy of nephew Ethan, who is as enamored with my kids' eyes as I am. :)

Felix is totally potty trained, although he will sometimes wait just a little too long to go and then get stuck with his pants and have an accident. At church one day he peed all over his new tie because it was a little bit too long. He does still pee at night, although most of the time he wakes up to go (some day he'll be able to get up by himself and go by himself, but for now he needs help).

Neither Felix nor Amelia sleeps very much. That is a constant source of frustration for me, but they're mostly very healthy so I don't actually worry. I'd just like more sleep myself.

Both kids are little meat eaters. They adore eggs and hotdog-type foods. Felix totally got into a steak on Sunday. Amelia loves jerky. Thankfully, they also both really like vegetables.

Felix has really gotten into role play lately and will jump around and say he's a rabbit. Or he'll crawl around meowing and saying he's a cat. He also likes to growl.

Just now he said he wanted to go upstairs and when I said he could go in a little bit he said, "But I want to go upstairs a whole bunch!"

Felix especially loves his grandpa and will spend every moment he can with him. When grandpa goes to work, Felix begs him to stay. Felix also loves his cousins. This morning he requested that Rachel come over to play with him, which will free me up and allow me to get some housework done.

Amelia has just a ton of little mannerisms that crack me up. She's so darn cute and I'm pretty sure she knows it. When she wants to be sad or angry she squints her eyes and gives a fake little cry. She always holds the back of her hair with one hand when she's drinking a bottle, which looks totally poised. She scrunches up her nose to grin. And she talks constantly. When she wants you to follow her, she'll half look behind the whole way to make sure you're still following, often running into walls and corners.

Amelia has a very strong opinion on many things and we're trying to break her of the "Mine!" habit.

More than anything, Amelia loves her big brother. She follows him around everywhere and if she can't find him she'll go looking, crying out, "WeWe! WeWe! WeWe!" For a while in the mornings she would come to me first, asking, "where's WeWe?"

Amelia is typically the first one to bed and the first one awake - usually by a couple of hours on each end. It's tough when my body wants to be asleep till at least 8 and she's wide awake at 6 and wanting to play.

She also dances. Like to everything. Give her any kind of tune and beat and she'll be wiggling all over the place. She LOVES music and dancing. Super cute.

And then there's water. I wish I had some pictures. The kids are both madly in love with any kind of water. This is bad sometimes because the kids don't ever want to leave. Or get out. Or stop playing in the sink. But it's a really easy/guaranteed way to entertain. I would really love to have a little wading pool for the kids to play in out back. And a trampoline. The kids both love those too.

All in all, my little monsters are about the cutest things ever. I'm actually kind of worried to have a third because I can't imagine another one could measure up in cuteness. Of course, that's a silly thought. It's like we've won the jackpot twice already. Odds are good little Oscar will be just as beautiful and lovable.

For now, however, I'm seriously enamored. Most of the time. They really can be monsters with a specialty in mayhem and destruction. But dang! they're cute! :)

Update - again

Okay, so we're having a boy. A little bundle of energy already. The kid is super active and I feel him a lot. I had a dream last night I could see his little hands pushing my skin out. Quite surreal.

Everything is going well with the pregnancy still. I do have quite a bit of back pain, and my sacro-illiac joint is totally on the fritz to where sometimes I have a really hard time standing or walking, but otherwise everything is on course. To hopefully prolong the pregnancy, I'm getting weekly progesterone shots from my sis Anne. When she first saw the needle she said, "Oh, that's the kind of needle the nurse uses when she's mad at the patient!" Apparently progesterone is really thick. She has to get the stuff out with one needle and then switch to the skinnier needle. Even so, the skinny needle isn't super pleasant. I did figure out yesterday that it hurts more to get the shot in the arm than it does to get it in the bum.

We're still going through plenty of sickness, but we're healthy enough. Amelia is quite the talker. She says a lot of words very clearly and she's using a tiny little bit of sign to augment. Her favorite is the sign for "all done" (kind of jazz hands) and she says it too: "ah none!" Super cute.

Felix and Amelia are finally sleeping in their own beds - at least mostly. Brent and I moved the big recliner into the kids' room so I could help them sleep there and so I could have a more private place to sleep. It works well enough, but I can't wait to be able to sleep in my own bed again. I'm sure it'll have to be in the fall when Brent is done sleeping with a fan (it just dries me out way too much to be comfortable).

Both kids wake up in the middle of the night a lot. Felix often does it because he's coughing and then he has to go to the bathroom. And that leads to the next milestone...

POTTY TRAINING!!!

I don't think I've said anything about this yet, but Felix is now potty trained. He does have occasional accidents, but he's more upset about them than I am. It did take a while to convince him to wear his underpants correctly. He wanted the big picture in the front so he could see it. :)

Night is a slightly different story. He will pee in his sleep so he's still wearing a diaper at night. But if he doesn't drink too much and you take him to the bathroom kind of late, it's very likely that he'll be dry in the morning. I've wondered if the tossing and turning about 3 am has more to do with going to the bathroom than with coughing, but I can't tell. Either way, he much prefers peeing in the toilet. Yippee!

The fun thing is that Amelia wants to pee in the toilet too. We haven't pushed it and she doesn't see much of a connection yet, but she sure likes to sit on that potty chair and try. I did get her to go once, but it was immediately after she woke up from a nap. She seemed surprised. heh

Yesterday at church Felix had to go to the bathroom so he went into the little nursery bathroom. Sadly, his brand new tie was a bit long and he peed all over it.

Amelia is also in the nursery now, but she's a bit different than Felix. She has turned into quite the mamma's girl and even if she gets distracted, she'll look around for me and have a fit if she doesn't see me. Brent is the only one who can calm her down (although her grandma and aunt Anne and a few girl cousins have had some luck). This week we had a relief society activity to make some craft things. Brent had a presentation at a friend's class so I took the kids with me since they had a nursery there. But the men who were helping in the nursery weren't successful in distracting her and she got super upset. I heard her screaming and got there just in time to get majorly thrown up on.

Yep, Amelia has turned into a puker like Felix.

Oh, we have also discovered that Amelia has lots of allergies. Looks like she's allergic to most nuts. She can do almonds without throwing up, but has fallen victim to peanuts/peanut butter, cashews, and even sunflower seeds. Felix has thrown up pecans and pistacchios as well. So it looks like only almonds - at least for a long time.

Sometimes I feel like my kids are missing out by not having peanut butter and jelly. :)

One last update - financial. So I got a garnishment on my checking account and they seized the whole thing. We're still trying to fight it, but Brent's brother John said we don't have a case against the lawyers. Sucky, eh? I still want it to go to court. We tried getting a loan to pay off everything and because the judgment had Brent's name too, it took a full 100 points off his credit score and now we don't qualify. Super sucky. Those lawyers essentially made it impossible for us to pay them back. Super idiots. Right now we're trying to file an official motion to get the case reheard so I can access my money again. And we figure our only options are to get a co-signer for our loan or to declare bankruptcy. Sucks either way. But that's where we are.

In other words, pregnancy is going well while we're taking precautions, Felix and Amelia are progressing and impressing, and financial woes stink. That's our spring, in a nutshell. :)

That's right, I'm amazing!

This comes from a favorite web comic called xkcd.

So, it's been really nice to stay at home these past couple of weeks. Mostly though, it's been kind of life-saving. What with Amelia's accident and all the other sickness (Felix has now been sick - fever and throwing up - for 3 1/2 days... this is the second time since I quit working), it would have absolutely destroyed us if I had to keep working during it all. As draining as it is to deal with all this, it really is nice to know that I'm really actually needed and appreciated. And not just during crisis.

This pregnancy has been quite different. For one thing, I've felt only the tiniest bits of nausea and heartburn. I've still eaten everything in sight and gained plenty of weight, but I blame part of that on just not following my eating plan I was doing last year. I was dumb to stop.

The biggest symptom I've had to deal with is just exhaustion. A lot of that is from the pregnancy directly, and almost all the rest is from pregnancy indirectly (I sleep worse when I'm pregnant). Mostly though, my clothes fit me differently especially around the middle. I don't know that I actually look pregnant yet. Definitely bigger though.

We do have names picked out, and as soon as the Medicaid kicks in we'll go get an ultrasound and see if baby #3 is an exhibitionist like the first 2 were. Feel free to make suggestions on names though. hahahahaha

Feelin' Groovy (relatively)

Amelia finally started walking again on Friday - one full week after the incident. She's doing great and her foot is starting to look human again. Dr. Freestone said it would still be a couple months before the skin on her foot isn't super tender and easy to tear. Poor kid won't be able to go barefoot till later in the summer. But she doesn't seem to mind all the bandage changing, and yesterday when I took her in the shower she didn't have any trouble with the temperature of the water (I did turn it to basically luke-warm, but it wasn't hard on her body or on her foot).

I feel like I'm finally coming out of this cold business. I'm not sure why nobody else in the family got it, but I'm extremely grateful that they didn't. It has been truly miserable. I can't imagine how tough it would have been if Amelia had been sick as well as injured.

So, the house is a complete wreck (and no, I'm not exaggerating with that description) and I have tons to do in the way of projects. Still working on the lawsuit stuff, as well as the medicaid stuff. I also have a couple of building projects and I will post pics if I ever get started.

On Friday I got together with my friends Michelle and Anne to brainstorm and write and it was extremely productive. I have great ideas and a definite direction. Now I just need to write it all out. This is the project I'm looking most forward to tackling.

We're good. Not perfect, but definitely good.

Update on Amelia - day 3 (caution - scary pics)

So, as requested, we took Amelia to the doc again this morning to change her bandages. Dr. Freestone said it's healing nicely with no sign of infection, but again, it was a difficult experience.

It was much easier than yesterday, but she still screamed. She can't put any kind of pressure on her foot and she won't keep the bandages on her hands. Still, healing well.

You can see Amelia's toes - they're essentially all giant blisters. The pics of the bottom of her foot - what's hanging off is the oily gauze they put over the top of the exposed under skin. First they put on some thick antibiotic ointment, then they cover it in this oily gauze (so it doesn't stick), then they cover it with regular gauze and then a stretchy sock-like thing. The bandage is pretty intense. We're going back on Thursday for another change of bandages.

"In some countries, she'd now be considered a man!"

So, I'm pregnant. Official due date is September 21. We have a boy name picked out and a girl name picked out, but we should be able to find out what we're having in the next few weeks. You're welcome to submit suggestions. :)

After the lawsuit* thing in January and the pregnancy thing right around the same time, life got a bit stressful. We did the calculations once I became eligible for insurance and we figured out that it would actually end up costing us for me to keep working. So last Thursday was my last day.

But the weekend before I got sick. Like really sick. I have no idea what's going on, but it's been over a week and I can still barely talk. I wake up every night coughing up a lung and if I go too long without coughing my throat closes up and I can barely breathe.

Thankfully, I'm the only one. Illnesses as a parent are actually easier to handle when it's just the parents. When it's the parents and the kids it's much worse.

Friday night we had a movie night with some friends. We invited lots but ended up enjoying the evening with Mike and Bethany and kids. It was incredibly pleasant. I really really really like them.

Saturday morning Felix didn't want to wake up. He was totally listless and mostly asleep all morning and if he did wake up he threw up. About noon we roused him again and he was thirsty. He wanted to get dressed and go out with grandma and grandpa in the yard. Acted 100% so I let him go.

Brent and I took advantage of the grandparents and when Amelia woke from her nap and wanted to go out we let her go too. My parents had been burning old sticks and such to clear out the yard, along with lots of cardboard that had accumulated.

Because Amelia is super quick and super determined, my parents didn't see her when she walked straight through the coals of their bonfire to get to Felix. She got right to the middle of the coals and fell over, and my mom was there almost immediately, but the damage had already been done. This was taken at the emergency room. It was pretty traumatic. They gave her some kind of narcotic which stopped the immediate screaming, till they had to wash off her foot. Tylenol with codeine, in tandem with ibuprofen, was a huge help, and she was walking on her foot very quickly.

Till this morning. We took her to her pediatrician (we adore Phil Freestone in Orem, by the way, if anyone needs a good pediatrician) and although he was very gentle, he still had to do some major work. This is what her foot looked like when the bandages from the ER came off:
This actually wasn't the worst of it. All that white skin on the bottom of her foot had to come off - it wasn't attached anymore. I did take a pic of it, but it didn't come out. And it would have grossed everyone out anyway. Brent came with me, thankfully, and held her down (with my help and that of the nurse) while Doc Freestone pealed and cut. That's a terrible thing for a parent... thank goodness she won't remember any of this.

Doc says there will be scarring and we have to take her again tomorrow. And this evening Felix had a reaction to a tiny amount of pecans. Sigh. It never ends.



*We next heard from the lawyers in February saying they weren't opposed to a settlement or payment arrangements. We figured they saw my response and got afraid so we didn't do anything - just waited for notice of the court date. It didn't come. End of March/beginning of April we got a big official notice from the lawyers saying that because we didn't come to court the judge threw out our response and sided with them. We talked to the courthouse and found that they had filed the "notice of pretrial" in February. We didn't get it - till the day I went to the courthouse to get copies. They had mailed it the day before - April 7. Court was scheduled for March 12. So along with requesting a new hearing, we're thinking of filing a countersuit because they've deliberately sabotaged our efforts to pay and to defend ourselves. I'm angry enough with them (and with their jerk of a legal assistant - she was never less than a complete ass to me on the phone) that I'd love to get someone fired over it. Stay tuned.