30 BEFORE 30 - Have a Baby

Done and done!

I didn't update at all during my pregnancy, mostly because life got hectic. I lost a job, found a job, started my novel in earnest, interviewed pediatricians, bought cloth diapers. It's been an exciting few months. But I'd say its been worth it.She's about a week old here, still in possesion of her gray eyes and newborn hair. The hair has since fallen out, to be replaced with hair that is her daddy's dark color though not, at this point, quite the same texture or amount. I'm sure that will come, to the bane of my future attempts at taming it. Her eyes have gone from gray to a very determined blue, again, just like her daddy, much to his dismay. He was hoping for brown, like mommy :)

My girl was born the day before her due date, via c-section. I still feel a jolt of anger and grief when I write that. She wasn't supposed to be born via C-section. I labored without drugs for nine hours before my delivery OB announced that, while I was dilating beautifully and my girl had dropped, she was breech, and breech delivery is something my OB does not "allow". I could have disputed it, and perhaps should have, but a woman in labor does not make good split-second decisions, and I let them cut me. I have a lot of regrets about that, which I may go over in another post. This post isn't about my regrets. It's about my perfect little success.

C-sections are odd things. I couldn't feel any pain, just tugging, which I found out later was **GROSS WARNING** the doctors removing my "guts" as my brother in law put it and placing them on my chest. Sick in the extreme. I had morphine in my spinal, which made me a little woozy, but I distinctly remember the moment she was "born". The doctor asked me if I was ready, and upon my emphatic "YES", I heard my little girl cry. I wish I'd been able to have a "right to the chest" moment, but when your arms are stretched out to your sides and the lower half of your body is numb and cut open, they don't exactly want to hand you your baby. They cleaned her up, and I did get to meet her before they took her off to the nursery for vitals.
They brought her to me within 15 minutes of my being post-op, and she was nursing within ten minutes of being with me. I will say that, other than the fact that I ended up with an "unnecesaerean", the hospital was very good about respecting my wishes. This picture is from the second day, probably less than 18 hours post op. Notice the lack of anything connected to me. I did everything I could to get off IV fluids and then GO HOME as soon as possible. We ended up going home 38 hours post-op. Less than two days. That's less than most vaginal deliveries. Take that, medical system
Our first family picture:

My girl is a month old now, becoming more and more alert, trying to hold her head up, still nursing like a champ. We are cloth diapering, something I'll cover in another post, but its going so well. I love being a mommy, but more importantly, I love being her mommy.

Green Olive

That's my baby: A green olive.

On December 2, I took a ridiculously early pregnancy test and was shocked to see the faintest of all faint positives. Paul wasn't even sure he could see a line, and I spent the rest of the day in "pregnant or not" limbo.

The next morning returned a darker positive, the third morning, a definite positive, and the following day, a digital readout of "Pregnant" on a digital test.

So today I am officially nine weeks knocked up. It's the first morning in about five weeks I haven't woken up wanting to vomit, which is a plus, and I was finally able to stomach the delectable smell of Chef-Boy-R-Dee, which I love with all my heart.

It's a short post today, but I promise (maybe) to be better about posting, now that I actually have soemthing to post about.

OIh, heavens. I just became that woman who thinks she has nothing interesting to say unless it pertains to motherhood.

Saints preserve us.

It isn't that I don't love you

I've just been so very busy, you see.

Working.

And writing the novel that's going to make me the next JK Rowling (AHAHAHAHA!! if only)

And Christmasing. I don't actually have a tree yet. We're supposed to get one this weekend because my parents gave us forty smakaroos. We spent it on groceries, but we're still buying a forty dollar tree. It's pretty much the same thing.

Christmas is in interesting thing when you're a young married couple. You've moved out, so you aren't the kids anymore, and the kids or sort of the focus of the whole Christmas season. And Jesus. I'll get to him in a minute. But for now, kids. We aren't the kids anymore, so the whole magic of that aspect is missing now.

Example: My sister and I used to sleep in the same bedroom on Christmas Eve and watch Christmas movies (Annabelle's Wish? The best/worse/best/worse Christmas movie on the planet. It's about a cow who turns into a reindeer. Seriously. Also, it's important to note that I just spelled "reindeer" as "raighndeer" The spell check suggested that I really meant "Straightener". Mercy). I usually fell asleep mid-Grinch, but still. It was a Yuletide slumber party once a year. Also, we always got brand new PJ's. Last year we tried that, and at nine, we both looked at each other and said "Yea, I had to work today. I'm going to bed." We didn't even sleep in the same room. She slept in her old bedroom and I slept in mine with my husband.

Childhood = gone forever.

I feel like this problem of missing magic could all be solved by having our own children, because really, kids get the joy and magic of Christmas. But while we are neither kids nor parents, we're stuck in Holiday limbo.

On the bright side, my Mommy still fills my stocking on Christmas Eve, although last year she did it while I was still awake and sitting on the couch. I watched her do it. Seriously Mom, how am I supposed to believe in Santa Claus if you do stuff like that. You're killing the Virginia in me, that's what. I told her that, too. Her response was that she was tired and wanted to go to bed. Apparently tricking us into thinking a fat man leaves presents every year was easier when we went to bed at seven thirty. I say her excuses find no sympathy from me.

Never

Tell a mother or a nanny of an ADHD child that it is ridiculous to medicate a child.

The next time someone informs me as such, I'm going to direct them to my charge at homework time when he has skipped meds.

Then I am going to kick them in the shins.

Here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

I love Harry Potter.

LOVE.

When I finish reading one of the books, I am overwhelmed by this sadness that just clings for days because I have to come back to reality and realize that the world isn't real.

It's incredibly healthy of me.

I'm very well-adjusted.

Anyway, with the seventh movie now half out (it was amazing, by the way), I am overcome with emotion at the fact that, after this July, it will be over.

OVER.

I can reread the books, and I will, but they will say the same things they always have.

The beauty of the HP universe is that it is so vast and there are so many stories waiting to be told in it. She has hinted at possible doing a few more, and to that I say PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!

The point of all this is that a dog jumped at me today.

Stay with me.

A dog jumped at me today and left a gash on my forehead about a quarter inch long. When I had the bleeding under control, I took a look in the mirror and OMGITSLIGHTNINGBOLTSHAPED.

Vaguely.

I can only hope against all hope that it scars.

NaNoWriMo: A sad, sad update

I lack something.

The common folk call it "stick-to-it-ivness"

I call it that too, but I like to say "the common folk"

I really do have none. My husband and I never did finish The Love Dare, I didn't finish the RIPV Challenge in October, I've never finished a Nest book challenge. Look at my "100 books in 2010" list. I'm at 96 and completely stalled out. And now, it's looking like NaNoWriMo will be the next thing tossed into my "Yea, I was going to do that once" basket.

I have a good reason though.

I started off strong.

I wrote well.

Then I realized...

I detest the characters I wrote.

DETEST.

As in hate with an almighty passion.

I very nearly just had her throw herself off a cliff because she's so darn annoying.

So I have scrapped that story. But I refuse to give up!

In a burst of determination, I went back to the drawing board and started over with an entirely new idea. It's going well, but I'm only about 500 words in, so we'll see.

Things That Bother Me About Harry Potter #2: How have Fred and George never been called in to a disciplinary hearing about underage magic outside school? Haven't they been developing Puking Pastilles and whatnot for ages?

Things That Always Bugged Me About Harry Potter

#1.

"If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my - my teddy bear into a dirty great spider because I broke his toy broomstick."

This seems like a rather advanced piece of transfiguration for a five year old, which Fred would have been at the time, especially considering he wouldn't have had a wand at the time.

Although, it's possible that he didn't do it strictly on purpose. It isn't unheard of in the Harry Potter universe for young children to do things on accident when they are angry or scared.

Also, I would like you to take this moment to appreciate how very much I love this series, because oly true love is able to care so much about something so ridiculously irrelevant.