Pregnancy Brain Moment #131

Today I opened the knife drawer and discovered a $5 bag of organic cheese inside. Then I remembered that the day before I pulled out a knife to open the bag of cheese and apparently decided to put the cheese away instead of the knife.

Does anyone know how long cheese can stay out before going bad? I mean, $5 is a lot for muenster!


I'm off to see if the knife ended up in the cheese drawer....

Beauty and the Beast

Today I was reading Wood's blog post about being able to wear nice clothes and high heels again after the birth of her second child. It struck me that I have not felt truly beautiful in a non-motherly way for a long, long time. There was one night back at Christmas time when my parents took Emerson while Robbie and I went on a date. But by halfway through the night we were so frustrated by our inability to get a buzz off Utah's watered-down alcohol and our inability to find much to do in downtown Salt Lake City, that I completely forgot about feeling feminine.

I always figured women's looks went downhill after becoming mothers because they just gave up. Little did I know that it is actually a much slower - and more insidious - process. It begins with pregnancy, when your rapidly changing shape makes it difficult to find anything that fits well, much less be considered fashionable. The first pregnancy I ended up wearing loaned maternity clothes that I never would've been caught dead in otherwise. This time at least hasn't been quite as bad since the new style trend is empire waists and baggy dresses (why all these teenage girls WANT to look pregnant is beyond me). But slowly, and surely, your standards for your wardrobe begin to drop.

Next comes acne, stretch marks, either dry eczema or an oily sheen (pregnancy "glow" my ass!), only the most comfortable shoes, and eventually the ever-sexy waddle walk. When I was pregnant with Emerson, I also scratched my cornea when sand got into my eye. Since pregnancy makes your eyes change shape slightly, but frequently, I have never been able to wear contacts for more than a few hours without them re-scratching the old wound and incurring another infection. Thus came glasses.

After pregnancy your body is still constantly changing shape and reacting to the hormones of breastfeeding, so things don't improve much. Plus you get to add the spit up that decorates every shirt, leaving you smelling like sour milk all day. Not to mention the poop, pee and eventually mashed food that is splattered on your hair and clothes. (For those non-parents out there who think I'm exaggerating, I can assure you that even as I write this, my pj's are sprinkled with yogurt from breakfast and poopy water from when Emerson decided that the bathtub worked just as well as his diaper.)

My one pride and joy is that I do manage to shower and get dressed (eventually) every single day. My hair may go three times longer than it should without a haircut because I ran out of time to make an appointment, and I often get to the end of the day before realizing I forgot to put on makeup, but at least for twenty glorious minutes I am clean.

I have vowed that someday in the far future when this second baby is weaned and my hormone-raging days are officially over (until menopause anyway), I am going to get Lasik surgery, a decent haircut, squeeze myself back into my tightest clothes, put on my most uncomfortable pair of shoes, wear full make-up, and enjoy feeling completely and totally non-motherly.

In the meantime, I'm yet another mother who gave up.

A Tribute to My Mom

In the past 16 months of motherhood, I’ve experienced the highest and the lowest moments of my life. I’ve laughed a lot, cried a lot, been overwhelmed with love and been overwhelmed by the urge to scream at the top of my lungs. Through all of this, my understanding and appreciation of my own mother has grown immensely.

I’ve always known I had it pretty good in the parents department, but as my mom has listened to my venting this past year, she has been sympathetic by sharing stories that make Olympic athletes look like wimps.

So to honor my mother this Mother’s Day, I’d like to honor all the things she’s done over the years that don’t typically make it into Hallmark greeting cards:

Like most Utahns (especially in the 70s), my parents got married young and started a family soon after. As mentioned in a previous post, my mom spent much of her pregnancy with my sister either throwing up constantly or lying half-comatose on a pea green bean bag.

My sister was born with lactose intolerance, but since no one knew this back then and no one supported my mom in breastfeeding, the formula caused her to projectile vomit almost every time she ate. She was also constantly crying for three straight months. My mom was determined to be a successful young parent, so the few hours that my sister did sleep, she cooked and cleaned instead of resting herself. She was so frazzled by the time my dad got home from his long hours at work that every night she immediately ran to the local payphone (they lived in an apartment with no phone) to call my grandma crying. My grandmother – being my grandmother – never once offered to help babysit, even though she lived mere minutes away.

When my mom got pregnant with my older brother, she sensed something was wrong early on, but no one would tell her anything (the doctor told my grandmother and they agreed to keep it a secret). My brother was born with a rare recessive genetic disorder called Ellis Van Crefeld syndrome, causing him a variety of health problems. The most extreme was a heart condition that required open-heart surgery at 8 days old. Unfortunately, doctors didn’t know much about anesthesia for babies back then, so he went into shock and passed away during the procedure. As any parents knows or can imagine, there isn’t a word for the kind of pain that comes with losing a child.

A few years later, my mom decided she wanted to have another baby even though she knew there was a 25% chance it would have the syndrome. My father was terrified, but the moment she got pregnant with me, she had an instinct that everything was going to be ok.

My parents now had two kids and only one income, so mom did everything she could to save money. She sewed most of our clothes and handmade many of our gifts; she canned enough food to last until the Second-Coming, she made her own dryer sheets, helped my dad raise rabbits in our backyard for meat and to sell (yes, so illegal and so white-trash); tended a full garden; kept a composting bin; and never bought anything new for herself.

My mom also made sure every holiday and birthday was special for us. Even now that we are adults, my mom still throws joint birthday parties for me and my sister (we were both born in December) complete with homemade invitations, balloons, streamers and our favorite home-cooked meal. For Christmas we always got to decorate home-made gingerbread cookies, leave lettuce out for the reindeer, open stockings full of our favorite treats, and then my exhausted parents loaded up the car with presents so we could make the rounds to all the relatives.

On Thanksgiving she spent days cooking and preparing for the big meal, made little paper turkeys to hold dinner mints and tried her best to run interference with my grandmother. Even on Easter she stayed up all night writing age-appropriate clues, hiding eggs and little presents, and making Easter baskets.

Finally, there were the millions of little things she did every day: she stayed up late gluing together school projects; attended countless (and doubtless painful) softball games, recitals and school plays; she braided hair; shopped for prom dresses; planned vacations; kept the house spotless despite the fact that we teased her mercilessly for being OCD; lost sleep over our bad boyfriend choices; lost sleep over our career choices; and now loses sleep over the grandkids.

I’m not sure how she functioned so well for so many years on so little sleep, but all I can say now is….thanks mom.

More Videos

Ok, we've gone a tad video crazy. But we've downloaded a couple more from this past month or so. The others are under 15-18 months.

Here We Go Again!

If you haven't already heard the news, we are expecting baby part deux (the final act) early November! Just another month until we find out the gender (think girly thoughts for me), but in the meantime everything has been going well. It seemed every day dragged by with Emerson and we couldn't wait until he was born. This time we know what to expect, so 9 months seems to by flying by WAY too fast!!

I'm about 14.5 weeks right now, but I' m posting a blog from the first trimester. Warning - if you are very squeamish, you might want to skip this!

Like any good parent, my mom provided us with birth control by telling stories about how she spent most of her pregnancies (except with me – I was the good kid) hurling her guts out in unusual places. One story I remember well was when she threw up in a drinking fountain. This gave me the distinct impression that morning sickness, or all day sickness in her case, made you spontaneously throw up with little warning.

So when I got pregnant the first two times, I waited for the onslaught to set in any minute….but it never did. I got a little nauseous and extremely bitchy if I didn’t eat pronto (imagine the girl in the Exorcist), but never so much as a dry heave. I figured I must be one of those lucky women who just don’t get sick during pregnancy.

Or so I thought. This pregnancy has been very different from the beginning. I’m more exhausted than before, achier, I’m expanding at twice the speed, and I’m definitely more nauseous. I’ve only thrown up once, but I wish I could more - just to get temporary relief.

The worse thing for me about being this nauseous is that I become fixated on throwing up. All I can think about are synonyms for throwing up (of which there are many) or I conjure up images and feelings from past experiences. It’s as if I’m trying to push myself over the edge. I remember being sick with the stomach flu once and just lying in bed reenacting over and over the scene from “Wayne’s World” in which he lists many of those vivid synonyms. If I remember correctly, that eventually did the trick.

My mom has been trying to console me by saying it must be a girl because girls make you sicker. Robbie is trying to freak me out by saying it must be twins (not that twins are bad for patient moms like my friend Bethany, but they would be a bad idea for me!). And I am just trying to focus on the second trimester when it will hopefully come to an end.

In the meantime, I’m off to eat something that won’t make me gag – like the ice cream and jar of olives Robbie just bought me. Good man.

Video Mania

We finally uploaded all the videos we've been promising. The one below shows vicious Emerson attacking again! For the rest, click on the "12-14 months" link to the right.

I'm Down, I'm Up

Just when life can't seem to get any more complicated, it throws another curve ball. At least that's how I felt a couple of weeks ago as I sat in the allergist's office watching the red welt on Emerson's arm grow larger and more ominous. He had a strange rash in an airplane that served peanuts last November and then another one broke out in January when I gave him a bit of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so our doctor suggested an allergy skin test. There seemed to be logical explanations for both rashes, so I wasn't concerned by it at all. Then the test revealed he was allergic to peanuts - SEVERELY allergic.

We were handed a huge packet of information on everything to avoid and then given a tutorial on how to use an Epi-Pen during an anaphylaxis attack. I am grateful for modern technology, but the idea of stabbing anything into my son's leg scares the crap out of me! As we prepared to leave the office after an exhausting day, the doctor looked at me and said sincerely, "I'm so sorry."

I couldn't understand all this since no one on either of our families has a history of food allergies. We have a dog and we don't clean compulsively (as much as I wish I could), so there goes the whole "our environments are too clean so our immune systems turn against themselves" theory. We waited the proper amount of time to introduce all his foods. So why a life-threatening allergy for a little boy who already has enough to worry about and set him apart? It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

In addition to the albinism and the allergy, I was already worried about Emerson's large delays in pretty much all his milestones. The more I worried and researched possible causes, the more hysterical I became. I cried nearly constantly for a couple of days.

At the height of this emotional breakdown, I took a trip down to the local library. It's become a favorite place for us lately because there is plenty of room for Emerson to explore and other children for him to interact with. This particular day a woman was there with her daughter and a son who turned out to be a few months older than Emerson. We started talking the normal mom chit-chat, then it came out that her son had just started walking at 19 months. She went on to say that he had been born with "some issues" that affected his development. As soon as she said this, I wanted to hug her!

We talked a little more here and there as we chased the kids around, but it eventually came out that they had moved out of state and were only here to catch up with old friends. My hopes of future play dates and learning more about her and her son were dashed - although we exchanged emails. But the gift came toward the end as I was getting Emerson ready to leave. She said, "You know how people always say they would never change anything about their child? I feel that way too - I just wish I could change the way the world views him." I nodded and started to cry again - right in front of this practical stranger. It was just what I needed to hear at that moment.

Later, things did get much better. I talked with Emerson's therapists and they said they didn't see anything that would suggest another serious condition yet, so that was nice to hear. They did agree to increase his speech therapy by having home visits, which has already helped.

I also think Emerson somehow sensed my desperation and has been making more of an effort. The past couple of weeks, he suddenly started clapping and waving (things we have been working on for soooo many months), he's willing to imitate more things (like patting and stomping when we do it, or pretending to brush my hair when I brush his), and he's even experimenting a little with the sign language we've been teaching him. I can't believe this is the same child!

Our life really is the cliche rollercoaster - a steep ascent followed by a gut-wrenching drop followed by another steep ascent. And then there are the loops that turn everything upside down....but I'll save that story for a later post.