I like to be PREPARED for things. I do research. I read books. I make lists. I plan. But here is what pregnancy has taught me – research, lists, and plans BE DAMNED! Your body will darned well do whatever it feels like whenever it feels like, regardless of what the books, your friends, or your parents may say!

So with that said, in the hopes that perhaps I can enlighten some newly pregnant women, I’d like to present my list of “Things I Wish I’d Known Could POSSIBLY Happen While Pregnant (Even If They’re Not Terribly Likely To Do So!)”

Beauty

• You know that glorious head of hair that everyone says you’ll get during pregnancy? You might not get it (on your head, at least!) You MIGHT end up with the limpest, coarsest, most “dead” looking hair EVER. Except for your leg hair. THAT will grow at an unfortunately remarkable rate (especially as your belly gets bigger and shaving gets harder. THANKS hormones!)

• Your fingernails might not get longer and stronger and more beautiful. They might stay just the same. Which isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, but, it’s one more “feel beautiful,” positive aspect of pregnancy that you might be disappointed by missing out on.

• Along with the thick hair and long fingernails, everyone always mentions the beautiful pregnancy “glow”. What nobody ever mentions is that the hormone surges in your body might end up mimicking the way you looked in early puberty (which for me, meant looking like the “before” picture in a Proactiv commercial). Again, not the end of the world (been there, done that, now I know what products to use!) but if you were counting on beautiful skin to get you through those rough few months, well, find something else to focus on!

Health/Physical Symptoms

• Like morning sickness! You can focus on that, instead! Your version of morning sickness might not lead to actual vomiting (yay!) but also might not be limited to morning (boo!) Feeling like you’re about to puke at any moment 24/7 is miserable enough that ACTUALLY throwing up starts to sound appealing, and it also makes it hard to answer when people ask if you’re experiencing morning sickness. Can you really claim morning sickness if you’re only on the VERGE of the sickness?

• I had read about skin being dry during pregnancy, and I think some people mentioned needing to put extra lotion on their belly because it was itchy. What nobody mentioned was UNBEARABLE ITCHINESS of the belly (itchy hands was mentioned a few times, as a symptom of a liver condition, I think? It was something random, that much I know!) But scratching your stomach so much that you’re afraid you’ll draw blood? THAT wasn’t in any of the books I read!

• Feeling the baby move for the first time has got to be one of the most highly anticipated aspects of pregnancy, and also one of the HARDEST things to describe! What almost EVERYONE seems to say is that it feels like butterflies. What a very tiny minority say is that it feels like gas. What my mom said (when I finally got around to asking her, because I was experiencing something TOTALLY not butterfly-like, but it was happening often enough that I started wondering if maybe it COULD be the baby!) is that it feels like you’re really hungry, except you’re not. (I know, WAY less glamorous than butterflies!) It’s a frustratingly abstract concept, until the day you realize, “Huh, I keep feeling like my stomach is growling, but I’m not hungry at all . . . oh, this must be it!” So if you’re waiting for those first movements, try to keep an open mind. Maybe it’ll feel like butterflies or champagne bubbles. Or maybe it’ll feel like you have to fart. You never know!

The Gory Stuff (Not For The Squeamish Or Modest)

• It is apparently possible to start producing colostrum (that’s a kind of nutrient laden pre-milk that nourishes the baby until your milk fully comes in) at 12 weeks (which I learned from the FANTASTICALLY HYSTERICAL “Zero to Forty” Pregnancy Calendar, written by the always awesome Amalah. That lady is my idol, and you should read “Zero to Forty” even if you aren’t pregnant, because it’s that funny. She’s also the ONLY person I’ve ever seen write about all these random things I experienced, so perhaps I should have paid closer attention when I read it the first time!) I read that at about 16 weeks and found out, “Hey, look at that, I’m making milk already! Cool!” Except that then I started leaking milk in my sleep, and waking up in a wet, sticky puddle. NOT COOL! (And if this ever happens to you, get some LiliPadz! They were a life changing find, and I was actually really disappointed to not have anyone to share the experience with, because nobody else was a dripping, leaking milk mess!)

• Mucous plug. Contrary to the name, it’s quite possible that when it falls out, it will be far more “mucous”, and way less “plug”. So, that would have been nice to know. I’d probably have freaked out a bit less if I’d known that was what it was. Thanks, pregnancy books, for describing it as something you might see sitting in the toilet (and never ever EVER mentioning that it might just kind of . . . ooze out of you. In mass quantities. Sorry, I SAID this wasn’t for the squeamish!)

• If your water happens to break while you’re sitting on the toilet, you might just think, “Wow, I guess I had to pee more than I realized!” Then you’ll feel like an IDIOT when the doctor asks you when your water broke, and you say, “Um, what now?” (And then a few minutes later, when it feels like you peed yourself, you’ll say, “Oh, yes, I can tell now that my water has broken”).

So if you’re about to have your first baby, here is my advice to you – plan for your ideal birth, but above all else, prepare to be flexible. Maybe you’ll have a textbook pregnancy, labor, and delivery. But then again, maybe you’ll end up at the hospital in the middle of the night 4 weeks before you’re due and find out that you’ve got dangerously high blood pressure, a baby that’s trying to exit butt first, a cervix that isn’t doing anything at all (despite your water having broken and contractions having started somehow without your knowing it!) and you’re about to be admitted to the hospital without having ever packed an overnight bag or attended your labor and delivery tour.

No matter how uncomfortable, inconvenient, and emotionally trying the whole experience can be, at the end of the day you have made a human being! And the only thing more miraculous than that is the fact that you’ll eventually forget all the horrible parts about your pregnancy, and want to do it all again

** Some of the above are affiliate links, because why shouldn’t I? **

First of all, I doubt anyone even noticed, but I went from blogging regularly 3 times a week to . . . pretty much not blogging at all again. What can I say? Life got busy (SO BUSY! SO much has happened this month! We traveled! We met new family members! Nathan learned to crawl and to pull up on things and cruise along furniture! We MOVED! More family came to visit! Any ONE of those things would have been enough to call it a busy month!) and I had to cut myself some slack so that I didn’t go insane. I’m glad I did that. I’m also bummed that I didn’t post as often as I wanted to. Oh well. Sometimes things don’t work out like you want them to, and I’m happy with the decision I made.

December is set to be less busy . . . for at least the first few weeks So during that time my job is to continue to unpack. My goal is that at least one box should be emptied a day, or a task of similar magnitude completed (e.g., if I don’t unpack a box, I’d better assemble and install something!) Nathan is also teething and going through a Wonder Week, so some days it feels like a pretty lofty goal!

I’ve decided that I definitely prefer unpacking to packing, but there’s no getting around the fact that having to do either just plain sucks. With unpacking, at least there is a tangible item to show for your work (an empty box, um, yay?) but with packing . . . no matter how many full boxes you have in front of you, when you turn around to see what is left, it seems like you haven’t even made a dent in it!

I was thinking about that when we were filling the moving truck, and suddenly realized that moving is like going to a restaurant and ordering pasta. You sit down and start eating . . . and eating . . . and eating . . . (and WHY do they always give you such an ENORMOUS serving? Who really eats THAT MANY NOODLES in one sitting?) and by the time you’re full you look at the plate and it doesn’t look like you’ve eaten anything at all! Such a full belly, and nothing to show for it! We’d fill the truck up, the boys would leave to empty it at the new house, and I’d turn around to see . . . a house that was STILL FILLED WITH STUFF! Didn’t we just put everything in the truck? How was there still more STUFF? (Especially because we’d done a pretty remarkable job of paring down all of our excess stuff during previous moves. This wasn’t even EXTRANEOUS stuff, this was daily living stuff!)

(In case anyone was wondering, it took 3 trips with the moving van and multiple trips with the cars to finish moving ALL of the stuff. And that stupid pasta feeling continued up until the very last car trip).

At this point, we really do have an awful lot of stuff unpacked. My clothes are (mostly) put away. The kitchen is (mostly) unpacked. The major appliances are (mostly) installed and in use. It’s far less common for someone to ask for an item, and for me to go running into the garage to unbury it. We still have a lot of storage and organization items to purchase (why is there no coat closet anywhere? And why did I not realize that the third bedroom didn’t have a closet in it at all? Where do I put Nathan’s coats?) but things are starting to pull together nicely.

All the same, I’m just plain over it. So now what I’d like to know is – what is the moving equivalent of getting a doggy bag? Because I’m all full up on moving, and would really just like to take the rest to go

I’ve been dieting in one form or another for about 6 months. After Nathan was born I started tracking what I ate (though trying not to cut my calories too much for fear of decreasing my milk supply!) and gradually got more serious until I ended up eating only a target number of calories per day and going to the gym an average of 3-5 times per week. I had quite a few setbacks along the way (after my appendectomy I was put on a “low-residue diet,” which basically meant, “you can’t eat anything with fiber – just white bread and plain bagels”. It was the anti-Weight Watcher plan!) but since I put on 50 pounds when I was pregnant and then gave birth to a teeny tiny baby, I’ve been carrying around a lot of extra weight for quite a while now.

Despite my best efforts, though, my weight loss has been EXTREMELY slow. In all fairness, my body seems to be the type that does NOT want to let go of any stored weight while breastfeeding, and my thyroid levels started going INSANE a few months ago, so I’ve got quite a few other issues going on at the same time that I’m trying desperately to fit into non-maternity clothes. But that doesn’t make the process any less frustrating and discouraging. I’m not even shooting for “thin” at this point – I’d just like to be able to wear my old “fat pants” again. Is that really so much to ask?

About a month ago, I started reading Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Body and was inspired to give his version of the Slow Carb diet a try. It’s pretty hard core (especially for someone who LOVES bread and sugary foods!) but I decided to try it for 2 weeks and see how it went.

The 2 weeks are up, and here’s my update – it works! On average, I’ve been consuming slightly more calories than I had been previously, but in 2 weeks I lost 1.6 pounds. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I’d been totally plateaued at the same weight for WEEKS (it didn’t matter if I was going to the gym 5 days a week or none at all, and I cut my calories back a few times, but all that happened was that I got hungrier and crankier) so that tiny loss got me over the hump that had me so discouraged I was about to quit dieting altogether and have a massive binge-breakdown. Also, during those 2 weeks J and I had our big “my birthday/his birthday/anniversary celebration weekend away without the baby” so I had THREE cheat days instead of one during the first week. So again, it was a small overall loss, but it was a LOSS (and in the face of overwhelming odds!) and that was what mattered!

It’s not an easy diet for me to follow, though. I had to make some modifications for breakfast because after two days of scrambled eggs with black beans and salsa, I started gagging Having a total cheat day once a week is AMAZING (I went on the most epic Halloween candy eating binge this weekend! It was everything I’d dreamed it could be when I realized that since we only had one trick-or-treater come to our house on Halloween, that meant I could be the one to eat all the candy we bought at Costco! Who DOESN’T dream of doing that??) but the rest of the week is ROUGH. Here’s how a typical week for me goes:

Monday – I’m good, I’m strong, I can do this!

Tuesday – I miss bread. Oh well, more veggies!

Wednesday – Grrrr, I am really sick of beans.

Thursday – Oh my gosh, I cannot do this any more, I MUST EAT CANDY!

Friday – I cannot possibly live another day! THIS IS EVIL TORTURE PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY NOW!

Saturday – (I go crazy wild and out of my way to eat everything I’ve been missing). *Angels sing*

Sunday – *sigh* My tummy kind of hurts, but I already can’t wait till Saturday again

I’ve decided to keep on following the diet as much as I can for another week and then see how I feel about it. It’s nice to not be hungry all the time . . . but I sure do miss bread . . . so it probably won’t be a diet I follow long term, but I think it might help me get back on track, motivated, and feeling good about myself again!

In the meantime, here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned these first 2 weeks that have helped immensely!

• Have food on hand – Terrible things happen when, oh, say, for example, you run out of lettuce and your only food options are green beans and black beans. That is NOT a meal I want to eat repeatedly! (I think I ended up eating brownies most of the day, which WAS a meal I enjoy repeatedly, but definitely wasn’t part of the plan).
• Cook in bulk – This goes along with having food on hand. If you’re going to cook some beans, cook a MASSIVE amount of beans. If you are running low on chicken, cook up a MASSIVE thing of it the next day so that it’ll be ready when you need it. DON’T RUN OUT OF “SAFE” FOODS! Just keep cooking in mass quantities, and you should be safe.
• Try different beans/lentils – I previously thought all beans were created equal, but it turns out that they all have slightly different flavors and textures. Black beans are mushier than red beans, which are smaller than pinto beans (though similar in firmness). Lentils have been interesting as they LOOK like some kind of split pea but taste like a bean, and can be put in soups with quite favorable results. So even though your food options are kind of limited, explore within the boundaries permitted, and you might find a kind of bean that DOESN’T make you think of scrambled eggs and feel like throwing up
• Don’t get hungry – Bad things happen when you get too hungry! (e.g., you eat all the brownies that were just sitting on the counter!) Eat when you first start to feel hungry, because if you put it off until you’re STARVING, you’ll be much more likely to crack.
• Find substitutes for cravings – I need something sweet during the day, I just can’t help it! I’ve found that decaf coffee (or normal coffee, if you don’t have addiction issues with caffeine, like I do!) can be a good dessert substitute while still remaining true to the rules. I use chocolate flavored coffee, 1/2 tablespoon of cream, a dash of cinnamon, and 1/2 tablespoon of sugar-free caramel Torani. It’s not the same as the coffee or dessert I’d like to make, but it’s enough of a treat to calm my craving and get me through to my next cheat day (when I LIBERALLY pour in the flavored creamer and as much sugar as I want!)

Has anybody else tried the Slow Carb diet? Any tips, tricks, or recipes you can share to help me out?

When Nathan was a baby, he didn’t have any toys. He did, though, have a bear that made heartbeat sounds and a bassinet that could vibrate. Both of those used batteries (duh) and needed a screwdriver to open the hatch to put new ones in. When I needed to replace the batteries, I’d get the screwdriver from the garage, replace the batteries, and put the screwdriver back in the garage.

That worked well, until the time all the batteries died in the devices right at bedtime, and we needed those suckers replaced QUICKLY, while he was still SLEEPY! The garage is at the other end of the house, too much time was wasted in traveling there and back, and by the time the batteries were in, Nathan was screaming. *sigh* After that, the screwdriver had a permanent home on our dresser

Once Nathan moved into his crib, he had mobiles that made soothing sounds but the batteries lasted a pretty long time. The screwdriver was put back in the garage.

Then this last weekend, my mom arrived with a bunch of toys she’d saved for future grandchildren to play with (MORE HAND ME DOWNS! We are SO BLESSED!) I thought she’d have a few cause-and-effect toys, and maybe some books. Here is what she brought:

This actually isn't even all of it! The non-electronic toys (and a few of the ones that need batteries, too!) had already been moved to his toy bin by the time I got a chance to take the picture!

See all of those toys in the left two bins? Those (plus a bunch that were already out and around the house to distract Nathan from pulling books off of shelves!) all needed batteries. It’s taken a couple days to change most of them out, and since some of them don’t have “off” switches (parents were apparently NOT consulted in the design of those toys! Anytime something shifts in the toy bin, they go off! It’s startling! And loud! And super duper annoying!) I have a feeling I’ll be replacing the batteries AGAIN before I know it.

And that’s why the screwdriver has returned to its proper place: INSIDE the house, right next to the batteries. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll be leaving it there until we don’t have any kids left in the house. (Though by that point, we may very well have hearing aids or other important devices that need batteries, so I guess we should just always keep that thing nearby!)

When I started blogging in this space, I had really grand plans for it. Then I got pregnant, and all of my good intentions were completely wiped out by the fact that I felt like I was mentally and physically fighting through quicksand (I did FAR less running and writing after I quit working than I had thought I would! And by less, I mean . . . almost none at all!) And then after I had Nathan, everything else took a backseat to adjusting to this tiny person who was suddenly in my house, and settling into a new routine with him.

I hope I don’t jinx anything by saying this (fingers crossed!) but at almost 8 months old, it feels like we’ve finally found one. It’s a fluctuating routine (he still throws me a curveball or two anytime I get too settled into or reliant upon a particular schedule) but I feel like Nathan and I are finally getting to know each other, and I can read him so much better these days. He is absolutely my favorite part of every single day, and I’m so incredibly lucky and blessed and thankful that I get to spend my time at home with him. (As a side note, I’d just like to say that it’s totally possible to adore your baby even if you hated being pregnant, and that it’s totally possible to grow into your love for your child even if you initially feel like you’re constantly caring for a needy blob instead of a human being. But I’ll probably elaborate on that another day, so if you take horrible offense to the statement, try to hold your tongue until I eventually explain it better!)

After months of hardly being able to leave the house and constantly collecting data on all of Nathan’s eating and sleeping habits, it has been incredibly freeing to be able to just do stuff again! But with our diapering stash taken care of, feeding issues worked out, and a nap schedule that I think is as established as we’re ever going to get, my brain needs a new project to focus on (I’m worried that if I don’t focus it in a specific direction, I’ll just keep trying to buy more cloth diapers! I’m the first to admit what a strange addiction it is, but for some reason, they are just so hard to resist!)

So I’ve made my blog my new project again! I’ve got a posting schedule that I’ve (so far!) been good about holding myself to, and I’ve returned to some of my original ambitions for the site. We’ll see if I can find a way to make it all work out, but I was really proud of myself today when I looked in my archives and realized that I’ve already posted more times this month than I have in any month since I got pregnant! I guess that it took 9 months to grow Nathan, and just about that same length of time to get my brain back to where it was before he was conceived! All that’s left now is to lose the rest of the baby weight, and I should be rid of my pregnancy body AND brain! Here’s hoping that it won’t take an additional 9 months to do so!

I’ve always maintained that after Halloween, time starts to move faster and faster and doesn’t slow down until after New Years. There’s just too many holidays between October and January, so no matter what you do or do not celebrate, it’s guaranteed to be a busy time of year.

In the 5+ years that J and I have been together, we’ve moved (at minimum) every single year, with most of the moves occurring (or at least being planned) during those busy few months. I swear we have good reasons for doing moving so frequently (usually because they’re increasing the rent and assuming that our desire to avoid packing up and moving will outweigh our outrage at more money being demanded. NOT THIS COUPLE! YOU BET YOUR BUTT WE WILL PACK UP AND MOVE AGAIN!) But the fact remains, I HATE moving even in the best of circumstances, and worrying about not having a place to live tends to put a damper on the festive nature of the season.

When we moved last year, it was a few weeks before Christmas, I was 7 months pregnant, and we were on the hunt for a place we could live in for longer than one year. We found a house (a real house! With a MAILBOX and a YARD and FRUIT TREES and GARBAGE CANS YOU TAKE TO THE CURB and other assorted grown up things!) in our price range in a nice neighborhood, and planned where Nathan would learn to ride a tricycle (or motorcycle, if you talked to J!), where we could put a mini-basketball hoop or baby pool someday, and maybe even where he would start kindergarten. We wanted to sign a 2 year lease but were told that the company’s policy was to start with 6 months (as a sort of trial period) and then if things had been going well up until that point, we could sign a longer lease. It also would ensure that if things didn’t work out, the company would have an easier time finding a tenant (which was fine by me, because I was SO TIRED of spending the holiday season every year worried and stressed out!)

Six months later, things seemed like they’d worked out fine and I was eager to sign a new lease (Nathan was a few months old at that point, and I did NOT like the idea of moving with an infant!) We were told that yes, we could sign a 2 year lease . . . at an increased rate. Or we could just continue with the current rate on a month-to-month basis. (Yeah, this still makes me want to shake somebody until their teeth rattle. It’s one of the dumbest, most backwards ideas I’ve ever heard! There is usually a higher rate for month-to-month and a discount if you’re willing to sign a long lease! What the heck is this stupid policy all about??) We went with the month-to-month option.

I was constantly anxious and concerned, though, about how we would manage if they decided to kick us out. What if they gave us notice while I was in the hospital having my appendix out? Or afterwards, when I was recovering and constantly on the verge of passing out? What if we paid off a bunch of bills and then didn’t have cash on hand for a security deposit for a new house? Would it be worth it to plant the garden I’d been so excited about, if they might then make us leave after money and time were invested and nothing had been harvested? Could we plan a party at the end of the summer, or was that unwise considering we couldn’t be certain of even living there still?

Then things got weird. The garage door broke one evening, and we called the property management to fix it. The owner of the house decided to get involved and try to fix it himself instead of letting the property manager send over a professional. A few awkward encounters later and he brought up the possibility of a lease again, but still wanted us to pay more money. Citing an increase in his own expenses (not our problem!) he seemed surprised that we didn’t jump at the chance to sign on for an additional 2 years in a house that we now knew was falling apart and would never willingly be fixed adequately (he did end up having to bring in a professional to fix the garage, but not until after he’d botched the DIY job and had no other options). During the time that he was trying to convince us what a good deal we’d be getting (I’m sorry, but how is spending more money a better deal than the one we currently have?) he emphasized that any lease would have to end in the spring, and when he finally left it seemed pretty obvious that come springtime, he’d be increasing the rent whether we liked it or not.

Which is why we are, once again, looking for somewhere new to live! The good news is that time is on our side, and we can afford to hold out for some place that we really like. The bad news is that we’ve learned to pay more attention to the section of leases dealing with moving out (I read everything before we sign it, I swear, but the importance of certain clauses didn’t jump out at me as problems at the time. Giving 30 days notice is pretty standard, but having to pay for the full month if you want to move out before the end of the month?? Really?? I sure know what to be on the lookout for next time we sign a lease!) and we certainly ask a lot more questions now about how often the rent is typically increased!

So, as the holiday season fast approaches, we’re back to our usual routine – J scouring ads and making spreadsheets, driving through various neighborhoods in the evenings and on weekends, making appointments to view the interior of places that pass our initial screening, filling out applications and paying redundant fees (don’t even get me STARTED on the information people ask for in those stupid applications! What matters is if we’ve paid our rent on time and the condition we left previous homes in! Why do you need personal references or the name of the supervisor at the company J worked for 5 years ago? It’s SO DUMB!) and trying to figure out how to plan a move around previously scheduled vacations and stretch our budget to cover not just Christmas gifts, but moving vans and packing supplies. Only this time, we’re doing it all with a baby in tow!

There are a lot of fun things I have planned for Nathan once he is old enough to enjoy this time of year, but I sincerely hope that (after this year) moving isn’t one of them!

We’ve done a lot of the whole “having a baby” thing on a budget. We’re using cloth diapers, we’ve been AMAZINGLY blessed with hand me downs and gifts of all sorts, and I’ve really been stingy when it comes to spending money on baby-related items. Particularly toys.

As Nathan has finally started getting more mobile and interested in things (it could be the glasses or just maturity, but he’s into EVERYTHING these days! The world is probably far more interesting when you can finally SEE it!) I’ve been realizing that I never bought him any toys! He has blankets and books and some teething rings and some rattles, but for the most part, that’s it! He definitely doesn’t have any of the fancy Lamaze toys that everyone else’s babies seem to have (is the firefly toy really THAT cool? I am starting to feel like I must be depriving Nathan of something important by not getting him one!)

But that’s okay, because while we may not have toys, we do have . . . .

laundry baskets!

He was really enthralled by being UNDER the basket, as well, but I couldn't get a good picture of that. (And doesn't his face look NAKED without glasses now?)

diapers! (cloth ones, not disposables – that would be a drooly icky mess!) (also, clean ones, NOT dirty ones!)

He will sit and talk to cloth diapers for ages!

things with straps!

Notice he is ignoring the ACTUAL toys for the straps. He will attack people to get to straps. I'm not sure why they're great, but he LOVES them!

kitchen supplies!

Today's selection includes a plastic cup and spoon (as well as a dog, but that was a gift and didn't come from the kitchen!) Previously featured items are measuring cups and plastic containers.

And let’s not forget the best baby toy ever . . .

toes!

Imagine if we all got that excited about having toes once we were grown up. Nothing would ever get done!

So I really do intend to get him more actual toys one of these days (particularly as he gets older and can better manipulate things), but in the meantime, if he’s perfectly happy throwing plastic utensils off his hair chair or chewing on anything cloth he can wiggle over to, why mess with that?

There are a lot of things I found odd or interesting about pregnancy, but one of the biggest surprises to me was that at some point during my childhood, the gestation of a baby changed from 9 months to 40 weeks. (It’s probably just semantics and based on when you start counting the weeks, but all the same, I found it confusing. Some books reference trimesters based on the old measurements and some on the new, and it was way less fun to try to follow along with what week I was in, because I couldn’t remember which system the book followed! Anyhow, I digress).  What I gleaned from most of them, though, was that 40 weeks is a full-term baby, but after 37 weeks the lungs should be fully functional and if you go into labor, nobody panics about it being “too soon”.

I started week 36 by calling my mom and telling her, “By this time next week, I’ll have a baby cooked enough that it could be born!” and when they told me at 36 weeks, 4 days gestation that the baby needed to come out NOW, I figured he was close enough to 37 weeks that we could just call him a ready-to-go baby. HAHAHAHAHA! (I’ve started thinking that everything about pregnancy was a giant life lesson for me, which basically boiled down to, “Just because this is the way you THINK it should be, it’s now going to be the OPPOSITE!” *insert evil laugh here*. But I digress again).

So no, Nathan was not a fully cooked baby, and even though he was short of 37 weeks by just a few days, he was technically a preemie (a late-term preemie, but that’s a mouthful that nobody ever says). And apparently I was wrong in thinking, “Eh, he’s close enough!” because I guess somewhere in those next few days were where he was supposed to learn all sorts of good stuff, like being able to keep his blood sugar high enough to have the energy to eat (hence the stay in the NICU, I’ll write about that one of these days!) and how to have really strong mouth muscles for sucking.

All of that meant that my dreams of lovingly breastfeeding my newborn baby did not exactly go as planned (there’s the universe, making fun of me again!) He latched and started breastfeeding in the recovery room, but his initial blood sugar level was low enough that supplementation was immediately needed. Since the nurse in the recovery room was AWESOME (I was told she was instrumental in helping my hospital become Baby Friendly) she was able to rig up an impromptu supplemental nursing system with a syringe and a tiny tube from some other device, so Nathan got formula through the tube while still breastfeeding (I’ve since seen many such devices, but at the time, she blew my mind with that thing!)

Once they transferred us to a post-partum room, I continued breastfeeding on demand, but his blood sugar levels were still too low. We didn’t have a McGyver style nurse this time, so the next best option was to try to get Nathan to take some formula from a tiny cup. He still wouldn’t take enough formula to get his blood sugar high enough, so they tracked down their nurse with the best feeding skills and had her give it a shot. No dice. That’s when he was transferred to the NICU for a glucose IV, and when I got started with the breast pump.

Once in the NICU, the rules for feeding were very strict. Nathan was fed every 3 hours, and had only 30 minutes to ingest a certain amount of food (I forget what the amount was, but we started at probably less than an ounce of formula and worked up to almost 2 before we could take him home). It was HARD to get him to eat that much food, because he kept trying to fall asleep! (I wish we’d taken a video of the process, but we were usually too stressed out by the time limit to do anything but encourage him to EAT EAT EAT! We’d be tickling his mouth with the bottle nipple, putting milk on his mouth, physically opening his mouth to put the nippled in it, squirting milk into his mouth, moving his limbs around, undressing him, rubbing his body to try to get him to wake up, changing his body position . . . it was rough!) I was allowed and encouraged to attempt breastfeeding, but since it typically took him AT LEAST 30 minutes to drink from the bottle, there wasn’t much time to spend trying to get him to latch (which he was TOTALLY CAPABLE OF DOING, but just refused to wake up for!) When he couldn’t keep up with the amount of food required, they placed an NG tube to get the calories directly into his stomach and bypass any effort on his part.

Nathan with his NG tube in place. Sleeping. Again

Between the IV and the NG tube, he had enough energy to FINALLY, SORT OF wake up once in a while, and they were able to slowly start weaning him off of those things as he proved he was capable of eating the traditional way. With the help of a lactation consultant, I was able to get Nathan to successfully breastfeed using a nipple shield, and after 2 weeks of pumping, breastfeeding, and then offering a bottle of pumped milk, he’d gained enough weight that I was given the green light to discontinue supplementation. (HALLELUJAH, that was a glorious day! The whole process took so long that by the time I finished pumping, I’d be setting an alarm to wake Nathan up again in 1-2 hours to start all over again. I WAS SO TIRED OF PUMPING!) He was still always a sleepy baby and nursing meant constantly trying to rouse him and remind him to keep eating, and he still needed the nipple shield to latch and eat consistently, but I was just so proud to finally be breastfeeding my baby!

Then I started taking the mini-pill for birth control, and while the documentation for the medication says nothing about it, I swear to you that thing killed my milk supply (it gave me horrible other side effects also, so I stopped it after a month and things were much better). Then Nathan started growing, and our nursing sessions just started getting longer and longer, to the point that I started enforcing a, “Mama needs to stretch, pee, and get more snacks” break once an hour, because on some days, there wasn’t an end in sight. He’d eat until he’d fall asleep at the breast, so I’d take him off, and he’d scream bloody murder until I let him nurse some more, and then he’d fall asleep, so I’d take him off, and he’d cry again. That would go on until he conked out for the night. Sometimes I’d take him off the breast and he’d be content, but he’d be so exhausted he’d fall asleep (only if you were holding him, though. He slept great at night, but during the day, forget about it!) He didn’t have much alert time during the day, because he was mostly eating and not taking naps on his own (wow, I’d already started to forget how awful that time period was! You really do forget the crappy parts eventually, I guess!) but I chalked that up to his being a preemie, and kept on trucking!

I eventually got around to making an appointment with lactation again to talk about weaning him off of the nipple shield, and that appointment went totally awry. The plan was to weigh Nathan, feed him, they would help troubleshoot his latching difficulties, and then weigh him again to see how much milk he drank. Nathan had been in the office two weeks prior for his well baby check up, and so when they weighed him again they noted that he had gained a grand total of . . . . 0. In two weeks, he hadn’t gained so much as an ounce (just to give an idea of scale, when we first brought him home, he was supposed to gain .5-1 ounce per day. In the first month, he’d wowed the nursing staff by averaging over an ounce a day. I don’t know what he was supposed to be gaining at this point, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Also, he had started off in the 5th percentile for weight, so he kind of needed to keep up that initial trend to even remain on the chart). So, that was troublesome.

They were able to help with the latch to some extent (he fed briefly without a shield before he started hurting me again, but they sent me home with some exercises to help him strengthen his sucking muscles and some tips for getting him to slowly wean off of the nipple shield) and after he’d done about 30 minutes on the first breast, they weighed him again and noted that he had gotten about 2 ounces of milk. I switched to the other breast for about another 30 minutes (where I showed them how with that side he had a tendency to bite and pull on my nipple, which is not the goal, and they diagnosed him with a high palate) and when they weighed him again he had gotten . . . no milk. He’d yanked and bitten and sucked on my nipple for half an hour, come off of my breast totally fine (he wasn’t crying or fussing or anything! In fact, he was trying to sleep!) and didn’t get ANYTHING to drink. So after an hour, he’d caused me a fair amount of pain and had 2 ounces to drink (and during the times at home that we’d offered him a bottle of expressed milk, he’d averaged about 4 ounces in a feeding. So we knew he could and did regularly eat more than that at once!) I left there with instructions to start waking him up at night to eat (so much for having a baby that slept through the night . . . ) and an appointment to come back for another weight check in 2 weeks.

Mostly, I left that appointment feeling like the world’s biggest failure. My day revolved around feeding my baby, and I put everything I had into doing so, but it clearly wasn’t even CLOSE to being enough. So, because I’m me, I tackled the problem with SCIENCE! And DATA! I made spreadsheets! (They were color-coded). I rented a baby scale from a lactation consultant, so I could monitor how much milk he got from each breast every time he ate, and see if that day had been a fluke, or was a consistent trend. I had pumped once a day on average to have a spare milk supply, but I started pumping more and tracking how much milk I produced so we could try to pinpoint the problem (was I not making enough milk? Was it really all my fault?) I also started offering him bottles of milk from my spare milk stash after breastfeeding, just in case that was the problem (was he still hungry but too annoyed with me to cry and let me know? Was breastfeeding too tiring? Was he burning more calories than he could ingest, like in the NICU? Was I doing him a disservice by allowing him to nurse for 1-2 hours on average?)

What I found was disheartening – on average, Nathan was getting 2-3 times more milk from one breast than the other, and on average he was getting less than 2 ounces (total) from an hour of breastfeeding. He was then eating 4-6 ounces from a bottle immediately after (which was approximately how much milk I could get from pumping, so that ruled out my milk source as a problem).

After a week of breastfeeding, weighing, bottle feeding, and pumping, we decided to cut out the breastfeeding. He still got breast milk, he just got it from an alternate source. At our follow up appointment 2 weeks later, he’d put on a total of 2 pounds. He was still less than 5th percentile for weight, but he was back on his previous growth track. And even better, once Nathan was only spending about 20 minutes eating (and eating so much more!) he transformed into an amazing little person! He cried and fussed less, he was alert more, he started smiling and looking at things and doing all of the developmentally appropriate stuff he’d been missing out on by staring at my chest for hours on end and then falling asleep! We’d been physically connected for the majority of each day, but I didn’t ever really get to spend TIME with my baby until I started feeding him from the bottle. My breast pump suddenly became my best friend instead of my nemesis.

I’m sure lactation would have been happy to help me troubleshoot why he wasn’t getting enough milk from the breast, or help me set up a supplemental nursing system, but to be honest, we just weren’t interested. For the first time in 3 months, we could feed the baby and then LEAVE THE HOUSE! (Previously he’d start crying and want to eat again an hour after finishing, so we were pretty tethered to the couch). We could DO STUFF as a family! He was GROWING! He was HAPPY! And he was DOING stuff instead of just crying and sleeping! (Which I know, some of that is attributed to just getting older, but I’m convinced his brain grew tremendously once he got more food in him!)

Looking at things! Playing! Laughing! Chatting! NOT EATING OR SLEEPING!

So for now, I’m back to the pump (I’m pumping as I write this, even!) I still put him to the breast on occasion just to make sure he remembers how to do it (perhaps I’ll change my mind and want to go back to exclusively breastfeeding at some point), but for now, I’m stuck in a weird place when asked if I breastfeed or bottlefeed my baby – who says that bottle feeding breast milk can’t be the best choice for me and my family?

A year ago today, I started this blog. J and I were living in a 1 bedroom condo, we were both working full-time, and I was just starting to look into our finances and talk to doctors about getting pregnant sooner rather than later.

Today, I’m sitting at my computer in the middle of the day (because I no longer work!) in a 3 bedroom house (still rented, but hey, one thing at a time!) and very, very uncomfortably 9 months pregnant with a baby that prefers to stick his head into my right rib/armpit area rather than turn head-down!

What a difference a year makes!

To get to this point, we took some massive leaps of faith. Yes, we did do a lot of work on rearranging our finances and our priorities, but more than anything else, we’ve simply been incredibly blessed with a combination of luck, timing, great friends, family support, and the apparent goodwill of the universe. I walked into the baby’s room the other day, looked around, and realized that the only thing in there I’d actually purchased was a set of plastic drawers. Everything else was a gift, a loan, or a hand-me-down. I felt so loved that I almost burst into tears. (Okay, there were definitely hormones involved, but more than anything, I was just so thankful that I couldn’t even express it to myself in words).

So to everyone who has been a part of our journey over this last year, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And while I apologize for the sharp decline in posting frequency after I got pregnant (what can I say, posting just took a back seat to growing a human being!) I look forward to all sorts of new and exciting updates in the coming year!

And with that said (and tears in my eyes, again!) I’m off to eat the wonderful dinner my hubby has been putting together (steak, twice baked potatoes, broccoli au gratin and apple cider, to be followed by homemade creme brulee!) while singing along loudly to the soundtrack from Sweeney Todd Even with everything else that has changed this past year, some things do remain the same

Oh, the best laid plans . . .

When I was planning to leave work and stay at home during my pregnancy, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the kind of structure I would impose on myself once I was no longer employed. As hard as I try to be comfortable with my decision to stop working, and as much as I love and stand behind that decision, I am still perpetually anxious about being judged for it. With that in mind, it was really important to me that I set up my day as though I still were a contributing member of society so that I couldn’t be accused of not doing anything besides sleeping, eating, and watching TV. After much introspection, I came up with what I thought was a realistic plan. I envisioned waking up every day at the same time my alarm would usually go off, and then allotting chunks of each day to reading, writing, exercising, and doing household chores and errands. I thought that would allow myself plenty of time to relax and enjoy what will probably be the only time of my life that I have completely to myself, and still accomplish the tasks that I thought would help make me the happiest, healthiest, pregnant version of myself.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

One month later, all I can do is laugh at the version of myself that really thought I’d be able to plan out my life in any fashion. One of the things I’ve learned, both from working with kids and from observing and listening to other moms, is that for as many lessons and skills an adult can try to teach a child, there are just as many times in life when it is our interaction with the child that ends up teaching us about ourselves (and of course, the lessons taught by children are usually far more insightful and personal than anything the adult could ever have offered the child).

I haven’t given birth to a baby yet (heck, I don’t even know what pronoun to use to refer to the baby, yet!) but I think that my little baby is already trying to teach me my very first lesson: having a child takes away your control of the world (and the sooner I come to terms with that, the better!) I honestly believed that I had made this epic first step in being a flexible and open-minded parent simply by letting go of my previous life, but as it turns out, I was still trying too hard to put things on my own terms. Even if the baby is still inside me, I’m not just “me” anymore, I’m an “us”. I’m a baby incubator, and my body is no longer my own. My body also, apparently, doesn’t appreciate my trying to dictate how it will behave.

For months now, I’ve been feeling like my brain doesn’t work. It can’t hold or process information as efficiently as it used to be able to, and  the horrible irony is that there is more going on in my brain than ever before! I’m having so many new and life-changing experiences and insights that are just begging to be put down on (metaphorical) paper, but I can’t seem to keep up with all of it. After a month of trying to at least organize them by topic in my head, I’ve given up. I’m hoping the seeds of really great posts will stick around in my head and come back some other time when I’m more lucid, but we’ll have to see. For now, I’m accepting that to a certain extent, between the hormones and the life changes, my thoughts are running wild on a crazy manic episode, and the part of me that is the listener and the recorder of all those thoughts simply cannot operate at that pace. Just the thought of trying to put it all into writing is exhausting (and trust me, getting just this much out will probably have me recovering on the couch for the rest of the day!)

Physically, while I’m still well intentioned when it comes to exercising and keeping the household running, the amount I can accomplish in any given time span is far less than I had anticipated. I can’t seem to pinpoint WHY exactly, because it’s not just the physical aches and pains and nausea, nor is it simply being tired. It’s just some ineffable thing that causes me to move slowly and need an inordinate amount of time to recover after any event or activity. I can’t for the life of me figure it out (so I’m really hoping some other previously pregnant woman has had time to reflect on it and can tell me how to explain it! Otherwise I’m going to start believing that I’m in my own little universe where time moves differently than it used to). I make lists and plans and break down what I hope to accomplish each day (and we’re not talking about lofty goals here. My list has things on it like, “add flight information to calendar,” “call bank,” and “email coworkers current contact info”) and then at the end of the day, I berate myself for not having accomplished those things. They’re such EASY tasks, and I feel like such a failure for not being able to simply sit down and get them all taken care of. I count being organized, efficient, and dependable as some of my key personality traits. What does it mean when I can’t harness any of those skills to run my own life? If you take those away from me, who does that make me?

A few weeks ago I mentioned not being able to get much accomplished to a friend who has been my work mentor for many years, and who is now also a mother and great source of information. She mentioned that there are days, both during pregnancy and after giving birth, when sometimes all you’ll be able to get done is a load of laundry. And maybe the next day you’ll do the laundry AND go to the grocery store, but then the day after that you might only be able to get through the laundry again. And you have to just get over it and be okay with that.

I’ve been ruminating on that for a little while now, because that’s the point where I’ve been stuck for the last month or so. I’m keenly aware of what I’m not getting done, but I’m NOT okay with it. I set arbitrary expectations for myself before I’d hardly started to experience pregnancy, and when I fell short of those, it caused me just as much stress and anxiety as I used to feel about going to work (and we all know how THAT ended up!)

I’ve always had issues with control and being able to plan, and while I’ve made a lot of progress, I clearly have a long ways to go. A few weeks ago I realized that I was being much harder on myself than I would be on anybody else I cared about, and that the only person who was stressing out every day about not meeting my goal was me. So I’ve started giving myself the advice I’d be giving anybody else, if the tables were turned.

You’re going through a lot right now, it’s okay to just let go and experience it without trying to control it.

Nobody cares about your stupid structure or plan for each day. Do what you can and then let the rest go.

You don’t blog for money, you do it for fun. If it’s not fun, then don’t do it.

You need to keep yourself and the baby healthy, but you’re still only human. Things either will or will not go wrong, no matter if you fit in a 30 minute walk each day. Do what you can today and then reassess tomorrow. You do what you can and that’s all anybody can ask of you.

Each day is going to be different than the one before it. There is no clear trend on a graph (in fact, there’s no graph!) Tackle each day and its joys and struggles as they come. It’s okay if you can’t anticipate what the next day will be like. You’ll figure that one out when you’ll get there. Just focus on today right now.

Just let it go.

I’m trying to follow my own advice, because I know in my heart it’s pretty wise stuff. I still keep my lists, but my goal now is to get one thing accomplished each day, and so far that has been an appropriate goal (I felt like Super Woman the day I managed to stop by the dry cleaners AND go to the bank AND buy groceries! Granted, the bank was inside the grocery store, and all I needed to do was deposit a check, but it was still three separate things that I managed to check off my list!)

I still have days where I worry about what other people think of me and stress because I didn’t get more done. But on those days I try to stop, give myself a mental hug, and remind myself that it’s okay to be kind to myself. Then I thank my baby for teaching me that lesson, and resume whatever it is I was doing with new love in my heart.