False Labor Evening from Hell

I haven’t done much of anything for the last few days.  On Wednesday, I started having contractions at about 430.  Which…I’m apparently a “contractor” so not a big deal, right?  Wrong.  No, they don’t hurt like the “oh god I’m getting sawed in half” contractions of ACTUAL labor, but they’re exhausting.  And after a while, they DO start to hurt…I guess from muscle fatigue or something. 

So anyway, I started getting pretty regular contractions in the afternoon.  They were between 8 & 6 minutes apart, but they weren’t the HOLY CRAP ones, so I knew it was false labor.  Whew.  My relief lasted about an hour.  After a freaking HOUR of having a contraction every 6-8 minutes, I was beat.  After two hours, I was angry.  After 3 hours, I was a WRECK.  And Dylan chose to be all clingy all afternoon/evening, which is usually all endearing and adorable.  But he seems to think that my belly is a bouncy ball, and this was quite obviously NOT working for me. 

So I called Brad around 6ish and asked him if there was any way he could PLEASE come home and run interference for me.  No, I wasn’t in labor, but holy CRAP it was getting rough to deal with.  Plus, I hadn’t eaten in a few hours, so my blood sugar was crashing, and I REALLY didn’t want to eat because…well…anybody who’s had contractions knows that eating is…ah…difficult…at a time like that.  Even if they are the “fake” contractions.  Brad couldn’t leave work.  Awesome.  Actually what he said was “I can go in a couple of hours.”  So he could LEAVE work right at the time that I needed to put the little boy to bed.  Big help there.  Siiiigh.

So at 8, I put the kid to bed, and he had a mini-freak out that luckily only lasted for about 45 minutes, so I didn’t get homicidal or suicidal…just more frustrated and exhausted.  By about 930, the contractions had tapered off to about one every 15 minutes or so.  But the nameless baby kept GRINDING his head on my pubic bone.  And he was apparently pissed about his little uterus house getting all cramped and tight on him for 5 hours or so, so he was kicking the everlasting SHITE out of me.  Yay.  So I jumped in the bathtub to try to take some of the pressure off.  That actually helped a little, as long as I leaned over the edge of the tub and let my belly float…which made my legs cramp because we have a teensy little bathtub. 

So the hub came home around 10, I think, and gave me a hand getting out of the tub, but as soon as gravity hit me again, the contractions came back.  Not as bad…but about every 20 minutes or so.  By the time I went to bed at midnight, I was about 4 steps beyond miserable.  And while I was able to sleep though a lot of the discomfort, I was waking up about every 40 minutes as a BIG contraction hit me.  Awesome.  This is on top of the normal waking up every hour to go pee problem.  At about 6, I got up to go potty (yep.  I said “potty”) and blew out my mucous plug.  THAT was fucking lovely.  I thought for a few seconds that my water broke, but then I realized that it was TOTALLY the wrong consistency, and it also…ah….just sort of stopped after a few seconds.  Then I realized what it was, and got totally grossed out and had to completely change clothes because…well…yuk.  (imagine your hoo-hah blowing its nose.  Yeah.  LOVELY.)  >shudder<

So on Thursday, I broke down and called in a favor from my friend Sonya to please please please PLEASE watch my kid so that I could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get some rest.  She did.  I owe this girl big time.  She kept the little monster for about 6 hours and I was able to straighten the house & then just LOUNGE for a few hours, listening to music & reading.  I think I may have fallen asleep for a few minutes, as well.  It was so needed.

Then Thursday night, I started having “fake” contractions AGAIN, for about an hour and a half, and then blew out what was left of my mucous plug.  This time, however, the lights were on and I was awake, so I had to SEE it.  Oooooooooooooooooooooooh god.  That’s enough to keep any rational woman on birth control for the rest of her life.  Needless to say, I almost threw up and jumped in the shower.  UUUUGH.

So today is Friday, and I’m thinking that this kid is gonna be here some time next week.  I’ve only had a couple of contractions since I woke up around 7ish, but the day is young and I seem to get them later in the day…I guess when I’m tired. 

So that’s where I’m at right now.  Awesome.  Now you know WAY more about my vagina than you ever wanted to know, right?  Sorry!  But if I had to look at a snot baby in my undies, you’ve got to read about it.  Blurgh.  I’m so glad I’ve decided to get my tubes tied as soon as this little monster is out of me.  ;)

Strange Day

Ohhh it's gonna be one of those days. I got just enough sleep to have horrible dreams, kiddo woke up yowling WAY too early and my WONDERFUL hub was too busy "getting ready" (re: checking his email/facebook on his fucking phone) to lend a hand...I walk into the kitchen & it's a goddamn disaster from him cooking last night. I know it's naive of me, but when he gathers up the dishes and then I hear water running, I just assume that he's actually cleaning up. Not just running water for the fuck of it and piling dishes (still covered in food) into the sink (that doesn't have a garbage disposal.) so that's what greeted me this morning when I wandered, exhausted, into the kitchen to fix kiddo's breakfast.
I'm loading the dishwasher, muttering to myself, and yeah, cussing, when brad wanders in and tells me that "it's not that bad" and I need to "calm down." gggrrrrrr.
And I have a doc appt this afternoon and I am NOT looking forward to getting a fist shoved up my hoo-hoo. Boo on today.

  My day ended up not too terrible. I'm still tired & crabby & in pain, but I don't feel like I should murder anybody right now.  Pretty bummed, but not homicidal anymore.

Sad note: one of my dear friends found out that her dog has a heart problem, and my own heart just about broke when she told me.  I'm glad we were on email when she told me, because I don't think it would have helped her coping to hear me stifling sobs.  For some reason when I hear about animals being sick, or lost, or injured, or dying, I just shut down inside.  It's pure tragedy to me.  I mean, I reasonable person would probably say something pithy about "it's just a dog..." or something stupid like that, but dogs and cats are such...GOOD...little creatures that it just seems wrong somehow for them to suffer.  

Another sad note: last night when Brad got home from work, he dropped it on me that another friend of mine died.  He didn't realize that we had been friends -- to him she was kind of just "the wife" of one of his friends.  She and I had gone through the stages of "oh god we hate each other" while in high school into "she's ok" when she started working for my mother into "she's pretty awesome" by the time I left Florence.  I hadn't seen her in over 10 years, since I left that horrid little village, but I've thought of her often over the years.  In the days before Facebook & Myspace & the like it was SUCH a bitch to stay in touch with anybody...not that "lack of Facebook" is a good excuse, but still...for the socially challenged such as myself, it's good enough.  But damn.  I don't know what happened, exactly, just that she was a year younger than me and...once again...people my age just aren't SUPPOSED to fucking die.  It's not fair or just.          

Doc appt went ok. I'm at 4cm and starting to thin out, and my doctor told me to "try" to hold on until next week. 37 weeks is the magic number, apparently! If I don't manage to start my own labor (again) she's going to induce me on the 19th. Women in my family apparently have amniotic sacs of steel though, so I probably won't be able to break my own water...yet again! Ah well. Just seeing the light at the end of the tunnel helps, and having a PLAN helps me not be such a freakshow. If I know that I'll have to go in at 7am on the 19th, then I won't be all freaked out worrying about what to do with Dylan when the time comes, or making it to the hospital without delivering on the shoulder of hwy 17 because I got stuck at one stoplight too many!

On a purely good note (for me, anyway) I found my camera cord thingie…so here are the cupcakes that I made the other night.  I’ve only been able to eat a couple of them, but Brad’s done his share of polishing them off!

So that was my day today. Started off horrible, went through sad as hell and ended up still sad but not too bad.
Yay mood swings!

MMM Cupcakes...

Last night I got a total hankering (yep. Hankering.) for something sweet, and true to form, there was NOTHING sweet in the house. My blood sugar had been good all day so I decided that I could whip up some cupcakes without too much guilt. So I did. I made salted caramel cupcakes with the leftover caramel sauce that I made last week and threw together some butterscotch frosting. They were (and still are) amazing.  And I would LOVE to post a photo of them, but I can't find the cord thingie for my camera.  Fantastic.  As soon as I find the stupid thing, I'll put the picture up. 
Baby boy is going through this strange phase where he wants to drop stuff into glasses. He's dropped his pacifier into glasses of water, put cereal I to his dad's coffee cups, and leaves into bowls. It's funny, but odd to have to guard my glasses not from being spilled, but from having weird shit dropped into them.
In unborn baby news, this nameless child if mine is going into the "still zone." with the 1st born of mine, that just meant that he only moved 19 hours a day instead of 22. With this one it means long stretches of the day when he doesn't move at all, and I'll have to poke his butt to get him to wiggle. I guess I'm closer to go time than I thought I was...I'm ready to get the booger out of me, but wish there was some way to do it without labor.
I had Dylan totally naturally. It hurt like fucking crazy, but it's definitely true that the pain fades. I honestly don't remember most of labor now, which freaks me out a little...but our bodies do amazing things at times. All I had to do was survive 4 hours of skull-crushing crotch agony, but then the actual pushing was easier to manage...I guess because I had something to DO at that point. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was god freaking awful too, but it was more directed. And only lasted about 45 minutes. If I'd known what the hell I was supposed to be doing, it would have gone much quicker, but I guess it's hard to describe what "pushing" actually means until you're actually doing it. To be completely honest, it's like taking a crap. It's basically the same muscles for both. But I guess that's one of those un-glamourous things that mothers don't like talking about. "so what you do is grab your thighs, hold your breath & make like you're going to poo in your doctor's face! Yay motherhood!"
So anyway, even though it was horrid agony, I'm going to shoot for natural again. If something goes wrong or I just can't fucking take it, I'm not morally opposed to an epidural, just more afraid of a needle in my spine than I am of birth pain. Weird, right?
We'll see how it goes...

And AWESOME my cord blood donation kit came in the mail today!! I'm donating cord blood this time (I tried last time but I missed the cut-off) and apparently this gunk & goop will go to leukemia banks. Awesome. It's unbelievable to me that you have to REQUEST this shit... Like all of this amazing biological goodness ends up in a freaking dumpster if you don't bank it. That's obscene to me. Banking should be the rule, not the exception, and it shouldn't be such a pain in the ass to do it. I have to get someone to mail it within 24 hours of delivery, and my doctor had to take a tutorial online to be able to collect the sample. otherwise it ends up in a fucking dumpster. Demented.

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was tasty. I made: a pumpkin dip with (store bought) ginger snaps, lemon poppyseed cake, 2 pecan pies, Mac n cheese, green bean casserole, sweet potato souffle, and 4 loaves of rosemary bread. I'm a dumbass and left my camera at home, so I didn't get a single picture! My hub fried a turkey, and it came out totally delicious.
Ok, I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of "southern" food...like the cholesterol bombs and fried everythings...like I HATE fried chicken with a psychotic fervor. But for some reason I think fried turkey is delicious. So brad's turkey was damn near perfect, in my opinion. And I'm not just saying that because I'll have to listen to his offended posturing if I say it sucked...it really was tasty! My food...I didn't use canned anything, because I'm a snob. I used a béchamel sauce as a base for the green beans and Mac n cheese. (ton of béchamel, some bacon, cheese & onions, then add the macaroni or green beans) to top the green beans, my MIL suggested smashing the hell out of butter & herb croutons. It turned out really tasty. The Mac n cheese, however...sigh...I made the casserole & it was all put together, awaiting its turn in the oven...And my MIL decided to "finish it" by dumping a freaking MOUNTAIN of sharp cheddar on the top of it. And I mean a mountain! So my delicate, moderately healthy-ish dish became a cholesterol bomb. Ah well. I was out-numbered by southerners, and she'd been a really good sport by letting me cook "my" foods, so I didn't freak out or anything heinous like that. My lemon poppyseed cake was yummy but in true form for me was lopsided and ugly as hell. I suck at baking. My baked goods almost always taste really good...but Christ it's ALWAYS hideous to look at!!
The only crap part of the holiday was the almost 2 hour drive. I thought I was going to DIE by the time I finally un-wedged myself out of the car. Holy hell that was uncomfortable.
My kid got to bask in a ridiculous amount of attention, but didn't get so over-stimulated that I have to spend a week reprogramming him! So all in all, it was a good holiday.

Obsessed with Food...

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I just made some caramel sauce. I find myself oddly distracted at times  by the thought of starbucks' caramel brûlée latte. And yeah, they're only $4, but when my choices are : latte for me or gallon of milk for everybody, I'm gonna pick the milk every time. So I decided...hey...I can do this, and without the crap ingredients that you end up with in the international delights or whatever store bought brand with 50,000 questionable ingredients...so I made some.

It was: 1/2 stick of butter, melt it in a saucepan on medium, 1/2 cup of brown sugar & 1/2 cup heavy cream. Stir until all mixed & bubbly and pretty, then add 1/2 tsp sea salt, stir about another 5 minutes until it starts to thicken. Take it off the heat & add 1 tsp vanilla. Taste it & adjust according to your taste buds. I added a splash more cream to mine, and a wee bit more salt. It's goooooood.

Anyway, if you put it in a jar in the fridge, it *should* last about 2 weeks... Unless you dump it in coffee & on ice cream and French toast or everything else like I intend to do! I think this jar will last about 4 days. We'll see if the hub likes it as much as I do…
So I've been getting my thanksgiving ingredient list & recipes together. Usually for thanksgiving, we go to my family's gathering in Williamsburg, va. This year, however, the thought if sitting in a car with a toddler, a giant dog & all of our crap (including, of course, the hub's bike...sigh) for 6+ hours is just NOT working for me. Aaand we dont exactly have the gas money to drive that far (or a non-crappy car, for that matter!) It makes me horribly sad though...my godfather/uncle has cancer and this will more than likely be his last thanksgiving with us. So I'm going into this holiday sad. Instead of going up to Virginia, we're spending the holiday with the hub's family in Florence, SC, which is only about an hour & a half away.
Florence is Brad's hometown. I, on the other hand, moved there at 13, and spent every summer that I could far far away. Then I left for good at 17. God I hate that town. There are a few people there that I kept in touch with, and going back doesn't make me nauseous the way it used to, but I still can't say I'm a fan of spending time there.
I've also volunteered to cook sides for the feast...mostly because of the diabetes, but holy hell getting coordinated is a headache. But kind of fun at the same time!
I haven't cooked thanksgiving dinner since 2000. I'm not making the turkey this year, but still...

In 2000, I cooked a duck & a bunch of sides & a pumpkin pie. It was just my ex and myself for the actual meal part, and I was only 22 years old and had never done anything like that before (I chose a duck because my stove was the size of a shoebox & I didn't feel like I could fit a turkey and anything else at the same time. And I freaking LOVE duck. Love it.) my little house was teensy (about 350 sq ft) and I ended up taking my computer off its desk and setting the desk as a dining room table.  With a sheet as a tablecloth. No shit. It was kind of fun, except the bastard had NO food passion, so he just sat hunkered over his plate and fed. We took some to his father, who suffered from the same passionless existence, and he sat on his couch, hunkered over his plate, feeding, ate everything on his plate, then told me that my duck was greasy. THEN my ex's best friend came over later and ate a plate and told me it was "delicious" and actually seemed to appreciate the food and the nature of the meal. I'm still friends with my ex's best friend 12 years later.  My ex...I shoulda broken up with him that day. We are not still friends. I am, however, friends with his wife. She's awesome.
So that was my last experience at cooking something as intricate as a "feast," even though I cook at least 2 or 3 meals a week and have assisted my mother at thanksgiving a few times...it's just not the same as doing the majority of it solo!
Luckily my hub is passionate about food. I'm one of those people that thinks that food should be experienced with all of your senses. Which is difficult for me, as my desserts and casseroles usually end up ugly as hell...but lumpy casseroles and lop-sided cakes aside, I believe that food matters. It's not just "something to shit later" as my mother says.  Which is probably why I'm 10-15 pounds overweight when I'm not pregnant.  Eh.

So I’m looking forward to cooking (I love cooking for people who enjoy food) but not looking forward to cooking in Florence.  And not looking forward to not seeing my family this year.  Especially Uncle Joe.

 

Anyway, the kiddo is asleep right now and the house is a TOTAL disaster.  After my Friday night melt-down, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself yesterday to do much of anything, so today I get to clean clean clean.  I can’t think straight in a messy house.  A certain level of messiness is acceptable and unavoidable, but when it gets to the “I have to weave my way through the living room to avoid stepping on stuff” and “oh my god we’re all going to get botulism and die from the condition of the kitchen floor and counters…” it’s time to clean for real! 

 I just wish it would stop RAINING so I could kick my poor insane dog outside for longer than 28 seconds.

The Night That I Lost My Mind

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Yesterday was terrible.  TERRIBLE.  The hub had to go out of town early morning, then go straight into work.  While he’s rarely home in the mornings (that’s when he has class) somehow it’s just…harder…when he’s out of town.  I know it’s in my head and utterly illogical, but there ya have it.  My father died in a car accident in 1998, and whenever anybody I love (or even like a lot) drives any kind of distance, I get antsy.  Especially when I know that person is already exhausted (poor guy had the migraine that never entirely went away and hasn’t slept very well the last few nights…then had to drag out of bed at like 630 to drive almost 2 hours away to do electrical work for a friend).  Anyway, I was a little stressed out, but that’s almost my normal state of affairs at this point…just…enhanced a bit.

So on top of that, I was out of grocery money, and forgot to ask the hub for some more before he left, so I called him to ask for him to transfer some money into my account.  The kiddo would have enough milk for breakfast, and enough fruit for lunch, but that was about it.  That didn’t work out too well – the hub wasn’t able to transfer money to me, as all he had was cash.  Well shit.  So added stress.  My kid’s not going to starve to death or anything, but I don’t like running out of anything.  Again, makes me antsy.

So the day goes by, the dog is getting progressively more insane because it’s raining and cold, and she’s a PRINCESS and refuses to be wet or cold, so she was going totally stir-crazy.  She’s a weimaraner, so when she gets cabin fever, it’s SUPER obnoxious.  She whines, that awful high-pitched whine…she gets RIGHT up in my face and breathes heavily like a dirty old man on a crank call…and she gets VERY demanding.  As in “I have to go outside NOW…let me back in NOW…I’m hungry NOW…I want pets NOW…” all day long.  All day.  The kiddo started getting cranky as hell after he woke up from his nap.  His molars are making him crazy, but they’re through the gums now, so it SHOULD be a little better for him, but nooooooooooo…apparently not.  So he’s being a grumpy little whiner-child.  I was having contractions…not particularly painful ones, but the insistent kind that take my breath away and make doing ANYTHING AT ALL immensely difficult.  Then…I don’t know if this as-yet-unnamed-baby is already dilating me, or what, but I’ve had the most AMAZING pain in the last few days – it’s not contraction pain, but it’s definitely a cross between cervical pain, awful abdominal pressure and ligament pain.  It’s god-awful and makes EVERYTHING suck.  So there’s that.

Then it’s time to put the kiddo to bed…everybody’s survived the day, everybody’s miserable, stressed out, crabby and exhausted by this point…and the kiddo usually goes to bed at some point between 8 and 830.  So I put him down at about 810.  At 900 he was still crying in his room.  I’d tried doing everything – from ignoring him (that whole “he’ll settle down in a second” thing) to turning the light up, to turning the light down, to adjusting the temperature in his room to checking on him to make sure his foot wasn’t stuck in the crib slats to giving him Ibuprofen for his teeth to changing his (totally clean) diaper to singing to him to rubbing his tummy to finally picking him up (which almost killed me…GOD that hurt) and rocking him and walking and singing and rubbing his back all at the same time.  Every time, he’d settle down for a second, then FREAK out again as soon as I laid him down again.  Finally I was like, THAT’S IT, I’M BEING MANIPULATED, I’M IGNORING THIS, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU! And I walked out of the room, closed the door and decided to *try* ignoring his obvious distaste.   

That is when he lost his fucking mind.  I was sitting on the couch, listening to him SCREAM like maybe he was covered in bees or ants, and I started taking it personally.  (And this is the part of motherhood that NOBODY FUCKING PREPARES YOU FOR…that point where you start to think that your toddler has a vendetta against you, personally, because you haven’t slept in almost two years, you’ve devoted YOUR ENTIRE LIFE to this child, and NOTHING you can do will make them happy.)  So at this point, I crossed over from annoyed into frustrated into this weird mix of fucking pissed and suicidally depressed.  Because, y’know…nothing says “I’m a terrible mother” more than your kid screaming his face off for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON and you not able to do a damn thing about it. 

By now it was about 930.  I freaked out.  I was standing in the carport in my PJs, trying to call my BFF, who for some crazy reason had her phone on vibrate (for shame!) and therefore wasn’t answering, freaking out and wondering if THIS is the point where all those other women went nuts and taped their kids to a wall or something.  I called the hub and asked when he was coming home, to which he replied “why?”  I guess that’s a valid enough question at any other moment, but in that fraction of a second, I lost my mind and just started screaming that I DESERVED AN ANSWER, DAMN IT, JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THIS TO ME?!?!  I guess since I couldn’t scream at the kiddo, the next best thing to do was to scream at the hub.  Makes perfect sense, right????  Poor guy.

After the cell phone equivalent of slamming the phone down (it’s just not the SAME to swipe the “end call” swipey as it was to just slam that receiver into the cradle as hard as you could…I feel old sometimes!) and realizing that my bare feet were going numb on the concrete of the driveway, I went back inside to a child whose crying had escalated from “help me mama I’m covered in bees” into “oh dear god, I’m being scalped.  By goblins.  While a herd of chickens peck my skin off.”  And at this point I was finished, emotionally.  The big choking sobs started breaking out.  The shaking started.  All of my thought pattern was focused down to that “fight or flight” reflex, and honestly, for me right then it was GET IN THE CAR AND GO FAR FAR FAR AWAY.  NOW.  RUN.  GO.  LEAVE.  GOOOOOOOOO. 

So I called the hub back and as soon as he was on the phone just shrieked at the poor dude, “YOU NEED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW.  RIGHT FUCKING NOW.”  I’m sure he LOVED that.  He told me to “calm down” and I screamed something totally coherent along the lines of YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL ME TO CALM DOWN COME HOME NOW!!  (let me just get it out there that the kiddo is 17 months old and I have never ONCE called him at work and told him to come home.  I’ve had a few breakdowns and told him that if I didn’t sleep, I was going to murder him, but I’ve never lost it like I lost it last night.)  It’s good to hold some things in reserve, I suppose, because to his credit, he got his ass home in record time, bearing Hostess Cupcakes for me, went straight into “daddy saves the day” mode and took over while I sat on the floor, stared at the wall and sobbed like a lunatic.

 Yeah.

It was that kind of day.  This morning, instead of going to work on his bike trail or ride his bike or do whatever it is that he does on non-school days before work, he got kiddo out of bed, gave him breakfast and kept him quiet enough for me to sleep until almost 11.  Sometimes he reminds me of why I married him. 

Today has been muuuuuuuch better, except for the continuing pain and contractions and that kind of wilted exhaustion that you get after 30 weeks.  I’m so tired I want to run away from home.  But I’d have to run away from the belly too, because THAT THING is a huge part of the reason that I don’t sleep.  Rolling over is impossible, and this baby just LOVES to punch my bladder at about 3am or so.  I was planning on cooking tonight (nothing stellar…soft tacos and like a corn salad or something) but the thought of standing up in the kitchen makes me want to start weeping all over again.  So I took my happy ass to chic fil a.  It’ll spike my blood sugar, but at this point, I don’t really care.  They have a drive thru, they’re cheap-ish, and their fries are tasty. 

So yeah.  That was my day yesterday.  Everybody survived, all is well now…but really.  Nobody really talks about the HOLY GOD ALMIGHTY freak-outs so I thought I’d share mine.  OH!!!  And the Hostess Cupcakes were amazing, of course!!!  <3