Another post!

As I sit here writing this, my son is doing his very best to eat a cat toy and I'm all right with that. I think this means that I have mellowed out about in regards to baby-stuffs. However, there are still:

Things I Still Refuse To Do:

Give him a binky that has hit the floor anywhere outside my house. (hey, I know what's happened to my floors.)

Take my hand off the stroller when I'm out of the house. (Kidnappers would have to pry my cold dead hands away from it.)

Put him in anything less than the cutest outfit I have available even if I'm sleep deprived and/or sick as a dog. (His cuteness is my fuel now, it inspires me to greatness.)

Let him cry. (Yeah, that's not even possible. He cries and I make it better. End of story. AP all the way!)

Pass him off to people because we are sick of him. (Holding him is still an honor we bestow upon the favored few.)

Stop taking pictures because it got boring. (Yeah right, like that could happen.)

So I may still be a tad Type A mom-ish about the whole thing, but have you guys seen this kid? He is really happy and thriving like a thriving thing. I'm gonna take that as a green light on my parenting style for now.

Take a breath

Ok, so it's been six months of baby bliss and I've started to realize that things aren't going to slow down and come back to normal. If I want to get anything done ever again I'm just going to have to MAKE it happen. This is a perfect segway  to:

Things I swore I'd Never Do

Stick the kid in front of the tv in order to entertain him. (How do you think I found the time to write this?)

Pee in front of him (Yeah, that went out of the window in the first week)

Be embarrassed about feeding him in public. (Even in this area, I still get self-conscious .)

Ignore my cats! (What, I still have cats? I kid, but they only get love now if Xan is sleeping or wants to play with them.)

That's all I have time for now, but I'm planning on updating more often again so next time will be Things I Still Refuse To Do.

The gory details

So where was I? I guess I could talk a bit about the actual birth of the fuzzlet. I had been in early labor on and off for about 3 weeks. As in, something would start happening, then stop just when things were getting good. Then as time got closer to his birthday I was just kind of in constant mild labor for, oh, maybe 3 days. It wasn't too bad, mostly just frustrating. I got tons of acupuncture from various different practitioners to see if it made a difference. Boy did it. This one lady named Masako gave me the ole pokearoo on Thursday morning and by the evening I just knew we were in labor. Then I fell asleep. Balls. Around 3 the next morning I woke up with the innate knowledge that for reals this time, I was in labor. So I told my instincts to go blow and tried to go back to sleep. It didn't take long to realize that not only were my contractions not going away, but that they were about 3 minutes apart and 45 sec long. So we called our Doula, Michelle who came over lickety split and said, "Um, guys, you might want to give your Midwife a heads up this is gonna be soonish. I go,"Yeah right, you call, Imma hop in the tub and ride the next few contractions out." Because, honestly, I thought it was going to be forever before things got real. Unbeknownst to me, because Michelle was super mellow and I asked her not to quote me numbers so I wouldn't get caught up in where I thought I should be, I was already smack dab in the middle, about 5 to 7 cm and gaining. Then I really started working for the gold and Michelle was like, seriously, bro, now is the time. So we hot-footed it to the birthing center which was a special experience due to contractions being about a zillion times stronger out of the water. Dan, being the most awesome husband ever, put on Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog for me to focus on. During the most intense contractions, I had A Man's Gotta Do as my personal soundtrack. It was epic. So, we get to the center and I'm getting wheeled through the lobby filled with half the state getting to hear things like, "Hey, today's my birthday too!" and other such things as I have some pretty fantastic contractions right there in public. I get wheeled to my room and suck it up through getting monitored because that's what they do, the whole time being very politely insistent that as soon as possible I'd like to get in the tub now PLEASE. So into the tub I go then out again a few minutes later as the midwife is all, "We need to break your water so you can push, k?" At that point it dawned on me that my whole labor had been super short, only a few hours and while pretty intense, totally doable since the whole time I had been expecting something basically unbearable and unending. Now don't get me wrong, it was no picnic. There were several times that I knew I was absolutely never doing that again. But according to the whole team, I had an easy time of it. There was only about 25 minutes of pushing and by that time the contractions were my friend helping me get to the finish line. And let me tell you, quick and easy, or no, during the actual pushing out part, I knew someone somewhere had made a horrible mistake, because there was no way he was gonna fit through there. I thought I would humor everyone and play along like I believed we were going to be successful, but really, I thought everyone was smoking crack. Fortunately for me I was wrong, and out he came, all purple and wiggly in what felt like no time. And there he was, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. My son. I kissed Dan, thanked him for our little angel, then promptly forgot that anyone else in the world existed as I stared down at Xander in wonder that has yet to abate.

The Other Side

So I made it through the actual production of this child. I find myself most pleased by the results. The actual delivery was nothing like what I expected - an event so gory that they'd have to rate it past NC 17 if someone tried to produce it. Instead it was fairly mello and, from what I've been told, a really easy birth - though at the time it felt like the hardest thing anyone anywhere ever has done in the history of doing things. Interesting fact - I had a freaking water birth - how wild is that? It's not that I was all, "I will forgo all drugs for the sake of my child." but more like, "they put a needle where? Eff that, Imma just do this thing in the water where it sucks the least." So for all the people that keep telling me they are impressed, in all honesty, I have serious fortitude in the face of a needle to the spine, so it's not as impressive as it sounds. What am I saying, everything I did that day was massively impressive, so carry on. BTW breast feeding is really cool and also super challenging, so any of you with experience let me know so I can pick your brains! Though for the moment Xan and I are managing pretty well. Ok, the child needs noms, I'll continue this tale another time.

This is a joke, right?

I know I'm only three day over due, but they have been a long 3 days. I'm starting to think that pregnancy is some universal joke, or riddle that I wasn't clued in on and that all of the moms of the world aren't allowed to tell women who haven't given birth yet the key to unlocking the 'prize' of delivery. Induction is still about a week and a half off, but until 3 days ago, my midwife wasn't even mentioning it and now apparently it's a thing I need to keep under consideration. Yes, I knew all of this before June 5th, but it didn't apply to me because I was going to be a unique snowflake that, when the oven timer went off, released a freshly baked batch of healthy baby boy. Descriptive, no? Anyway, I am bored. Bored stiff. And I've stopped being quite so loving when I talk to the ole fuzzer now. Before I was all like, "Daddy and I can't wait to meet you, my beloved snuggle bear!"Whereas now it's much more like, "Time's up, everyone out of the pool! Get out, get outgetoutgetout!!!!"I am considering going on a cookie strike so that he knows that there won't be any more tasty snacks until he comes out and learns how to nom them himself. That'd work on me. Ok, rant completed. Gonna go bounce on my yoga ball some more...

Ready to be one person again

Do I sound ungrateful? Sue me. Yeah I already love the crap out of this kid, but he needs to pack his bags and head toward the exit. Now. Yes, I mean right now. So I'm pretty sure I have the whole false labor thing down, I know when he's just faking to get attention and I can now ignore contractions with the best of them. What do I miss about being not pregnant, you may ask? I'd love to tell you:
 My feet! I can't reach them and getting a pedicure from a salon is way too stinky. The one time I went, I spent the whole time absolutely positive that I was making my kid dumber with every passing minute.

Self control - If there is anything anywhere that I want, I just go get it/eat it/make Dan get it for me. Why? Because this is like the last time for a very long time that anything gets to be solely about me and I want to enjoy these last shining moments. Why is this a bad thing? Ask the 2 new cavities I've just grown. At least I'm not ballooning up too badly. There just isn't enough room for him to exist and for me to stuff myself anymore.

Oddly enough, not booze. At this point, it's been so long, I don't really care anymore. Forward locomotion at any speed other than turtle - I've probably told most of you about the old lady with the walker that passed me on the sidewalk. She smirked at me! I swear she did! Walking is now something I see is only for suckers. I only do it for as long as I can stand it for the sake of getting labor started and the I go take a nap.

Lazy sex - the less said about this the better I suppose, but seriously, we have to get darned creative these days to even attempt it.

Having a private cervix - Everyone on the planet, strangers especially, keep asking me how much I'm dilated. What I want to do is come up with an equally invasively personal question to ask them, like, "What was the consistency of your last bowel movement?" Though, I've had strangers ask me that one too... Wowsers.

Sleeping on my back - It's been so long I don't rightfully remember it properly, I but I do believe that it didn't involve snoring or drooling quite as much as side lying does. Poor Dan, I finally have been able to pay him back for all that snoring.

All these gripes aside, I can still honestly say that I have enjoyed being pregnant. And I will enjoy not being pregnant again ASAP. Seriously dude, scoot. I'll make you cookies...

My Now Monthly Post

Had Ultrasound today and Fuzzlet is fully locked and loaded and in a good position to find the exit when the time comes. I have hourly conversations with him about how the whole process will be easier on us both if we just work together towards our final goal - him safely and happily on the outside of my body. I have bought him a bajillion very cute and very necessary items and his room is a breath away from being done - though be warned, if you see it, you may go temporarily blind from the cuteness factor. I talk to all of the cats daily about how they are about to have a new brother and to be nice to him when he comes, though Hime has suddenly started peeing and pooping outside the litterbox - not the best sign in the world. So I've been letting all of them sniff and play with the new stuff so they can get adjusted. I am very much looking forward to my lovely friend Christie coming and staying for a couple of weeks after Fuzzy shows up. It'll be nice to show my son proof that his mom is cool enough to have a friend like her :) Soon I will be posting a little something about what the plan is after I go into labor, so everyone will know how to get info and such. Though at this point, I'm considering just posting on FB "Guess who we got to meet last night!" and not bother with telling folks until after he's all pink, wiggly and out and about. The closer I get to the appointed day, the less I can manage to give a flying crap about work, though I fully intend to put in at least one or two more orders in before I am gone. I'm pretty sure all of our new employees think Dan runs the whole store and I'm just arm candy. They might be surprised a few months from now... We'll see, I guess.

Pregnant Easter Bunny

Had a good birthday weekend. My present from Dan was unlimited help with my favorite obsession - getting the nursery ready. It was awesome! We spent a good portion of the day (and our bank account) at Babies r Us and then we put most of it together. Dan even helped instigate doing the fuzzling's laundry. I bought a bunch of cloth diaper inserts for burp cloths as recommended by nearly everyone I know, but they seem kinda small... Not sure if they will protect me from the predicted splatter and such. I guess we'll see. I also got tons of cake, my favorite thing. The next day I dragged my increasing mass around the countryside looking at and getting nommed on by baby cows. So frikkin cute. Then with the company of my mom and Dick, we stuffed our faces with the tastiest pancakes known to man. I do believe I surprised the parental units with my size, though the auditory evidence was relatively benign. I was only told that it had been a while since they had seen me, fortunately no one made me or Dan need to inform them that the word beautiful was to replace all adjectives referring to my size for the foreseeable future. Examples for future use: "Wow! That chair didn't stand a chance when confronted by your sheer beauty!" Or, "You might be too beautiful to ride in the Prius anymore, let's take the van instead." Note: lovely can also be applied in this situation. "I think my loveliness is preventing me from reaching my feet, can you help me tie my shoes?" During the meal, my mom presented us with Easter baskets containing bunny ears which we wore for the rest of the day. The staff at the restaraunt took out picture, so when we bring the fuzzling in a few years we can show him exactly what kind of family he got stuck with :) though, by then, he'll probably have some inkling.

I know, it's been a while.

Oddly enough, life does not slow down once you start to reach the home stretch. We now have 9 weeks to go, wowsers. Finally have the nursery painted and the furniture peoples are due any minute with the crib and changing table/dresser. More and more I am leaving the Mercantile to Dan and crew, while I get the house ready for our new arrival. I am in total full-on nesting mode at this point - all I think of any more is making appointments and finding the most perfect and absolutely cutest stencils to put on the walls. Yesterday while I was at Target buying diapers, diaper pails and the like, I stumbled across the cutest display ever, so the baby/guest bathroom is now covered in monkeys. I sure hope this kid isn't afraid of monkeys because they are everywhere. Fuzzlet's grandparents are becoming anxious to meet him and my grandparents are just adorable, I can't wait til they get to meet him. I'm going now, because I want to see if Michael's has an online selection of stencils or wall stickers for me to peruse, now I need some for the bathroom too!

New Discovery

I went to a creative movement for birth class last night and I learned something very important - super pregnant ladies freak me out!!!!!! As soon as I went into the room and saw several ladies about to pop I got all dizzy and almost had to put my head between my knees (good luck with that, right?). It took me almost an hour before I could look one in the eye.

I'm actually glad that I discovered this now, because I have time to work on it. Actually, during the whole class I got more and more comfortable with where I was and I asked myself what the heck was going on. I realized that until last night I never EVER thought about labor. So many oh-so-helpful (snort) ladies have told me tons of horrible stories that just left me completely shut down about the idea to the point where being in the same room as some lady about to pop almost sends me into convulsions. Not ideal.

Fortunately for me the whole class was focused toward joy and strength instead of "And then THIS is probably gonna happen! HaHaHa!" So by the time it was over I felt kinda like, "Hey, I can totally do this and it might even be kinda cool." Instead of, "Soon I'll be going to the birthing center where something super scary that I won't think about will happen and then I'll come out with my fuzzling in my hot little hands, woot."

Conclusion: Midwifery Center birthing classes are good, well meaning ladies with horror stories to tell need to be tazered.

Being Pregnant Means...

When you say "I need to go to the bathroom." people don't continue on with a 20 minute long story and practically chase you into the bathroom in order to finish telling it. They say, "Oh yes, of course." and even point out the closest one. Sweet.

When you say "I'm tired." they don't ignore the comment and expect you to push through something exhausting and mind consuming. Actually they tend to get panicky and try to push you to the floor in order to immediately get you off your feet. Then they get you blanket and pillows and gummy bears. Rock on.

When you say "I really want some cake right now." They don't say, "For breakfast?" They start listing out all the different kinds of cake you could have from the closest locations. Sounds great, but is a little hard on the willpower.

When you say "My shoulder hurts a little." people don't expect you to take Advil and ignore it. Instead, you end up getting fought over by 2 chiropractors, a massage therapist, and a physical therapist who just want to fix the problem as quickly as possible so you don't even have to take Tylenol.

When you are having a hormonally unbalanced day, you get hugs and lovin's instead of the stink-eye.

Peeing all the time. ALL the time.

Getting to use the elevator at the parking garage without getting mean looks from people. Woot.

Always having someone to talk to or sing weird songs to that NEVER interrupts and gives you little kicks as a way of communicating his love for you. :cries:

Your family makes sure you know they love you all the time.

99% of people are just plain nicer to you than they normally would be. I like that part. And the 1% that is mean - for whatever reason- usually gets jumped all over by the other 99%. I rarely ever get to bust out my preggo-rage on anyone. (p.s. I hate the word preggo.)

Dear unborn fuzzling,
Had there been any resentment from the nonstop barfing and exhaustion of the first 4 months, it is all forgotten now. I cannot, however, speak for the birth. I can only assume the same will apply.
Love, Mom

Smartness

Yeah, being smart is totally overrated. When my mental faculties started going downhill from being pregnant, at first I was all like, "Oh no, how will I keep from stupiding myself to death?!" Now I'm all, "Yeah, I put my car keys in the toilet tank again, what of it?" (not a real example, unfortunately)

Maybe the hormones have just started to level out, but I find myself being able to spell again, which is nice. Verbal communication, on the other hand, still consists mostly of me trying to beam the image of what I am trying to convey directly into the other person's mind - that and wild and elaborate gesticulation, which can get kind of hilarious, especially if someone gets poked in the eye. Dan has become a pro at understanding me, even if I just say, "Snowblower!" He'll be all like, "Don't worry, there will be plenty of ice cream left when we get there." What a catch! Now that I know about his super pregnancy mind reading powers I will totally have more of his babies.

By the way, I like cats.

Different Stuff So Far

Standing Up
Getting up is becoming a new adventure every day! Getting off the couch? Forget it, it takes several moments of flopping about followed by rolling over onto the floor to even get off the dang thing. From there I have to do some fancy yoga moves to get myself upright. Remedy? Go buy a recliner that half propels me to my feet. Problem solved right? Not quite. It turns out that the new recliner is a cat magnet. They don't want anything to do with any other item in the room - especially if I'm sitting on it. So, the problem is that if there are cats on the chair when I need to get up (and there's always at least one) they are also propelled off the couch into the air. Poor things. I try to give them a warning, but when a pregnant lady needs to use the potty, there's really only a small window for success, so they get one nudge and then it's air time.

Sleep
What's that? Yeah, so there isn't really any of that happening - at least on my side of the bed. I wake up about every 30 minutes and then spend 10 - 15 minutes going back to sleep. This continues for 3 hours and then it's all over. I just have to get up and occupy myself for at least 3 hours before trying again. Caution: Anyone advising me to try Chamomile tea will be hunted down and have a cat propelled at them. Fortunately for me, once or twice a week I actually get a full 8 hours of  sleeping for 30 minutes and then being awake for 10 - 15. This makes it so I don't actually follow through on the urges to run people over with my car when they do something deserving of it.

All that being said, I do actually have one tried and true method of falling to sleep, and that is my Shadowcat. If I can convince her to sleep next to my head, but not on it, I will conk right out. The purring she gets up to is epic and will put me down like a brick to the head (except nicer). Unfortunately, I can't have her every night because I have to leave the door open to allow for potty breaks which means that our kitten - who is very nocturnal - gets up to wacky hijinks with everything in the room that he can conceivably chase/pounce/put in his mouth. So, I only get my purr-bot sleep remedy once or twice a week when the kitten is willing to sleep too. Otherwise they all stay outside the bedroom.

All of this, I believe, is really just to prepare me for learning how to function on no sleep. Let the good times roll.

Eating
Definitely gaining more weight now than before. My love for cake has returned with a passion. Many people tell me to enjoy it while I can since I have an excuse and, for the most part, I am, but I don't think you people realize exactly how much cake I can take down in a day. (For those of you at home, the definition of cake - to me - is anything sweet that can be baked. This includes cookies, brownies, cake, muffins, and so on...) About a year before I got pregnant, I went on Weight Watchers and lost 50 lbs so that I could have any easier time with this pregnancy, which turned out to be a very good idea. Mostly that entailed not eating cake all day long and exercising a bit. Now that I am off the program (can't diet whilst pregnant) and I no longer have serious food aversions to everything, I have turned into the freakin' cookie monster! Now, I'm not a horrible mother. I make sure that the fuzzlet gets healthy noms before I fill up on cake, but at this point, I do believe that I will be right about back where I started a year and a half ago.

Now, with all that being said, I don't freaking care! I love cake right now, it sings to me like a forbidden lover to a teenaged girl and I WANT it. So I have it. But my goal now, as of this very day, is to have only one caky thing a day. This way maybe I won't look like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man by the end of this whole endeavor.

Shopping

I've just made one Girl Scout a very happy little girl. About an hour ago as I was preparing to eat some fruit salad I realized that what I really needed was a doughnut. I needed one bad enough to slap someone for it. So I informed my dear husband that we had to go to Atkins Farms, like, pronto. So we went. These are the results:

1 piece of white cake with white frosting
2 rocky-road brownies
1 bag of cider doughnuts
1 chocolate doughnut with chocolate frosting
1 honey dip doughnut
4 nectarines
1 box of clemetines
1 pint of strawberries
1 turkey sandwich

This was just the stuff I got for me, though I imagine that Dan will help out a bit in the doughnut department. As we were leaving there was a blessed little angel sitting outside selling Girl Scout cookies which I have been gagging for for months so I got:

2 boxes of Thin Mints
2 boxes of Samoas
1 box of Dosidos
1 box of Tagalongs

I thought it was interesting that rather than getting weird looks from people (I was pretty adamant about my needs at the bakery department) all I got were smiles and kindness. I guess when you have a baby bump you can do all sorts of things and have society just smile at you. I'm going to miss that. Especially the ability to order Dan to drive with me to the store for massive amounts of cakey-type things.

P.S. As soon as I got home I ate 1 clementine and then decided that I didn't really need all that other stuff just right now after all.

Thank God for Good Men

I'm home early today after less than 3 hours of rather unproductive work because I have already cried my eyes out 3 times over how much I already love my son, almost screamed from anger at stupid vendors (so not me) and had several dizzy spells that sent me to the floor over and over again. All I want now is to curl up and snuggle with my Honey Bear and my Shadow, but he's continuing to work hard so that I can go home and have a small meltdown. He's a good bear. At least I have my wonderful grey-cat sitting right beside me as I type, ready to fill my lap with purrs the second I get off the computer. And just to be clear, this isn't a call for help to my RL peoples to come over/call - that is unless you want me to yell at you over nothing and then sob an apology into your shoulder/receiver. This is just me documenting the joys of being a mom. Man, I love this little boy.

Ninja Boy

Today the fuzzlet has been insanely active, but for a change, so have I. Woot. This is a big breakthrough for me since up until today, whenever he has been kicking like an action movie hero, I have been about as active as a bar of soap. Today he was so excitable that he kicked my massage therapist in the thumb when she was working near my abdomen. At this rate, I'm fairly certain that our dreams of him becoming a space ninja will come true.

I'm a Gundam!

According to my dear friend Charlotte, anyway. For those of you who didn't spend your college years believing that sleep was for the weak and that if only you watched a little more anime, fairies would appear from space and give you the inspiration to finish the last 5 pages of your final in biology due in only 10 hours, a Gundam is a mechanical suit of armor that a small soldier boy or girl can fit inside of and drive into battle - for great justice. A few days ago I told Char that I wasn't feeling in control of my actions that day. She responded by telling me that she knew exactly who was driving, considering the amount of cookies I had just shoved into my face and that I was totally little Fuzzbutton's Gundam. This made me very happy and suddenly the bad mood was gone, so I spent the rest of the day pretending that I was a miniature mobile suit of armor lumbering around my house doing the bidding of my pilot.

Nicknames

Many people come up with adorable nicknames for their unborn children, including us. So far I've heard Little Bean, Meatball, Sprout, Monkey, Batman, Little One, Tiger and the list goes on. So far Dan and I have been calling ours Fuzzbutton or Fuzzling because I already have 3 absolutely gorgeous, precocious hilarious children that are my fur babies. I see no reason to think that, just because this one is technically going to be human, I need to think of him as my first because really, he's going to be the 6th child that Dan and I have had together. Yes, yes, I know it'll be different, and much more complicated, but let's face it guys, you know I'm going to raise this one to be a cat too.

Anyway, up until quite recently, Dan and I were perfectly content to call our new little guy Fuzzling until he came out and we had to 'fess up to what his 'real' name was going to be. Then we saw the second to last episode of Doctor Who which featured a baby named Stormageddon. Since then, we have both been calling him either that or diminutives like Stormy or Storms which - don't get me wrong those names are totally freakin' awesome - but jeeze! Every cat I have ever named has almost completely conformed to the names they were given. Charms was the most dashing gentleman anyone could ever wish to meet, Shadowcat follows me literally everywhere I go (she's sitting on my ever-shrinking lap as I type) and Hime (nihongo for princess) is the most spoiled, entitled girl in the history of cat-hood. So I am currently trying to resist Stormageddon because it invokes images in my mind of never sleeping again due to a very noisy boy. However, deep in my heart of hearts, I think that being able to tell my son his nickname was Stormageddon when he was little is the coolest thing that has happened anywhere, ever.

In the Beginning...

I didn't want to blog about my experiences whilst being pregnant. First, because I didn't want to alienate my FB friends with the minutia of my daily life. Second, any time I have ever felt as though I HAD to write/draw/create anything at all, I've tended to find it not fun even a little and then quit. However, lately I have had many things I've wanted to write about regarding the new little man in my life (yes, he's here right now affecting my life, so in my mind he's already here.) and all of the ladies on the Bump, not to mention an RL friend seem to be enjoying it immensely, so there you go, today I make my attempt at blogginess. I may post often or never again, but for those of you who are interested, feel free to read whatever it is that I put here involving me being pregnant.