From Here to There

Introducing, Ben 10: Alien Force:

Shannanb aka Mommy Bits got close enough by guessing turtle. 

He’s an African Spurred Tortoise, aka: Little itty bitty tortoise that is going to grow up to be a member of the third largest tortoise species in the world.

He sure is cute though, no?

I felt kind of guilty taking him, knowing full well that unless I get a house with a back yard, he will eventually have to find a new home.  Plus, it just seems a little eccentric to own such an animal. But I have to admit that we are both enamoured with the little dude.  No worries, animal lovers, he’ll get the best of care and go to a good home if it comes down to that.  He’s got a few years of growing to do.

Little Man named him; I was partial to “Iron Man” since he’s got armor, but since this is technically a gift for Little Man, I relented.  Plus, Ben is a pretty cute name for a tortoise.

Everyone say “Hi, Ben!”.

1. Yeah, I know I haven’t been around much and my comments on your blogs have basically sucked donkey balls the last several weeks.  My excuse?  Work and lots of it.  It’s our busy time of year right now and the days leave me drained.  I just had a four day weekend and do not feel refreshed in the least. Talk to me in November.  

2.  I’ve got about 200 unread posts in my reader.  Considering the fact that I only subscribe to about 20 blogs, that means I’m waaaay behind and I’ve never had that many unread posts in my reader.  I am not going to tell you that I’m marking all as read and not feeling guilty about it, because I intend to read them:  I just won’t comment on all of them.  I know you guys are cool with this.  I just wanted to make it clear that I AM reading.

3.  Can anybody tell me how to fix my technorati profile?  I’ve tried deleting my claim and reclaiming this blog, but it’s still holding on to my old claim and it won’t ping or update my super duper high “authority”.  Like the sarcasm?  Seriously though, it’s driving me bonkers.  Basically, when I took my site offline and went to blogger last month, that’s when Technorati stopped pinging.  And no, I can’t manually ping either.   Also, incoming links are not updating on my Wordpress dashboard either. I know this had to do with closing my account and reopening, but I’m not sure how to fix it.

4. I’m considering changing the names on this blog. Little Man would become Jacob and LMD would become not an acronym.  What do you think?  I chose Jacob for Little Man because that was almost his real name.

5. And Finally, we have a new addition to our family.  My good friend gave this to Little Man for his birthday and I want to see if you guys can guess what it is from this close up:

Dear Little Man,

It’s hard to believe that it was five years ago that I held you in my arms for the first time.  That moment is forever etched in my mind.  I remember looking into your sweet little eyes and feeling like I was home.  I was so overcome with emotion and joy that I started bawling my eyes out.  Not knowing that this was a normal reaction for a new mother, I felt the need to explain to my OB over and over again, “I promise, these are tears of joy!”.  She just looked at me, smiled a knowing smile and said “I know”.

You have always been the kind of kid that if you are going to try something, you are going to do it right.  For instance, when you learned to walk you gave us no indication that walking was even a blip on your radar.  No, instead you chose to crawl happily along until you were ten months old and then without warning, one day you decided you were ready to walk.  Your grandma (my mom) and I had been coaching you on, but we didn’t think you would actually do it, especially since you hadn’t even started cruising yet.  But you did.  You decided to just go for it.

From that point on, there was no stopping you.

Your first word was not “mama” or “dada”, your first word was actually your first word(s).  You pointed to the ceiling fan in our apartment and asked “What’s Dat?”.

When you try new things, you are filled with energy and excitement and sometimes that scares me, but I know aggressiveness offset by a good nature, is a wonderful disposition to have.  

So here we are, you are five years old and for you it’s just another birthday.  You don’t measure time like I do.  For me, five represents 1/3 of the way to 15 and because I know these last five years went by so quickly, I also know the next ten years will probably happen in the blink of an eye.

I hope that you will always understand that I love you more than anything and that our very worst moments are still infinitely better than any moment I had before you were born.  I love you with every ounce of my heart and soul.

I had planned on posting something beautiful for your birthday, but found myself short on time because of all of the fun we had this weekend and today.  I’d much rather be making those memories than writing them down, so I’m going to try not to feel guilty about this.

So, Happy Birthday, my Little Man, thank you for making me your mom.

Love,

Mommy

Contractions taunted me for three days straight and on September 1st, I made a last ditch effort to walk Little Man out.  At 10pm on that same day, as I sat there putting together a stroller with LMD and my mom, I got the call.

Apparently, I was the first one scheduled for September 2nd and they wanted me in at MIDNIGHT.  I hadn’t slept for three nights (hello, non-patterned contractions) and I was a little stressed out that I would be delivering a baby in such an exhausted state. I thought that if it had to be a scheduled birth, I should be allowed my beauty rest, right?  But my excitement outweighed the nerves and I repeated “I’m having a baby, I’m having a baby, oh my gosh, he’s coming soon!”

I remember pulling into the parking lot and pressing the after hours button and the elevator ride up to the maternity ward.

Everything is so crisp and clear in my mind, especially the part where the nurse had a hard time putting my IV in and sonofa…it hurt like a…you know.  I DON’T LIKE NEEDLES and that freaked me out. After HOURS UPON HOURS (okay, 20 minutes or so - but it felt like hours) of poking and prodding, she finally got that vicious little needle into a vein and I breathed a sigh of relief.  And then that first pitocin induced contraction hit.

If you’ve ever dealt with pitocin, you’ve probably had a similar experience to mine. There is no “build up” of contractions.  You feel like you are at 10cm immediately, even though you are at, oh, THREE POINT FIVE (what I was at when I arrived).  It’s like BAM, okay, can I push now?  Except you can’t. You have to wait, because as far as the baby is concerned, the walls are vibrating, but there is no need to evacuate…yet.

The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural and I said no.

They eventually moved me from the “preparation area” to my room.  For some reason I want to call the preparation area “triage”, but that seems traumatic and the only traumatic thing was the whole IV disagreeing with my veins thing (still gives me shivers, thankyouverymuch)

For several hours I sat on that bed, shaking violently between contractions and trying to breathe properly, even though I wasn’t really sure what properly  was. 

At about 4am the nurse came into check me and I was sure I had to be at AT LEAST 7cm.

Nope, 5cm.

I asked for the drugs, I had to control the shaking.  I couldn’t believe that I had such minimal control of myself, but I tried not to worry about it.

The nurse told me she was only giving me a half dose of Stadol until she knew how I would react to it.  Never having had drugs delivered via IV before, I had no idea how quickly it worked.   I started floating in Happy La La Land as soon as she plunged that syringe into my IV.  I was as high as a kite and even though I could feel the pain, I did not care one bit. Not one little bit.  I said something like “whooooo, you weren’t kidding when you said that stuff works fast, wheeeeeeeeee…”

I floated around Happy La La land for about 20 minutes and when she put the second dose in, all it did was make me tired and miserable. 

(In all honesty, it could have been an hour, I’m not sure what Standard of Time Happy La La Land uses.)

After the dose wore off, I turned to the nurse and said, ”I think I might want that epidural after all”. 

I’m pretty sure the anesthesiologist was standing at the door waiting for me to cave, because he appeared out of thin air.  In hindsight, I’m guessing the night crew had a bet going on how long I’d be able to hold out.  I’m sure I was that night’s crazy lady in room 212 who thought she could give pitocin induced birth without an epidural.

(PS, some women have no problems with this, but some women are not ME.)

I wanted to ask that man to marry me.  The epidural was nothing like I’d imagined.  I felt a few painless pinches where he was numbing me and then…bliss, pure bliss.

I think I said something like, “Oh my gosh? THAT’S IT???!!!”

And, “I love you, can I have your babies?”

I found out very quickly that pure bliss took away my ability to move freely about the cabin and that my right side wasn’t nearly as numb as my left side.  I kind of thought that sucked since I had agreed to it and all.  I sort of wanted to have the WHOLE epidural experience if I was going to give into it, ya know?

After another six hours, my OB declared me ready to push and my heart swelled.  My baby was on his way.  I felt the epidural wearing off and when I told them as much, they said it wouldn’t be too much longer, so no more medicine for me.

Wait, what?! 

LMD wasn’t into the whole pregnancy preparation thing, so we never did Lamaze classes. Nevertheless, he was a pretty good coach. The only complaint I had was that he would count my pushes like this:

onetwo.three..four..five……six………………………………seven……………………………………………………..eight…..

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………nine

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ten.

which annoyed me; because when you are popping facial capillaries, you kind of want the counting cadence to be even.

After about an hour and a half of pushing, they discovered that Little Man was having trouble getting past my pelvic bone, so the nurses prepared the vacuum.  My OB came in and said “oh nononono, we don’t need that” and then she pretty much stuck her entire upper body up there to move Little Man around.  It worked and within minutes she was asking me if I wanted to feel his head before I pushed him all the way out.  I did and his head felt so warm and so…real. 

When I was a child, I used to ask my mom what it felt like to have a baby.  She told me it felt like you were pushing out a really big bowel movement.

Right after I felt Little Man’s head, I had that very sensation (the epidural had long since worn off) and I thought “whatdoyaknow, Mom was right”, and then I gave one more big push and felt the intense, but beautiful pain of giving birth to my son. 

—————–

I have an entry planned for later today, but it might not happen until tomorrow.  So, I just want to take this opportunity to wish the love of my life a Happy Birthday!  I love you more than anything, anywhere, at any time. You are my everything.  Happy birthday, sweetheart. Thank you for making me your mom. <3

I had all of these marvelous plans for a natural birth, but never really discussed them with my doctor.  The whole “birth plan” thing seemed a little excessive because, well, what are the chances things would go as planned?  I was 28 by the time I gave birth, a little wiser to the ways of the world and changed plans than your average first time mom.

I didn’t want an epidural because I was terrified of having a needle in my back, not because I was morally against it.   I decided that I would go for the drugs first, if anything.

And that was about the extent of my birth plan.

I was making very little income at the time and for the first and only time in my life, I relied on government assistance (AHCCCS) for my prenatal care.  I was positively shocked when I walked into my OB’s office for the first time because it was like the crystal castle of OB offices. Surely I had the wrong address?  Aren’t government cases relegated to clinics?

No and as it turns out, I received better care while insured by AHCCCS than I would have if I had been insured privately or through an employer.  The bonus was that EVERYTHING was completely free.   No, I am not a welfare mother, I’ve obviously picked myself up out of that hole, but I don’t feel bad for having to rely on government assistance for a while.  Most people have been in some kind of rut during their life, I just happened to get pregnant while in mine.  Having my son is what helped to pull me out of it.

And so I had a great OB and would deliver my baby at a rather posh hospital (private rooms) in Scottsdale, AZ.  (Rumors flew that Britney Spears would have her second baby at the same hospital).

Like most pregnant women, I wanted my son OUT toward the end of my pregnancy.  I wasn’t really uncomfortable, but I was anxious to meet him. I tried to tell myself that I would never be as close to him again as I was during the last days of my pregnancy, but I still just wanted to see him. I knew about halfway through August that this child would not come out anytime soon and I had a feeling induction was imminent.

My OB saw me at my 40 week appointment and I was like, 1.5 cm dilated, which was nothing to get excited about, for sure, so she went ahead and scheduled the induction for September 2nd.  She told me that they could call me in as early as 12:00 am on the 2nd, so be prepared, but hey, he’ll probably come before then!

Bwahahaha!  The stubborn DNA that this child inherited is off. the. charts.  I knew that before I even met  him.

On August 30th, I started having contractions and I thought there was a chance Little Man might come on his own. 

Bwahahahaha!  See above.

This is the best part of an Arizona Summer:

Winds estimated at at least 80mph as the storm moved in (wind stopped once it started raining).

You can’t really tell from the video (because my apartment is like a dungeon and you can only see the sky in the upper left corner there), but the thunder and lightning was so continuous that it was like a strobe light.  

Listen to my baby’s voice, it’s still really munckinized and I love it!

The friendly cat hid and the timid cat watched the storm.  Freaks.

Oh, and don’t you hate it when people talk like that to their kid? GAH!

“Oh my goodness”?

Who the heck do I think I am?  Giselle?  How annoying.

I loved him completely from the moment I knew he was there.  We were not planning it, he was a surprise - the best kind of gift.  I felt like the luckiest woman on Earth.

I took several more tests that day just to verify that this miracle was really happening.  I called my mom and shared the news.  She was ecstatic and almost immediately made plans to move to Arizona.

Then I looked at my reflection and imagined a noticeable difference.  Something had changed in me, that was for sure, but it wasn’t anything you could see. 

I knew he was a he immediately, I don’t know why, maybe it was just a lucky guess, but when people asked me what I thought I was having, I always said that I knew he was a boy.

I felt like he was sent to me.

I immediately began to fret about how badly I could have screwed him up in those first eight weeks. The internet is a terrible, terrible place for a pregnant woman. It should come with a warning: May cause increased heart rate, paranoia, delusions and gas.

I felt such a fierce need to protect him that it hurt.  Of course, I know now that this is what Mother’s Love is like and the almost tangible string that connects a mother to her child starts in the womb.

My pregnancy was as perfect as one could expect.  I experienced morning sickness intermittently, but severely, for about three weeks and that was it.  Every term went as smoothly as it possibly could have, save for the trips to the doctor where I had convinced myself something was wrong.

I wondered what he would be like.  I knew he would be stubborn. I knew he would be adorable.  I didn’t know if he would have long legs or if he would come out with as much hair as his cousins (the hairy gorilla Assyrian side of him).  I didn’t know that he would someday make me laugh by asking me to “do the bag of onions thing” when he wants me to put him over my shoulders like a sack of potatoes.  I had no idea how badly he would be able to rip my heart in two and then turn around and sew it right back up with three little words.  I didn’t know how much I could adore the scent from the top of someones head.

I had no idea what love was until I met him.

LMD and I got married in an unremarkable civil ceremony the day before Thanksgiving 2002.  Our friends Alec and Reanie were our witnesses and once we said our “I Do’s”  the four of us went out to dinner to celebrate.  Later that night, we went to Alec’s favorite gay bar to celebrate even more.  I got smashed and remember very little beyond some sweaty dude without a shirt telling me that I looked like a dancer.

(NOT an exotic dancer)

I liked to party pretty hard in those days.  I loved to frequent the gay bars because they played the best techno and trance and it didn’t feel like a meat market.  At least not for a woman.  LMD was always comfortable in his heterosexuality, so he had no problem with these places. Plus, he was a hairdresser and he was used to being hit on by men.  It was a non-issue.

Sometime during the month of December I noticed a growing disdain for my beloved trance music.  It began to grate on my nerves and make me feel physically ill.  I attempted a trip to the bar with a couple of friends of mine and we had to leave within an hour because I couldn’t stand the music.  Something in my core bubbled up and regurgitated at the thump thump thump- make it stoppppppppp!  Suddenly I knew why people couldn’t stand that style of music, because listening to it felt like scratching my fingernails on a chalkboard.

I also threw up at a Christmas party after only two drinks and experienced insomnia for the first time in my life.

Everything got sore, but it felt like PMS.  One day I had such a bad cramp that I squealed and doubled over in pain.

People started to ask questions and I told them I wasn’t pregnant, silly.  We just got married!

LMD and I went to our favorite classy bar for New Years and I couldn’t finish my Lemon Drop Martini and asked to leave before the countdown.  LMD began to believe all those old wives tales about how women change after they are married.

The next day I got sick.  And the next day.  But it was at night.  Morning sickness happens in the morning, right?

On January 4th, I scraped up some change and took a few pregnancy tests. 

When the second pink line showed up, my life began.

Followed directly by my first twinge of Mommy Guilt.

Little Man was due five years ago today!  Of course, he didn’t come for eight more days and only then by eviction notice, but still, it’s hard to believe it’s been five years since I paced the corridors of Scottsdale Fashion Square in an effort to force my stubborn child to make his appearance. 

As a lead up to his fifth birthday, I will only be posting about him for the next week. That way, if his birthday comes and I can’t think of anything to say (which is par for the course when I feel *pressured*), at least I’ve got this.  I’d like to write something really special for him on his fifth birthday, but let’s be realistic here, I find it hard to commit these days.

Happy Estimated Due Date, Little Man!

Yesterday got off to a marvelous start!  We got up only five hours after I went to bed and then had a complete and total meltdown before 8am!  YAY FOR US!

Actually, the meltdown is the beginning of our story. You see, my son is absolutely terrified of bugs.  I am not talking squeamish, I’m talking about real phobia here, people. 

In an effort to be a responsible mother, I’ve been trying to put my own squeamishness aside in order to educate him and perhaps jumpstart his career in entomology.  I’ve showed him the bugs he needs to be afraid of online - Black Widows and Scorpions - and when we pass a bug in our travels and he screams I remind him that it doesn’t look like any of the bugs we need to be wary of.

It doesn’t really work, but it’s baby steps, right?

He’s seen a real scorpion before, the most recent one being the one that was right outside our gym last November.  So he knows exactly what a scorpion looks like (like a lobster, in his words).  And so do I.  Many of you know the kind of problems we had with them when my son was an infant. 

Arachnids of any sort paralyze me with fear.  Scorpions are the worst.   Unfortunately, scorpions are common here.  When we move into a new place I never know if it’s going to come with an extra roommate or two.  So I count the days down until scorpion season hits (summer) and try to convince myself that I’ll just deal with it if and when we find any.

(I’ve had visions of finding a sledgehammer with a ten foot handle so I don’t have to get close to the little mofo’s. Who needs walls anyway?)

It’s August now and the summer has gone by without incident.  Until yesterday when Little Man went flying out of the bathroom, screaming at the top of his lungs. (The bathroom sits off the bedroom, keep this in mind.)

The poor little dude couldn’t even talk right. All he could manage was “gah gahgahgah dah dadahadah!” repeatedly while spittle came out of his mouth.  And then he would scream as loud as he could. Continuously.  I told you, he’s seriously got a phobia.

He finally managed to say, “I saw a bug like the one we saw at the gym that one time*screeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaam*”

In my head I said something like, Oh s*#%# O&^&Mother*^&^(^#$T!!!!!!

But my mouth said something like, Oh shit, really? oh crap, uh uh uh, let me find something to get it with!

Little Man saw the panic in my eyes and I’m sure that did not help matters.  It was also probably not helpful that I tried to match his volume when asking him to calm down.

Long story short (actually, it’s still pretty long and I’m not done yet), we ended up having to wait outside for LMD to show up. He heard how inconsolable our son was on the phone (think night terrors) and left work to come over and help out. I could not get Little Man to step foot in this apartment, and he wouldn’t let me go in to look for the offending bug without another round of top of the lungs screaming.  His terror was so absolute that the site of an ant made him flip out all over again.  We took turns scouring the apartment while one of us waited outside with Little Man and were finally able to convince him to come back in.

We never found the bug.  I’m trying not to think about what that means.

So, in an effort to educate Little Man on why we shouldn’t be so afraid of bugs, I bought him a book yesterday:

We picked this one because the pictures were drawings and that made the creepy factor a little more palatable.  Plus, it was also educational and explained the danger level of each scary bug.

(Keep in mind I’m pretty freaked the fuck out too, I was just trying to be all adult like and shit about it. It was really hard, because if I had been the one to run into a scorpion, I would have screamed, too.)

At this point in the day, the heebie jeebies are pretty much at maximum strength, but I kept my cool and read him portions of the book, trying not to wince at the pictures of unsavory critters.

But this? This was just too much:

Can’t see the wording? Here, let me give you a sample (this should probably come with some sort of warning, so consider yourself warned.)

This is the point where I turn into a total girl and resist the urge to vomit. And no, I did not read this portion to Little Man, are you fucking kidding me?  He’s picky enough as is. Aren’t you glad you stopped by today?  I’m never eating pasta again and that’s just one more reason not to touch broccoli either.

Little Man was interested in the book, but not so interested that he was ready to go into the bathroom again.  In fact, he still wouldn’t even get off the couch. He held it all. day. long. and when I attempted to take him into the bathroom at the gym, a fly sent him into hysterics again.

LMD picked him up last night and before he got here I called him while Little Man was zoned in on the TV and told him to go into the bathroom when he got here and pretend to find that damn bug. 

Dude can put on an act.  He almost had me convinced he found it.

Why yes, we lied to our son, but the other option was him never stepping foot in the bathroom again.

When they left, I let down my guard, did a little heebie jeebie dance and settled on the couch for some BBC America.

Primeval is basically a show about time travel.  These people find anomalies that allow the past to come into the present and vice verse. So far the show has focused on prehistoric times. You know, like dinosaurs.

Well, do you want to know what last nights show was about? Hmmm?? Really, do you want to know?  Because I really could have done without it.

Fucking huge ass prehistoric bugs that eat people, that’s what.  Centipedes and scorpion ancestors to be exact.

And I watched the whole damn thing. I thought at least I would see those gigantic bugs, little blond scorpions are harder to see on BEIGE FUCKING CARPET.

Yep, I was a basket case yesterday, and just before I turned off the TV for the night, a Capital One commercial came on:

I know it’s supposed to be an armadillo, but I wasn’t listening and on first look I thought it was a giant non-maneating pill bug .  I laughed my ass off.

And then I turned off the lights and slept on the futon in the living room.