When i heard my mom or my grandmother saying “this is the hardest job you will ever have!” - did i ever think how completely and brutally honest they were being. There’s no exaggeration in that statement. Being a parent is emotionally, physically, psychologically exhausting.
How do you know if your doing it right? I mean, yeah- they will be happy. But how do you know that they will turn out okay and be proud of who they are and who their parents are? Its scary.
I’ve never been so afraid in my whole life. Its terrifying.
I get judged because im a young mother. Pretty sure i get those cranky mid-life crisis mother stares that are either judging or jealous. Most are probably judging. Everyone has insecurities. And yeah, when you come at me attacking my parenting style or the way i do or handle situations Im going to break down mentally. I will get thoughts of being a complete failure in every possible way. I will look at my little girl and think “why don’t they think she’s perfect like i do?”
Tomorrow i will be in the presence of some family who i don’t think intentionally try to make me feel like a complete failure, but do. I always leave feeling guilt. Like her lkids are up on a pedestal because she makes them sit next to her every 5 min for a time out. They end up looking completely sad and miserable and having to say sorry all the time.
You know, getting them to say sorry all the time just gets them to lie. YOU are sorry they did it. THEY are too young to actually know what sorry is. 2 and 4 year olds can’t comprehend that shit. So, in their future. Their “sorry’s” will be empty promises of “they won’t do it again”. Liars.
My daughter won’t be a liar.
Ugh tomorrow will come and end and i will probably blog a silly post of all my insecurities. Or of all of their stupid ways of making their kids look like they are well behaved. You can count on it.
But i really shouldn’t feel that way, i know that. But how can a parent not feel some type of fear?
Maybe Im just writing this because Leah and i had a bad day. I wasn’t patient as i should have been. Potty training has gone pretty much out the window.
Here’s to having more patience for tomorrow. I gotta get my shit together and stop having “parental- temper tantrums” she’s a baby and not a little adult.
This book- 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas W. Phelan- is an amazing book! It really made me look at things a lot differently. And now, i can laugh about it (parental temper tantrums & little adults). You would be amazed at how many ppl do this. Its an automatic thing we do without knowing it.
One last thing i want to add:
Dear Leah,
Being a young mom meant that we met a little early; but i get to love you a little longer. Some people said my life ended when i had a baby, but my life just started. You didn’t take away my future, you gave me a new one.
I will love you every single day of forever.
-M.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Where Did My Little Baby Go?!
Dear Leah,
The last few days you seem to have grown up so much. You do such funny things, say more words, listen better when on time out. Yeah, that's right. TIME OUT! you sit there and for the most part you are pretty good. Sometimes you try to get off but you look at me all sneaky like and as soon as i say "NO. Sit down!" you get back on, cry a little sometimes. But you get it and you learn your lesson.
Yesterday we were driving and i let you play with my phone i have this talking baby app that cries, laughs etc. Does it all. Well, it started crying and you say "sh sh sh." turned my phone around and hugged it and pat it on the back. Lol
Those big blue eyes and tiny little face is so capable of making my heart melt right to goo.
Our next task is teaching you sharing. Its not an issue yet, but i don't want it to be. :)
I love you baby girl. Your so beautiful. I am so lucky.
-M.
The last few days you seem to have grown up so much. You do such funny things, say more words, listen better when on time out. Yeah, that's right. TIME OUT! you sit there and for the most part you are pretty good. Sometimes you try to get off but you look at me all sneaky like and as soon as i say "NO. Sit down!" you get back on, cry a little sometimes. But you get it and you learn your lesson.
Yesterday we were driving and i let you play with my phone i have this talking baby app that cries, laughs etc. Does it all. Well, it started crying and you say "sh sh sh." turned my phone around and hugged it and pat it on the back. Lol
Those big blue eyes and tiny little face is so capable of making my heart melt right to goo.
Our next task is teaching you sharing. Its not an issue yet, but i don't want it to be. :)
I love you baby girl. Your so beautiful. I am so lucky.
-M.
Friday, August 12, 2011
A Trip Down Memory Lane- L's Birth Story
I'll Start at the beginning: My EDD was December 19 by ultrasound. According to dates alone my due date was December 28,2009. And that was of course what my OB Wanted to go with. The evening of Dec 30th DP and i were at his sisters making plans for ordering Chinese food on new years eve, the following night. Our nephew, who was just about 3 at the time was being so hilarious i was crying. (i say its thanks to him that i went into labour)
Anyways, we went home and went to bed around 9 that night. Very early for us. I woke up at 1230am to go to the bathroom. I had some tightness in my stomach but nothing i didn't feel before. I went back to bed and felt a weird "drop". I didn't want to move because i was afraid my water was broke Haha. But i had to go to the bathroom again so i HAD to get up. After staying in the bathroom and just standing there breathing through these strange kind of uncomfortable moments, and using the bathroom numerous times, i decided to go downstairs and sit on the couch. This was definitely not normal.
I started to time these uncomfortable moments to see if they were actually contractions. They were 30 sec long every 3-4 min. This was it and i knew it. I went upstairs and said "I think we should go to the hospital" A sec after i had the last word out of my mouth he was up getting dressed.
We parked at the grocery store up the street because parking is super expensive. DP asked if i wanted to be dropped off but i said no. When we got to the L&D floor they put me in an assessment room and hooked me up to a monitor to watch contractions and for her heart beat. By the time i was all hooked up my contractions were irregular and more spread out. About 6 min. The nurse checked me and said "Wow. Your a 4 already" i couldn't believe it!! I thought to myself "wow, if this is all labour is i can do this no prob" the contractions were breathable. It felt like a belt being squeezed around my mid-section, REALLY hard tho. The nurse told us to go for a walk she said it was ok if we walked down the street to the coffee shop which was past the grocery store we parked at. We did. Then we walked back. Oh, let me just add - it was SNOWING AND COLD and obviously my winter coat couldn't zip up! But thanks to whoever shoveld the sidewalks.
They checked me again. I was at 5. They gave us this huge room! Which i was thankful to spend my entire stay in. By 7am our nurse came to start the iv. I was dealing ok at this point. But i was extremely tired! I knew i needed sleep to have energy for pushing. At 8am i received an epidural for just that reason, i needed sleep. Shortly after they broke my water. I was at 6cm after all of this. Within minutes my legs were warm and tingly. At this point, everything was going well.
Contractions started to slow down again and get irregular. They started me on an oxytocin drip. Leah wasn't tolerating that at all. Her heart rate started to drop with each contraction. And each one her heart rate got slower. About a half hour being on this drip her heart rate dropped and stayed low. After the contraction was over, her heart rate didn't recover. They gave me oxygen. That wasn't working. They moved me around to the best of their ability. Nothing was working. I watched the little machine, eagerly waiting to see that number jump back to the 130-150s it was in at the beginning. I was crying then. A bunch of different ppl came running in. The Doctor and 3 or 4 others plus my labour nurse. I looked at DP for some kind of answer, then to my mom. I told them "Im scared. What can i do?" neither of them said anything to me. They just watched the doctors do what they had to do. They quickly told me they were inserting a fetal heart monitor onto her scalp for a better reading. Finally, her heart rate picked back up. The nurse checked me and i was ready to go. At about 230 in the afternoon i started pushing. An hour and a half later i was still pushing. Then her heart rate dropped, again! The doc looked up at me and said "hey, you HAVE to focus, push as hard as you can, or we will have to use the forceps" (btw- i think i feared that just as much as a c-section) I pushed as hard as i could. Her heart rate was still not coming up. Then came the forceps. I don't now what happened to the epidural at that point but i felt everything!! I was screaming. I could feel metal-on-metal clinging together. I felt like i was in a horror movie and being tortured. Yeah, i wasn't quiet.
At 4:33pm she was born. The Doctor held her by her neck and ankles. She wasn't moving or crying. The doctor cut the cord off of her neck (which is why her heart rate was dropping) then let DP cut it. He said "you did it!! She's here!! She's beautiful. Im so proud of you!" The "baby doctors" were waiting to work on her before she was even out. I kept saying "is she okay? Why isn't she crying?" NO ONE answered me. The doc pulled out the placenta and stitched me up. One of the doctors was walking towards me, holding my little baby. He looked down at me and said "congratulations, shes a healthy baby girl" I kissed her head. I was crying. It was over. I was ridiculously swollen down there, like SO BAD! I couldn't move, sit up, walk, turn etc. No matter what was wrong with me it didn't matter. Leah was here. And she was perfect. She had bruises on her face from the forceps, that made me unbelievably sad.
Birth never goes the way you plan. And if it does, your a freak of nature. But if i could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be "calm the fuck down!" my nerves got the best of me. I probably made it out to be worse than what it was. And if i could Just have stayed calm a little more i think things could have gone better. She was born on December 31, 2009 a 7lbs 11oz beauty.
I am so thankful. I can't think of what it used to be like before her.
I love her.
-M.
Anyways, we went home and went to bed around 9 that night. Very early for us. I woke up at 1230am to go to the bathroom. I had some tightness in my stomach but nothing i didn't feel before. I went back to bed and felt a weird "drop". I didn't want to move because i was afraid my water was broke Haha. But i had to go to the bathroom again so i HAD to get up. After staying in the bathroom and just standing there breathing through these strange kind of uncomfortable moments, and using the bathroom numerous times, i decided to go downstairs and sit on the couch. This was definitely not normal.
I started to time these uncomfortable moments to see if they were actually contractions. They were 30 sec long every 3-4 min. This was it and i knew it. I went upstairs and said "I think we should go to the hospital" A sec after i had the last word out of my mouth he was up getting dressed.
We parked at the grocery store up the street because parking is super expensive. DP asked if i wanted to be dropped off but i said no. When we got to the L&D floor they put me in an assessment room and hooked me up to a monitor to watch contractions and for her heart beat. By the time i was all hooked up my contractions were irregular and more spread out. About 6 min. The nurse checked me and said "Wow. Your a 4 already" i couldn't believe it!! I thought to myself "wow, if this is all labour is i can do this no prob" the contractions were breathable. It felt like a belt being squeezed around my mid-section, REALLY hard tho. The nurse told us to go for a walk she said it was ok if we walked down the street to the coffee shop which was past the grocery store we parked at. We did. Then we walked back. Oh, let me just add - it was SNOWING AND COLD and obviously my winter coat couldn't zip up! But thanks to whoever shoveld the sidewalks.
They checked me again. I was at 5. They gave us this huge room! Which i was thankful to spend my entire stay in. By 7am our nurse came to start the iv. I was dealing ok at this point. But i was extremely tired! I knew i needed sleep to have energy for pushing. At 8am i received an epidural for just that reason, i needed sleep. Shortly after they broke my water. I was at 6cm after all of this. Within minutes my legs were warm and tingly. At this point, everything was going well.
Contractions started to slow down again and get irregular. They started me on an oxytocin drip. Leah wasn't tolerating that at all. Her heart rate started to drop with each contraction. And each one her heart rate got slower. About a half hour being on this drip her heart rate dropped and stayed low. After the contraction was over, her heart rate didn't recover. They gave me oxygen. That wasn't working. They moved me around to the best of their ability. Nothing was working. I watched the little machine, eagerly waiting to see that number jump back to the 130-150s it was in at the beginning. I was crying then. A bunch of different ppl came running in. The Doctor and 3 or 4 others plus my labour nurse. I looked at DP for some kind of answer, then to my mom. I told them "Im scared. What can i do?" neither of them said anything to me. They just watched the doctors do what they had to do. They quickly told me they were inserting a fetal heart monitor onto her scalp for a better reading. Finally, her heart rate picked back up. The nurse checked me and i was ready to go. At about 230 in the afternoon i started pushing. An hour and a half later i was still pushing. Then her heart rate dropped, again! The doc looked up at me and said "hey, you HAVE to focus, push as hard as you can, or we will have to use the forceps" (btw- i think i feared that just as much as a c-section) I pushed as hard as i could. Her heart rate was still not coming up. Then came the forceps. I don't now what happened to the epidural at that point but i felt everything!! I was screaming. I could feel metal-on-metal clinging together. I felt like i was in a horror movie and being tortured. Yeah, i wasn't quiet.
At 4:33pm she was born. The Doctor held her by her neck and ankles. She wasn't moving or crying. The doctor cut the cord off of her neck (which is why her heart rate was dropping) then let DP cut it. He said "you did it!! She's here!! She's beautiful. Im so proud of you!" The "baby doctors" were waiting to work on her before she was even out. I kept saying "is she okay? Why isn't she crying?" NO ONE answered me. The doc pulled out the placenta and stitched me up. One of the doctors was walking towards me, holding my little baby. He looked down at me and said "congratulations, shes a healthy baby girl" I kissed her head. I was crying. It was over. I was ridiculously swollen down there, like SO BAD! I couldn't move, sit up, walk, turn etc. No matter what was wrong with me it didn't matter. Leah was here. And she was perfect. She had bruises on her face from the forceps, that made me unbelievably sad.
Birth never goes the way you plan. And if it does, your a freak of nature. But if i could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be "calm the fuck down!" my nerves got the best of me. I probably made it out to be worse than what it was. And if i could Just have stayed calm a little more i think things could have gone better. She was born on December 31, 2009 a 7lbs 11oz beauty.
I am so thankful. I can't think of what it used to be like before her.
I love her.
-M.
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