They tell you that one of the best things to help you through the first few months/years of motherhood is a good set of friends. I couldn't agree more. It is essential to have friends who understand what you are experiencing, how you are feeling, and don't hold it against you when you crack open a beer or do a shot of tequila at the mid-morning playgroup, or pretend not to hear your child crying when she wakes up after only a 20 minute nap.
But all that camaraderie aside, you need friends with kids so that you can constantly compare yourself and your kids to someone else. Kind of like when my skinny friends go to the beach with me, it just makes you feel better sometimes. No...it isn't right, but you know we do it and you know it makes us feel better to see that someone else isn't as tall, as mobile, or as articulate as your own child. Try not to shout out loud when your child stacks blocks faster than your neighbors child, and they will try not to draw attention to the fact their kid can grasp his cheerios before yours.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Baby Weight
20-30 pounds. My ass. Well...that is exactly where it landed ...on my ass. But that is what all the books tell you a normal person should gain during their pregnancy. And unless normal means Nicole Richie or Nicole Kidman, you can expect the scale to rise just a bit more than what they tell you. In fact you should have seen the look of horror on my husband's face when he realized that I gained more than 55 pounds. Yeah boy, you're married to a fat ass!
Part of the problem, for me at least, is that I am a lifetime dieter. I have Jenny Craiged, Weight Watched, Nutri-Systemed, E-Dieted, and Atkinsed my whole adult life so when I found out that I was pregnant...watch out Jesus...I started eating. Holy cow! There was a list as long as a 5 year old's letter to Santa of what I wanted to eat. I think it started with Cinnabon and ended with onion rings and if it had saturated fat, grease or fried bits it certainly made the cut. 300 extra calories a day of mostly dairy, fruits and veggies...you talkin' to me? I didn't think so.
You see, I was completely dellusional about all the weight gain. Yeah, yeah, we can blame all the media attention on the celebrities losing their weight immediately, but I am too smart to truly believe that crap. I just figured that it wouldn't be too hard to get back to my original weight after the baby was born. I wasn't skinny pre-kids, and so I held no hopes that I would be skinny post-kids. But what I did think was that within a week or two I would be back in my pre-pregnancy clothes. If only my laughing right now would laugh my cinnabon ass off.
I clearly remember going home right from the hospital and walking into my closet and trying to put on a pair of jeans. No matter the discomfort having a nine pound baby was giving me, I just had to see if they would fit. If you saw the Friends episode where Ross tried to get his leather pants back on sweaty legs...well then you have a good idea how I looked with the jeans stuck at my knees and going no further.
"No worries" my dellusion said to me. You're breast feeding, the weight will come off really fast.
Again, I think that laughing may work faster than breast feeding did for me.
Part of the problem, for me at least, is that I am a lifetime dieter. I have Jenny Craiged, Weight Watched, Nutri-Systemed, E-Dieted, and Atkinsed my whole adult life so when I found out that I was pregnant...watch out Jesus...I started eating. Holy cow! There was a list as long as a 5 year old's letter to Santa of what I wanted to eat. I think it started with Cinnabon and ended with onion rings and if it had saturated fat, grease or fried bits it certainly made the cut. 300 extra calories a day of mostly dairy, fruits and veggies...you talkin' to me? I didn't think so.
You see, I was completely dellusional about all the weight gain. Yeah, yeah, we can blame all the media attention on the celebrities losing their weight immediately, but I am too smart to truly believe that crap. I just figured that it wouldn't be too hard to get back to my original weight after the baby was born. I wasn't skinny pre-kids, and so I held no hopes that I would be skinny post-kids. But what I did think was that within a week or two I would be back in my pre-pregnancy clothes. If only my laughing right now would laugh my cinnabon ass off.
I clearly remember going home right from the hospital and walking into my closet and trying to put on a pair of jeans. No matter the discomfort having a nine pound baby was giving me, I just had to see if they would fit. If you saw the Friends episode where Ross tried to get his leather pants back on sweaty legs...well then you have a good idea how I looked with the jeans stuck at my knees and going no further.
"No worries" my dellusion said to me. You're breast feeding, the weight will come off really fast.
Again, I think that laughing may work faster than breast feeding did for me.
Monday, August 18, 2008
What's not natural about the boob?
I really am a supporter of breastfeeding. Not only does it provide your child with all the essential nutrients, anti-bodies, and all that other jazz (you can actually find all that information in the aforementioned books) but it is also extremely portable, doesn’t take up a lot of space (unless of course you are talking about the enormous rack you have to cart around throughout the process) and you don’t have to sterilize a thing. But…for something that is such a natural process, it certainly did not come naturally to me at all.
When the boy was first born, the nurses put him on my chest with the hopes that he would latch on. I thought he would just crawl right up there, shove the nipple in his mouth and start sucking the milk down like I do when I get a frappachino. Instead, the nurse put his little (if you call a 9lb baby little) body on my chest and ripped open my gown to expose my still rather small and rather modest boobs, with her ice cold hands she grabbed my boob…hello…squeezed it with her vice clamp hands and shoved the thing into my sleeping baby’s mouth. Ughh…I don’t know about the rest of you, but that didn’t seem natural to me at all. This whole process kept repeating itself as the nurses and the lactation consultant (I didn’t see this option on my Myer’s Briggs results) came to check to see if he was latching on correctly. And apparently, it isn’t a good latch unless the child has your entire nipple in his mouth and not that I have the biggest nipples in the world, but that is a lot for an infant to swallow so to speak.
So once you and your team of dozens of boob grabbers decide that the baby is latching on properly, the next thing that you wait for is for your milk to come in. The way the books that I read during my pregnancy described it was that when your milk comes in your boobs will become engorged, they will hurt and they will practically burst with milk. I do know that this happens to some women, but if you are at all like me you might still be wondering at your child’s fifth birthday if your milk ever came in. After the 2 days in the hospital with the nurses asking me if my milk came in, I started to feel like they wouldn’t let me go home with out my milk. And, with a desire to please and have the right answer I eventually started to say yes, even though I was never entirely sure.
When the boy was first born, the nurses put him on my chest with the hopes that he would latch on. I thought he would just crawl right up there, shove the nipple in his mouth and start sucking the milk down like I do when I get a frappachino. Instead, the nurse put his little (if you call a 9lb baby little) body on my chest and ripped open my gown to expose my still rather small and rather modest boobs, with her ice cold hands she grabbed my boob…hello…squeezed it with her vice clamp hands and shoved the thing into my sleeping baby’s mouth. Ughh…I don’t know about the rest of you, but that didn’t seem natural to me at all. This whole process kept repeating itself as the nurses and the lactation consultant (I didn’t see this option on my Myer’s Briggs results) came to check to see if he was latching on correctly. And apparently, it isn’t a good latch unless the child has your entire nipple in his mouth and not that I have the biggest nipples in the world, but that is a lot for an infant to swallow so to speak.
So once you and your team of dozens of boob grabbers decide that the baby is latching on properly, the next thing that you wait for is for your milk to come in. The way the books that I read during my pregnancy described it was that when your milk comes in your boobs will become engorged, they will hurt and they will practically burst with milk. I do know that this happens to some women, but if you are at all like me you might still be wondering at your child’s fifth birthday if your milk ever came in. After the 2 days in the hospital with the nurses asking me if my milk came in, I started to feel like they wouldn’t let me go home with out my milk. And, with a desire to please and have the right answer I eventually started to say yes, even though I was never entirely sure.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
What you don't expect when you're expecting
I’m a reader. I read books, I read magazines, I read several newspapers, and I even read the directions on how to set up my paper towel holder. I don’t like to go uniformed or look like a fool like someone in my house who installs the toilet seat upside down...which of course we didn’t notice until the 3 year old got a cut on his bum. But I digress. The fact of the matter is that I like to be prepared, to know what is coming, to have a plan of attack, so imagine my glee when I had my first child and I could stock up at the bookstore on myriads of books like, What to Expect When Expecting, Dr. Sears, and I even indulged in The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy. With about 3 years worth of reading to do in 9 short months, I resorted to college days (minus the binge drinking and skipping class) and pulled a few all-nighters to get the work done.
When my little boy arrived, I was sure that I knew what I was doing. I knew that he would sleep at 3 hour stretches, I knew what color and consistency his poop would be, I even knew exactly when he would smile back at me. Ha! Turns out that while I was reading late at night, he was just sleeping through the whole thing. He didn’t pay attention at all.
So here I set off for impending motherhood completely convinced that I have done all my homework and I will be ready for any challenge that is presented to me. (Do you hear all the veteran mothers laughing their asses off right now?) Yes, you can only imagine my surprise (read: horror) when instead of sleeping for 3 hour stretches, he slept for 2… aghh…that’s not what they told me. You can just see the look on my face when instead of pooping 6-10 times a day as a newborn, he didn’t poop at all. You read that right…he didn’t poop AT ALL. (What you really should have seen was the look when he finally did poop after a newborn suppository) And imagine my distress when I realized that I had to clean his circumcised penis…again, they didn’t mention that in the books. I know it’s not a pretty topic people but you could have at least put it in a small box on a page in the back and maybe mentioned all the business about flaps, folds, and alcohol swabs.
Within 48 hours of having this adorable little bundle of joy I knew at the very least 2 things and with the amount of sleep deprivation that was going on being able to recall those 2 things was remarkable. The first thing I knew was that the library of books that I read throughout my pregnancy did nothing to prepare me for this baby and the second thing I knew was I didn’t know shit about this bundle of joy who at the time was apparently trying to suck my nipple right off my boob. Don’t worry honey, I wasn’t very attached to it anyway.
When my little boy arrived, I was sure that I knew what I was doing. I knew that he would sleep at 3 hour stretches, I knew what color and consistency his poop would be, I even knew exactly when he would smile back at me. Ha! Turns out that while I was reading late at night, he was just sleeping through the whole thing. He didn’t pay attention at all.
So here I set off for impending motherhood completely convinced that I have done all my homework and I will be ready for any challenge that is presented to me. (Do you hear all the veteran mothers laughing their asses off right now?) Yes, you can only imagine my surprise (read: horror) when instead of sleeping for 3 hour stretches, he slept for 2… aghh…that’s not what they told me. You can just see the look on my face when instead of pooping 6-10 times a day as a newborn, he didn’t poop at all. You read that right…he didn’t poop AT ALL. (What you really should have seen was the look when he finally did poop after a newborn suppository) And imagine my distress when I realized that I had to clean his circumcised penis…again, they didn’t mention that in the books. I know it’s not a pretty topic people but you could have at least put it in a small box on a page in the back and maybe mentioned all the business about flaps, folds, and alcohol swabs.
Within 48 hours of having this adorable little bundle of joy I knew at the very least 2 things and with the amount of sleep deprivation that was going on being able to recall those 2 things was remarkable. The first thing I knew was that the library of books that I read throughout my pregnancy did nothing to prepare me for this baby and the second thing I knew was I didn’t know shit about this bundle of joy who at the time was apparently trying to suck my nipple right off my boob. Don’t worry honey, I wasn’t very attached to it anyway.
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