Not That You Wanted To Know This, But...

...I took the advise of several of you and midway through today, put the kid in a Pull Up. He'd already had one accident, and by the second, which was sudden and messy and running down his leg and onto the carpet AND the hardwood AND the bathmat oh dear Lord, I had had enough. I was also starting to wise up to the fact that maybe the stomach virus was NOT gone and now was not a good time to be working on Number Two Issues anyways.

Boy, was I right. Or should I say, you were right. It happened again during dinner, but at least this time, just as I started to feel my heart racing with the fight or flight response I always get before dealing with messy disasters, I remembered that lo! He was essentially wearing a diaper, and all I had to do was unsnap, wipe, and throw away. It felt like a downright LUXURY, I tell you.

And the fact that changing a diaper containing the results of a stomach virus could feel LUXURIOUS is something that has me a little concerned about how low I've fallen in this world. Next I'll be posting to let you know about the dee-lishus pizza remains I found in the neighbor's garbage! Score!

Sometimes

There are afternoons when I dream of running away from my house so badly I can taste it. It's the worst on weekends, and I know this is something many moms complain of- there is no relaxation to look forward to at the end of the week, just more of the same, along with the added chaos of extra people and extra plans and messed up schedules and so, most likely, a messier house and even whinier children than during the rest of the week. Sometimes its fine, and its still fun, and I go with the flow...

And sometimes I am very nearly six months pregnant, and I am hungry all the time but then every time I eat I get heartburn. Or I am tired all the time but every time I lay down either the heartburn makes it impossible or my hips start screaming in protest no matter which side I lay on. And often the house is an unthinkable disaster, but either my own inward voice or another person starts scolding me when I try to clean and tidy it because I shouldn't be exerting too much. But the idea of living this way, with dishes and laundry and toys always threatening to overwhelm, is enough to make me sit down at the table and just weep in despair. Literally.

Also, sometimes a certain child is completely potty trained in one regard and not even close to being potty trained in another, more disgusting, regard, but it's too late to switch him back to diapers. And so, one waits, every day, to see when the inevitable mess will happen and just how bad it will be. After two or three weeks of this, including several out of town ventures, it will start to feel like you are just waiting to get BEATEN every day, and you and your husband are just taking turns volunteering for the abuse. Though, let's face it, more often than not it is going to be you. You are here. You are always always here.

You are here when in one single half hour, one kid poops his pants, another needs help on the toilet, poopy kid gets cleaned up and then decided to try to actually use the potty for its intended purpose, toilet kid CLOGS the toilet, poopy kid poops again, this time in proper receptacle, and you, while trying to lavish the appropriate amounts of praise for a Potty Success, realize you need to EMPTY that potty but that you first have to plunge the normal potty, all with a wide eyed and curious audience, and you yourself haven't even eaten breakfast yet and are beginning to want to eat less and less...

Sometimes you feel like if you hear a little voice yelling, or whining, or shrieking in panic "Hey Mommy!" one single more time you are going to cry. Sometimes you do cry, and are in fact crying as you tend to them (the need almost always involving someone needing something WIPED, of course) and the horrifying part is that no one even notices that you're crying. Partly you feel relieved that you haven't upset them, and partly this makes you want to cry even harder because you realize that you spend the bulk of your time with people who are basically oblivious to your needs and feelings. It never occurs to them that YOU might need to eat or sleep or use the bathroom, much less that you might be tired and in pain and overwhelmed.

Then your baby will stir in your belly and you feel so terrible that most of what this kid has heard and felt today from you is negative. You snapping, you sighing, you sniffling. Surely this cannot be a healthy way to gestate your child, but the problem is that it's the gestating itself that is making so much of your day to day life feel so daunting.

AND sometimes you flee to the computer as soon as both the kids are finally otherwise occupied and you hurriedly ramble out your current misery and then you feel the tiniest bit better, though still wobbly and weepy. You look around and still see a house whose every surface needs wiped and picked up. You know there's still a car seat cover that needs dried and reattached after being subjected to a Horrifying Accident last night, along with a multitude of normal laundry loads, and you know there are still plates and cups and random clumps of eggs and cheese and dirty napkins all over the kitchen. You also know that you're exhausted and should really just nap, but that when you tried to lay down with your daughter your cranky cranky hips made it impossible to do so.

And so. You will take a deep breath, and put on some music, and maybe eat a bag of peanut M and M's that were supposed to be your husband's but forget him because you snooze you lose and you will, as Swistle once put it, make that Journey of A Thousand Loads of Laundry that begins with a single paper towel. You will, pathetically, hope that someone somewhere is feeling sorry for you, just a little.

Edit: ...And sometimes you feel kind of bad about eating husband's M and M's, when he brings you home a bag with like TEN candy bars in it because he wasn't sure what you might like to make you feel better.

FTLOG

Ok. Ok ok ok. So we got home from family reunion, which was lovely EXCEPT for falling into a river and spending the subsequent two hours with a bunch of wet, pissed off people whose lunches were floating upstream and EXCEPT for the part where Eli had Horrifying Accidents of a Solid Nature in his underpants about a gazillionty times in a relative's lovely, clean home. And we had one phone lost and one phone sort of clinging to life and four different keys to have made, and amazingly all of that got taken care of pretty quickly and smoothly and I was all, "Nice recovery, family unit!"

And then. And then in one single day: the phone that was valiantly soldiering on completely gave up the ghost, rendering it useless even for contact list retrieval (!!!); I brilliantly tried to put CORN HUSKS down the garbage disposal and completely clogged out entire sink system, including the (single) bathtub/shower, which is currently a swamp of murky water with random corn silk balls bobbing despondently therein; and Eli developed some mysterious stomach ailment just as I took the kids over to my parents' house to bathe, which led him (omg omg omg) to POOP on their WHITE FRESHLY STEAM CLEANED CARPET twice. omg omg omg.

It was so bad, you guys. And thank heavens it was obviously scotch guarded or something, because I couldn't believe I got those stains out. I was seriously SWEATING in panic, while the previously potty trained boy was running around in diapers for the first time in about three weeks and doubtless ruining all his progress.

Arrgh. So to sum up: piles of dishes, including a crock pot of barbecued ribs, which have sat untouched by dishwasher for two days; an impressive number of soiled and/or ruined underpants which REE-HEALLY need laundered; and a ticking time bomb of a toddler sipping on Pedialyte. So I may as well just say it and get it over with: after five days of attempting to swish/soak/rinse fecal matter out of underpants in the toilet (after getting very tired of just throwing them away following such an accident) I think I have decided I may not be cut out for cloth diapering after all. Don't judge me, great internet.

Oh, and I just stepped into a pile of slimy regurgitated weeds courtesy of the dog. Of course I did.

Lessons from the Weekend

Hey! Did you know that if you happen to completely submerge your cell phone in water- say, just for a random example, by flipping out of a canoe while the phone is in your pocket- you can take the phone apart, put it in a bag of rice, and it may SORT of come back to life? With a weird upside down, funkily colored screen that reads backwards, but that the nice cell phone store people can hopefully at least extract the contact list from?

Now you know. Bag of rice.

And also! Maybe next time keep your phone in a plastic bag when BOATING, you genius. Just a thought.

More Crunchy, Attachment Parenting Type Advice Needed!

Well, you all made me feel a lot better about the prospect of cloth diapering, so, thanks a lot. Still not sure about which brand to go with, but I really liked the idea of ordering that newborn started pack thing-ie which lets you try several brands out and decide which you prefer. And then you get to send it back and pay only shipping or something?! Anyways, that sounds great. I'm still a little icked out by the whole "disposing of solids" part of the process, but whatevs. Diapering is just gross any way you do it, really, and I do think having a bag of wet diapers sounds less disgusting overall than a pail of wrapped up fecal matter rotting away.

I do think we'll take disposables with us when we're out and about, though. Not because having plastic bags and bringing home the wet ones sounds super difficult or anything, but because I am VERY bad about forgetting to pack things and also forgetting to bring stuff back into the house (like sippee cups, for instance.) So I can totally see how I'd end up out with a dirty diaper and no sack to bring it home, or, if I did remember the sack, I'd then forget to bring it into the HOUSE in the chaos of getting three kids in the door, and then there'd be rotting wet linens sitting in the hot car for a full day.

Anyways, since y'all are so handy with the advice, maybe you can help me out again here? The sling I used with Eli got recalled recently (Infantino brand) and so now I'm in the market for a new one. Ideas? Brands to avoid?

Au Revoir, Parent's Choice Diapers

I WILL miss the storage uses of your jumbo boxes, but Mr. Elias has decided he doesn't need you anymore. Well, he'd kind of like to keep pooping in you, but he has reluctantly reached the conclusion that once you're in underwear, you can't demand a diaper solely to.... Well anyways. Enough said. But how awesome is this!? The kid just woke up and decided to wear underwear and has had like a total of TWO pee accidents in five days. That's pretty remarkable, no? He's even been fine out and in public, with the exception of a disastrous playdate with our neighbors that ended in him and me rushing back to our house for a quick BATH and a change of clean clothes. Like I said, less enthusiastic about using that potty for number two than number one. But we're getting there, and he is not even three yet, and also the whole child-led potty training thing actually does WORK for some kids! Before they're five years old! How 'bout that?! (Today, knock on wood, there have been ZERO accidents of either kind, a successful, uh, deposit on the potty, AND a trip to Dairy Queen in which he even used the regular old toilet without qualms! And WHY am I still talking about this? Good grief, parenting makes you way too invested in other people's eating and eliminating habits.)

Also in diaper news: I think we might be cloth diapering this one. Gulp. Now that I've actually said it out loud to several people, I feel scared. Can't back down now, or those wadded plastic, two-hundred-years-to-decompose diapers are going to feel even worse on my conscience. But! I've never done it before! And we only have one bathroom! And how can I possibly do this without it being REVOLTING? Don't you need, like, a whole room of your house devoted to haz-mat once you decide to cloth diaper?!

Well. First can those of you who do cloth diaper or who have in the past, tell me exactly, step by step how you go about it and what supplies you need? And maybe give me brand recommendations and tell me how many I need of each size and all that? Oh, AND make the whole laundering part of it magically seem less daunting?

From The Mouths Of Babes

The other day I was at the playground with my friend, her kids and her niece, whom she's babysitting during the summer. I hadn't seen Lily for awhile and said hi, while Jess asked, "Did you know Sarah was going to have a baby?"

Lily nodded sagely. "Yeah, I could tell."

I beamed, for it's just been in the last few weeks that strangers have begun to notice my pregnancy as obvious enough to comment upon. I expected her to say something about my bigger belly, but instead, she continued in explanation:

"She keeps pulling up her pants. I've noticed pregnant ladies' pants are always falling down."

Results!

Okay, so yesterday was a VERY good day, in spite of pouring rain the entire drive to the specialist's office and also taking the wrong exit and ending up on the completely wrong side of town. Because! No clots! The sonographer did the longest, most thorough ultrasound EVER and assured us that the dark spots looked like "venous lakes" which are pooling of blood or fluid and, while they should be monitored, are almost always nothing. In occasional cases they can lead to fetal growth restriction, so the doctor recommended that my OB here in town continue to check the baby each month with ultrasound to make sure he's still growing well, but other than that, business as usual!

Obviously, we are extremely relieved. The doctor and sonographer both were all breezy about it, and both basically said, "Oh, this is really not that uncommon- we see it a lot here because sometimes regular OB's and sonographers don't recognize them or their machines aren't high enough resolution to tell the difference between these and more serious problems. But it's almost definitely nothing to worry about!" So yeah, big sigh of relief. I feel like I'm out of mental limbo and can start planning for this real, live, baby boy (weighing in at fifteen ounces and currently sitting in a breech position on my bladder, in case anyone's interested) to be here in about four months.

I still have to TAKE IT EASY, though. Bah. I was having tons of really painful Braxton Hicks during the drive and even throughout the ultrasound, so the doctor had the sonographer measure my cervix, and it was RIGHT at the cusp of still being long enough. Like, anything under thirty mm they worry about, and mine was exactly thirty. So, you know, we should definitely be trying to keep the contracting to a minimum. Guess I'll just have to delegate anything strenuous to other people! Darn!

The Briefest Movie Reviews Ever

Sex and the City Two: possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. If you liked the show at all, spare yourself and skip it. It's like finding out that an ex boyfriend whom you remember fondly as being sweet and clever and funny is now living on the street, unwashed and gaunt and selling sexual favors for heroin. It's really really bad. I don't understand how the writers and producers from the first movie could have had any hand in the second. Did they, even? I didn't exactly research it or anything before I saw it (obviously, or I would NOT have seen it.)

Robin Hood: worth watching, at least, and an interesting take on an old story. I liked it, though I would definitely have included more shirtless scenes of Russell Crowe if I had been in charge of that film. WHAT were they thinking? I also liked Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian. An interesting remake of a character who is usually bland and feminine and otherwise nondescript. My only complaint is that the ending felt very rushed and choppy- Jim and I kept looking at each other and going, "Wait, did we just miss a scene or something? Is this film messing up?" So that sucked. But I'll definitely want to see the sequel, as opposed to the above movie. Wouldn't see another film in that series if you offered me a lifetime supply of Prada.

Attack of the Killer Ants

Today has been one disgusting fire to put out after another- and let's see, it's only nine am, so I'm thinking I should just go hide back in bed right now before this day goes even further downhill. The nastiness technically started last night, but it was around one in the morning, so I'm counting it in with today's lineup to make it a tidier little sum of misery. Also, it'll sound more overwhelming and evoke more sympathy. So, last night's problem: invasion of killer ants.

A little background is that I was eating tortilla chips and hummus, watching stand up comedy and laughing so hard I actually thought I... burst a muscle in my stomach, or something. I can't describe it exactly, but it felt like my lower abdominals actually snapped. Round ligament pain coupled with a two week long, racking cough can really wreak havoc on the 'ole abs. Can't wait to see my belly after this kid finally emerges!

Anyhoos, when finished with the hummus, I sat the bag of chips on the floor next to the couch, opening standing straight up, and forgot about them until it was time to go to bed. During this interval, I kept feeling itchy and slapping at my arms and ankles, but figured I was just feeling fidgety because all the laughing really woke me up and I always get all twitchy when I'm watching TV but feeling wide awake.

Fast forward to one. I stand up, pick up the bag of chips, shuffle off to the kitchen where the light is on, and realize that the entire bag, inside and out, is crawling with ants. And that there were also not a few ants swarming the couch where I had just been sitting, absentmindedly slapping at my "phantom" itchiness.

I can't even describe to you the screaming and throwing of items across the room and possible swear words and yelling for Jim to rescue me that went on. It was pretty embarrassing given that they WERE just ants and not, say, killer scorpions. But there were a LOT. We ended up pulling the couch out, dust bustering up an ungodly amount of ants, finding a piece of cereal which seemed to be drawing them, and then putting down ant traps to try to lure the ant line to their death rather than to our food containers.

By we I mostly mean Jim. My main contribution was hopping around, shrieking, and remembering where the ant traps were. And then hopping around some more, reliving the situation and hyperventilating and going on and on about how much I hate bugs.

Then this morning there was: a bag of nasty garbage torn open all over the garage, presumably by a RACCOON; a refrigerator which I suddenly realized was full of horrifyingly old leftovers and random unused produce and OMG cleaning that Tupperware out was maybe more shudder-worthy than the ant attack; a runaway dog, and of course it stormed last night and so he returned wet and muddy; and finally, discovered while cleaning out the nasty leftovers, the underside of a sink strainer so disgusting I had to scrub it off BEFORE I could put it in the dishwasher to sanitize. And a dirty diaper change thrown in just for good measure.

HAPPY WEEKEND TO ME.

Sad/Sulk

I'm feeling very cranky the last two days. Well, pissy actually. That would be a more accurate word. Cranky sounds like a kid who missed his nap. I feel a little more like a kid who just had someone come along and steal their ice cream cone or something. I sort of want to punch someone. I keep getting irrationally angry about things like laundry left too long in the washer, to the point of throwing said laundry and then bursting into tears of frustration. I feel like I am stuck in some kind of terrible inertia, wandering around grumpily and spinning my wheels while accomplishing nothing of either housework or good parenting. We returned home from Canada late Sunday night, and it has taken me until this morning to get all the laundry finished up and put away. Don't even ask about the state of the rest of the house, but I just can't seem to care.

I don't know. I know it's normal to be worried until we find out for sure what's going on. I have cried about it like three times already, and I'm not really a crier. I just keep hearing the doctor's voice saying, "Now, this doesn't mean you're definitely going to lose your baby or anything..." And me thinking, "But it is a possibility. You're bringing it up, so that means it's possible." But I can't even think about that too deeply. I keep telling myself that the WORST case scenario would just be that the baby would have to be delivered early, via C-section, and that he'd be in the NICU for awhile and/or would be underweight from intrauterine growth restriction.

Even that is pretty awful to consider right now, but as long as he makes it and we get to take him home I think I'm not going to care too much about the other stuff. And obviously I'm hoping that none of that happens and that somehow this stuff just... resolves itself, I guess, and the baby will be fine and go to term. I just feel so mad still that this is even happening, and that finding out about it kind of ruined the fun of finding out the sex of the baby for me.

I just want so badly to know if something is seriously wrong or not. I want so badly for some kind of guarantee that if I do x and x then the baby will be ok. I want to stop feeling like the universe is totally against me having children and is constantly trying to thwart things, or that I am just genuinely terrible at gestating babies and that we would be better off hiring a surrogate if we ever have more.

Hmm, wallowing in self pity much? I know, I need to snap out of it. For the other kids' sake if not for myself. I did feel a lot better last night after talking to some friends, and making light of some of the otherwise depressing doctoral orders, such as (please look away if you're squeamish and/or related to me) forbidding me to have an orgasm until the baby is born. Yep. The fun just never ends. Since my uterus is kind of irritable and the Braxton Hicks are continuing to come rather painfully on a regular basis and since we're going to have enough early labor problems to contend with if the placenta starts deteriorating, she said I shouldn't do anything that would trigger contractions, and that orgasm was one of the things I should specifically avoid. I can't wait to break THIS one out in about fifteen years: "Son, you had better not give me grief about this! You know what I gave up for YOU while I was pregnant?!"

Houston, We Have A....

Boy! Absolutely, definitely, no doubt about it, would've been able to figure it out ourselves without the help of the tech, boy! The weird thing is, I kinda thought I wanted a girl, and if I would have had to guess based on how I was carrying and on pregnancy similiarities with Addy and Eli, I would have guessed girl. Yet I felt completely unsurprised and totally thrilled when she told us it was a boy, so there you go. It kind of felt like the same reaction I had when Addy came out and was a girl, after nine months of not knowing. I kept saying, "I KNEW you were a girl!" Even though I hadn't KNOWN, of course. But it felt right. And it feels right that this one is a boy.

The ultrasound was not completely a pleasure, though, unfortunately. The tech didn't say anything to us about a problem, but once I got back to the exam room to talk to the doctor, it turned out there was some issues with the placenta. There is a large patch with three dark spots, and basically they're either bleeds or blood clots. Blood clots definitely being the worst scenario, obviously. Don't even google "blood clots in placenta." Not reassuring. There's very little hard medical information, just a whole lot of scary stories about babies dying or having to be born very prematurely because their placentas stop functioning.

So. My doctor wants me to stop taking the baby aspirin for two weeks and then do a follow up ultrasound, to see if that seems to shrink the spots, in which case she'd assume the problem was bleeding and if it looked the same or worse, we'd assume clots. I, however (and Jim) are not too comfortable with waiting two weeks. I'm especially not comfortable with taking a chance that it's "just bleeding" when if it is in fact clots, stopping the aspirin would be the WORST thing to do.

Anyways, after a frustrating afternoon, we decided to call back and ask for a referral or a second opinion or something. Something more than just wait and see, when every day the clots, if they are clots, could be getting more and more dangerous to the baby's health. So we're seeing a maternal-fetal specialist in Columbus next week, and (I think) getting a Level II ultrasound, which is supposed to be a lot more helpful for diagnosing intra-uterine problems like this. If they are in fact clots, I'll probably being starting the dreaded Lovenox injections after all. And, you know, wishing I'd been doing them from the beginning. Except that then that would've probably caused a miscarriage because of that subchorionic hematoma...

Well. Pregnancy. It sure is a fun, uncomplicated, guilt-free ride! Certainly doesn't bring to mind the expression, "Damned if you do and damned if you don't" or anything!

But anyways, sweet little thumb-sucking boy is safe and sound in there for now, and we are very happy about that part. I took the kids therapy shopping today and we bought him a little car sleeper and a tiny pair of Robeez and that made me feel a wee bit better. I also really want to get him named. I have this irrational idea that once he has a name, he can't possibly leave us. That a name will keep him safe.