no baby yet

Well, not that I expected to be giving birth before my due date but it would be nice. I was at the OB's office yesterday, that guy is such a total asshole. He NEVER even asks me how I'm doing or if I have any questions. I literally have 5 minutes with him and then he walks out of the room without saying goodbye. I hope he is not the doctor on call when I give birth.

Today is my last day at work for a whole 55 weeks. Though I love my job, I can appreciate the break. It's nice that I get so much time with my baby. So this weekend its all about the sex and housework to bring this baby out!

Get 'er done, as they say.

still pregnant

Yep, nothing happening yet...

1 centimetre

Saw the OB today. I am dilated 1 centimetre which he assures me is normal and means nothing other than the fact that I am nearing the end of my pregnancy. He says he will most likely see me in the office next week. Avery is doing well and he thinks she will probably weigh about 7 to 7 ½ pounds when she is born. As for the swelling, he says I should stop working, go buy a bunch of magazines and books and stay at home with my feet up. I am seriously considering this today. I am so, so tired. Next week is my last week but, as he reminded me, I will not have ANY time to myself until Avery is in kindergarten so I should take advantage now.

The hormones seem to be at their height for some reason. I woke up kind of in a funk (I need to stop watching documentaries about peak oil and Rwanda for awhile) and when I was waiting in the OB’s office, a woman and her husband walked in looking very panicky. My OB came out to talk to her. She had had a few miscarriages and was back to find out the result of her latest pregnancy. Her physician had forgotten to send some test results over and had also failed to tell her the status of her current pregnancy. My OB confirmed that it was a healthy, single fetus in there but she would need to go and have another ultrasound because the first one missed something. I could hear the desperation and stress in her voice and soon I was tearing up. Ugh. How embarrassing. I just felt so bad for her. I remember that feeling of desperation when you don’t know if you are getting bad news or good news or what the hell is going on.

Anyway, my OB could tell I was a little sensitive so he was pretty easy on me today. He even talked to me about my job and my plans for going back to work and how many children I wanted to have. It was very unlike him.

So that’s it. After an uncomfortable internal exam, we find that we are not ahead of the game. That’s okay though. I think I’ll try to spend some more time resting and staying off my feet until my lovely daughter decides it is her time to come into this world. Until then, I am a puffy, blubbering anxiety-ridden mess.

Welcome to motherhood.

fuck off

I’ve just been scanning the news headlines as I do every morning because I don’t have time to read a paper at work and I have come across some things that I am tired of hearing about. I have decided to dedicate this post to people like me out there who just feel like saying “You know what? Fuck off.”

Here we go.

Muslims hold new protests against Salman Rushdie knighthood

You know what? Fuck off. Why the fuck are we giving this shit any press time? The Ayatollah wanted this guy dead years and years ago. Then Rushdie went into hiding. Then they lifted the death penalty in Iran, and then Rushdie came out of hiding. Now Mr. Rushdie has been knighted. Big Fucking Deal. Now some people in Iran and Pakistan are mad. There was even talk of suicide bombings and how they would be justified in this case. Really. Like these idiots need an excuse for a suicide bombing. Ebrahim Rahimpour, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s director for Europe said “The British Government’s insulting, suspicious and ill-considered act is an obvious sign of Islamophobia which has terribly hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims.”

Hurt the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims? Because of a fucking book that was published how many years ago? Get over it. And fuck off. Oh, and I hardly think you are speaking on behalf of that many people worldwide. I’m sure that the majority don’t even know who Salman Rushdie is.

Do yellow ribbons show support for troops or for war?

City of Toronto politicians are arguing over whether fire trucks and ambulances should keep displaying the yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons. City Hall is voting on this today. From the Globe and Mail today:

“The issue arose at city hall yesterday after a news report that the city, in response to complaints from people opposed to the Afghan mission, had ordered the decals removed from 170 fire trucks and a similar number of ambulances. The decals were installed last year, without council's involvement, after the firefighters' union paid $3,000 for the fire-truck stickers; emergency medical services dipped into its taxpayer-funded budget for a similar amount.”

You know what? Fuck off. Stop wasting time and taxpayer money on stupid ass shit like this. There are a hundred WAY more important issues that need to be addressed than this. You are voting on this in council today? What the fuck? Are you doing anything about the fact that that idiot David Miller has run this city into the ground and we are now facing bankruptcy? The same idiot who thinks that public transit is the answer to everything? That taxing people who own cars and charging families that create more garbage is the “green solution” to end all environmental woes? Someone needs to walk up to this blond-haired buffoon, this NDP idiot and flick him in the forehead and say “Hey douchebag, the firefighters are a militarily based organization. They are structured around military principles. Many reservists and former members of the Canadian military are firefighters. They are supporting their brothers who THIS COUNTRY has decided to send into a chaotic war zone to be killed for nothing.”
You don’t have to support this useless war but for fucks sake show a little compassion and humanity for the poor bastards who got shipped over there. And stop wasting time and money on issues like this. Start talking about incinerating garbage, about stopping big business from polluting the shit out of our city, about solving the immigration backlog and shutting down grow houses and putting the teenage gangsters in Jane and Finch in jail so they will stop shooting each other and terrorizing the neighbourhoods in our city.

Health Canada probes phony toothpaste sold in Ontario

Hey – how about you don’t buy your toothpaste from the dollar store? Did you notice all the other weird ass products on the shelves in there? Would you buy powdered soup from Kazakhstan? Do you really think that Colgate is selling it’s toothpaste to dollar stores?

Fuck off.

You know what else? Maybe we should stop outsourcing our manufacturing and farming to places like China, a country that seems to have no problem poisoning its own babies with contaminated formula and then not informing its public about it. A country that sent over contaminated additives for use in our pet food production, resulting in the deaths and illnesses of thousands of animals. You think that the produce and other food products you are buying at Loblaws aren’t affected by this? Guess again. Where is your garlic from?

These countries use pesticides on our food that should be banned as a weapon of mass destruction.

I think it’s time we became more concerned and conscientious as consumers and realize that cheaper is not better. It is toxic to us, to our economy and to the planet. Why are we shipping whitefish from our waters over to China to be processed and sent back to us?
Something is very, very wrong.

Okay, that’s my doom and gloom for the week.

kinda crampy

I woke up this morning with a dull ache in my lower back. While I was standing in the shower I noticed that the pain moved around my waist and became more ‘menstrual-like’. Am I getting ready to have this baby over the next couple of days? It would be nice. Am I just assuming every twinge I feel is the onset of labour? Possibly.

Now I am sitting at my desk at work and the pain is back, only now it feels like my back had tensed up and I don’t want to walk even though I desperately need to pee.

For the last couple of days I’ve been feeling like she is going to drop out of me. I’ll be walking up the stairs or making dinner and all of the sudden, boom, she’s right on my pelvis and I clench my thighs together out of fear that she’s going to come tumbling out of me. It honestly feels like that.

I have an appointment with the vagina terrorist tomorrow where he will be doing an internal exam (fun!) to see if I am dilated at all. I’m hoping for at least 2 centimeters. Chances are nothing is happening though.

I really, really, really just want to have this baby. I am so over this pregnancy. I actually got mad at the cat last night for trying to sleep beside me.

That’s how grumpy I am.

dear me in the near future,

Congratulations, I’m sure everything is going wonderfully. Hopefully, we never got the post-partum depression we were so worried about and we are adjusting to life as a slave/milk machine well. Also, I hope our vagina is still intact and functioning normally.

The reason I am writing this is because I am afraid that we are going to forget about pregnancy as soon as husband starts talking about having another one right away. As we both know, he is very concerned about having children too far apart and he feels like he is going to be too old to have kids in a few years, which, as both of us can agree on, is ridiculous considering that he is only 30 right now.

Here is my main piece of advice and I would like you to consider this in all seriousness: do not get pregnant again for awhile. Like, give it a couple of years. I don’t see any problem with having a 3 or 4 year old and a newborn, I think that is a great combination. I have many reasons for thinking this way and I have outlined them below:

First of all, don’t forget how bad the first trimester was. We were very sick and very tired all the time. It was hard for us to take care of ourselves and Charlie (remember what a pain in the ass he was then?) and things were very stressful. We did not start feeling better until we were about 16 weeks along. Now picture that with Charlie, a toddler, a full time job and a house to run.

The second trimester was great, but it leads in to the third trimester, which has been for the most part fine, except that we are bigger and very, very tired again. Bending over to pick up a dog chew off of the ground is almost impossible now. See where I am going with this? The breasts hurt, the skin on our tummy is stretched and itchy and we feel like a big puffy blob. Ooh, the swelling. The swelling is really bad if we don’t stay off of our feet. Not possible with toddler, Charlie, house and full-time job.

Also remember that when husband is working, especially nights, we are basically a single mom and that is a lot of work. It will not be easy with two of them under 3. And how are we managing the daycare situation? Remember the conversation we had with husband about the potential of us not being able to stay home after the second one is born. We could be shipped right back to work after the maternity leave. I know we always planned on staying home for a few years but this might not work out and I know us too well to think that we could live happily with all that stress. 2 kids under 3, Charlie, a fill time job and a house to run. Honey, it’s not worth it.

Husband is wonderful and very supportive for the most part but I am still cleaning the house, scrubbing toilets and picking up the slack at this stage. He constantly has to be reminded to change the cat litter and he ALWAYS forgets to take the garbage out on garbage day, leaving us to haul everything to the corner. Note for the future pregnancy: PLAY IT UP. Even if you feel fine, shut up about it and let yourself be pampered and cared for. Stop trying to do everything yourself. It makes you tired and grumpy. I want you to be happy and to enjoy the children, not be trapped in a messy house with screaming kids and a bitter husband.

Don’t get pregnant right away. Enjoy Avery. Enjoy her for a few years before you think about having another one. Trust me. We will have long forgotten all about this pregnancy by then.

Love,

Me.

is it me, or is he just a jackass?

I had my weekly OB appointment this morning. Last week, he got ‘all up in my grill’ because I had put on 3 pounds in one week. After he chastised me for this he left the room to get something. I sat there for the 10 minutes it took him to ‘get something” agonizing over how I could possibly have put on 3 pounds in one week. When he came back in he started squeezing my calves. Then he looked at my chart. Then he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“The gain is a result of all this swelling. So don’t worry about it.”

Okay thanks for freaking out about it initially, leaving me to brood and then coming back and acting like everything is fine again. Whatever.

So this morning I get on the scale and I have gained ½ of a pound and he says to me “See, it can be done!” I was like wtf? So I said “I know it can be done, you told me that last week’s gain was from the swelling.” He looks at my chart.

“Oh, so it was” he shrugs.

I hop up on the table so he can feel where Avery is (her head is now engaged – woohoo!) and listen to her heartbeat. When he lifts up my shirt he points to the couple of lines I have developed under my bellybutton.

“They’re getting worse, are they?” he asks as he pokes at my stretch marks.

Let’s just pause for a second and go back in time to a few weeks ago when I noticed the first stretch mark and proceeded to freak out and cry to my husband about my ruined body. Shallow, yes, but cut me some slack, I’m still adjusting to my new mommy body. My husband talked me out of my freak out and assured me that not only did it not bother him, it was hardly noticeable and he was so proud of me for carrying our baby and making her into a healthy little person and I should just shut up and grow up because I am a woman, not a 15 year old girl and he loves me.

I can honestly say that any worries I had about the stretch marks disappeared. I felt much better after that. Since then, I have developed a few more and they got a little longer. It looks like a tiny little animal was clawing at my skin under my bellybutton. Whatever, they’ll fade.

So when Dr. Jackass made the comment about them getting worse I just shrugged. I told him that I obsessively put cream all over my body in order to avoid them and nothing worked. I’m not happy about them (what woman would be?) but they are a small price to pay for having a baby.

“Did you get them anywhere else?” he asked pointing to my thighs. When I told him no, he said something along the lines of “Well, it could be worse. At least you can cover your stomach, but if you got them on your thighs like a lot of women do you wouldn’t be able to wear shorts anymore without being embarrassed.” Then he made some remark about how this is why men could never have babies because it would devastate them to much to have these things happen to their bodies.

So I asked him how the hell he thinks women feel about it. Does he think that we are happy to sacrifice so much? To have to look at celebrity magazines and see airbrushed pictures of women who have had babies but don’t look like they have? To worry about miscarriage? To worry about labour? To go through the pain and recovery of labour?

You know, I’m starting to think this guy is a bit of a misogynist. I really do not want him anywhere near me when I am having my baby. Oh yeah, then he actually made fun of my swollen ankles. “Nice tree trunks!” he said.

Its 35 degrees with the fucking humidex outside today in this shithole of a province. It’s fucking bad enough that I have to listen to the idiots who love this weather talk about how great it is while I sweat my tits off. I am really not interested in any comments about my swollen ankles. I can’t feel my fucking feet at the end of the day. I’m aware that I have cankles. FUCK OFF.

And if I hear one more woman say to me “Ooh, looks like you’re ready to go any day now” I am going to claw her eyes out.

When I look in the mirror at this body that is keeping my daughter healthy and safe and warm, it is pretty sad that the first thing I see is the damage that has been done to it rather than how amazing it is and how lucky I am to be able to have a baby.

This society is fucked. Pregnant women should have god damn shrines built for them.

37 weeks: whoa mamma

My daughter is now considered full term. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by. Wasn’t it just the other day that I was 20 weeks pregnant? Apparently, she gained like 18 pounds in the last couple of days because she feels HUGE in there. Like, shake the bed when she moves at night huge. There are baby parts poking out of me at all angles now. When she isn’t hoofing me in the ribs, she’s trying to escape out the side of me through my skin. I won’t even get into the rolling around, which causes me to feel like I have to take a giant you know what one second and then has me buckled over the next.

Yesterday, the husband and I were at the supermarket and she dropped herself right onto my pelvic bones and bladder. I had to stand hunched over the cart for 10 minutes before I could move. According to my OB, she is head down, but I can pretty much guarantee you that she doesn’t stay that way. We watch as she turns herself around and stretches out in there sideways all the time. Oh the pressure. I’ll tell you what though – I am freaking ready to have this baby. Bring it on. I don’t care if I am standing at the photocopier in the office here and a tidal wave of amniotic fluid comes gushing out of me and everyone sees it because I AM DONE. Get this baby out.

I’m not saying I’m so terribly uncomfortable that I can’t handle it. I’ve been pretty lucky. I’m still sleeping well and I’m not very big compared to most women (18 pounds of weight gain now), but I really am tired of being pregnant. My boobs are tired of being pregnant. My veins are tired of being pregnant. My ribs are tired of being pregnant.

I went to a breastfeeding class on Saturday. I really didn’t learn much, save for a couple of tips regarding how much areola should be in my baby’s mouth. Fun stuff. You know, it is amazing that we have to take classes to learn how to do something that is supposed to be natural. My husband thinks it’s because our society shuts women away while they breastfeed. A long time ago, you would be breastfeeding with the other breastfeeding mothers. Now you are supposed to go hide in a restroom or in your house and cover up your guns with a blankie because god forbid anyone see a breast being used for it’s original intentions. That’s right people: the female breast: not just a secondary sexual trait; it also feeds babies.

So that’s the update. I’m a little tired today and looking forward to going home and lying down. Maybe I should have taken time off of work earlier.

pregnancy update: 36 weeks

Okay I feel a bit better today, at least better than I did when I wrote my last post. This is not to say that the actual situation has changed, but I have calmed down about it.

I saw my OB this morning and all is well. Avery is still head down but her head is not engaged yet. Her heart rate is very good, my blood pressure is very good, and I have gained 17 pounds total up to this point, which is also very good. I ate two danishes in a row last night and now I don’t feel so guilty about it, although a Dairy Queen Mint Oreo Blizzard has been calling my name for weeks and I am so tempted to chow down on that tonight. Damn you cravings for all things sweet and delicious!!!

The husband has been working extra shifts and has been on nights for the last few nights. He’ll finally be off on Thursday. I’m used to it I guess, but I’m finding that being this pregnant with a puppy and a house to look after is difficult without my partner. He also forgot to take the garbage out last night so I had to wake up to the sound of garbage trucks this morning, bolt out of bed and haul the compost, recycling and garbage out to the curb. Not easy with 17 pounds of tummy in front of you. Ah well, it could be worse I guess. I just wish he would stop ‘forgetting’ things like that and try to remember that his wife is tired and pregnant and alone a lot of the time with a very hyper dog and no one else to help. I made a comment the other day about how I would really like to just have a cesarean section and spare my vagina. I was being slightly glib of course, but his comment to me was “Well, then I would have to do EVERYTHING around here for two weeks while you recovered.” I didn’t say anything to that in case I am just being overly sensitive but really what I wanted to say was “hey sorry, you know this whole labour thing is all about you and your needs. I mean, who cares what happens to my body; what matters is how it impacts you right?” Yeah, right.

Anyway, I’m glad my little bean girl is doing well and that is all that matters to me right now. I can’t believe we are going to meet each other in just a few weeks. It seems almost surreal.

thoughts at 36 weeks pregnant

Last night was the first night in this pregnancy that I was too uncomfortable to sleep. Even though it has been 35 degrees in this godforsaken province for the last week, I was still able to sleep. But last night, Avery decided that she preferred to be wedged on the right side of my uterus, with her head firmly planted on my bladder. I think I got up at least 11 times to “pee”, and by “pee” I mean haul my massive belly out of bed, waddle to the bathroom, step on the cat and sit on the toilet while a tiny little trickle of urine comes out of me. I begged her to stop wiggling around and go to sleep. She refused. I tried every different position I could but to no avail. Eventually I fell asleep, only to wake up for my usual 4:30am “pee” followed by my usual 4:30am anxiety attack where I worry incessantly about the baby, about everyone around me dying in a horrible accident, leaving me alone in this horrible world with no support or love, and about my family.

I can honestly say that the worst thing about this pregnancy has been its impact on my anxiety. I have had problems in the past with some minor obsessive/compulsive shit, which basically caused me to create “rules” in my chemically imbalanced head in order to ensure that nothing bad would happen. Most of this involved cleaning, a need to always be the one driving the car, and making sure that every single electrical appliance was off in my house before I went to bed. The fact that the fridge and furnace had to run seriously caused me some stress. Sounds ridiculous right? It was bad, but manageable, and eventually, it tapered off enough that I could forget about it most of the time. Then I got pregnant and had a miscarriage at 14 weeks. This shook me a bit. Then I got pregnant again and the anxiety started up like some engine of a horrible, destructive monster machine.

At first, I assumed it was a direct result of the miscarriage and the dark shadow it was casting over my new pregnancy. I had many dreams where I would be wading in murky, knee-deep water, a sense of panic welling up inside of me because I knew that I was about to encounter something in the water. And each time my feet would find it, and it would bubble up from the bottom: pieces of flesh, hair and bone and I could never get away from it. I was trapped in the water with it. Eventually these dreams stopped, and I stopped worrying about the baby so much, but the anxiety continued. In the last month, I was able to get a handle on it, and I was doing fine. But now the family issues have started up again, and without going into detail because a)I am sick and tired of it and b)I would be typing forever to tell the story, I can honestly say that I am fed up with people shitting on me, especially when I am 8.5 months pregnant. I do not need the extra stress. And after getting off the phone with my mother yesterday afternoon, after listening to her go on and on about her own depression (which I do not take lightly), and how I need to get involved in the divorce again and sort my father out, I sort of broke down. And when I broke down I felt my uterus tighten and it made me angry.

My daughter isn’t even fucking born yet and already she is feeling the effects of this family bullshit. This is not acceptable to me.

I am tired of my family and I am tired of my husband’s family. The lack of support, the dramatics, the alcoholism, the inconsistencies, the mental instability, the inability of certain people to get their shit together has all got to stop. If it does not, then I am cutting people off. The fact that my family has burdened me with their shit for the last 15 years is bad enough, but when I am having a baby the last thing I need is someone calling me up and telling me how horrible everything is, that they are so depressed that they can’t even feel happiness about the impending birth of the first grandchild and then blaming me for things I have no control over. I am tired of family telling us that our dog is too hyper and he is going to hurt Avery and we’d better blah, blah blah…and then doing nothing, offering no help, support or constructive advice. In the sweltering heat of the last few days, while my husband was working double shifts to make up for the time he is going to take off once the baby is born because we can’t count on anyone else, not a single family member from either side offered to come over to see if I needed help with anything, to take the dog for a walk, to help me with food shopping, nothing.

I am so thankful that I have my husband, my best friend in the world, but we are alone and it is so disappointing. I expected more from a group of adults. I expected more from people that supposedly love us. Most of all it makes me sad for my daughter because I foolishly thought that she would have a better and bigger and more supportive family than I ever did. I must be so naïve.

I will say this though: she will be loved, and ferociously protected from all of this bullshit. But at what expense, I worry. Now I know why people move away from their families.