After using a small crane to lower myself onto the floor this morning in order to wrap the only gifts I've managed to purchase so far this holiday season, I've come to the realization that Christmas is dangerous, ya'll. And not for the reasons you might think.
Sure, we hear about the folks who slice their finger or hand open on a blister package that requires a nuclear reaction to open and heading to the emergency room for stitches. There's the unfortunate Turkey Fryer accidents. There's the dissolution of marriages and disowning of children by parents who were up until 4am assembling the tiny plastic parts of a Barbie Malibu Dream Castle. But for pregnant kindergarten teachers, there is even more peril.
First of all, there's the hormonal issue. I cried the other night because the pork chops I had in the oven weren't browning the way I wanted them to because they were thicker than the ones I usually buy. I collapsed into a bewildered heap of sobs over that disaster. That has nothing to do with Christmas, of course, but how can you expect someone who cries over pork chops to be able to drive while you're playing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" on the radio, Light 98? Or "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch?" I mean, these songs are FILLED with emotional triggers like "Your soul is an appalling dung heap overflowing with the most disgusting assortment of garbage imaginable." Sobs, I tell you. I carry mascara in my purse so that once I get to school I can somewhat reassemble myself.
Of course, that doesn't last long. And why? Pants. They keep caring if I'm wearing pants to school. Yes, I wear a dress as often as possible and recently made the foray into leggings and longer shirts, but I haven't found a way yet to wear my ACTUAL nightgown or a pair of sweatpants to school without escaping notice. And with a baby belly roughly the size of the unexplained object orbiting Mercury:
They're COMING FOR US
Pants are seriously dangerous. As a matter of fact, on Thursday I was a mere moments from taking my scissors into the stinky peed-on bathroom in my classroom and cutting the waistband on the maternity pants I was wearing so that I could stand to wear them for another moment. I had a whole plan to extend them involving duct tape and my stapler, but luckily the Husband showed up with my sweatpants just in time for my pants to escape Mythbusters style rigging.
THEN this morning I got the proofs of The Squirt's 2 year old photo shoot with a talented photographer friend. The kid is spectacular, I must say. Even the dogs look cute in the shots they invaded. Me, not so much. I look like a whale. An actual, verifiable, World Wildlife Association Profiling Endangered Species. There is only one of my kind: The Central Virginian Mommious Colossus. I am SNL's Land Shark's Whale counterpart. And this is particularly troubling because I've really not gained that much weight at all (nneighborhood of 10lbs, sometimes as much as 15 depending on when you weigh me). So this served to completely destroy the picture of myself in my head that I have where I am a Whole Lot Thinner Than I Actually Am. Tears. Oh yeah. Tears.
And now I'm trying to plan some merriment for my kindergarten friends for next week, and it's frustrating because I have a Jehovah's Witness in my class. They take the fun out of everything and replace it with Watchtower pamphlets. This is the first year I haven't spent the whole month of December playing my collection of Robert Shaw carols and such on the CD player in my classroom instead of my usual "Piano's Most Relaxing Hits" albums.
On the slightest end of positive, this week I only had ONE unexplained pee puddle appear on my classroom floor, and only had to make one awkward phone call home to a parent because his son was masturbating on his rest mat during naptime. Oh yeah, baby.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
There's a Madonna Song in Here Somewhere
With The Squirt, I elected to have an induction and it failed. I ended up having a c-section which was neither the most or least enjoyable experience of my life.
What was the least enjoyable, you may ask? Well, it just might be the phone calls I get from various personages taking me on a delightful passive aggressive guilt trip revolving around the birth of my children!
When The Squirt was born, I was teaching the worst 5th grade class ever assembled by a soulless, neckless demon from the depths of Hell. I was compounding the problem, I'm sure, by being exhausted, uncomfortable and grouchy but truthfully passing the time with a pack of rabid babboons bent on giving me the Ebola virus would have been a more enjoyable way to spend my day. Then the phone calls began.
One side of the family remained willfully ignorant about the details of pregnancy and childbirth and didn't seem to understand why neither me nor my beloved obstetrician could pinpoint with any accuracy when exactly she would be born and how much she would weigh. I'm already getting the "have they told you how much she weighs?" questions again, and this time I'm answering with the information from my What Not to Expect app..... so today? About 4lbs. "Why is she so small?!? Is there something wrong?" Um no. Did you think that as soon as the sperm hit the egg a 7.5lb baby magically appears? I am under the impression that she grows. You know, gets larger every day. And if someone has invented an intrauterine scale then I certainly haven't heard about it. Le sigh. Last time someone expected to be able to videotape the birth and didn't really want to listen to my objections, so I got the nurses to tell people that nobody other that my husband was allowed in the room because of the Swine Flu outbreaks. L&D nurses are GREAT liars.
So one cold and rainy afternoon in November, I was forced to abandon the rabid babboon hoarde to field a series of passive aggressive phone calls from my own mother and grandmother. It appears that my mother had decided that my unwillingness to consult the Dark Arts to divine when my child would be born so that she could be assured of being present, and my inability to secure travel plans for picking her up from the airport when there were no day or time parameters to consider was code for me saying I Don't Like You And Don't Want You To Ever See My Child. Then to add insult to injury, I expressed interest in spending the last few days of the husband and my life as a couple as, you know, a COUPLE. Without houseguests. I am mortifyingly selfish it seems. Either that or my mother is secretly a 2 year old.
In the last few weeks, I've been trying to make it clear to various family that I don't intend to schedule a C-Section for the birth of kidlet #2. It does not appear to be sinking in for some, but others have decided that I am intentionally inconveniencing them so that I can be sure that they cannot be present when she is born. Out of spite, you know. I am spitefully choosing to give birth in the intended way if possible. Egg on my face, right?
My general feeling on the matter is this: I have a 2 year old. I will have a newborn. I would vastly prefer to avoid major abdominal surgery and the recovery involved. After a C-Section, you're not allowed to pick up anything heavier than your baby for like 2 weeks. Someone explain that to a 2 year old, please? All she would know is that Mama will hold the baby but not her, and I can't hurt her like that if I have the power to possibly avoid the issue at all.
Since I AM the one who will be giving birth to this little Riverdancer, I can't say I particularly care about making it convenient for anyone else. And it really chaps my ass that I'm dealing with passive aggressive guilt trips because my decisions regarding my body, my baby, and my family are inconvenient for people's travel plans. As far as I'm concerned there is exactly ONE other person on earth who has any actual right to be present for the birth of this little girl, and that would be her daddy. If it works out that the more long distance family is able to be there, great. If not, I'm not responsible for that.
So my decision to VBAC if possible is NOT made out of spite to you, Mother. Nor is it intended to relay some secret message of hatred towards you. It is about ME prefering NOT to be cut open and sewn back together when I have this handy dandy doorway all biologically ready for my child to exit. Why smash a hole in the wall if there's already a door to walk through? Of course, if medically necessary I'm not opposed to having another c-section, but it's nobody's decision but mine and my doctor's.
Oh, January, you cannot come swiftly enough.
To Quote Her Madgesty Herself: And I'm not sorry..... it's human nature.... and I'm not sorry, I'm not your b!tch, don't lay your $hit on me.......
What was the least enjoyable, you may ask? Well, it just might be the phone calls I get from various personages taking me on a delightful passive aggressive guilt trip revolving around the birth of my children!
When The Squirt was born, I was teaching the worst 5th grade class ever assembled by a soulless, neckless demon from the depths of Hell. I was compounding the problem, I'm sure, by being exhausted, uncomfortable and grouchy but truthfully passing the time with a pack of rabid babboons bent on giving me the Ebola virus would have been a more enjoyable way to spend my day. Then the phone calls began.
One side of the family remained willfully ignorant about the details of pregnancy and childbirth and didn't seem to understand why neither me nor my beloved obstetrician could pinpoint with any accuracy when exactly she would be born and how much she would weigh. I'm already getting the "have they told you how much she weighs?" questions again, and this time I'm answering with the information from my What Not to Expect app..... so today? About 4lbs. "Why is she so small?!? Is there something wrong?" Um no. Did you think that as soon as the sperm hit the egg a 7.5lb baby magically appears? I am under the impression that she grows. You know, gets larger every day. And if someone has invented an intrauterine scale then I certainly haven't heard about it. Le sigh. Last time someone expected to be able to videotape the birth and didn't really want to listen to my objections, so I got the nurses to tell people that nobody other that my husband was allowed in the room because of the Swine Flu outbreaks. L&D nurses are GREAT liars.
So one cold and rainy afternoon in November, I was forced to abandon the rabid babboon hoarde to field a series of passive aggressive phone calls from my own mother and grandmother. It appears that my mother had decided that my unwillingness to consult the Dark Arts to divine when my child would be born so that she could be assured of being present, and my inability to secure travel plans for picking her up from the airport when there were no day or time parameters to consider was code for me saying I Don't Like You And Don't Want You To Ever See My Child. Then to add insult to injury, I expressed interest in spending the last few days of the husband and my life as a couple as, you know, a COUPLE. Without houseguests. I am mortifyingly selfish it seems. Either that or my mother is secretly a 2 year old.
In the last few weeks, I've been trying to make it clear to various family that I don't intend to schedule a C-Section for the birth of kidlet #2. It does not appear to be sinking in for some, but others have decided that I am intentionally inconveniencing them so that I can be sure that they cannot be present when she is born. Out of spite, you know. I am spitefully choosing to give birth in the intended way if possible. Egg on my face, right?
My general feeling on the matter is this: I have a 2 year old. I will have a newborn. I would vastly prefer to avoid major abdominal surgery and the recovery involved. After a C-Section, you're not allowed to pick up anything heavier than your baby for like 2 weeks. Someone explain that to a 2 year old, please? All she would know is that Mama will hold the baby but not her, and I can't hurt her like that if I have the power to possibly avoid the issue at all.
Since I AM the one who will be giving birth to this little Riverdancer, I can't say I particularly care about making it convenient for anyone else. And it really chaps my ass that I'm dealing with passive aggressive guilt trips because my decisions regarding my body, my baby, and my family are inconvenient for people's travel plans. As far as I'm concerned there is exactly ONE other person on earth who has any actual right to be present for the birth of this little girl, and that would be her daddy. If it works out that the more long distance family is able to be there, great. If not, I'm not responsible for that.
So my decision to VBAC if possible is NOT made out of spite to you, Mother. Nor is it intended to relay some secret message of hatred towards you. It is about ME prefering NOT to be cut open and sewn back together when I have this handy dandy doorway all biologically ready for my child to exit. Why smash a hole in the wall if there's already a door to walk through? Of course, if medically necessary I'm not opposed to having another c-section, but it's nobody's decision but mine and my doctor's.
Oh, January, you cannot come swiftly enough.
To Quote Her Madgesty Herself: And I'm not sorry..... it's human nature.... and I'm not sorry, I'm not your b!tch, don't lay your $hit on me.......
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