Pink lint in the dryer…
I’m 37 years old, I have a husband, a dog, a cat…oh yeah, and the reasons for all the pink lint in my
dryer…my 3 daughters! I am, what they call a “stay at home mom”, the opposite to the working mother….the NOT working mother? Is there such a thing? Are you ever “not working” when you are a mother? Really the “working mother” term is so redundant. In fact, here is my typical day;
Wake up in the morning, way earlier then desired, feed the baby, change the baby, make coffee, play with the baby, have a sip of coffee, wake up the teenager for work or school ( depends on a day), have a sip of coffee, spit up- change baby again, wake up teenager again, poo-poo – change baby again, wake up teenager again, make lunch for husband, put baby down for nap, sit on the couch for a minute, have now cold coffee listen to nothing……..one minute later the toddler has now joined the party……do I love this life?......you bet ya!!!!!
I do, I love what my life has turn out to be. Family wasn’t always the clearest vision for me; my parents have and always have had a very dysfunctional relationship, heaps of arguments and masses of “quiet time”(not talking). And so I developed into your typical dysfunctional teenager; smoking, cutting school, angry, depressed, lost and then at the age of 18………..I became…a MOTHER.
I bet you could’ve guessed…..
Being a mother at such a young age was not uncomplicated, and realized later THIS”fun”fact; once a young mother….always a young mother. Yes you will grow to become older and wiser and gain parenting skills, certainly!... but your kid grows with you. So by the time my now 19 year old daughter Kathy was a toddler I have now gained knowledge of babies, and by the time she was in school I was excellent with toddlers, high school for her…..and elementary school age kids….no challenge for me! I now see I will always try to catch up and she will until the end of time beat me to it. I will always be this teenager having a baby. On the flip side, this, I discovered later was my calling, destiny, my fate if you will. Being a mother turned out to be the most satisfying, fulfilling thing in my life. Thanks ~K~
I did somehow provide her with life skills to do better than me. She is now in college and doing excellent. She’s a great kid and I’m proud of her. Sure there was an assortment of tribulations, she WAS born with a job( as DR Phil would say), she had to teach me how to be a mom and sometimes wait for me to do my “assignments” I blame myself often for many things, and seldom do I find ways to go back in time and fix the past( where is Dr Brown and his time machine when you need him) If it really is possible to learn from your mistakes then considering the amount of mistakes I’ve made…..we are taking a mastermind here writing this story!
I am now 37 and Kathy is 19, I got married 6 years ago to a wonderful big Jewish boy and had 2 more daughters! oy vey!
Life couldn't be better, Sadie my 2 ½ year old is so cute and funny and extraordinarily smart. Toddlers…I could talk about toddlers for hours (well, I could talk about anything for hours, maybe that’s why I always go back to writing, fearful this talking thing gonna get me divorced and friendless. You can always close a book when you’ve had enough, me….well …not so much. Sadie……. I waited a long time for this girl. Kathy was already almost 17 when Sadie arrived. For a long time I thought, it would always be just Kathy and me, and it wasn’t a sad thought, it was almost a decision. I really didn’t think I ever wanted to get married, I didn’t think it was for me. I never loved a boy forever.
Rob and I dated for 7 years before we got married so when he proposed and I still loved him so much and did not want to ever be without him, the answer was easy. Suddenly everything has changed, I now wanted to be married and wanted more children……I found love at last…
Sadie was a much planned pregnancy. I’m talking ovulation calendar on the computer, did oodles of research on; “how to get preggers fast” Even ate “the right” foods….in the end, it was surprisingly simple…sex without protection. I remember the day we drove to the hospital to be induced,( I can grow them well but my uterus doesn’t want to give them up). I felt a bit nervous, anxious yet…calm.
Yes, I was going to have to push a watermelon through a very small opening, and endure the kind of pain hell is made of but I was ready. Ready to fall in love like that again, ready to share this amazing experience with Rob, ready to give Kathy a sister……..with Rob by my side I was prepared and equipped to have a family, my OWN family.
We arrived at the hospital, parked the car, and seat there for a minute. I looked at him and said” lets go have a baby”. The boy I loved was about to become the father of my child. He was excited, happy and just like me, anxious. I watched him with Kathy for years, and knew he was without doubt going to be a remarkable dad, but this was different, this was his first “genetic “child. He was going to be Daddy now.
We went up to the 2nd floor (we knew it well by now, I thought I was in labor every other week throughout the entire pregnancy). The nurses got us set up in our labor room, and I got to change into one of those very fashionable hospital gowns that open in the back and of course you always forget That small detail( well, I always forget), so every time you bend down you present the world with a side of you that at 40 weeks and 5 days of pregnancy and 50+ lbs extra is not exactly…..attractive (because of course by now they have you walk around “commando” for to allow easy access to what used to be the most private part of you that now seems to be public property. No dinner and a movie, not even a cocktail! My doctor and the nurses just walk in the room and say;”ok, lets see”
I got hooked up to the remarkable drug called “potocin” to get the labor started. Without this great drug I would stay pregnant forever (like I said, I can conceive them, grow them really well, and that’s it….they get comfortable and certainly overstay their welcome!)
It was going to be a long day….or two. My doctor presented us with the game plan; potocin all day, if not dilated 10 cm by the end of the day, we will take a break for the night and start again in the morning. Oh please, dilate……
Things were progressing sort of slow, but steady. The potocin was doing it’s job, my contractions were very regular and definitely becoming more and more intense, but I was still able to sort of think through them so I knew I wasn’t even close. Sometime mid day we had one of Rob’s friends stop by to see how we were doing, Rob and we’ll call him Dennis( we’ll call him that cause that is his actual name) stepped out of the room for a while, to walk around a bit …… labor CAN be exhausting…..hmmmm. Just then……I felt a bit wet! Holly revoltingness!...did my water just break?!?!
I actually wasn’t sure at first. I thought, maybe I just peed a little. I have done it plenty all through the pregnancy. Anyone that has experienced pregnancy before IS very familiar with the occurrence.
It is rather ironic that most of those times I thought my water actually broke and promptly called my DR, yet when the one and only time it really does happen…I think I just peed a little. I guess I just imagined it differently. For some women it will just be drops, some a slow trickle and for the
“lucky” ones…a gush. This is how it went down (no pun intended) for me; couple of drops at first, no big deal , again this happened every time I stood up, sat down , sneezed, coughed, laughed…whatever, like a comma in a sentence. Just couple of seconds later …..a trickle, hmmmm , should I call the nurse? I did… she came, confirmed, yes my water did break and thus all hell broke loose too! Wow , the contractions picked up fast, I was not able to talk or think through them any longer, it became painful and terrifying but exciting ….this girl was definitely coming and she was coming SOON!!!!
I was now 3 ½ cm. Wait, wait, before you judge! I know what you’re thinking….3 1/2cm?! she’s in this much pain at 3 1/2cm?! What a wimp!!!! No, believe me not a wimp at all! I had Kathy without epidural, without any kind of meds not even to take the edge off! So no my friends, not a wimp.
Sadie was a BIG baby, so once the water broke and she was pressing right on my(lets use a technical term here)crotch! I was in pain!!!!!!!I didn’t want epidural just yet, I was afraid it would slow down labor and because I did have Kathy all natural I guess I did feel little cowardly to ask for epidural this early on. I walked around for a while hoping this will help pick up the pace……it didn’t…….. initially. I was still 31/2 cm but the pressure was unbearable…..I gave in…it was time for epidural.
The anesthesiologist came” installed” the good stuff and 10 min later I was in heaven…….for about 10 min. Then, hell again!!!! The epidural only worked on one side so my right side felt like it was being ripped off of my body, they tried turning me from left to right and back again but no use, the anesthesiologist came back, put more meds through already installed IV in my back. Now, I felt nothing….no pain, no pressure…………nothing. My DR came in to check on me as he did all day every so often. My nurse informed him I was 3 ½ cm just 20 min ago, and also told him about my problems with epidural. I mentioned how right before they gave me my second dose, I felt a ton of pressure. “Well, let’s check you again, just to see what’s going on” he said………..this is what happen next;
“OMG,she’s complete!!!” the nurse; “what?!”, the dr;”push!”, me; “what?!”the DR and the nurse now;”push! push!”, me; “now?” Because of the double epidural I didn’t feel my contractions hence I didn’t know when to push and so when they said push, I pushed…..and pushed….and pushed! ....and didn’t stop until the baby came out! Consequently I ended up with a 4th degree tear. For those not familiar with the phenomenon, the more you tear from front to back the higher the degree. There is no 5th degree……….enough said.
Sadie Gloria arrived at 7:22pm. Wow, I just gave birth to……..my husband…. in drag! She looked just like him but unquestionably like a girl. How is that possible? How can this girl look so much like the boy I married yet still have the prettiest girl face? Guess my husband is kind of pretty too…in a very manly sort of way….of course.
She was SO beautiful, I was SO ready to nurture again, it’s been SO long since I had a baby…..this felt SO right…….
Rob cried for days, he never loved like this before, he kept saying; “I feel too much!”………I knew exactly what he meant, and right then and there, I knew, we were not done.
Two and a half years later…Victoria Lauren was born……
I was sitting on the couch one evening, watching Rob and Sadie putting together a puzzle. I was soo tired, drug induced kind of tired….could I possibly be preg…..no,no,no. I mean, yes, this is the kind of tired I only feel the first couple of months of pregnancy and no, we have not been as careful as we should be, but we are in no financial position right now to have another baby, nor could we fit 3 children in our house………”mommy, mommy! Wake up!”I suddenly hear…Oh good! This was only a silly little dream. Daddy! Mommy is sleeping again!...she is?!.....I am?!.......In my head now…….oh crap! I’m pregnant!!!!
I knew I was pregnant, this kind of tired is very different, very recognizable, very specific to this “condition”. Suddenly everything made sense. The exhaustion, the not feeling great, the bloating…..I had no doubt in my mind, I was “with child”, but I had to make sure. I had to….pee on THE stick! Next morning Rob went to work, it was Saturday so I was home. I waited for him to leave and the minute I heard the garage door close I was in the bathroom…taking THE test. The second I made my” deposit” onto the stick…it was positive! I think it even made a sound, and did a little dance. I waited the required 3 min and…well…still “+”! OK, come down, this is good; you both wanted this ……maybe not now but at some point…definitely! I guess “some point” is now!
I can’t even describe the feeling, I got so hot and lightheaded and woozy I couldn’t even concentrate on how I felt emotionally.
Now the question is; how do I tell Rob about this without killing him?!
He came home telling me something about someone, or maybe…..by then I could hardly comprehend English, in my head now only holy cow I’m pregnant, OMG I’m pregnant, wow pregnant, pregnant, pregnant……..
We need to talk, I said….Kathy wasn’t home and Sadie was already in bed. I wish I had something better to make the announcement with, but like I said in my head now just…bubbles..
Why? He asked in a very suspicious tone. He knew, he had to! We were not using protection; we were just depending on my ovulation cycle, or my knowledge of it. Right.
Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant!! …..OK………….
