Wishing I had more time to blog! I just wish I could write down all the everyday moments that make me smile.

Like Kylie, when you wanted to wear your swim suite all day today, even under your clothes to target . 😅 Or when you were sad last night that you "did something bad and lost your temper". Or when Grammie said she was old and decrepit and you said "someday you'll die". So maybe that one made my mouth drop rather than smile!

Or that other thing Kylie did but I can't even remember what it was now.

Or that Quinn you now lick the drips off your  bib if I take too long to feed you.

Or that I just listened to you, Travis, get emotional telling the sweetest stories to Kylie about finding out she was going to be a girl and when she was born.

Funny stories

While I am reminiscing on adorable moments, I have another good one I never want to forget. The other day I couldn't decide if I wanted to put a pull up on Kylie while we did errands. I was helping her get dressed while she was telling me something and I did slip it on. When we got to the pants she realized she didn't want to wear the pull up. It was mid afternoon so she was getting a bit grumpy. She started demanding that I rip the sides of the pull up to get it off, as I do in the morning when it is wet from sleeping. I was doing pretty good staying calm (which I don't always do), and explained that  this pull up was dry so I didn't want to waste it because we could use it that night. She looks at me silently for a few seconds and then says, "do you hear that tinkle tinkle?". She was peeing in the pull up just so I would rip it!

Oh the things she says....

Ky's vocabulary has been increasing even more for the last few months, she has been marries ting her play with words like scampered. The other day she was saying "and she was tramping on the roof". When I told Travis this story he told me that wasn't the word it was "trampling". I said, "no, they are two different words with similar meanings. One means to stamp/march and one means to run over". He of course didn't believe me so I looked it up. My 3 year old daughter has a better vocabulary than my 29 year old husband. (Travis if one day you ever read this, I'm sorry honey and you know I love you).

Birthstory!!

Hellooooo internets!!! So glad to see you 😉. We have been very busy around here the past few months, and I have so much to get off my mind into cyberspace. But I guess I must start with the birth story of our second perfect baby girl before I start to forget the details! (Just a heads up in typing this out on my phone so sorry in advance for any typos!! I also apologize for my horrendous grammar, although I don't have an excuse for that one. 😬)

Quinnie's birth story!
With my first daughter I went earlier than the due date I received from the doctor (even though I thought the date would be a bit later). Of course this made me quite anxious for when my second would decide to make her appearance. Even though my first labor was not at all fast (and I had lost my mucus plug about 4 days in advanced) I couldn't help but worry a bit that labor would come on fast and there would be no one around to watch my almost three year old daughter. My parents live two hours away and my husband travels that far away for work each day. I worried a lot about Travis being at work when I was in labor and not knowing when to call him home, or keeping him home from work for a false alarm the first time too but this time having another little being added a new level of anxiety. Thankfully I have some wonderful mommy friends that live close by that reassured me they were there in case of an emergency, no matter the time.

This baby however did not come early, and May 3rd came and went. Which actually didn't really surprise me because, as with my first, I actually had a different date in my mind. Because I had charted to get pregnant I pretty much knew my conception date, and based on the chart's due date estimate, I was due May 8th. Despite my confidence in the chart, I began to doubt myself and my body's ability to labor, enter a new stress. You wouldn't think that 5 days difference would be enough time to worry that much, but it was. I was not a first time mom, I knew I should be savoring the last days with only one child, but I couldn't help but stress that I might have to be induced. I had not had ANY warning signs. No dropping, no substantial Braxton hicks or "practice contractions", no mucus plug. My midwife started checking my cervix at about 36 weeks I think and every time she would say it was open 1cm and still very high. I actually remember one time saying I might have had some Braxton hicks but I didnt know if it was just wishful thinking and my midwife saying "your still high but you are one cm so it probably was" and then I was thinking, "well that's exactly what you said last time". Needless to say I still had my doubts. Now, I did read that second and subsequent pregnancies don't actually drop until labor starts, and, while the cervix effaced and then dialates with first time moms, the cervix of multiparas efface and dialate at the same time. Not to mention that every women is different and every labor is different! So it made sense I hadn't had any prelabor signs. Still my midwife was always a bit negative about the fact my cervix was still so high. That, coupled with her talking about induction before I was even at my due date had me uneasy. To be fair she didn't say she would worry until a week after my due date but it just mad me feel nervous even discussing it! I didn't want to end up in a c section even more this time. Even though i had less of a stigma around it in my mind than I probably did this time, I just didn't want to have to be in the hospital and away from my daughter longer. Anyway, I was still holding out for May 8th, and I flat out told my midwife (multiple times) I thought that was a more accurate date and wouldn't want to even decide anything until that date. So we had an appointment that morning Monday, May 9th to discuss setting an induction date or refusing it and doing the non-stress test/ ultrasound route.

Well May 8th, Mother's Day, came and still I had almost 0 prelabor signs. I did have two nights where I woke up with contractions but as soon as I got up they went away. But still: progress! I also thought I might have lost a bit of mucus plug but it was not very much and no bloody show so I figured nothing immediate was going to come of it. I have to admit I was pretty bummed all Mother's Day! Once it got to the weekend and I knew Travis was going to be home I was so ready for labor! And what better day to have a new baby than on Mother's Day! But by the afternoon it was obvious we weren't going to have a baby that day. I did get a really great belly movement video though! So there I am, the last one awake Sunday night and I did have a bloody show!! I don't remember if I had minor contractions before that or if they came after but I do remember I went to bed thinking it was going to be soon and I might as well get as much sleep as possible. That turned out to be an hour of sleep before I was woken up with pretty strong contractions. I think I walked around a bit to make sure they didn't go way like the previous episodes had and then eventually decided it was the real deal and I got in the shower. Well that felt good but boy were the contractions strong. It was somewhere around 11pm and I didn't know if I could make it all night like I hoped before I called my parents. I decided to call them so they would be here to watch Kylie in case I had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. Travis ended up waking up and just kinda being with me. The contractions were pretty painful but sitting on the ball helped. In retrospect I should have just got back in the shower. My parents got there somewhere around 2am and then we did decide to go to the hospital. I really wanted to stay as long as possible because I prefer to labor at home but also because I wanted to be there when Kylir woke up and tell her we were going to have her baby sister! But I also wanted my parents to be able to go back to sleep for a while and figured that wouldn't really be possible while we were there.

So off we went to the hospital and my contractions just about stopped 😑. I was thinking great I made my parents come down and we are going in the middle of the night and it will be for nothing! We also had to check in at the security desk and the security man said something along the lines of "so you think your in labor" and I said "I think so"! I was feeling a bit unsure of myself then! We got checked in a security, and then went upstairs to labor and delivery. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones there other than the nurses. It was about 4am or so and they had to turn on the machine and get it started which took seriously close to an hour. Then another half hour to get all my info in. Meanwhile, my contractions had pretty much stopped. I was really worried now, and I could tell the nurse thought she was just going to end up sending me home. Well, she checked and was surprised to find I was a 6cm. I tested strep b positive this time so I had to be hooked up to an IV to received the meds for that. I had asked if I could walk around later and she seemed slightly taken aback, and told me she wasn't sure but she would ask. I pressed my case and told her that it had been no problem with my first daughter. She came back with aprroval but also said to be careful and not stray too far because "we don't want the baby to slip out" or something. I was thinking ah ya that's not going to happen.

They did a staff change at 7am, which was good because I could tell the other nurses were quite tired and done with their shifts. My next nurse was pretty great. She wasn't as old or mothering as one of the nurses I had with Kylie, but she was a nice strong, supportive presence, and she was awesome to me even though I was practically kicking her during pushing.

Labor itself was different than with Kylie because I couldn't walk around as much due to construction so I didn't actually enjoy it because I felt like I was evesdropping on the nurses. So I tried to walk around in my room as much as possible and sit on the birthing ball but the contractions were not as strong. I found it ironic that with Kylie everyone told me we would wait to break my water as long as possible but for Quinn's birth they were talking about breaking my water right away. They just had to wait til I got the second round of antibiotics for the strep b, which they didn't end up actually waiting, they broke it about a half hour before when it became apparent there would be time for the IV to be administered. Like I said, labor wasn't as strong in the hospital as it was at home and I was not making much progress. Marcia and Bruce got there and I was trying to tell them to go shopping and not wait because it seemed like it might take a while. Although, the nurses kept saying "baby by noon", I was very skeptical.

They eventually recommended pitocin, which I took since I had last time and this time really wanted things to go faster since Ky was at home. That was probably around 11am. It did get pretty intense fast after that. I almost think contractions might have been starting to get stronger on their own because I remember thinking there were certain positions I didn't want to sit in because it was making them strong and hurt. But, make no mistake, the pitocin stepped up labor to a new level. It was very VERY painful and I was just laying there looking up at the ceiling for the first half of the contraction because it was so much force I felt kinda out of control and like all I could do was endure it and not break. Once it peaked,  I could breath through the second half of contractions and felt somewhat in control. I remember thinking omg there is no way I can do this for long, but I didn't really have to because by 12am we were pushing. Like with Kylie, laying on my side was not fun, and I had a "lip" of cervix that was being difficult. So I was rotating from side to side. I think at some point my body just pushes because it is kinda a pain blocker. If I would stay in one position long enough I would feel like pushing and that is what happened on my right side but I couldn't help it, my body was pushing. I told the nurse and at that point she went to get Barbie the midwife. When Barbie came in she checked and said the lip could be pushed so she told me to lie on my back and push. This part was very weird because once I got to my back, I no longer felt the urge to push. So, it was very bizarre. Of course it hurt and I was going slightly crazy screaming and pushing my legs. At one point her head was like halfway out and I had to take a breath before I pushed again and that was the worst pain. But she came out in two pushes I believe (my nurse said the baby "shot" out) so the pain was short lived. Ah to be over with labor!! The "high" you get from just returning to normal after being in prolonged agony hahahaha.

They brought her to my stomach and I said "she's so small" and the midwife said "well, she's a good sized baby". She was 7lbs even and 20in long. We thought she might be the big child of the family, it looks like that might not be true (fairly small now at one) but she still has many years of growing left to do. She was crying quite a bit and I was trying to nurse her but I couldn't get her to reach because of the umbilical cord. The nurse was also getting annoyned because she had to give me more pitocin and I wasn't really listneng because I was admiring my brand new perfect baby. woops! Travis cut the umbilical cord, I nursed her and life has been amazing with our littlest girl ever since!

I called Kylie to come and see and I thought she would be most excited to see me. I had read to have it just be you in the room first and then to bring the baby. So I did, but when Ky got in the room she could have cared less about me and was looking all around for the baby (including behind the furniture). One of my favorite memories.

The nurses all thought I was crazy because I didn't want to stay two nights but then in thet middle of the night I hear two "code blues", someone died. :/ Travis was still getting over a gold and hacking up a lung, I thought they were going to kick him out haha. He went home the next morning to get Kylie and we all went home as a family around 12-1pm the next day. The weather was beautiful and it was a lovely spring day. Best feeling of my life, going home with my perfect new family.

Motherhood and sacrifice

Recently I stumbled upon Rufi Thorpe's article about how motherhood and writing are incompatible: http://velamag.com/mother-writer-monster-maid/

As someone whose most major piece of writing was for a college grad class, my expertise on the subject is certainly lacking. Nonetheless I have been thinking about it ever since; parts I agreed with, some I disagreed with, and of course many more questions raised. While the  main point of the article was to explore the idea that motherhood is crippling to writers or artists, I found that  underlying this theme was the assumption that motherhood takes  self- sacrifice. What that sacrifice is might differ from person to person it it's always there in some form or another; sacrifice of your body, sacrifice of your sleep, sacrifice of your health, sacrifice of your career, sacrifice of your personal time, or maybe all of the above and more. I have come to believe that mom guilt is the main difference between motherhood and parenthood. You just don't see fathers feeling guilty over letting their child watch tv or eat sugar. 

There is a point in the article where Thorpe quotes Kim brooks in her article " The point of art is to unsettle, to question, to disturb what is comfortable and safe. And that shouldn't be anyone's goal as a parent." Yet I cannot agree with this sentence. That is exactly what bringing another baby into the world does. While the idea of family life maybe neat and orderly, a new baby disrupts and unsettles the status quo. When I became a mother I started to question every decision I was making, even things that had nothing to do with parenthood. It was like I was looking at life with new eyes. It is not uncommon to  hear  stories of  women who, after becoming mothers, are inspired to change careers, invent things, or start up businesses. There are so many celebrity moms now a days, who rather than taking a few years off, come right back with a new album or movie. Art is intended to evoke emotion and so much about parenthood and motherhood that is emotion, "all the feels" to use current slang. Before becoming a parent you may know, rationally, what to expect. But you don't understand the roller-coaster of highs and lows that you come in contact with every single day until you live it. Until you feel it.

So I reject this clause that motherhood can only be safe and comfortable, but I do agree with how restrictive it can be. For many mothers, the reality isn't glamorous. It's exactly how Thorpe describes her days, "To read an adult book is out of the question. To sit quietly for a moment without someone touching me is out of the question. To poop alone is out of the question. Showering is something I have to ask my husband for time to do each night." And, as Thorpe laments in her article, we choose this servitude. Self-sacrifice. It's not even a day alone to myself I long for so much as the day my husband stays home with both girls all day and realizes how hard it can be. Housework and childcare are truly invisible work and it is very frustrating when they are not appreciated like they should be. Everything else comes first; the kids, the husbands, the housework. What is more infuriating is that "me time" for a mom is considered normal day to day things like having a coffee, reading a magazine, or taking a shower. While motherhood is the most joyous time of my life without a doubt, it can be suffocating to give all of yourself, everyday, year after year.


And because I'm a mom, this post will have to be left unfinished for now. 

Pregnancy #2 Recap

Tomorrow I will be 39 weeks pregnant, and although there are no signs of impending labor and delivery, I wanted to be sure to get in one more post on this pregnancy. I was a bit surprised at how much I had already forgotten about my last pregnancy that I would like to try to document as much as possible this time around.

In general, I know I have felt more aches/pains and general discomfort this time around. I'm not sure if that is because it's the second time, or because I have much more to do this time around since I'm home caring for a toddler rather than sitting at a desk 40 hrs a week.

The pregnancy started off with a fair amount of nausea mostly in the morning or around supper time (worse during the later times). That went away around 13 or 14 weeks. I think the exhaustion of the first trimester was about the same as my first pregnancy except it wasn't as easy to find time to rest. I would even find myself falling asleep when reading my daughter her bedtime stories! I definitely felt like I was showing sooner and even my midwife commented that I had "popped" quite early on. Although, looking back now I'm pretty sure no one that didn't know me already could tell during the first trimester. I did wear a maternity dress at a wedding when I was about 11 weeks and I definitely noticed some people that knew me looking at my stomach. But then, when we did our Christmas pictures and I was somewhere around 18 weeks, I had mentioned that I was pregnant and the photographer said she didn't even notice!  At times I have had pretty bad heartburn and indigestion although thankfully that was just  from about 25-30 weeks (ish). In books I have read about heart "palpations"  and I did notice that a few times right in middle of my pregnancy. I didn't have any symptoms other than I could feel my heart beat and it felt slightly irregular. I wondered if I was imagining it until later I read about it.  In the third trimester I definitely got more tired again (although I think a bit of it stayed the whole pregnancy).  Now in the mornings sometimes I feel out of breath and my body almost feels heavy like it isn't getting enough oxygen, it's weird and only happens for a minute or two in the morning, I have no idea why. I have had the Charlie horsing in my calf but it wasn't as bad this time. In the mornings it would wake me up and I could stretch it out before it got really bad. That lasted for about a month I would say. Now that I'm at the end I have been having some groin pain and back pain that has been quite uncomfortable. It is usually worse in the morning too but the back pain is sometimes worse at night. My feet have also been pretty achy if I am on them a lot during the day, which indefinitely remember from last time.

Although I do remember being quite emotional during my last pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, I think I have had more anxiety this time around. I think part of that is I'm just more anxious now as a parent than I was before, having a child will do that to you ha. So now that I'm at the end I'm really anxious about how everything will go. I think I'm even more scared of labor this time around even though my labor with Kylie was quite manageable. I'm nervous about my husband always being like a two hour drive away when he is at work, and also that my parents and our family is at least a two hour drive away as well. I don't anticipate a very quick labor but I can't help but worry a bit. I am very apprehensive about having to leave Kylie overnight and how she will do away from me for so long since we don't get to practice that much with our family being so far away. I'm really hoping we won't have a prolonged stay at the hospital and that baby will be perfectly healthy. Now that I have gone further than I had with Kylie I'm nervous I'm going to end up being induced. Even though I already suspected they had Kylie's due date a bit wrong and really she wasn't "early" and my charting to get pregnant had the due date at May 8th (then also confirmed by the first ultrasound), I'm still irrationally worried.

Toddler Easter Basket

Kylie's third Easter basket at 2.5 years old included:

• sidewalk paint
• watercolor paint
• two Easter themed stamps I found at Target
• a package of Annie's fruit snacks
• three Reese's peanut butter eggs
• the books Little Lamb and Miss Rumphius
• Eeboo brand puzzle I found at our local bookstore
• Grimm's Wooden Rainbow toy (I think it's just the "small" size, as opposed to the Mini or Large).