So, yesterday I sent Baby B off with her great grandparents for the day, and I spent the day cleaning my house, doing art projects and missing her. It was about 8 hours, and was the longest we've ever been apart.
The Great Grands said she was good, and didn't cry that whole time. When she got home, she'd fallen asleep in the car so I took her to bed and took a nap with her. When she woke up, she made sure I was aware of her extreme displeasure and needed to be held for the rest of the evening.
Last night, as a delightful side effect of both our day apart, and I'm sure, the fact that I've been watching the Bad Girls series, I had nightmares about being in prison and having my babies either taken from me, or having them die.

I won't actually need to get used to being apart from Baby B for about 5 years when she starts school, but I was thinking about how if I were American, and unable/undesiring to leave the workforce, my maternity leave would already have ended a whole month ago. This is a psychologically wrenching notion to me. The thought that I'd be relinquishing control over how my child is raised (what if the only Daycare I could afford parks the kids in front of "educational" videos? What if they're so understaffed they can't interact one on one with my baby? What if they teach her to be ashamed of her body and it's functions? What if they re-enforce gender stereotypes (the only princesses in our house carry swords, thanks)) is stomach turning, to say nothing of the timing being right when most babies are just deciding that their Mum is the only gal for them. Baby B. certainly has.
In any case, I really don't need to be apart from my baby. I might let her Great Grands take her for 4 hour stints once in a while, but the 8 hours was a little excessive, at least for the moment.

Anyway, heres the trick she's been doing for the past 4 or so days...

like a dropkick to the eyesocket

So, sometimes when I'm on facebook, I click on the photo albums of friends of friends. Usually if it's a baby album I click it, because I get curious about the stupid things people name thier kids, and because as a new mom, I like to see what the other babies my daughter's age look like (mostly they look pretty generic, but once in a while theres one that looks like someone shaved a chimpanzee, or like krang is thier biological father .)
Anyway, I click on an album that one of my cousins had commented on and I got about 3 images past the photo where she'd given her dutiful "oh isn't he precious" when all of a sudden....
BAM!!!...
...Nutsack!!!
Sweet jesus, I thought! This has to be some kind of entrapment senario! I quickly clicked to the next image, trying to distance myself from the extreme closeup crotchshot assault, but alas, like a dropkick to the eyesocket:
BAM!!!...
More Nutsack
BAM!!!...
yet again, more Nutsack!

Shaken, I gathered my wits about me, and managed to think clearly enough to just hit home, but I still feel pretty scarred.

I wonder what would posess a kids parent to take a picture of his junk and publish it to a public album on the internet? Where ANYBODY, not just bitches like me, but real live scary nutjobs can see it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the existance of internet crotch-shots be the kid's decision, when he's 18 or older?

Baby B on her birthday

She was due july 30, and I had an appointment on July 29 in the morning. My husband dropped me off, uncomfortable with the idea of being in the room during a pelvic exam. I'd seen a number of obstetricians, they all shared an office, so they saw each others' patients if, say, one doctor were busy delivering someone elses baby.

This time instead of my also-pregnant-lady-doc, I was seeing Doctor charming-but-unsettlingly-young. In light of it being only one day ahead of my due date, the doctor announced that he was going to do a "sweep" to "stir things up" and that I'd probably go into labor within the next few days, and that he'd be doing deliveries on the weekend, so he might see me then.

The cramping started as soon as I left the office. I started copying down descriptions and times of my various pangs. I called my mum, I took a long nap, I woke up. I noticed and noted a small gush of warm fluid, noted it and tried to make dinner. We watched "I love you man". My sister-and-then-roomate went out for the night, telling us to call if anything happened. I called telecare and based on the fluid loss a few hours earlier they advised us to head to the hospital, where we arrived around 1130pm. We'd been reluctant to leave too hastily, as our douchebag neighbors were throwing a party, and we'd lose our parking spot if we were sent home again. we were not sent home.

We left my sister a message, but decided not to call anyone until after the birth.

When we arrived, I was considering forgoing drugs, due to my fear of needles. I was offered the use of a jaccuzzi tub, but I couldnt seem to stop shivering. and got out as soon as I thought it would be polite. I almost immediately changed my mind about drugs. Labour felt like debilitating menstrual cramps while having my legs wrenched out of my hip sockets. I was given an IV, and later an epidural, which only effected the right side of my body. This is when I found out I have scoliosis.

The doctors on duty that night happened to be Doctor Pregnant-Lady and Doctor Andy-The -Student. Doctor Preggo supervised Doctor Andy breaking the amniotic sack. It was super reassuring that he needed to be told which end of the medical instument he was supposed to use.

My nurse told me that if at any point, if I felt like I needed to have a bowel movement, to let her know. She said that when this happened, I'd need to bear down into the pressure. Basically, "wait until you feel like taking a shit, and then try really hard to take that shit"

The contractions, and the tearing are nothing to the feeling of the skin around ones vagina being stretched to accomodate an entire human being. at one point I thought Dr. Preggo must be driving her fingernails into me, when she wasn't even touching me. My clitoris was in searing pain.

They offered me a mirror so I could see what was happening which struck me as preposterous. They also asked if I wanted to reach down and feel her head, which I was also not interested in doing.

I'm pretty sure I felt her blink.

I horrendously abused my nurse and doctors, and they told me I was handling things great. And then at 4:20am on her exact due date she was born.

The first thing she did was give Doctor Preggo a dirty look. She was dark tan in color. She weighed 8 pounds 9 ounces. They asked my husband if he wanted to cut the cord, which he declined. The first thing I said to her was "thats ok, you can pee on me..." We noticed that an electrical storm had started.

I called my parents, and told them to wait until visiting hours.

I lost alot of blood. while My husband held Baby B, the nurse was using her hands to squeeze clumps out of my uterus from the outside. Once the epidural had worn off enough to walk, they removed my catheter and let me shower. My body temperature was low. as soon as I stepped out of the shower, I started shaking so hard I could hardly dress myself. I was pushed down to my room, and my husband and Baby B soon followed. As my nurse was heeling on me I can remember remarking that I really felt like I'd been kicked really hard between the legs.

The rest is foggy. I can remember my husband cradling her in his arms, looking tenderly into her eyes and saying "I'm gonna call you Hotdog..."

Day One:

One Month Birthday:

2 month birthday:

3 Month Birthday:

Her 4 month birthday is next Monday.

-gate-gate

I'm really annoyed today, because I watched the Daily Show, and they showed clips of a news station referring to the apparent "scandal" of US President Obama bowing to the Japanese Emporer as Bow-Gate. How come nobody ever calls journalists out for lazily adding the -gate suffix when referring to every scandal that makes it's way across thier newsdesks? Why is this considered ok?
The fact that news outlets are making a negative out of Obama showing appropriate respect to a foreign dignitary is stupid too obviously

And I get to be her Mum

row of bottles

I used to have a collection of 1/2 pint captain morgan white rum bottles. I kept them on a string like christmas lights over my window. They were mostly empty, but a few contained the following :
1: A rose, purchased for me by my cousin, as a drunken apology for not keeping in touch, turned dehydrated and brown, from my use of said rum bottle as a vase
2: A note from a short latino man with helmet hair who'd tried to make me drink odd smelling liquor after I told him I wasn't interested in sleeping with him. It said "call me" but he later told my best friend I was racist for not putting out.
3: A eulogy for a zygote that probably only existed in my terror stricken imagination. Oddly enough there was never a eulogy for the one that probably did exist later on.

I don't remember whether I boxed the bottles, or whether I threw them away.

Mermaids

wink

This is from a photo of my Uncle Mike, at my wedding.

It's called falling in love because it feels like falling

When I was 16 I fell in love with my brother's best friend. It was in History class, we took Math together too but he just annoyed me there. Something about Math just agitates me I guess.

The first thing he said to me was, "Are you Marty's sister?" to which I cocked my eybrow and cautiously affirmed. He knew goddamn well who I was, and I did not want to incur my brother's wrath by associating with his friends.

And that was the start. He sat beside me. He had black shining eyes, and freckles all over. He only ever wore collared shirts. He always looked happy to see me.

A voice inside my head said "Oh. Fuck. No. Not him. Fuck" and I heard rushing in my ears. Sometimes I dream I'm suffocating, and I cant do anything to help myself, And I felt like that. I felt as if I was falling endlessly backwards. I felt fear and fury and hope and pathos.

It took 5 years before we got it together. In the intervening years he dated other people, I slept with other people, he stopped talking to my brother entirely, I dealt with the worst of my issues, we both moved to the city separately.

The Monday after Valentines day in 2005 I was in a state. My then boyfriend had chosen that weekend to tell me that he didn't love me, but didn't want to break up with me. I'd managed to stifle my impulse to destroy the boyfriend, had gone to work seething. At one point I looked up from the heated recollection I was giving my work-friend, and saw HIM walking out of a training room.

3 1/2 years later I married my highschool crush.

robot

I'm going to be away for the next few days. Here is a robot I made.

Pubic Relations (cross posted)

I was busy today so I'm cross posting something I wrote back in April on the MSN space blog that I'm abandoning:

April 07
Pubic Relations
I was having a conversation with a friend recently, and he was talking about "curly German moustaches" which I took to mean those little french waxed Dali-esque moustaches. Needless to say my mind also went straight to the classic German Hitler/Chaplin 'stache, and obviously from there my mental cogs and gears took me to the only logical cerebral destination : Pubes.
Specifically why has the Hitler moustache taken off with such success in pubic styling? Why has the Dali not enjoyed such favor in crotch styling? For that matter, what about mutton chops? Those who know my brother may recall he once had some Strombolopolous (sp?) inspired chin stripes at one point which I think would translate beautifully to ones' hooha.
Well, My friend tells me I'm talking about "Landing Strip" and that he's never heard it called a Hitler moustache, but to my mind a Landing Strip is more akin to Adnan Ghalib's chin pubes. Some of you may remember seeing/perpetrating a lot of "the Adnan" at my wedding last summer. (Thanks for making me think about pubes at my wedding, pals! You're forgiven, as long as you'll forgive me for wondering if your spouses were sporting matching "Adnans")
I'm going to chalk Hitler Vadges up to this: Pubic hair or lack thereof is controversial. From both a feminist and misogynistic stand point. I know girls who've been told point blank that they have too much or too little by partners. Partners they were about to bone.
Too little hair, and some might accuse a woman of catering to paedophilic fantasies, or otherwise striving to be less of a woman, despite her own personal preferences. Too much hair and some might accuse a woman of being unhygienic or, coincidentally striving to be less of a woman (seriously). "The Hitler" is, to my mind, the only compromise most women can think of, but Ladies, please, some food for thought... Your pubes are stupid looking. At this point you might as well go for the Dali.
(Also it's creepy if your partner cares enough about your pubes, or lack thereof to make you feel shitty about it right before they intend to bang you. You should probably not bang that person.)

Baby attack

So... This happened today:


Video featuring my Daughter, to be known from here on out as Vanilla Gorilla, and my mother.

I see you pooping in my driveway!

A few weeks ago we had pouring rain, and I don't drive, so my baby and I couldn't leave the house. I was wandering around in my sock feet, trying to think of things to do other than clean, when I happened to notice my neighbors cat. In my driveway. Pooping.
Bearing in mind that it was raining, and I wasn't wearing any shoes, all that I could do is to stand in my doorway and shout "Hey! Cat! Stop pooping in my driveway!" But he didn't stop. He just looked at me like I was crazy and kept on pooping.

An open letter to the breastfeeding militia

"When I had MY babies, All I had to do was take off my bra, and my milk would just POUR out! Why, I even had so much extra milk, I donated it to the hospital!" - A lady I'd literally only just met, at my Mother in Law's birthday party... Uh... great, Lady-I-Just-Met...

When I was pregnant, I used to get glared at alot. I'd be walking to the bus and middle aged women would throw me death looks. Even my husband noticed it once at the mall. Now that I've had the baby, it's less dirty looks and more women asking me whether I'm breastfeeding.

It's a touchy subject. A long story. Suffice it to say, It didn't work out. I did pump for 12 weeks, and my arms are still wicked strong, but I'm pretty sure I gave myself carpal tunnel, if thats possible.

Basically, if you say "no, I'm not breastfeeding", It's not going to be left at that. They'll want to know why. Especially medical professionals. I had a lactation consultant take a tone with me because I mentioned that I was supplimenting with formula.

The truth is, breastfeeding is wonderful, it's natural, and as much as I am sick of hearing about it, it is beautiful. Also beautiful: My husband and our families feeding our baby. Me not being stressed out. My baby sleeping all night long because her belly is full.

SO... can we please lay off of judging people who don't breastfeed?