My mom and grandma came for a little visit this past weekend.  They arrived on Saturday, left on Sunday, and in that short span of 48 hours, managed to drive me insane, get my 7 month old hopped up on sugar from ice cream, and reinforced every decision I’ve made thus far as a parent (my philosophy is to do the exact opposite of what my mom would do).  I’ve still got the mother of all headaches, pun intended.

A little background: my mother is crazy.  For many, many reasons, most of which are too deep to get into in this post.  We aren’t particularly close; in fact, this weekend was only the third time in Dylan’s entire little life that she’s even seen her.  And she lives 2 hours away.  The only time I saw her when I was pregnant was when I was 2 months pregnant.  She didn’t even come to my baby shower.  Like I said, not close.  But apparently she’s made some kind of life change, and wants to start over and be a part of Dylan’s life, yada yada yada.  So she’s been to visit twice in the last couple of months, which for me, is almost 2 times too many.  And this time, she brought along my equally crazy grandma.  The entire weekend was filled with stories of my childhood, which I’ve heard and do not believe for a second, and stories of my mother’s childhood, which if true would have resulted in the death and/or dismemberment of my mother and her siblings on several occasions.  And these women want to spend a lot of time with me and my child.  Help.

My mother is the kind of woman who has memories that differ in almost every way from reality.  What she remembers, and what actually happened, are not even close.  For example, she claims that me and my siblings were all talking by 6 months of age.  Or walking by 8 months.  Eating meat and potatoes in infancy.  Reading by a year.  All of her memories of us as babies and kids are designed (by her) to make her seem like the most successful mother of all time.  I used to halfheartedly  believe her, if only because talking at 6 months of age makes me seem like some kind of genius.  But now that I have a baby, I can say with 100% certainty that all of her stories, as amazing as they make me look, are a load of shit.  99% of babies can’t sit up on their own at 4 months old, alone climb out of their crib.  But somehow both me and my brother did?  Uh huh.  Couple of savants, is we.

She is also fond of telling stories about raising us that should have gotten her investigated by Child Services.  I know, it was a different time back then (my sister was born in 1978, I was born in 1981, and my brother came along in 1984).  But even 30 years ago, I’m pretty sure keeping loaded guns lying around, or allowing your children to run amok unsupervised in the neighborhood for 12 hours a day, was frowned upon.  It’s a damn miracle that my siblings and I made it out alive.  We never even had to go to the hospital.  But I’d sooner set myself on fire than leave Dylan in her care; I was nervous if I left her alone while I went to the bathroom.  It doesn’t take long to run outside to let Dylan play in traffic.

As her daughter, it was inevitable that I would inherit a fraction of her insanity.  Luckily for my children, present and future, the fraction I inherited doesn’t have anything to do with child rearing.  I got my temper from her, my love of Cher, and my dislike of organized religion.  Any parenting skills I have, I got from books and sisters.  Thank God for books and sisters.  Without them, I might be letting my infant daughter suck on chicken bones or freaking out because at 8 months old she isn’t reading her own bedtime stories.  Needless to say, my mother thinks baby books are stupid.  She’s never read a baby book, and her kids turned out fine.  But for the grace of God.

On a positive note, I suppose I should thank my grandma for feeding Dylan ice cream while I was in the bathroom at dinner.  I was waiting until she was a year old, like all doctors and experts advise you to do, but apparently my grandma knows something we don’t, and deemed 8 months the perfect age to start dairy.  She digested it perfectly fine, so it looks like we may have dodged the lactose intolerance bullet common among people of Asian descent (Tom is Japanese, don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that).  Good to know.  So, thanks grandma, for putting our fears to rest.  It almost makes up for having to peel my baby off the ceiling from her first sugar high.  Almost.

Dylan has taken to protesting her naps.  Meaning, whenever I put her down for a nap, she screams and wails and throws her pacifier and spins around in her crib so expertly it’s clear she was some kind of circus performer or synchronized swimmer in her previous life.  It’s not like I put her down when she’s raring to go and not at all tired; I wait for the signs, the eye rubbing and hair pulling and face smooshing, and once I see one or all of those, I declare it nap time.  But as soon as I make moves to put her in her crib, stand back, because Sweet Angel Dylan has left the building, and Demon Dylan has set up camp.

I should mention that until about a week ago, I rocked Dylan to sleep, in my arms, for every nap, every day.  Until she was 5 months old, I also completed this routine every night, and after every feeding throughout the night, with minimal success.  I rocked so much, that even when I wasn’t holding her, I found myself rocking.  But I didn’t have many other options, because Dylan has, since the day she was born, had an aversion to sleeping.  No wait, let me rephrase: she had and has an aversion to FALLING ASLEEP.  Once asleep, she sleeps like a drunk.  But getting there, to that lovely, sumptuous, encompassing drunk sleep, has always been like pulling teeth.  From a lion.  With chopsticks.

So I made the mistake of rocking her to sleep, and it worked so well that I kept rocking her to sleep.  Every night for 154 days.  Several times, when you consider that she would wake up to eat a couple of times at night, and even at 4 am after having gulped down warm breast milk in a state of semi-consciousness, this kid would no, could not put her damn self to sleep.  And I did it all day whenever she needed a nap, because I did it at night, so why wouldn’t I do it during the day?  And it was fine, it was working, she got to sleep and I got to snuggle her.  All was well.  Until it started taking longer for her to fall asleep.  And longer.  And longer.  Some nights, I started the rocking at 8, and she would finally, FINALLY, fall asleep at 1.  As in, 1 in the morning.  As in, 5 hours after I started trying to put her to bed.  And then 3-4 hours later she’d wake up to eat, and it would take 3-4 hours to get her back to sleep.  In that time, she wasn’t crying or fussing or fidgeting or anything.  She was just not asleep.  She would lay in my arms, sucking on her pacifier, staring at my face or my boobs or the cat, FOR HOURS.  And then she would finally fall asleep, and 3-4 hours later, we would do it all again.  Every night.  Yeah.

So I made the choice that mothers everywhere agonize over: I chose what is commonly referred to as the “Cry It Out” or Ferber method.  I put her in her crib when she was awake, and I went in to check on her and soothe her after longer and longer intervals, until she eventually fell asleep.  There was a lot of crying, hers and mine, that first night.  And I considered running in and scooping her up, hoping to erase whatever damage I had just inflicted by letting her cry for 2 minutes without me picking her up.  But I resisted, and lo and behold, she fell asleep after a measly 10 minutes.  And she slept ALL NIGHT LONG.  For 11 hours straight.  This was my favorite day ever.  The next few nights were as successful, and some were markedly less successful (30 minutes of crying is hard to stomach) as the first.  And even now, almost 3 months later, she cries for a few minutes when I put her down.  But she sleeps all night, and I sleep all night, and we are 2 very happy ladies when that happens.

So the trouble with the naps is bringing up some rather painful memories.  I can’t go back to rocking, I just can’t.  And if I leave her in the crib for long enough, she eventually falls asleep.  For 30 minutes.  Which sort of makes the hour it took for her to fall asleep for that 30 minutes seem like a waste.  But whatever.  That 30 minutes is gold.  And according to the sleep book that saved my sanity 3 months ago, she will indeed start falling asleep sooner and sleeping longer.  Which would be, I don’t know, platinum?  Because Well Rested Dylan is so much more delightful than Cat Napped and Still Exhausted Dylan.  Hell, I’d take Kind of Rested Dylan over that Cat Nap kid; she’s an unholy terror.

One of my favorite things about being a mother to an infant is that it gives me license to act like a fool in public.  I can sing, I can dance, I can make funny noises and faces and be just completely batshit crazy, as long as I have Dylan around, it’s totally acceptable.  Cute, even.  And really, when you hear that laugh come out of a kid, you’d do anything to hear it again.

But then I got to thinking: she’s a baby now, so all my crazy antics are totally amusing to her, and she loves when I sing and dance and blow spit bubbles, but what’s the age when I stop being funny and start being an embarrassment?  And should I care?  I mean, when I think back to my childhood, I can recall several instances where one or both of my parents mortified me to the point of actually wanting to die or kill them, and it didn’t seem like they really cared.  In fact, they seemed to get joy out of it.  Like, your dad coming to pick you up from school in the ugliest, loudest, dirtiest car on the planet, even though you asked him repeatedly not to, and even though it’s not his only car.  Or your mom singing and dancing to a popular pop song at a sleep over or party or the grocery store (and by dancing, I mean the kind that is not complete without some kind of pole like apparatus), even though you’ve begged and pleaded and cried for her to NOT do exactly that.  They did it for entertainment, for their own perverse thrill.  It tickled them.

And that has got to be one of the greatest parent perks ever.  So when does it start?  When do kids normally start hating what used to make them scream with peals of joyful laughter?  5? 6? The teenage years?  I feel like my sisters kids are already embarrassed of her, and they’re 10 and 6.  But she’s really embarrassing.  I’m sort of embarrassed of her, to be honest.  So how much longer do I have before my spontaneous dance shows in malls and grocery stores don’t make Dylan laugh and complete strangers say “awwwwww” anymore?  Cause I’d like to know, so I can get plenty in before hand.  And also, so I can start thinking up even more mortifying behavior.  I’m her mom, it’s my job to embarrass her.  And I always say, it’s not worth doing if it’s not done right.

Today on “What Would You Do?”: parents picking favorites among their children.  If you don’t know, “What Would You Do?” is this awesome show on ABC on Friday nights (I’m married with a baby, it should come as no surprise that I am at home, watching television, on a Friday night) that puts unwitting strangers in super messed up, totally contrived situations, to find out if they will be a hero and stand up to the crime/injustice/bad behavior, or see if they suck at life and turn a blind, douchey eye to it.  It’s so entertaining I can’t stand it.

So on tonight’s episode, a mom and her 2 daughters were shopping (the ones creating the fracas are all actors, the jerks and/or heros are not), and the mom was totally loving the pretty, girly daughter, and being incredibly mean to the other, less pretty girl.  Cue the indignant, utterly offended shoppers who inevitably come to the ugly girls rescue while completely reaming the bitch of a mother.  I really like the ones that use children to piss off parents, you get the best reactions from those.

So after I watched this, I got to thinking: how many parents have favorite children?  And I mean obvious favorites, not the subtle favoritism that every person in the world thinks his or her parents have or had for his or her siblings (trust me, if you have siblings, you were absolutely convinced at some point in your life that your parents loved them more).  I mean favorites where your mom talks about your sister with such reverence that even you are in awe, and refers to you as “the other one”.  Or the brother who got a car while you got a bus pass, that you had to pay for with your own allowance, which you were required to earn by shoveling snow during a blizzard without shoes on.  Or maybe you were the fortunate one, and mom and dad payed for your Ivy league education with no questions asked, but made your sister work nights at Taco Bell and turn tricks on the weekends in order to cover the cost of her 6 units at the local CC.  These are all imagined scenarios, I promise.  My parents are crazy, but slightly less crazy than this.

My parents had their favorites, in different situations.  I think all parents do, I can’t see how they couldn’t.  If you have 2 girls, and one is girly and one is a tomboy, you’re always going to have certain scenarios that you pick one over the other for.  I think as long as you give of yourself equally, and love each equally, you’re on safe ground.  I mean, it’s human nature to have a favorite (fill in the blank).  As kids, and even as adults, don’t we have a favorite parent?  And don’t lie and say no, I don’t know ANYONE who doesn’t like one parent more than the other.  Doesn’t mean you love the other less, you just love them differently.  But when you start to lock one in a box in the attic and spend all your time with the other, well, I’m afraid you may have crossed a line.

I totally have a favorite kid.  She’s my only kid, sure, but I love her more than any other kid I know.  I think a lot about what will happen when we have a second baby, and how I will possibly love that one even a fraction as much as I love Dylan.  But you just do, I suppose.  Your heart just makes room.  Or you wouldn’t have another one.  Dylan is the most awesome baby (I wrote a song that I sing to her, called “Dylan is the Most Awesome Baby”, it’s certified gold), and our second child, should we be blessed enough to have one, will be equally awesome in their own way.  Unless they’re a real dud, in which case Dylan would continue to be my favorite.

And on a side note, I really wish WWYD would come to California.  They shoot all the episodes in New York, so I will never have the opportunity to impress John Quinones with my conviction and bravery.  Although I have a tendency to get a little, shall we say, worked up, so maybe it’s better they stay away.  I want to impress John Quinones, not get arrested.

I was a lady who lunched today, with 2 dear friends and my lovely daughter, aged 7 months.  Now, in the Valley, there are innumerable places from which to choose for a nice, leisurely lunch.  And I’ve been to many of them.  But today (and in the past 7 months) I’ve had to take some extra things into consideration when picking a restaurant for breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack time.  And I’ve been somewhat unpleasantly surprised by where I don’t end up.

First off, the place has to be loud-ish.  I’m not talking rock concert, damage to your eardrums loud, but some substantial background noise is required, in order to blend with the constant stream of babble and utensil banging that one often gets from an infant.  Gone are the days of quiet, intimate meals where you can hear the fork scrape the plate of the guy 3 tables over.  Next, it has to be roomy.  If you’ve ever tried to maneuver a stroller in between tables that a size 8 would have to suck in to get by, you know what I mean.  It also helps if there is more than six inches of elbow room between tables, because kids throw stuff, like food and knives, and some people can be REALLY touchy when it comes to half eaten french fries and their hair.  High chair availability is a must; apparently there are restaurants that don’t offer them, and if you’ve ever tried to keep a baby in a car seat for longer than 10 minutes out of the car, you’d understand the importance of a high chair.  And finally, the restaurant should have a certain vibe, the kind of place where the waiters don’t mind pandering to kids or picking up 456 pieces of napkin off the floor.  Those kinds of places are hard to find.

We ended up going to Umami Burger today, which was not exactly kid friendly (I had to leave the stroller outside), but the burgers are so damn delicious I didn’t really care.  And they were pretty amazing, I have to say.  The waiter complimented Dylan profusely (big tip), they had high chairs, and there was enough shiny shit all over the walls and ceiling that I could actually have half an adult conversation while she stared at it all.  So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Umami gets a solid 7 on kid friendliness, which is pretty good for a fancy burger joint.  Next time we go, I’ll get Dylan to throw a knife or something; we need to kick it up a notch to get an accurate read. She was way too good today, it really messed up my research.

Dylan has been teething for what feels like most of her short little life.  It started around 3 months, with the drooling and the gumming everything she could get her hands on.  I remember thinking she was going to get teeth right then and there, because this couldn’t possible last for months and months, right?  But everyone kept saying she wouldn’t get teeth for a long time, possibly not until she’s 9 or 10 months old.  9 or 10 months old?  Really?  Either my child had the slowest growing teeth in the history of teeth, or the people I ask for advice on child rearing are all crazy and/or lack intelligence.

It took 4 more months, as it turns out.  For the last 4 weeks or so, my normally angelic child has been a little, shall we say, demonic?  A lot of crying, and screaming, and not nearly enough sleeping.  Plus, the gumming, oh my god! the gumming.  I’ve had to throw away 3 toys that have become too water logged to be played with any more.  And then she started actually taking my fingernail and scrapping it along her gums, I guess in an effort to scratch an itch or tear through the flesh to free her tooth.  And then, it stopped.  All was quiet on the western front.  I was beginning to doubt that she was teething, because then wouldn’t there be teeth after all the fuss?  So imagine my surprise when I stuck my finger in her mouth on Thursday and felt something other than slimy gums.  Could it be?  The slightest sliver of tooth on the bottom gum?  I was so excited that I kept shoving my finger in her mouth trying to feel it and see it and I don’t know, rub it for good luck?  I felt like I had accomplished something, when in reality, the tooth has virtually nothing to do with me.  But still, she’s my kid, I get to take credit.

So, we had a tooth.  The storm had passed, and the tooth had arrived, and according to my advice people, the worst was over, all the other teeth would be a breeze.  Yay!  And then Friday rolled around, and my lovely adorable child was once again replaced with a demon of equal cuteness, but 100 times worse.  How was this possible?  The tooth was here, the hard part was over!  What could possibly be causing her this much discomfort, AFTER the tooth was already here???

A second tooth.  Which made it’s debut right next to the first one on Friday.  2 teeth, at the same time.  No one told me they came in pairs.

So, it took 4 months from the time I thought they were coming, but finally, at the ripe old age of 7 months, Dylan has teeth.  Not that the hint of teeth she’s currently sporting mean anything at all, or impact her life in any meaningful way right now.  They’re barely teeth, they’re more like tee.  But man, is she gonna look adorable smiling when they get a little bigger.  Although, by the time they get big enough to be cute, she’ll probably be working on the next set, in which case the only glimpse I’ll have of them is when her mouth is open in a blood curdling scream.  Still cute though, I’m sure.

As you can probably gather from the earlier post about labor and delivery, I was ill prepared for just about everything that happened once I stepped foot into the hospital.  It was like a giant rubber band ball that someone pushed down the biggest hill in the world: it’s going, ain’t nothing you can do to stop it, and you have NO IDEA what it’s gonna do.  But once Dylan was actually out, and we were in our little room, with all the nurses and doctors and consultants and cute little old ladies delivering food, it started to feel positively calm.  Which was surprising.  But I was like, yes!  This is gonna be a snap!  I’ve got this!

And then, we went home.

There’s some kind of strange phenomena where everything that worked and was going smoothly in the hospital suddenly goes to total shit when you get home, and there are no doctors or nurses or consultants or cute little old ladies delivering food.  Sleeping: like a baby (pun intended) in the hospital, NOT A WINK at home.  Diapers: we brought them home from the hospital, WHY DON’T THEY WORK HERE?!?  Breast feeding: I will go into greater detail in the next post about my experiences with breast feeding, but for now I will say this–something that’s supposed to be the absolute best for your baby should not be that hard.  The mechanics and logistics of it seem so stupidly simple, but nothing has ever, EVER brought me down like breast feeding.  I kinda want to cry thinking about it now, and I’ve been doing it successfully for 7 months now.

The first night we were home, we didn’t really know what to expect, except we expected it to be like the previous 3 nights.  And it wasn’t.  At all.  It’s like hospitals know that babies turn into little monsters on the third day, so they deliberately discharge the unwitting idiot parents just before it happens.  And we had it pretty easy, from what I understand; some parents have complete meltdowns in the first 36 hours after bringing home baby.  We managed to survive, pretty much intact.  The sleep sucked, but doesn’t it always, with every new baby?  Everyone says start a schedule.  Ok, sure, let me explain to my newborn that she’s gonna eat right now and then sleep for 2 hours, regardless of what she wants.  They also say to sleep when the baby sleeps.  Also a great idea in theory, but then when do I eat?  Or shower?  Or talk to my poor husband, or pet my poor animals who think we’ve traded up, or check my email or watch t.v. or cry uncontrollably?  The sleep when they sleep thing didn’t really work for me, because if I’m asleep when she’s asleep and tending to her when she’s awake, there’d be no time for me, and I like time for me.

The bottom line is, nothing could have possibly prepared me for bringing her home.  It is such an incredible shock to your system, it’s almost paralyzing.  The first days are a nightmarish, seemingly never ending mishmash of poop and spit up and crying (yours and the baby’s) and zero sleep and having absolutely no idea what you’re doing or if you’re doing it right or if the baby is eating enough or sleeping enough or peeing enough.  You add to that the emotional fall out you’re experiencing, and the pain and recovery from pushing out a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon, and it’s enough to make you want to give it back, for just a few more days to get ready.  But then, one day, it’s not as hard as it was the day before.  And the next day is a little easier, the one after that is a little easier still.  And before you know it, you’re wearing make up and you’ve downgraded from Percocet to Tylenol and you don’t cry in the shower or bathroom or dark corner, and you’re actually having fun(ish).  It’s a process, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s ongoing.  I still cry in the shower sometimes.  But never in a dark corner.  Those days are behind me.

Today I discovered one of the coolest things about being a mom.  Dylan’s current favorite toy is RazzBerry, and RazzBerry suffered a potentially life threatening injury during a particularly aggressive chew session.  Now, Dylan doesn’t know that, she only knows that Mom took RazzBerry away, and isn’t giving her back.  One day when she’s older, I’ll show her these pictures, and explain that Mommy had to sew the monkey back together after she tried to eat it’s leg.  But for now, I’ll just bask in the look of sheer joy I’m sure to elicit tomorrow when Dylan wakes up to find RazzBerry waiting for her, good as new.

Prepped and ready to go

Don't worry, she can't feel a thing

(Catch up blogs will resume tomorrow, I just had to get this one out of my head)

Last weekend, Dylan developed a little case of the sniffles.  I couldn’t tell if she was sick or just had a runny nose from being outside in the cold while we waited for a table at Umami Burger (not worth the way, btw), because she was acting like her normal bubbly, happy little self.  Until we got home, when her little case of the sniffles turned into a full blown cold, complete with mild fever, copious amounts of snot, and A LOT of crying.  By the next morning, the snot had multiplied, and her poor little voice sounded like Pheobe With a Cold on “Friends”.  It was official, she was sick.

Which wouldn’t have been sooooooooo terrible, except that around the same time Dylan’s sniffles started, Tom started complaining of not feeling so top notch himself.  Now, for those of you that are married or in a relationship, and have had the distinct pleasure of taking care of your boyfriend or husband while they are sick, you will understand me when I say that I would rather take care of 500 sick infants than ONE grown ass man.  Grown men are the absolute worse patients.  Even a mild cough is enough to lay them up for four days.  Now, in Tom’s defense, he was sick.  Not dying, mind you, but I’m sure he felt pretty crappy.

So there I was, sucking boogers out of Dylan’s nose with one of those booger snatchers, and tending to Tom while he sprawled out on the couch.  Tom slept a lot, Dylan hardly slept at all, it was magical.  I was exhausted, but strangely exhilarated, which might have had something to do with the Emergen-C I was mainlining to keep the nasty stuff away.  After a few days, Dylan was feeling much better, and Tom saw that my patience was wearing dangerously thin, so he started feeling much better too, and all was well at last.

And then, Saturday hit.  And the cold that Dylan had mated with the cold that Tom had, and laid it’s germy little eggs somewhere in my sinuses.  I hate being sick.  Like, really, really hate it.  Especially now, when I can’t just curl up in bed with a bottle of Nyquil and the remote and wait for the enemy to be flushed out by narcotics.  As it turns out, 7-month olds don’t get that when Mommy is crying and coughing and wiping away snot, it’s not a great time to crap so much it comes out the front, back, and both sides of your diaper.  I tried explaining it to her, I tried pleading with her, I even tried bribing her with candy, but seeing as how she can’t speak or comprehend and doesn’t know what candy is, none of it worked.  She just smiled and laughed and blew spit bubbles, and really, who can feel bad when that happens?  Uh, I can.

Thankfully, the enemy did not stay long, and I am slowly clawing my way back to good health.  And when all is said and done, it wasn’t THAT bad, I suppose.  It definitely could have been worse: I’ve got a friend recovering from pneumonia, which makes my petty little cold seem like, well, a petty little cold.  But still.  It’s no fun.  And I really hope that the next time I get sick, Dylan is old enough to understand and make me a card or help dad with the chicken soup.  Or at the very least, not crap all over herself when I want to take a nap.

I should have read more books on the subject.  I read tons of info on pregnancy, but I got tired of reading, so I stopped just short of reading about the actual delivery.  I think I figured that when the time came, the doctors and nurses would be there to guide me, and my body would just know what to do.  And they did, and it did.  Kinda.  But my brain was sorely misinformed.  Sorely.  Misinformed.  Let me elaborate…

See, I chose to be induced.  I literally could not take one more day of being pregnant, so I coaxed my doctor into inducing me a few days before my due date.  And for some reason, I equated induction with less labor work.  See, this is where the reading would have come in REALLY handy.  I went into the hospital on Monday night to start the first stage.  First stage was the Cervidil, which is a medication-ish thingy that goes…up somewhere and softens things.  After the Cervidil is in for 8-12 hours and the things are sufficiently soft (ewww, I know), it comes out, and another medication called Pitocin is started, which starts contractions and thus starts labor, but usually takes several hours to really get going.  Easy-peasy, right?  Well, my nurse on Monday night who did the Cervidil business informed me, as she’s doing the business btw, that SOME women, very, very FEW women, will actually go into labor with just the Cervidil.  But it almost never happens, it’s really rare, don’t worry about, you won’t have a baby till tomorrow night at the earliest.  So I was looking forward to getting some sleep while things softened, even took an Ambien to help with the plan.  Goodnight, see you in the morning, then we’ll have a baby.

And then it started.  At around 2:00 am, not even 4 hours after the first stage was implemented.  At first, I felt what I thought were just some mild cramps (Nurse Don’t Worry About It said some mild cramping was to be expected, so not to worry about it).  And then the mild cramps turned into more moderate cramps.  And then moderate cramps turned into what the hell is happening to my stomach cramps.  And then those turned into what can only be described as fiery knives trying to push their way through the inner wall of my uterus, better known as contractions.  Now, this progression took all of about 30 minutes, so by the time the really bad ones hit, I was pretty freaked out.  I was supposed to have at least another 8 hours before this part started, and here I was trying not to scream and trying to remember to breath, neither of which I practiced.  Nurse DWAI then informed me that I was in labor, had in fact started to dilate (soften, ewww), and I was being moved to labor and delivery and did I want the epidural now?  My responses: what? when?!? okaaaaaaay.  YES!!!!!!!

This whole time, Tom is asleep on the couch in the room, and I’m trying not to wake him because I thought, well at least one of us should get some sleep, so I wait until Nurse DWAI gets me ready to move.  I really regret not waking him earlier, I missed out on a solid 45 minutes of being able to cuss him out without recourse.

So I go to labor and delivery, and I’m waiting for the anesthesiologist to come in and save my life, and at the same time, I’m trying to jump off the bed during each contraction, which by then were around 3 minutes apart.  And then my water broke.  And then the real pain started.  Things got pretty hazy after that, I’ll be honest.  I remember telling Tom to call my sisters, because it was happening not according to our original plan and the new plan was a lot faster.  I remember getting the epidural, which was almost as painful as the contractions because I was bent over like a Chinese contortionist and in the middle of a couple of those bitching contractions.  I remember the initial feeling of relief once the epidural kicked in, and then the paralyzing fear once I realized that I could still feel stuff on my left side (apparently, it doesn’t always work at full capacity, did not know that, wish I had).  Things got a little better after that, my sisters got there, I was 5 centimeters dilated, we settled in for a longish wait.

The longish wait turned into an hour.  Apparently once my body got started, it was like a Mack truck, unstoppable.  I was fully dilated, ready to push.  Dylan had other plans.  She was still all snuggly up there, not really ready to come on down.  So I pushed.  And I pushed.  And I pushed some more.  I pushed for an hour straight, 3 times every contraction.  I was on the verge of quitting and begging for a c-section when tada!  There she was.  And she was on my chest and so small and warm and barely crying, and then she was gone.  Things get REALLY hazy after that.  The combination of pain and exhaustion and emotional overload brought me down.  Tom went with the baby, he called out some numbers that it took me a minute to realize were her weight and length.  There was some work being done down below, some stitching and such (all VERY unpleasant).  Pictures and phone calls and tears and cheers and laughter.  I remember feeling like this had all just happened to someone else, and I was just watching it.  And then I’d feel a stitch, and it would bring me right back around.

And then, she was in my arms.  And she was so pretty and perfect and pink.  Her little face was so serene.  Her fingers so elegant.  Her head, COVERED in hair.  And she looked at me.  And I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.  It was like she knew me, and I knew her, and we were talking to each other without words.  And then she closed her eyes again.  And we had peace.