Ambergontrail – Trying to get through life without dying of dysentery

I couldn’t stay away for long.

I’m not going to go into WHY I took the break. I will tell you it was NOT to garner “I miss yous” and “Please come backs”, but they were much loved, and so great to hear, thank you.

Lately I’ve been a little down. I don’t know if post partum depression can extend to eight months post-partum, but well, I was depressed. I felt like a failure as a mother and wife, and employee as well. I want to do so much, but I just can’t.  After a week of crying jags I’m starting to realize that I need to be happy and healthy for my family as well as myself.

To do this, a break was necessary. Sometimes the online world is a little vicious for a nobody like me, while at other times it can be a link to those you’ve learned to love and admire.

While I was going through my down-period, I received so much support from readers, twitter friends, and Bees. Let me tell you… I am so loved. Friends I love but have never met sent me flowers, kind thoughts, emails and twitter DMs. In all my time of being a Bee, the only other time I ever felt like I mattered so much was when I was in the hospital having Piper. For everyone who let me know I mattered to them: Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

I have never felt so low in my life. I considered many things, crawling under a blanket and never coming out… taking meaningless work-from-home jobs so I can work from the comfort of home, possible surrogacy (since I got so good at pregnancy), selling things… In case you’re wondering, it’s not because I lost my job- I just want to be able to make money while working from home. In the end, I pulled a puzzled Piper into my lap and cried. Cried for where I was in life, cried for who I was and who I had thought I’d be by now, and cried for what I wished I could be.

I am done crying. I am a mother now, and like my mother before me, I will do what I have to in order to make things in my life work out. I will work, I will chase after my excessively more mobile baby, and I will snuggle up to my husband at night, forgiving myself for sinking into that pit of despair. Why? Because I can’t be everything to everyone, but if I let myself down I’m letting down Piper. I am okay with myself now, for the time being. I still get sad and wistful sometimes, but I’ll trudge ahead, as per usual.

Again, thank you to every single one of you who held me up while I was sinking.

I don’t know. Lately my life has been a shit storm, and I don’t know if I can continue blogging about Piper’s momentous occasions when I can’t even accomplish eating lunch, dinner or breakfast. I am tired of feeling like things couldn’t get any worse, and tired of being tired.

Thus, the break. Hopefully I’ll be back soon.

Thanks for your understanding.

Just when I stopped freaking out about the idea of having to chew Piper’s food for her for the rest of my life- a future of birthday pudding cups because she has no teeth and PROBABLY NEVER WILL- I’m going to be on Discovery Health because I have the first baby to never, ever grow teeth… yes, that was me freaking out. I have stopped that, promise. I love her gummy smile!

Just when I started thinking that it was GOOD that she has no teeth- because I will never, ever get to see her with no teeth ever again- this is the ONLY time Piper will have that gorgeous, gummy smile that just gets me deep down inside… anyway… I was coming to relish not having a little chomper in our midst.

Until this morning. I was grabbing a toy for her and she grabbed my hand and put a (clean) finger in her mouth. She bit down, as per usual. Unlike all other times, something sharp poked my finger. Heart racing, I dug my finger back into her mouth. What is this?? A sharp-ass tip of a tooth, not even able to be seen with the human eye- was there, hurting me.

My baby has a tooth coming in!

Now I’m sad. Haha. After all the feeling of the gums for months, searching for that nub of tooth, to find nothing… my baby is growing teeth!!
She’s TOO YOUNG FOR THIS!!

Yes, I am a freak.

Today I got an email from Parenting Magazine.

The subject line read: 34 Weeks: Make Weaning Easier

Um. Make weaning easier? Weaning? Piper is only 34 weeks (as it said in their subject), eight months (on Saturday)… am I supposed to be weaning?? I went to the page it linked to and it said this:

With all my pregnant friends and mommy friends, birth stories and birth plans come up in conversation a lot. I often think about my birth story. Of course, I also think about what I’d do the same, and what I’d do differently if I have the chance.

What happened vs. what I want for next time:

Didn’t bring a brush.

Will definitely bring one next time, still can’t believe I forgot it, even the conditioner had a hard time getting out the tangles.

Didn’t take maternity photos.

An absolute must, I have very few images of myself during the pregnancy, and I loved my body during pregnancy, so there was really no reason not to do it.

Didn’t try to move my progress after setting induction date (didn’t try to progress at home).

Next time I will try primrose oil, acupuncture and more walking.

Didn’t get any sleep at all.

I will tell them to try to hold off on the monitoring while in the middle of the night, that blood pressure thing kept me awake all night. If I need to, I will ask them to give me something to sleep, since I was so anxious.

Was hooked up to machines my whole stay.

Next time I will ask if I can be monitored wirelessly.

Got the epi at 4cm.

Will wait until the pain is too excruciating, and then weigh my options. I really think I could have tolerated more.

Got a c-section.

Hopefully I can again try to have a vaginal birth, even though I know VBACs aren’t all that usual, but my OB said I could totally try for one next time. Which I definitely plan to do!

Didn’t have any pictures of Piper other than the ones we took, and the ones our friend Tina took of her at 3.5 weeks.

I’ll definitely have some pro photos taken early!

Exclusively nursed- no bottles at all.

I think next time I’ll try the baby out on pumped breastmilk a few times in the beginning. I wonder if it would help with the “I need Mommy in my view all the time” issues we’re dealing with.

So far that’s all I can think of, other than all this, I’m not regretting anything. Well, actually, I regret nothing as it stands, but I have faith that I can do MORE and tolerate MORE in the future.

Piper is finally crawling on tape. By this I mean, crawling more than a step, thus making it easier for me to film it.

Yes, I say “Oh my god”. Why? Because she went from laying on her tummy and dragging herself around, previously (as in, an hour before the video) to full on crawling. Instead of the one crawl, laydown, drag, cry…

SHE IS A CRAWLER, PEOPLE!

Joy

Is there anything more wonderful than a baby getting nuzzled by a puppy?

To pee or not to pee?

Actually, this is about going to the bathroom- with your child. Now, at home, when I’m alone and Piper’s awake and I need to pee (or, ahem, the other) I just plop her in the exersaucer. Usually I time her naps well enough to not need to do that. Sometimes she’s pissed off at something and utterly hates the exersaucer, so… I bring her into the bathroom with me. It happens enough that I actually have her bouncer in there all the time.

Is this weird? At work I will bring her into the bathroom with me- our bathroom isn’t in our suite, and is shared by six other suites. It has a handicapped stall and a smaller stall, so I usually wheel her into the handicapped one. As at home, I’d rather not have to bring her in with me, so I just wait until she’s asleep and go by myself when a co-worker is around to make sure she’s okay.

Still- I am alone, and she is awake way too often to not bring her in with me. So I ask you, at what age does it get “gross” for you to bring your kid into the bathroom stall with you?

I don’t want to cause her to go into therapy in her later years, but sometimes things just don’t work out right and I need her to come in with me. Part of the time I feel badly about it, but then i think, well, there are no other options, and this is important, as my bladder control isn’t as great as it once was (ah, the pushing). So when I need to go- I NEED to go. When we’re at work, she’s always n her stroller and never ever does she touch anything.

Again, I ask- Am I damaging her for the future? I attempt to stay as modest as possible, but sometimes nature calls when I’m alone and she’s awake- and I don’t care what other people would do- I would never leave her in the office alone.

I don’t like to talk about Piper’s sleep. I am SO superstitious that I fear it’ll jinx me. It’s happened before, I swear! Anyway, as of her 7 month birthday, Piper stopped getting up three times a night. Previously, at 5 months, she slept all night. Then, all of a sudden… she was a rolling fool and decided that sleep is for the birds, and rolling is what all the cool babies are doing.

Now, she sleeps. She wakes up a couple of times a night with a random burst of tears then goes back to sleep (sidenote: what IS that about? Why cry in her sleep?). There are nights when she’ll wake up hungry or wet, and I’ll feed her or change her, so it’s not all “STTN! YES! I HAVE MY FREEDOM BACK!”. I have learned, in my months as a mother- to never, ever take anything she does for granted.

Example? The crawl. She crawled! Now she will never ever do it again. Her arms are getting stronger and her legs are getting better at moving one at a time, but as a whole, she prefers to side creep and roll around.

I think that when you start thinking your baby has a routine and that she’ll stick to it, that’s when you get a surprise. I will no longer assume Piper will ever do anything ever again.

Baby still has no teeth!  NOT ONE TOOTH! Of course, she is creeping, playing peek a boo and pulling herself up (Paul dropped her mattress down to the next level in her crib, sadness), and is this close to outgrowing her infant seat, so I’m more than ready to have her not get too advanced.

Growing up (until 1986 or 1987), I had one grandpa and one grandma. Grandpa passed away in the 80s, while I was still learning how to remember people. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of him. My grandma is a different story- I have so many incredible memories of her that will last a lifetime. I only wish I could let Paul and Piper into my head so they can see those memories in the vivid colors I remember them in.

Today, Piper has three grandparents: our moms and my dad. She has a great many Aunts and Uncles as well as cousins, but only three real grandparents. Lately I have been wondering how I can “introduce” Piper to Paul’s dad, who passed away in 1998. We have few pictures, no home videos, and not really anything to show her about him.

Paul will have his stories, as will his Aunt and Mother, and we may be able to squeeze some stories from his siblings, but that’s pretty much it. It’s incredibly important to me that Piper knows her grandparents- ALL of them. So how do  you go about telling them (when she can understand) about who they’ll never meet in this lifetime?

I try to tell her about him with subtle mentions, like, “Grandpa Pete loved trees” and random things like that, but as someone who didn’t meet him either, I have so little to share.

For those of you who have lost family members: how do you intend to tell your children about them, to make sure they know they are just as important as their living family members?