This week Milo got really sick.  He had a 104 fever and a really bad sore throat.  It was pitiful.  Just as he started getting better, Elyse started to get sick.  Same symptoms - high fever, bad sore throat.  I gave her the old, "You'll pull through!  Milo's strep test was negative, it's just a virus you caught from your brother..."  Cut to her dad picking her up and taking her to urgent care to find out she has strep.  Nothing like a major fail like that to make you go to sleep questioning the fate of your children with their obviously negligent mother.

Milo has been waking up at 4:45AM - ANTE MERIDIEM - since he was sick.  Makes for long days.

I accidentally wore my "skinny" work pants to work.  I was literally too busy getting ready for work to realize they were a tad too small.  I have felt gross all day, but it is incredibly motivating to eat better.

I resolved a long time conflict with an old friend.  It felt like a hundred pounds lifted off me.

I've been thinking a lot about my brother recently.  I had a dream a few months ago that he was in, and in my dream he was literally "coming to me" in my dream.  He stared at me waiting for my reaction and I stared back at him without moving.  It was disturbing.  Since then I've had a lot more random thoughts.  Even the kind that are like, "Oh, when I see my brother next I'm going to tell him..." which is weird considering we're coming up on 2 years.

I tried to sew a dress and I sucked at it.  I reallllly want to learn how to sew, but it's going to take me actually putting effort into learning which is something I have limited time for.  I was kind of hoping to just sit down and be naturally good at it.  Alas, it's iron-on letter decorating with clothes for the time being.

Cam and I got a 2nd van.  We are definitely fully integrated into the whole big family unit thing now.  I swear I can't shake the feeling that I've forgotten something since Milo was born.  I wonder if I'll perpetually have this feeling until my kids start leaving for college.

I tried to make an appointment for my step-daughter and they wouldn't let me because I was her step-mom.  I was strangely offended that I was somehow less than because I was her step-mom, not her real mom.

My sister-cousin is graduating college and I am so proud of her.

My bestie had her baby and I'm so excited to have my best friend be a mom now.

I resolved a conflict with a new friend.  Which is hard but worth it if you're going to make new friends that'll last.

And lastly, I'm thankful for my husband accepting my crazy.  Like when I freak out about seeing an ant in our room and sleep on the couch for the night.  Just as a hypothetical example - not like that ever really happened.

Milo loves...

it when you bury your kisses in his neck.

watching baby einsteins old mcdonald video on youtube.

his older brother and sisters hold him.

his nu-nu.

getting his diaper changed.

eating his hands.

getting applause when he rolls over.

going bye-bye or going on walks in his stroller.

the sound of crinkly paper.

the sound of people clearing their throat or sneezing.

when his daddy takes small bites out of his tummy.

when his mommy kisses him all over his face.

being in the ergo always.

listening to Lullaby by the Dixie Chicks.


Milo hates...

waiting to eat.

waking up hungry.

getting left in tummy time too long.

being in the swing longer than 3 minutes.

when the sun is in his eyes.

when the doctor tries to look at his throat.

Happy 4 months to my little tiger bunny!!  He was 18.5lbs at his last appointment.  Double his birth weight!  He's wearing 12mo. sized clothes.  He can roll over to the right, but not the left and only from tummy to back.  He can sit up kind of supported and continues to be a champ at breastfeeding.  He talks loudly and often, and his laughs sound like a chipmunk but the cutest chipmunk ever.  Sometimes he laughs so hard his whole face gets red.

Body by baby

5lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight, but still considerably more squishy than I'm used to. My tummy will never look the same but there have been 3 humans made within that skin. An organ that has grown 500x it's size and has stretched my body and separated my hips. A body that continues to use its own energy and nutrients so that another body can thrive and grow big and fat and healthy. This is a body that has been rocked proudly by motherhood.

Little moments of a big family

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Pearl S. Buck

We were in San Diego recently in a little family-diner style restaurant, all 5 of us (at the time) lined up in little cushy seats in a row.  The three kids sat on one side, Cam in the middle and I sat on the end, full and pregnant, ready to bust with our 4th child.  A cool older dude looked over in his cool California attitude and was like, "Man, your family is beautiful.  Look at all your beautiful kids and your pregnant wife.  I love that.  We've got a big family at home and I think it's just a beautiful thing, dude."  And I remember really appreciating for the first time, "Yes.  This is my awesome big family.  We are officially big family people!"

I always wanted a big family when I grew up.  Growing up with just my Mom and my brother always felt lonely.  My brother was 5 years older than me, we had nothing in common and truly I spent most of my childhood feeling like an only child.  I knew when I grew up I wanted as many babies as I could.  Life happened, unexpected babies happened, first marriages, 2nd babies, divorces, re-marriages, bonus kids and now new kids happened and BOOM, I am living the dream.  Somewhere between 2 different schools and daycare, printing homework for 3 grade levels, parent teacher conferences for 3 kids, volleyball games and gymnastics practices, I realized that I am here.  In my family of 6 I am living the chaos I dreamed of.  And it's so sweet.  A brilliant and stressful show every day.  A life that takes a lot of planning, a life that sometimes skips showers, goes days without groceries because there is no time for the store, a life that has 4 little people laying around in their chonies watching cartoons before 7:30am.  I'm so blessed and I can see before my eyes how rich this experience is for our kids and it fills me to my fingertips with sparkly joy.  I watch my children and see them practice life.  They learn to share, to fight, to defend, to plot, to work together, to sacrafice, to love unconditionally and how to say sorry.  They learn responsibility and what it means to take accountability for your actions.  They learn that life isn't fair and your older sister gets to stay up later and your little brother gets to read with parents at night.  I love it, even at it's highest peak of crazy, it's enriching to the very depth of my soul.  I have never been more busy or more stressed, but I go to sleep and wake up happy.  Every single day.

So in my moment of appreciation, I wanted to take a minute to share the little moments that make our big family. 

 

Sisters taking care of brothers.

 

 

Naps caught whenever we can snag them.

 

 

Introverted boys.  Extroverted girls.

 

 

Music.

 

 

Everyone going different directions.

 

 

Big brothers being curious about little brothers.

 

 

Homemade cakes and family birthday parties.  Summer swimming every night because it's free fun!

 

 

Early morning cranky.

 

 

Photo-bombing.

 

 

Walks to school every day.

 

 

Trying unsuccessfully to catch everyone in a picture.

 

 

Early morning movies before school in our jammies.

 

 

Stealing kisses from my husband at soccer practices.

 

 

Finding time to play with my husband (here is Cam playing dress up in my Fergie Ferg shirt)

 

 

The kids looking totally joyful while we are simply at a gas station pumping gas.

 

 

Fancy birthday dinners!

 

 

Going eye class shopping with my best friend.

 

And my favorite...

 

When everyone is in the living room, it feels like the whole world has stopped and everything we need is right there.  It feels like a big deep breath after a long day. 

 

I am so lucky.

Nerd Assassin

Apparently there is some sort of nerf assassin club where strangers review the address of someone to "kill" and you have to track that person down, assassinate them with nerf bullets, they will then pretend to die and you take their picture as proof.

My co-worker is part of said club. Or he had a great cover story set up as to why he had nerf guns in his car. Either way is cool really. I work with absolutely fascinating people.

Sunday

Sludges

3 Funny Moments.  One Horrific Moment.

I asked Elyse what she was going to say if someone made fun of her for not matching.  Without a beat she said, "I would tell them matching is boring."

Andy asked me if God "needed" the devil so that he had somewhere to put the people that didn't believe in Jesus.  Probably the first theological question I didn't know how to answer with my kids.

Elyse was pretending to be an angel and she found a dried out palm branch and said it was her broom.  Andy said, "Why do you need a broom for Elyse?  You're an angel not a witch." And she said, "To sweep up all the lies off the floor."  Which sounds like the super-emo lyric of a super-emo band to me.

This one is controversial, brace yourself, but this is the kind of stuff that you get thrown at as a parent so let's be honest.

So Elyse drew a picture of short little shorts crossed out with the word NO! written all over the page.  At the bottom she wrote, "There are no sludges in this house!"  So I was like, "Cool pic - what's a sludge?"  She's like, "You know, girls that wear those really short shorts, or clothes that show too much of their body - sludges!" 

A moment passed.  And then I realized the word she was searching for was "Sluts".

A couple things went through my mind,
1. Horror that my daughter has heard this word.
2. Horror that my daughter is judging other girls and using that word.
3. Pure joy that she wasn't asking for those short little shorts any time soon, at least not yet.

Of course I told her that sluts wasn't a nice word, that it was a curse word that's specifically designed to be disrespectful to women.  I told her that a better way to approach the situation would have been to say there are no short shorts in this house, not to unkindly talk about people that wear them.  But the situation itself was just a reminder that my kids are exposed to so much when they hit school age years.  It's such a strange phenomenon when they start picking up things that you didn't teach them.  You spend the first 5 years in charge of every influence, every thought, every word or activity.  Then they get thrust into the school system where you are at the mercy of the parenting of 300 other kids.

Most of the time it's super funny to hear what tumbles out of the mouths of babes and I love that they are exposed to all different types of people and cultures that she's learning to be comfortable with.  But every once in awhile you hear stuff like that and want to yank them from school and move to a deserted island to protect them from all the ugly.  Raising kids gets harder every year.

Finding my Fight for a VBAC

I don't regret my c-sections.  I never mourned a lost birth experience or felt like less of a woman because my babies were cut out instead of being pushed out.  I also never felt like having a vaginal birth was going to be the key to my womanhood or motherhood.  I went to vbac support groups throughout the pregnancy and heard story after story of women who were depressed and broken after their c-section and it made their vbac journey that much more powerful.  I feel like my desire for a natural birth was based on something much more simple: I wanted to know I could do it and I wanted my baby to come out in the most healthy way possible, in the way God designed for it to happen.  It had very little to do with what I wanted for my body as I'd had two rather uneventful cesareans before.  My preference was to avoid surgery, but it wouldn't have been the worst part for me if Milo's birth had turned out differently.  I feel so sad for women that had expectations that weren't met in their previous births, and I'm lucky that I was so young and naive that I had no preconceived notions on how my birth would go, other than that my baby would come out healthy.

Looking back and it's no surprise that I had no desires for a natural normal birth.  I was a cesarean baby and my Mom was born in a hospital as my Grandma was strapped down, drugged and labored by herself.  I had no reference to what was considered a "normal delivery".  In my preparation for this birth, my doula asked me to consider what birth philosophies I was bringing into this delivery.  I had six very specific birth experiences to draw from:

1. My mom having two cesareans.  I grew up thinking this is the normal way babies come out.  I never remember being curious about natural birth because I was never really exposed to it.  I assumed cesareans were normal.  I never questioned it.
2.  When my aunt had my cousin, my mom was there.  I remembered my mom talking about how horrifying it was to watch the baby "go in and out" and how the baby looked like an alien when it came out.  (Oh hey Tori!) I had never heard anything about what cesarean babies looked like, so in my young mind I pictured beautiful pink little babies being cut out and purple cone-headed aliens being pushed out.
3.  My other aunt talking to my mom about how she was so swollen down there that she couldn't even sit down.  I'd asked my mom growing up if it hurt when I was cut out and she'd explain that she was numb and didn't feeling anything.  Thus with little understanding of post-surgery reality, I associated natural birth with pain.
4.  I had pre-eclampsia with Elyse and my blood pressure was too high so I had to be induced at around 38 weeks.  Being induced with Elyse, I never experienced the spontaneous onset of labor and after three failed days of induction, she had to be cut out after showing signs of distress.  I believe that she was truly in distress and that it was a legitimate emergency cesarean.
5.  I was there when my friend Gracie had her baby.  She had an epidural and her labor and delivery seemed effortless.  Her baby came out pink and beautiful.  My mind was blown.
6.  The doctor telling me that if I tried to have a vaginal birth with Andy, I was risking the safety of my baby so I scheduled a repeat cesarean.  It felt a lot different going to the hospital when there wasn't an emergency.  It was a lot scarier.  Andy was born and had to be in the NICU for a week because he wasn't ready to be born yet.  I felt responsible and angry.

When I became pregnant with baby number 3, I automatically assumed it'd be a repeat c-section.  It wasn't until about 16 weeks that I found a video about natural cesareans that I started to change positions.  I was moved by the idea that I could control the environment and conditions of my child's birth.  I'm at the age where I'm coming into my own independence and it aligned with that sense of "I'm the master of my ship" mentality.  I wanted my baby to come on it's own time.  I didn't want him to be pulled from me, but eased out (called delayed transition).  I wanted my cord to be cut after it stopped pulsing.  I wanted my baby to lay on my chest after being born so we could bond and I could experience that rush of oxytocin.  Seeing that natural cesarean video made me realize that I never tried to make my birth experiences "special" before.  My delivery had previously been means to an end in which I show up at the hospital and the doctor helps me take the baby out and then we start our new special life together.  I was energized by the idea that I could take this event and make it my own.  I went to the doctor primed with new ideas about how I wanted my cesarean to go.  After shooting down all of my ideas, telling me they weren't "possible" or "safe", they ended the appointment by laughing at me when I asked to hold him on my chest after he was born while I was still on the operating table.  I left discouraged and sad.

Shortly after that conversation, I realized that I was trying to shape my cesarean into a natural vaginal birth.  Why not just push him out?  How dangerous is it?  Will I be selfishly putting my life on the line when I already have a husband and kids that need me?  Could my baby die?  Will my girly parts be wrecked?  Will my husband still want to have sex with me?  These are all things that I had to find out, and I did.  I took on this challenge for vbac like I would anything else - full force and with reckless abandon.  Every doctor or person in my life that told me I couldn't do it, strengthened my resolve that I could and would.  I had doctor's tell me throughout the whole pregnancy that he was too "big" or that if xyz happened, I would have to have another cesarean.  I had one doctor tell me, "We don't even know if you can have a vaginal delivery...".  It seems like such a harmless statement but it devastated me.  It was the most insulting insinuation that my body would somehow not work like it was supposed to.  He was attacking my the very essence of my womanhood.  I cried the whole day over it, then got angry and more resolved.  I went through four doctors and several doctor interviews until I found one that didn't make me feel like my birth preferences were second to their priorities.  I was so frustrated that I stopped all vbac planning around 6 weeks.  I was tired of fighting and just wanted to enjoy my pregnancy for awhile.  I found Dr. Plimpton after that and he ended up being the keeper.

The whole VBAC experience changed me in a very intricate and complex way.  I realized a lot about my philosophy of birth and I gained the confidence to be in charge of my body.  I made sure that doctors acted like they were performing a service, not like they were doing me a favor by being my doctor.  I learned to educate myself on all birth scenarios so that there was nothing I would be ignorantly talked into.  I grew into a stronger woman when I realized that this was my birth and that I wanted to experience with my husband alone.  It was a lesson in wisdom and patience.  I had to train my brain and my thoughts to prepare for plan B.  What if I do have a cesarean?  What do I have to do to ensure I don't feel disappointed in myself if that happens?

Achieving my VBAC was my greatest accomplishment.  I'd never spent so much time planning for something so important to me, making sure every detail was in place and that I had done everything I could.  I can honestly say I put 110% into my success.  Even when things didn't go as planned (tons of pain, worthless epidural, slow progress), I still made it.  When I wanted to quit, I didn't.  I pushed that baby out of me!  He came exactly when he was supposed to without a single medical intervention.  Sometimes it seems to good to be real.  I get overcome with pride in my baby, in my body and I am grateful that for that experience.

So even though I didn't have any traumatizing cesarean experiences, I still found the fight inside of me.  With odds stacked against me and against negative doctors, I kept going. 

I chose my birth and what I wanted for my body and I did it, goddammit. 

And it was amazing.

 

 

No one likes honeydew.

I had really good honeydew today.  No I'm serious. 

I personally think honeydew is the vanilla ice cream of the fruit world but it was super delicious. 

I was shocked.  And so I'm sharing.

Also, I've taught my son to make this super annoying clear your throat kind of sound.  We do it back and forth and we think it's the funniest thing ever.  And he's pretty much a genius.  He's on his way to being a very successful young man.

I may have just impulsively bought these online.

My husband and I may have plans to wear them together out in public.

They may have been out of most sizes...

so I may have purchased a small for me and a medium for my husband.

We may walk around looking like great big giants poured into little tiny people shirts.

 

But we are definitely adorable. 

 

And we are gonna rock the shit out of these shirts.

 



The Girl That Made Me a Mama

And she's turning 8 next month and it feels like a combination between pure tangible joy and gut wrenching heartbreak.