predictable curmudgeony NYE post

The way I see it, there are several possible routes you can go when writing an end-of-year blog post.

• You can reflect on the past year of your life as an excuse to re-post all your favorite and most flattering photos of yourself.
• You can demonstrate how mature and sophisticated you are, sharing details of a classy and intimate dinner with your most grownup friends, not failing to mention how you drank one glass of wine, only a sip of champagne and closed out the night with a snugglefest on the sofa with your hubby.
• You can post about your 2011 blog stats, using that helpful email WordPress sent you about an hour ago.
• Inasmuch as you are above such arbitrary celebrations, you can whine about how much 2011 sucked and try to make everyone else feel like an asshole for having a good time.
• You can do a this year/last year comparison, allowing you to post more gratuitous photos of your new baby friend.

Guess which one I chose.

Last New Year’s Eve…

This New Year’s Eve…

Happy New Year, bitches.

on my newly acquired fupa

So when you have a baby, you come home from the hospital with a big vacancy formerly occupied by said baby. You probably haven’t worked out in several days or weeks or months, and your ab muscles have separated; basically the tone and definition or your torso does not exist anymore. These factors create the perfect conditions for a fupa.

I have already lost 30 pounds in the three weeks since giving birth (and I don’t even have AIDS, hooray!), but there is still a very pronounced fupal protuberance that I would like to be rid of. (Sidenote: you don’t know how awesome it is to step on the scale and find you’re still losing weight after eating like John Goodman all day long.)

Let’s explore…

Exhibit A: my honeymoon.

Also I had a tan this one time.

I feel obligated to note this photo was taken in 2005, right after I had conveniently stumbled upon a cache of illegal Mexican diet pills (hey, don’t knock ’em until you’ve tried ’em), and I haven’t been that skinny since. Also, the Caribbean (honestly, Red Stripe and rum) causes you to wear things you would not normally wear in real life.

And here’s me now:

Dramatization.

Don’t you love my little pink purse? I put my weed in there. No, but did you really think I was going to put MY fupa on the internet? This isn’t that kind of blog.

I haven’t been cleared by my doctor to do anything other than light low-impact activities like walking and ellipticalling (sp?), but rest assured, as soon as he says the word, I’m going to be a sit-up doing motherfucker, motherfucker.

What other exercises are good for fupas?

my amazingly epic journey of childbirth, parts I – X

I’ve been working on this post for a week. It just seems stupid to use my free time to blog when I haven’t gotten four consecutive hours of sleep in two weeks. I’ll say it again: I don’t know how you mom bloggers do it. Anyway, this was supposed to be a relatively brief and light-hearted “birth story digest,” but it somehow turned into the Moby Dick of birth stories. So I did some trimming. I didn’t think you guys would mind.

Part I

Midnight, December 11. After watching a dismal 30 minutes of SNL (Dear Katy Perry: just…no), we turned out the lights and went to sleep. I dreamed my water was breaking and I woke up at 12:30, soaking wet. (waterproof mattress pad = success!) My husband called our doctor’s after-hours line and he told us to head to the hospital. When I got there, they confirmed the rupture, “checked” me (a procedure that sounds simple but actually hurts like bloody hell), did some monitoring and put me in a totally dope LDRP room that would be our home for the next three and a half days. I still hadn’t had any contractions so they induced labor around 2 a.m. (Sidenote: If you ever have kids, you should really try to go into labor after a solid night’s sleep. Losing a whole night before we even got started ended up sucking balls, but I’ll get to that.)

Part II

Contractions started quickly and forcefully. I’m told pitocin makes them harsher, as did the lack of amniotic fluid, which would have provided some cushioning. This is the part where I try to convince you that my contractions were worse than anyone else’s in the history of childbirth. I KNEW labor was going to be unpleasant, but nothing could have prepared me for this special kind of agony. My friend Jill said it’s like your worst period cramps ever, times 10, with knives. It felt like a red hot ball of pain radiating out from my gut. The next seven hours is a blur. I mostly spent the time doubled over the bed, a chair or a birthing ball, breathing out curses in a tight whisper. The contractions quickly went from 2-3 minutes apart to what seemed like one long, endless contraction with barely a pause in between. I’d start to stand up, and be racked with another one almost instantly. My husband, just as sleep-deprived, rubbed my shoulders, pushed on my back, held my hand, breathed with me. My parents were at the hospital too but made themselves scarce: my mom checked in every once in a while, cringed and fled the room; my dad wisely stayed in the waiting room and read a book. (I think he read about 11 during the course of their visit.)

Part III

9 a.m. This is the part where I tell you how I finally couldn’t take it anymore and conceded to the epidural. If there was any hope the contractions weren’t going to get worse, I might have hung in there a while longer, but it was still early. I was in tears and nearly passing out from exhaustion despite the pain. When I came into the hospital, I was at 1 cm and 0% effaced; after seven hours of contractions I was at 4 and 90%, which they said was fantastic progress. When my nurse went over the options with me, she said I could have narcotics by IV, which would last anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours OR might not work at all; or an epidural, which would last indefinitely and totally eliminate all the pain. I decided not to fuck around: I went for the epidural, and let me tell you, it was fanfuckingtastic. They warned me it would hurt, and it was definitely hard to sit still during the procedure while I was still in agony, but the sting of the needle was a walk in the park compared to the contractions. Thirty minutes later, I was in bed, blissfully unaware of my ever-stronger contractions and clapping myself on the back for making such a wise move.

Epidurals: rewarding smart people since 1942

Part IV

This is the part where everything started to go downhill. I couldn’t feel the contractions anymore, but the monitor showed every time I had one, the baby’s heart rate dropped. After a couple of alerts, they gave me oxygen and stopped the pitocin drip. I also got an amnio-infusion to replenish the fluid I’d lost when my water broke. The nurse gave me a pep talk that began, “I’m going to be honest with you…”

Part V

3:30 p.m. A major blow to my fragile, sleep-deprived psyche when my doctor tells me I have made virtually NO progress since the epidural (seven hours earlier) and I’m still at 4 cm. He believes her head is tilted, and the contractions aren’t pushing her down in the way that promotes dilation/effacement. Since we’re going on 16 hours from the water breaking, there’s a risk of infection and he recommends a c-section. The upside: labor is over. The downside: I’m about to have a big hole cut in me. I realize at some point in this monologue I’ve slipped into the present tense….

Part VI

This is the part where I try to forget I am utterly fucking terrified. They wheel me into the OR and start prepping me for surgery. A Brazilian wax joke gets me a few laughs. They pump me up with another epidural that paralyzes me from the chest down. (Sidenote: my anesthesiologist was this loudmouth Kathy Bates type and I absolutely adored her.) It’s sort of funny to watch my legs flop around like they belong to someone else.

Part VII

I stare at the ceiling while my doctor cuts me open. My husband watches over the dividing sheet in rapt fascination. Every few seconds he tears his gaze away from the carnage and gives me an encouraging nod. It only takes a few minutes, and doesn’t hurt in the least, but I feel tremendous pressure as my innards are not very delicately shoved around and they pull out my kid. They whisk her across the room where a gaggle of nurses is waiting. Ten long seconds go by before we hear her start to cry. The whole day suddenly catches up with me and I begin to sob uncontrollably. My doctor tells me to hold still because he’s still all up in my junk.

Gooey babies are only cute if they're your own. That being said, LOOK AT MY ADORABLE GOOEY PRINCESS BABY.

Part VIII

This is the part where I tell you how it took them 20 goddamn minutes to stitch me up and my husband is the first one to hold the baby. When they’re done toweling her off or whatever it is they do after a baby is born, he is allowed to bring her over and hold her near my head so I can see her. I sort of kiss/slobber all over her face, still blubbering and sobbing, and now shivering uncontrollably from the anesthesia.

Panda warmer is brought to you by Japan.

Part IX

Freshly injected with morphine for the pain that will come when the epidural wears off, I am wheeled back to my room with my freshly extracted kid tucked into my arms. (Don’t worry, they made her a little nest by cramming a couple of pillows between her and the edge because, safety first!) Someone forgets to tell me I’ve just had major surgery and I try to go traipsing around like I haven’t just had major surgery.

Part X

Sixteen hours later, the morphine wears off and I am in a world of hurt. Whoever said a c-section is “easier” than traditional childbirth can smile and blow me. (“Smile and blow me” is still a thing, right?) On top of that, I’m still having pretty fierce contractions every time I breastfeed, something else nobody told me. They’re almost as bad as the contractions I had during labor, and I let the nurses feed me Percocet and Naproxen after confirming half a dozen times that it won’t hurt the baby.

Afterbirth

This is the part where I reflect. It seems to me that in my case, pitocin –> epidural –> c-section. I’m told the epidural is not what halted my progress, but it seems an incredible coincidence given the timing. That said, do I regret having it? Fuck no. I was in agony and would have agreed to birth the baby rectally if that’s what it took to ease the pain. I think what really screwed me was the water breaking so early and the contractions not starting on their own. I could have refused to go to the hospital until contractions started, assuming they would have started eventually (thus perhaps avoiding pitocin and perhaps avoiding the epidural), but I’m not a doctor and I have no business playing those odds. Yeah, it would have been neat to watch her come out, but in the end, we got our baby friend, so I’m happy, and I think she’s happy too. Or sharting. It’s hard to tell.

Pffft.

please stand by: new baby edition

It’s 4 a.m., I have a dual breast pump strapped to my juggies, and I’m trying to think of something prolific to say about childbirth and simultaneously seeing to a troll-type who is earnestly replying to every comment on a couple of my old posts. I don’t know how you mom bloggers do it.

This announcement is a week late so it’s probably rather anticlimactic (and also shallow and pedantic), but I did want to share the news of our new baby friend and obviously, wallow in my glory a bit…

Kenzie Ryan made her grand entrance December 11 at 4:17 p.m. She was a teency 6 pounds 12 ounces, 21 inches long, and cone-headed. I’m currently working on the birth recap to end all birth recaps, but since I can only manage to type about one sentence at a time, you’ll have to wait a little longer. In the meantime, enjoy some photos of our loinfruit:

Looks like my 10 step program worked, eh?

For those of you wondering what kind of food it was that actually threw me into labor, it was leftover-Thanksgiving-turkey enchiladas and Spanish rice.

And for those of you who are concerned the baby is going to ruin this blog, you’re probably right.

P.S. Thanks, Rob!

pho phail

Oh heeeey! One day left until the official due date…the day on which less than 5% of women actually deliver (look it up).

Throughout my pregnancy, I airily exclaimed to anyone who’d listen that people place entirely too much importance on this somewhat arbitrary date, and the baby will come when she is good and ready. Of course, throughout my pregnancy, my pubic bone was not being ripped in half and all the organs housed in my torso had their own little happy space that was not invaded by a giant pulsating parasitic fetus. (Note to fetus: If you read this some day, dear child, I use the term “parasitic” in only the most affectionate sense).

So, while I understand I actually have very little likelihood of giving birth ON my due date, I’m still hoping with the passion of a thousand gallons of fiery Sriracha sauce that I will be one of the 5%.

Today, with the goal of arousing the baby’s swift evacuation from my battle-weary womb, I went for a long walk and then guzzled an extra large bowl of spicy pho. I had a few twinges of crampy pain, hardly worth mentioning, and my lazy, underachieving baby slept through the whole thing.

Tomorrow I’m upping my game: hill repeats, hot wings, tequila and rough sex.