Confidence Is Underrated

Two weeks ago I sat in a WIC class surrounded by approximately ten mothers and one mother-to-be. The leader of the class asked the mothers who were still breastfeeding.

I immediately reminisced about my first visit to that very class when I sat determined to breastfeed for a year and one mother sitting in front of me turned to me and said, “Oh, honey, if you’re like me you won’t make it past two weeks. It hurts too much! Naw, that’s not for me!” 

Honestly, I’m not still breastfeeding my daughter who weaned herself just two months prior to the class. . . but I lied. No other mothers in the room raised their hands when we were asked who was still breastfeeding and I wanted to show the mama-to-be that it is possible to have a successful breastfeeding relationship. I raised my hand and said I was still breastfeeding my 16-month-old daughter. The leader asked what I liked about breastfeeding. The question caught me off-guard and I stammered something about not having to get up in the middle of the night to prepare bottles while my daughter waited, crying. If I’d had more time to prepare, this is what I would have shared with the class.

There was certainly a learning curve, and it wasn’t always comfortable, but breastfeeding has fulfilled the lives of my daughter, me, and my husband more than I could have ever imagined.

The gifts that breastfeeding gave my daughter are obvious. Breastmilk was gentle on her stomach, unlike formula. Breastmilk comforted her when she felt poorly. Breastmilk sustained her and helped her grow. Breastmilk kept her healthy and protected her from the germs I brought home from work.

Breastfeeding gave me sweet, beautiful times to cuddle my daughter and look into her beautiful eyes. It gave me time to slow down, stop, and enjoy her company. It taught me patience and perseverance. It gave me a greater sense of purpose. It gave me something about which I could be passionate. Breastfeeding gave me a sense of accomplishment that I’d never known – after all, not only did I help my beautiful girl grow in my belly, but I also helped her grow once she met the world for the first time.

I would have never guessed that our breastfeeding relationship could have been a gift for my husband as well. After I told him the benefits of it he was on-board. He was able to see my commitment to our daughter. He was able to see a mother nurture her babe in every sense of the word. He was also able to gain his protective, father-bear instincts when it came to defending us and our choice to breastfeed.

Little did I know when I made the decision to breastfeed that it would be the best decision I’ve ever made.

More importantly?  

Breastfeeding helped me learn my body and trust it. . . and gave me confidence in myself.

Many Questions

I think we’ve become paranoid.  I hope we’ve become paranoid.

It seems like no matter where we look, there is always another reference to autism.  A boy I used to babysit is high on the autism spectrum.  There are commercials for autism awareness, charities . . . one of our favorite shows, Parenthood, portrays a couple raising a teenage daughter and an autistic son.  I’m resenting so much autism awareness. 

Does that make me terrible? 

I’m resenting autism awareness because now I look at my daughter every day and wonder if she’s showing signs.

We had thought that Tori had said two words around 11 months old, but she hasn’t said them since.  Language regression can be a major red flag.  I think, however, that Josh and I have talked about it and decided that we only thought she was saying those words.  Maybe she was just making sounds but had yet to make the connection.  Regardless, here she is at over 15 months old and she has yet to say anything.  Instead she points and grunts at everything.

To be fair, I didn’t talk until nearly two years old . . . and until I did talk, my means of communication was pointing and grunting.  So . . . maybe that can be explained away.

But she’s also making repetitive movements.  She obsessively rocks and bounces her back against the back of the couch.  I do mean obsessively.  Sometimes her rocking becomes quite intense.  I looked at some videos of autistic children stimming – and in some of them I saw the same movements my beautiful daughter makes.  That makes me more concerned than anything, I suppose. 

Last Thursday Josh and I took Tori to her 15-month appointment.  We were certainly hoping that doc would listen to our concerns and then say, “Oh, you’re fine!  Kids do that.”  Instead he furrowed his brow.  He used the words “red flags”.  He referred us to TEIS – Tennessee Early Intervention System.  We’re supposed to get a call from them sometime this week so that they can do an in-home assessment on Tori. 

For now I’m trying to remind myself that autism, a spectrum disorder, can be really mild.  There are a lot of autistic people on the lower-end that are more than high functioning – they are intelligent, wonderful, delightful people to be around.  I’m trying to remind myself that early intervention is key – that autism, when diagnosed and treated early, can be a bump in the road but nothing more.

I’m also trying to remind myself that I’m likely paranoid from all the images I’m seeing in regards to autism.

When talking to yourself, what language do you use?

I haven’t been feeling so great about myself, folks.  I’m frankly quite disappointed.  Throughout the majority of my pregnancy with Tori, I was “all belly” and hardly gained any weight anywhere else on my body.  By the end of the pregnancy I had convinced myself that within 60-90 days of having my daughter I would be back to my pre-pregnancy size.  We’re now almost 13 months past my daughter’s birth and I weigh almost five pounds more than I did at the end of my pregnancy – that’s after joining a gym three months ago and having little success with my diet and exercise plan.

I am still determined to lose the weight, but as the days stretch on and my progress gets slower I can’t seem to focus on anything but the negative.  My internal voice hasn’t been kind lately, and that’s just self-destructive.  All these thoughts will do is make me more miserable and set me up for failure.  I need to snap out of this and find a new perspective.  I know I’m not the only one.

Let’s find the reasons for wanting to do this and change our language. 

I need to gain more energy so I can play with Tori.  I need to lose weight so that my body is healthier and can deal with the stress under which I put it.  Most importantly, I need to start living a healthier lifestyle so that my daughter has the opportunity to grow up with an example of how to care for herself in today’s hurried and often half-assed culture.

Those are the items on which I need to focus.  Those are the words that will get me to my goal.  Self-destructive language will only slow me down.

So how do you speak to yourself?  Do you tell yourself that you can reach your goals because you'd like to be better to yourself?  Or do you tell yourself that you'll never get what you desire because you're too < insert self-depreciating word here > to do it? 

Let's try to be better for ourselves.  We owe it to our families, our friends, our children . . . but most importantly, we deserve to be treated better. 

Un-cut. Un-circumcised. WHOLE.

Here's a controversial one for you.
 
When I had just become pregnant with our darling daughter, Josh and I started discussing all sorts of parenting-related things (as you can imagine). We were on the same page about a lot of issues, but there was one statement Josh made that really made me furrow my brow.
"If we have a little boy he's not getting circumcised." 
 
I was confused, curious, and honestly a bit disgusted. I asked him why he said that, and he responded simply: "Because I wasn't asked to have this procedure done. I didn't give my permission. If he grows up and decides he wants to be circumcised, I won't have any problems with it. But I don't think it's fair that I didn't have the choice." 
 
I could understand that much of his argument but I frankly wondered if that was the best decision to make. After all, I hadn't much experience with uncircumcised penises - but with the experiences I did have, I knew *I* certainly liked them more circumcised. Also, circumcision exists for a reason outside religious beliefs - it helps keep the area cleaner. 
 
Folks who know me will know that it was time for me to do some research and soul-searching. Through that research I have changed my mind about circumcision and, at this point, whole-heartedly agree with Josh. If we have a little boy, he will absolutely *not* be circumcised (at least until he reaches an age where he can make that decision for himself if he so chooses). Why the change? 
 
The first analogy I reached hit me like a ton of bricks. The question was posed, "How do you feel about female genital mutilation?" I was instantly enraged. How could you compare female genital mutilation (FGM) with circumcision? FGM has no medical reason to exist. It's the act cutting parts of a baby girl's (and sometimes older girl's) genital area resulting in less physical enjoyment during sexual intercourse, sometimes performed so that the area looks "neater" and cleaner". 
 
Oh, wait. After discovering that there is no medical reason to circumcise, and that removing the foreskin from the penis results in a lowered number of nerve endings and, therefore, less physical enjoyment during sex, I made the connection myself. 
 
Take just a moment and let this idea sink into your mind. 
 
- FGM = done for cosmetic purposes, has no medical advantages, and sometimes done to reduce a woman's enjoyment of sexual activity.
- Circumcision = done for cosmetic purposes, sometimes done for religious purposes, has no medical advantages, and results in reduced enjoyment of sexual activity.
 
These two issues are the same, yet in our culture we fight *against* FGM and we continue to circumcise our boys. How's that for a double-standard? 
 
That information alone was enough to make me change my mind about circumcision. I don't want to take a part of my boy's genitals without his permission. I don't want to cause him pain as a tiny infant for aesthetic purposes. I don't want to take part of his body without his permission. I don't want to limit his sexual enjoyment later in life for a ritual within a religion of which I do not subscribe. My mind is made up. 
 
But now as I learn more and more information about the topic, I'm becoming more passionate about it. Not only is circumcision not necessary and not medically helpful, but it can be dangerous as well. I was a bit skeptical when I found out this information. How can a circumcision, a tiny cut, result in the death of an infant? More so - if it's such a dangerous practice, why haven't we heard about this before?
Why is circumcision potentially dangerous? If just one ounce of blood is lost, a baby will critically hemorrhage and result in hypovolemic shock and death. Once ounce. If 2.3 ounces are lost, death is imminent. 
 
I know that there are some out there who don't understand how little fluid is one ounce, much less 2.3. Just to give you an example, one fluid ounce is equal to two tablespoons of fluid. That means that after losing roughly four and a half tablespoons of blood, your infant can be gone. Why am I trying to emphasize that so much? Because the penis is an extremely vascular area and one can reach the conclusion that if the knife slips, much bleeding can occur. 
 
At that point I was becoming less skeptical, but I still wondered why we have yet to hear about this problem if it is such a potential problem. As it stands, hospitals are not required to report deaths caused by circumcision, so a newly-circumcised infant's death is often incorrectly entered as SIDS, heart-failure, or seizure. How *can* we know as a people that circumcisions are harmful if they are subject to such a huge misnomer? 
 
Here's a bigger shocker: while choking is cited as the number one cause for death in infants, the number of deaths resulting from circumcisions each year is actually higher. Even if that were not the case, do we really want to consider the fact that something unnecessary (circumcision) is causing death in infants *at all*, much less that it's a higher number than something occurring (eating) which is necessary for survival?
What I'm attempting to say here is that I thought it bad enough that circumcision is an invasive procedure that we do to our boys without their permission . . . it's even worse to know that deaths could be prevented by skipping the unnecessary procedure.
 
I know that we humans tend to be creatures of habit. I realize that for generations the majority of the residents of the USofA have been cut. And I know that there are some parents getting their children circumcised simply because they want their little boy to "look like Daddy".
Would that be the case if we all knew the dangers associated with it? And if we all realized that genital mutilation is genital mutilation - regardless of whether it occurs on female or male genitalia?

***Note: edits made 10/08/10 to strike through previous statement because my source of information was de-bunked. Woohoo!

Three Little Birds - Bob Marley

This is my favorite song to sing to Tori while she's falling asleep. Check out the lyrics:

"Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou:")

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!"

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. Don't worry!"
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing" - I won't worry!
"'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right" - I won't worry!
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, oh no!
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

The No-Cry Sleep Solution

So what is the solution to sleep issues?

Since I'm not going the direction of the Cry It Out method, I had to do some research and find a better way to help Tori sleep away from Mama.

In all honesty, if it was just up to me, Tori and I would co-sleep until she was ready to find her own big-girl bed and sleep in it. (Yes, I understand that kids sometimes continue finding their ways back into their parents' bed well after 7 and 8 years old . . . but that's a side-effect I'd happily subscribe to. Unfortunately, I can't continue co-sleeping with Tori simply because it isn't the safest option any more. Since Tori gained mobility, I'm worried she's going to crawl (or walk!) her way off our bed. Regretfully, it is time to get Tori to sleep in her crib.

One book has been highly recommended to me time and time again. It is the "No Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. The author lists gentle ways of parenting your children to get them to fit into a better (or better for you) way of sleeping. I spent some time on her website and found extremely helpful FAQs. I didn't see the answer I was looking for in particular, so I emailed a suggestion for a question on the website. Within a couple of days, lo and behold, the author actually emailed me back to answer my question. Moreover, she included excerpts from the latest version (read: unpublished) of her books that would help me with our situation.

Seriously. That has to be the best customer service I've ever received from an author - and you'd better bet that her willingness to assist me with my issue, even when I had yet to buy her book, is going to ensure that I purchase her books to help raise Tori in a loving, gentle way.

Here's a great big thank you to Elizabeth Pantley - please visit her site. I'm sure that you'll likely find some information there that will help you with your little one, as well.

We're Not about to Cry It Out!

You’ll have to pardon my lackadaisical ways. If I were a better reporter I would have gathered all my sources, cited them, maybe even added little footnotes to the end of my blog. Unfortunately for you, you’ll just have to trust that I did a lot of research and reading before making this decision.

My arguments are these:
• When one leaves their little one to cry alone their bodies are quickly filled with hormones (stress hormone, cortisol, and with adrenaline). When these hormones continually fill the baby’s under-developed brain tissue, nerves inside the baby’s brain will not form their usual connections with other nerves and will deteriorate instead. What that translates to is permanent structural and functional change in regions of the brain.
• Children left to cry were found ten times more likely to have ADHD, show poor school performance, and display antisocial behavior.
• Infants that cried for long periods of time in the first three months of their lives showed IQ scores nine points lower than their peers at 5 years of age. Their fine motor development was also not as good as their peers who had not experienced prolonged crying. Prolonged crying in infants also resulted in increased blood pressure in the brain and decreased brain oxygenation.
• Extended periods of crying can lead to a child vomiting and, without an adult nearby to help the child, may lead to that child dying of suffocation.

To be fair, I must note here that it is unclear whether such damage is caused by allowing your child to cry it out for sleep training or if the damage is only caused by extensive crying caused by abuse and neglect.

What *is* clear is that the way a parent responds to his or her child shapes the child’s brain, particularly the areas that control the child’s emotional well-being and ability for attachment. A parent is a child’s safe haven from the world while he or she is learning his or her way around that world.

That was the scientific part of my argument. The next part of my argument stems purely from the emotional (and sometimes irrational) part of me.

I can’t help but think of this scenario: if I was two feet tall, depended entirely on another human being for every.single.need I have from feeding myself to cleaning myself, and my only form of communication is crying, I would likely want attention at night when I’m suddenly left alone. What if something happened? What if I needed something? I would probably be crying for someone to come see me as well.

Now take this a step further . . . At two feet tall I would just barely be grasping the concept of object permanence. And – if I do understand object permanence and I know my mom will be back to get me, exactly why has she not come to get me yet? If I’m crying because I’m alone and scared and just want company and no one comes to get me I’m going to feel abandoned. It wouldn’t be long before I would distrust my mother because I would stop expecting her to come to me when I needed her. My mom may think my reasons for wanting her with me are silly, but I sure don’t – I take those emotions seriously. And yes – I may eventually stop crying, but it won’t be because I’ve been able to reason that everything is ok. I will eventually stop crying because I give up and realize that no matter how much I cry, Mama’s not coming back.

The thought of Tori stopping her crying, in exhaustion, because she’s realized her mother won’t always be there for her makes my heart drop. I can’t do that to her. I want her to understand that as long as I can be, I will always be there for her, no matter what she needs.

Crying it out does not teach my daughter the lesson I want her to learn.

Besides, she’ll only be a little girl for a little while. This is a time I want to cherish.

Let me tell you why I adore my daughter.

At ten-and-a-half months old Miss Tori amazes me every day.



She's all over the place. Since she learned to crawl about a month ago she's been unstoppable. The baby gates hold her in place, but just barely. She powers through any form of baracade that her daddy and I try to make. Stack of pillows? Ha! She's through it. Using her Jeep as a baracade? Ha! She crawls under it. Even the two-parent-human-style-baracade fails sometimes. Since this little one got mobile, she's realizes she has places to go.



She also knows she has plenty to say. Her range of vocalizations and noises is all over the place. This little girl makes me smile more than I ever have simply by discovering a new sound or jarble of words she can make. When she gets wound up she doesn't stop jabbering! What's adorable is that we think she might be saying "Mamamamamamamama" at this point, but I think I'm more impressed that yesterday she started rhyming words with "duck". I'm not sure if she fully intended to say duck, either - it's hard for me to tell at this stage if she's just making noises or if she's starting to try and say something. If she is, "Dada" won't be far behind.



Her little laugh is incredibly sweet. Her daddy and I love to make her laugh and giggle. Lately she's been squealing a little higher and quite a bit louder - and we love it. She loves being chased while she's crawling around - she'll turn around, see us behind her, giggle and squeak, and then take off again.

She's started nuzzling us. From our lap or from her arms, she'll just bow her head toward ours or toward our chests and lean it against us. Each time she does Josh and I melt. I think it's as close as she can get to hugging us right now. Like Josh said, it's awesome that she's got some way to show us affection at this point.

She tries new foods like a champ and we haven't seen her turn down anything to eat yet! I love it when Tori shares my sandwich with me while I'm home on lunch. It's fantastic to be able to get that time with her in the middle of the day. Tori is always finding new ways of being too cute for her own good, and spending my lunch with her allows me to recharge my batteries in the middle of my lunch day.

This afternoon when I came home she was napping. By the time I'd made my sandwich she had woken up. I took her from Josh and brought her to my lap. She looked up at me, smiled sweetly, and then laid her head on my chest. Adorable! We gave her a teething biscuit and she started a game she's picked up in the last week or so. She'll take a bite, then give it to Daddy. He'll thank her for it, give it back to her, and then she'll hold it to my mouth to take a bite - so I pretend to munch on it until she takes it back and takes a bite. She continues to share her biscuit with us until she's bored with it.

I could already tell as a baby she is going to be a sweet girl - now as the days continue she's just proving that more and more. I couldn't be more proud of this sweet, smart, and beautiful wonder!

Unschooling?

I believe I'm shaping up to be a sort of non-traditional mom. I always thought I'd be highly authoritarian and quite strict, but now that it's come down to it I'm viewing things differently. I'm breastfeeding (which is traditional but not the norm these days), I've dabbled with cloth diapers, Tori and I co-sleep (how much longer is the question), and I've considered home-schooling my daughter.

Recently I've heard about unschooling. What in the world is unschooling?

Apparently unschooling is an education technique whereby your child leads his or her own learning by his or her interests. You don't go to a school building and read text books and participate in all-day classes with your peers. Instead, you teach lessons using normal, everyday situations - and that is your child's education. Go to the park and learn about the different types of trees there. Go to the grocery store and get a lesson in accounting, math, and organizational skills.

I admit, even as a more non-traditional mom, I'm a little put-off by this method. Why?

I was unschooled. (GASP!) That's right - an 80s child was unschooled. But that was *in addition* to going to school as well!

I believe that all children should be unschooled all the time, but I believe they need structure in their lesson plans as well. At school I learned the more technical skills like advanced math and sciences. At home I learned about life skills. I don't believe that education should stop when a child walks in the door to his home after school. It should continue until he goes to bed, then pick up when he wakes up for school the next day.

The last time I checked it didn't need a special name, either - it was simply known as PARENTING.

Circus Act

I've always considered myself a strong person. I've been proud of how much I have tolerated and still managed to come out on top. (Well, not necessarily on top - but I've been able to keep my head relatively above water and make the most of any situation.) Part of the reason I never wanted to be a mother before I conceived Tori was that I knew I'd be responsible for another little human being and I was sure that would push me past my limit.

When Josh and I conceived Tori, I was petrified. Instantly. Life as I knew it was over. It was time to shed my old skin and re-emerge as someone completely different - as a mom. Sure, I had almost 10 months to prepare, but 10 months is nothing after you've been concerned with sustaining only yourself for 27 years before that.

I read everything I had time to read about motherhood. I took a childbirth class. I took three breastfeeding classes. Did I feel more prepared? Nope. I felt more terrified. I had days when I wondered, "How will I do this?" Some days I thought, "What was I thinking?" On others I simply felt amazed at what was going on within my body. Pregnancy is truly a miraculous experience. Over time I became more and more nervous about labor and delivery.

When the morning of August 2nd came and my water broke, I busied myself with laundry while Josh got his last couple hours of sleep as a non-parent. I spoke nervously to my tummy. "Do I get to meet you today, little one?" I asked as I stood in front of the washing machine and rubbed my bump tentatively. Tori didn't answer me but my heart fluttered. As it turns out, I didn't get to meet her that day but I did the next - August 3rd at 12:07 a.m., after 17 hours and 37 minutes of easy labor. Then life truly changed.

Suddenly I was no longer April - daughter, sister, college graduate, employee, wife. Suddenly I became a circus act - a juggler. I became all the things listed above, plus mom.

Now instead of going to work, paying bills, coming home, spending time with the husband, and going to bed - I'm getting up, taking care of Tori, being "moo-mie" (making milk), going to work, paying bills, making doctors' appointments, being moo-mie again, running errands, paying bills, coming home from work, and then again being moo-mie, taking care of Tori, orchestrating baths and showers, grabbing a quick bite to eat, and then settling to bed with my favorite snuggle-bug.

I sure am busy . . . but life is wonderful.

Adventures in Mommyhood

I was told that I would develop tunnel vision for my little girl once she was born. I was told I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. I was told that my priorities would change greatly just as soon as she came into the world. I was told that I would never experience a love quite as deeply as that love for my child. I can’t say that I was skeptical, I understood that there was no greater love than that between a mother and her child, but I also didn’t think that my experience would be the same. Even throughout my pregnancy I feared the true emotions I would have once she arrived.

Cue the grand entrance of Miss T . . .

Everyone was right. This little girl quickly became the light of my life.

There were, however, things that no one told me.

No one told me I would smile when I found poo on my hands. No one told me that I could survive for months on end with very broken sleep because her whimper or grunt or cry would give me the energy I needed. No one told me that my heart would almost burst with love when she looked up at me, nipple still in her mouth, and grinned a huge grin.

This little girl, at just under two feet tall, has me in the palm of her hand. And I couldn’t be happier.

Bloggity Blog Blog

Hi there. Preggo here. I know I had dropped off the face of the earth for a while, and I do apologize for that. I think that all I have to say about that is that I’ve had a lot of adjustments to make!

I think the last update that I made was catching up everyone on my new job. (I can’t really remember right now, though, because that’s been forever ago and I’m typing this from work.) Maybe it was the 25 More Reasons for You to Question My Sanity blog. I’m not really certain – “pregnancy brain” has taken me over in a big way. I’m lucky to be able to remember my own name on some days. Most of my conversations consist of “uh . . . well. . . er. . . the thing with the stuff . . .” J has been a fantastic translator most of the time, though I still stump him sometimes.

Back to the point, work is going well. I’ve gotten into the swing of things here and I’m doing relatively well. So far I haven’t made the bossman angry, only slightly perturbed. (Trust me, you know when he’s angry.) For those of you who don’t know (or in case I really didn’t tell you about my job), I’m the receptionist for an engineering firm who is working to bring fiber optic cable to rural areas of the U.S. That’s only 1/10^th of my job, however. My largest function is customer service specialist. Ideally I’m supposed to call customers when construction crews have repaired their lawns and make sure they’re happy with the work. Realistically I’m elevated customer support, tracking the complaints, relaying them to the appropriate individuals on the correct projects, and then conferring with those individuals if I hear that the work has not been completed to their satisfaction. I hear some relatively interesting stories. The folks I work with are all pretty cool which is difficult to accomplish in a company of 25+ people. Did I mention that the office is beautiful? It really is.

Annnnd more importantly, everyone has been really helpful and really supportive, especially after finding out that I have a little one expected to be on the way less than seven months after being hired!

Since I got past the morning sickness, I’ve been doing pretty well. I’ve been gaining enough weight but not too much and my blood pressure and circulation have stayed pretty good. I got a scare last week when they gave me a one-hour glucose tolerance test and I failed it with a 168 (140 is high and my personal norm is 100). I had to go back and have a three-hour glucose tolerance test which was absolute hell . . . and apparently I just barely made it through that one by the skin of my teeth. That’s a great warning, though – so I know now that I should be a bit more careful and a bit more selective in what I’m eating, then I should be kosher. Please no gestational diabetes for me!

Most of the time I’m just plain sleepy. Or hungry. At any moment I’m happy to accept a sammich or a nap, but both would be better. The little one has been flipping and turning like crazy. She’s alive in there! It’s still exciting and completely freaky to think about. My poor belly button has ceased to exist. But yay for me, NO STRETCH MARKS yet! My goddess tattoo has been hanging in there too, which I’m frankly surprised and oh-so-excited to see. I was expecting her arms to be reaching to Mars by now.

J and I have gotten her room cleaned up and I’m starting to arrange stuff. My brother-in-law floored us with a ton of gifts (he pretty much cleared my original Target registry plus a few things). I can’t thank him enough . . . everything from a pack n play to a bouncer to a diaper genie and a ton of other handy stuff. My mother in law went for the matching high chair and stroller/car seat combination for us. Thankfully that was the ice-breaker that J needed and he’s agreed to let me send a baby shower invitation to her, so hopefully we’ll be opening the lines of communication with her again. A lot of stuff happened . . . but it’s been a long time, we’ve all had time to think, and it’s time to move on. For those of you who are long distance, if you’d like to see our registries, both are under my name at Target and Wal-Mart.

Of course, emotionally I’ve been all over the place. I’m excited but scared to death. I haven’t envisioned myself a parent for a long, long time – quite the opposite, actually. So when someone changed my plans FOR me, it threw me for quite a loop. There are all the standard parent anxieties too, like “will I screw her up too badly?” but I’m sure that those never go away. For that matter, I’m sure that if I didn’t have those anxieties, then all of you should be seriously concerned. J is THRILLED. He’s literally bouncing off the walls. And he’s been so supportive and helpful. I have absolutely nothing but fantastic things to say about the way he’s adjusting to being a more attentive husband, and I already know he’s going to be an amazing father.

Father’s Day gift ideas anyone?

Well, before this gets any longer . . .

I can’t wait to meet our daughter!

I have news!

You might want to sit down for this one. Some of you have already found out in dealing with me during about the last month and a half, but I wanted to keep this a secret until things were more sure.

We would have never expected it in about a thousand years, but . . . I'm pregnant. =)

As of Sunday(ish), I'll be 12 weeks along. My due date is (gasp!) August 7th. I'm a glutton for punishment to be most pregnant during the hottest months of the year, yeah?

J and I are thrilled. He's wanted kids for a long time, I just haven't been ready. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I'm ready now, but I think that may be a good thing. I'm sure over-confidence can't be great in parenting.

The first few weeks after I found out, I was terribly sick, and couldn't go much of anywhere. J took very good care of me - ran the errands, did the mundane, cooked for me whenever I *thought* I could eat. Thankfully I'm pulling out of that, and with vitamins, right diet, and anti-nausea medicine, I'm managing my symptoms much better.

At this point I'm sleeping ALL the time. And I'm enjoying it. =)

Well there you go . . . I suppose that's all I'll write for now so that you can have a chance to get over the shock value. HA!