I love my dog but some days he can drive me positively mad. Chip is a big lumbering hunk of a beast who basically resembles a barrel with legs. We got him from Animal Compassion Network and, according to them, his mother was at least part border collie and only 40 lbs. When I was looking him over the Animal Lover People told me that he would only grow to "about 40 lbs." Idiot I was, I didn't realize that the darling pup was likely already 40 lbs. with miles yet to go.
Chip has been a fabulous dog. Certainly the best dog we've ever had. Quite possibly the best dog on the planet. That is until it comes to walkies. For several years he was a good boy. He would poop in the woods and come when we called and say "please" and "thank you" (well, not really with words, anyway). He would stay in the vicinity of our yard, with no fence, and we could walk him off the leash for the most part. Good boy that he was, he was in voice command maybe 98% of the time with Matt and oh, maybe 80% of the time with me.
But there were times when he was a goner. Deaf as a doornail. That was when there was the smell of some critter about. It was like he could only have a couple of senses going at the same time so if his nose turned on, his ears turned off and he was all alone in the world. Just him and his little precious bunny, oh, so scrumptious.
Then one day he caught sight of a cat. Not any cat but the cat of an elderly couple on the next street. He took off much faster than I thought was physically possible, given his heft, and shut his ears to the hand that feeds him. By the time I got to the scene of the crime he was spinning himself in circles with poor, evil Fluffy affixed to his torso, resisting the pull of the centrifugal force by the sheer power of her claws. When it was all said and done, the cat was fine except for a bruised ego but refused to eat for days, necessitating two trips to the vet. A slightly nasty and condescending letter from her owner and $152 pet bill later, Chip was on a leash.
So, I had to walk the boy on the leash. A pain, of course, but he was emotionally traumatized and would refuse to walk that direction in the neighborhood anyway. So I took to going farther afield and he seemed happy enough until the day he got the hankering for chicken.
Remember that we had no fenced in yard for this pup. A short distance through some woods is an illegally placed camper type residential option whose occupants are not the most savory characters on the planet. One fall day I was busy with the leaves when Chip disappeared for a while. Later we got a visit from one of the characters. I don't think it was the one commonly referred to as "Wild Bill," but I could be wrong. According to him, Chip had eaten his chickens. Or at least killed them. Or maybe he was attempting to greet them up close and personal and all and was a bit too vigorous in his hospitality. I don't know, but they swore up and down Chip was the culprit and their precious chickens were gone.
Not wanting to start a feud with our neighbors, illegal as they were, Matt offered to pay them for the chickens. "Them's fightin' chickens!" Say, what? Mr. Take You For All You're Worth proceeded to tell us that these were prize chickens, worth $100 a piece. Knowing that we were being taken but not wanting to fight over something like poultry when there may one day be bigger fish (or chicken) to fry (there had been an easement dispute with the property owner), Matt coughed over the money in a show of good will all the while being told that if Chip came over there again they would feel free to shoot him. And that's when we fenced in the yard.
Back to my initial point. I love my dog but he drives me crazy. Turns out he's considerably larger than a Border Collie, perhaps part St. Bernard, and, with the onset of middle age and the confinement that comes from leash walking and fence-in living, he's grown into quite the portly fellow. The vet wants him to lose 15 lbs. but Chip isn't getting with the program. When I walk him I'm DRAGGING the dog up hill, all the while his collar is up around his ears, the only thing keeping it from coming off is the roll of fat that comes with it. It's like ratcheting up the tension on an exercise bike, only I'm the one getting the exercise and he is ambling along looking positively miserable.
Maybe one day I'll have success with the Doggie Spa and Fitness Center and he will have energy again. But I'm not banking on it. Meanwhile, he is fairly self contained and happy, unless he's walking.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
To Blog Or Not To Blog
It seems like at least five times a day somebody on Facebook is linking to somebody's else's blog post. Every so often I'll go in and read these posts and I almost always come away feeling like "why bother?" Why should I bother blogging when there are women out there who are so much wiser or funnier or more insightful and much better writers. I know, this isn't a contest and I am the last person on the planet to want to compete. I hate competition with a passion, perhaps from my years of always coming in last, but anyway, I sometimes wonder if it is worth the effort.
These blogger women seem so young and beautiful and talented and they all have like a gazillion kids and homeschool and have big gardens (organic, of course) and bake their own bread and, quite possibly, even grind their own wheat. They cook and love to do it and post recipes. They tell stories of great spiritual insights gained when conversing theology with a 4 year-old in a beautiful hand-smocked dress. They seem to have animals, too. They are all so perky, with their latte infused humor and Pinterest sense of style. Their children are gorgeous chore-loving cherubs, their husbands handsome and strapping, and their hormones mostly intact. Why write when there is already so much better stuff out there?
I do have things that come to mind. And friends keep encouraging me to write. But there are so many limitations. Already the hapless victims of my Facebook charades, two of my offspring do not want to be mentioned in any way, shape or form in a Facebook status, much less an emotion-laden blog. I must respect that. I must respect them. They did not sign up to have their life on cyber display, even if only 68 people ever view that particular post. I could go into greater detail with the struggles I had growing up but there I must tiptoe along a fine line between honesty and honoring the parents that brought me into this world. It's just so much more complicated than I thought it would be.
Life is messy. That is what I know. And, from what I hear, you are to write what you know. At least that's how it seems to work best for most people. But how do I write about messy and who on earth would want to read it? I am totally stumped.
These blogger women seem so young and beautiful and talented and they all have like a gazillion kids and homeschool and have big gardens (organic, of course) and bake their own bread and, quite possibly, even grind their own wheat. They cook and love to do it and post recipes. They tell stories of great spiritual insights gained when conversing theology with a 4 year-old in a beautiful hand-smocked dress. They seem to have animals, too. They are all so perky, with their latte infused humor and Pinterest sense of style. Their children are gorgeous chore-loving cherubs, their husbands handsome and strapping, and their hormones mostly intact. Why write when there is already so much better stuff out there?
I do have things that come to mind. And friends keep encouraging me to write. But there are so many limitations. Already the hapless victims of my Facebook charades, two of my offspring do not want to be mentioned in any way, shape or form in a Facebook status, much less an emotion-laden blog. I must respect that. I must respect them. They did not sign up to have their life on cyber display, even if only 68 people ever view that particular post. I could go into greater detail with the struggles I had growing up but there I must tiptoe along a fine line between honesty and honoring the parents that brought me into this world. It's just so much more complicated than I thought it would be.
Life is messy. That is what I know. And, from what I hear, you are to write what you know. At least that's how it seems to work best for most people. But how do I write about messy and who on earth would want to read it? I am totally stumped.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Chore Time
Kids around the world do chores. Mothers across this great and mighty land of ours organize their offspring and mobilize their activities via chore charts. Some charts are simple with stars or check marks. Others are more sophisticated. And yet others resemble the inner workings of a top secret nuclear power plant. My chore chart isn't like any of these because, well... because I don't have one.
Chores is one aspect of motherhood I suck at. One of many, but one that causes me no end of grief and gnashing of teeth. Why has getting my children to do chores always been so darn hard for me? It seems like every mother on the planet succeeds in this area, producing highly competent children who are paragons of responsible citizenship, children who could run a small republic, if need be, before the onset of puberty.
It wasn't for lack of trying, of course, but by the time I got around to the chore ideas, other families were far, far ahead. I once had a friend call me and ask if I had any ideas for how to get her 3 year-old son to make up his bed neatly. NEATLY. My three year-olds were hardly even potty trained, much less pulling up and smoothing out bed linens. This is just an example. The problem was, when it came to chores, I was out of my league.
You see, I didn't grow up with chores. We had a maid, Rose (for more info on that see my February blog post on this dear lady). Rose pretty much did everything. I don't remember anything that I HAD to do. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, I just was never told to. On top of that, I was a pathetically compliant kid, so anything you told me to do I would have done with no back talk and a lot of guilt that I wasn't doing it well enough (such is my life....sigh). So I had no modeling on how to run an army of short, short workers.
Add to that the fact that I have absolutely NO managerial skills. Now, why on earth a woman with no intimidation value, managerial skills, or backbone intentionally brought forth four children in six years is beyond me. But have them I did. I just didn't know what to do with them once they were here. Still don't.
I bought the charts with the stickers and the stars and wrote their names and then was stumped. I couldn't even divvy up the work to be done. What if it wasn't even? What if one was harder than the other? What would be the consequences? You mean I'm gonna have to remember to remind them? And then I'll have to remember to enforce it? And then I'll have to remember to fork over consequences for chores left undone? Sheesh! And what if it needs to be done and they are not home. What then? That's a lot of work. My brain short circuited and fried itself, nice and crispy.
Meanwhile, other moms were teaching their kids to clean and vacuum and sweep and cook and sew and plant gardens and grocery shop and milk cows and feed chicks and roof the house (ok, maybe not that, but you get the picture). I had no idea how to do half of that stuff myself, much less teach my kids to do it.
I threw out the chore charts in exasperation and gave up. Eventually we got our kids to do their own laundry by the time they were 16. And that is about where it stands. My house is not run like a well-oiled machine. It's messy. There are rings in the toilets sometimes. Bath towels seem most at home on the bedroom floor. Dishes stack up beside beds.
I worry that my lack of chore training will hurt them in life. That somehow they will move into adulthood handicapped because they never had to unload the dishwasher on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays or vacuum the living room every day at 5 p.m. or get up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows before walking 3 miles to the school bus.
I would imagine that everybody that reads this will rush to defend chores and, frankly, I don't blame them. I am in no way saying they are wrong. I am just saying that I must be the only person on the planet that has really and truly failed in this area of motherhood.
It is what it is. I love my children anyway. God gave them to me anyway. And his grace is sufficient even for this.
Chores is one aspect of motherhood I suck at. One of many, but one that causes me no end of grief and gnashing of teeth. Why has getting my children to do chores always been so darn hard for me? It seems like every mother on the planet succeeds in this area, producing highly competent children who are paragons of responsible citizenship, children who could run a small republic, if need be, before the onset of puberty.
It wasn't for lack of trying, of course, but by the time I got around to the chore ideas, other families were far, far ahead. I once had a friend call me and ask if I had any ideas for how to get her 3 year-old son to make up his bed neatly. NEATLY. My three year-olds were hardly even potty trained, much less pulling up and smoothing out bed linens. This is just an example. The problem was, when it came to chores, I was out of my league.
You see, I didn't grow up with chores. We had a maid, Rose (for more info on that see my February blog post on this dear lady). Rose pretty much did everything. I don't remember anything that I HAD to do. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, I just was never told to. On top of that, I was a pathetically compliant kid, so anything you told me to do I would have done with no back talk and a lot of guilt that I wasn't doing it well enough (such is my life....sigh). So I had no modeling on how to run an army of short, short workers.
Add to that the fact that I have absolutely NO managerial skills. Now, why on earth a woman with no intimidation value, managerial skills, or backbone intentionally brought forth four children in six years is beyond me. But have them I did. I just didn't know what to do with them once they were here. Still don't.
I bought the charts with the stickers and the stars and wrote their names and then was stumped. I couldn't even divvy up the work to be done. What if it wasn't even? What if one was harder than the other? What would be the consequences? You mean I'm gonna have to remember to remind them? And then I'll have to remember to enforce it? And then I'll have to remember to fork over consequences for chores left undone? Sheesh! And what if it needs to be done and they are not home. What then? That's a lot of work. My brain short circuited and fried itself, nice and crispy.
Meanwhile, other moms were teaching their kids to clean and vacuum and sweep and cook and sew and plant gardens and grocery shop and milk cows and feed chicks and roof the house (ok, maybe not that, but you get the picture). I had no idea how to do half of that stuff myself, much less teach my kids to do it.
I threw out the chore charts in exasperation and gave up. Eventually we got our kids to do their own laundry by the time they were 16. And that is about where it stands. My house is not run like a well-oiled machine. It's messy. There are rings in the toilets sometimes. Bath towels seem most at home on the bedroom floor. Dishes stack up beside beds.
I worry that my lack of chore training will hurt them in life. That somehow they will move into adulthood handicapped because they never had to unload the dishwasher on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays or vacuum the living room every day at 5 p.m. or get up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows before walking 3 miles to the school bus.
I would imagine that everybody that reads this will rush to defend chores and, frankly, I don't blame them. I am in no way saying they are wrong. I am just saying that I must be the only person on the planet that has really and truly failed in this area of motherhood.
It is what it is. I love my children anyway. God gave them to me anyway. And his grace is sufficient even for this.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Reliable Cog
Have you ever noticed that so many scholarships and awards out there are for people with leadership potential? When my oldest was applying to college, we were struck by this. The most coveted scholarship, the one with the most financial outlay, was for those superstars with leadership skills. Even with the lesser scholarships, the goal seemed to be to find those students with that extra "something" that set them apart from the crowd and gave them a leg up.
Now there is nothing wrong with being a leader. Heaven knows we need them. Good ones. Strong ones. Wise ones. But there is a reason for the phrase "too many chiefs and not enough Indians." We can't ALL be leaders. We can't all be stars. Somebody has got to follow. Somebody must set up and take down. Somebody must organize. Somebody must direct. Have you ever noticed at the end of a movie all those names. Line upon line of names doing jobs that make no sense to us. But they were all part of the production that became the movie. We only recognize the stars. But they never could have made the production without the hundreds of people behind the scenes.
Most of life needs a few leaders and a lot of reliable cogs. We need those who have, in our estimation, bit parts and small jobs. Jobs that go unappreciated until they aren't done. Parts that are unnoticed until they break down. A bad seal caused the Challenger explosion in 1986. A bit part. Easy to overlook. But the link between life and death.
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul talks about the Body of Christ being like a real body. We each have different parts but serve one body. And it is sometimes those lesser parts of the body that serve such an important purpose. Shortly after Matt and I were married I had an accident that included cabbage, a brand new really, really sharp knife, and lots of blood. The end result was that I lost an entire fingernail. Never before had I given a fingernail any thought at all, except when my oldest sister laughed at my nails because they grew in square.
Over the course of the next few weeks, as I eagerly awaited my new nail to grow in, I was shocked and pained (quite literally) to find out just how important the fingernail actually is. I think there may be no place on the human body as tender as the naked nail bed. The naked nail bed of the index finger finds just about anything first. Scissors, ends of coat hangers, door frames, razor blades, bricks. Even something as soft as a pillow can inflict pain on something so tender. So it is with us. Some of us are heads. Some of us are hearts. Some of us are feet. But some of us are fingernails. And the body will really hurt without us.
One day my husband and I, if we are ever wealthy enough, will start a scholarship, a Reliable Cog scholarship, for the student who is conscientious and responsible and hardworking, but lacks the bells and whistles of the great leaders and superstars of the world. Because reliable cogs are important, too.
Now there is nothing wrong with being a leader. Heaven knows we need them. Good ones. Strong ones. Wise ones. But there is a reason for the phrase "too many chiefs and not enough Indians." We can't ALL be leaders. We can't all be stars. Somebody has got to follow. Somebody must set up and take down. Somebody must organize. Somebody must direct. Have you ever noticed at the end of a movie all those names. Line upon line of names doing jobs that make no sense to us. But they were all part of the production that became the movie. We only recognize the stars. But they never could have made the production without the hundreds of people behind the scenes.
Most of life needs a few leaders and a lot of reliable cogs. We need those who have, in our estimation, bit parts and small jobs. Jobs that go unappreciated until they aren't done. Parts that are unnoticed until they break down. A bad seal caused the Challenger explosion in 1986. A bit part. Easy to overlook. But the link between life and death.
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul talks about the Body of Christ being like a real body. We each have different parts but serve one body. And it is sometimes those lesser parts of the body that serve such an important purpose. Shortly after Matt and I were married I had an accident that included cabbage, a brand new really, really sharp knife, and lots of blood. The end result was that I lost an entire fingernail. Never before had I given a fingernail any thought at all, except when my oldest sister laughed at my nails because they grew in square.
Over the course of the next few weeks, as I eagerly awaited my new nail to grow in, I was shocked and pained (quite literally) to find out just how important the fingernail actually is. I think there may be no place on the human body as tender as the naked nail bed. The naked nail bed of the index finger finds just about anything first. Scissors, ends of coat hangers, door frames, razor blades, bricks. Even something as soft as a pillow can inflict pain on something so tender. So it is with us. Some of us are heads. Some of us are hearts. Some of us are feet. But some of us are fingernails. And the body will really hurt without us.
One day my husband and I, if we are ever wealthy enough, will start a scholarship, a Reliable Cog scholarship, for the student who is conscientious and responsible and hardworking, but lacks the bells and whistles of the great leaders and superstars of the world. Because reliable cogs are important, too.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Envy Sucks
My sister-in-law came to visit and brought with her Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung's book Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies. In describing the subject matter, my sis-in-law flipped to the first vice in the list, envy, and began to read aloud. Never before had I heard a more accurate description of much that ails me. I was so engrossed that she left the book in my hands and went back to Missouri empty-handed.
Based on the description, envy has always been my vice of choice. It stems from a sense of powerlessness and inferiority that sees anyone else's good attributes as a threat to one's own worth. It's mode of operation is by comparison. And that I can do on an Olympic scale.
I think most females are rather good at comparing. We do this from an early age, comparing looks, friends, popularity. Then boyfriends. Some girls are high strung and driven and compare grades (I never did that until I was 47, after I had mastered comparing in all other venues). Then we have houses and babies. Or babies and houses, depending on how you order things, and the comparing moves from an amateur to a professional level. How many of us have visited a neat and tidy home of a mother of 5 and gone back to our own cribs of chaos with the dog hair and the sticky counter tops and the mountains of laundry and the smell of rotting broccoli coming from... from... somewhere and felt terribly inferior by comparison? Even James Dobson has said that the worst thing that one mother can do to another is to clean up before the other mother comes over for a visit. The mighty Dr. Dobson knows that we will compare with one another. It's what we do.
Envy has always been a huge and driving force in my life. From my earliest years when I was painstakingly shy, to when I was so aware of another's popularity or beauty, to the years as an awkward, hormonal teen with a grill of metal in my mouth and the coordination of a herd of cattle. Everyone else was pretty. Everyone else was popular. Others got into the good clubs. Others got elected positions. I "trailed and failed" at pretty much everything. Envy went deeper.
College brought much of the same, with possibly the inklings of understanding that there was a God who created me. I was given respite for a few years as I made my way into adulthood and marriage. Then came motherhood and it was all over.
There is nothing... NOTHING... like becoming a mother to dig up every insecurity known to man... or woman. Motherhood is the comparison game on steroids. From pregnancy weight gain to birth stories to feeding choices to sleeping styles to schedules vs. non-schedules to discipline styles to education choices. It can be a wretched, wretched world, motherhood, and some are so very competent at it while others are so very pale in comparison.
I could go on and on with descriptions of my insecurities but I won't because the point is that, no matter what stage of life I'm in, I will find myself comparing myself with others and always, always come up lacking in some way. And envy, taken root and blossoming, produces a hideous fruit. I see that. I see that in myself. And I go to the Master Gardener and beg him to remove the weed that is choking the life out of me, choking out my ability to love others and embrace life because my eyes are on myself and not on the one who made me—for it is he who has made me.
The bottom line for the envious is how they stack up against others, because they measure their self-worth comparatively.
Based on the description, envy has always been my vice of choice. It stems from a sense of powerlessness and inferiority that sees anyone else's good attributes as a threat to one's own worth. It's mode of operation is by comparison. And that I can do on an Olympic scale.
I think most females are rather good at comparing. We do this from an early age, comparing looks, friends, popularity. Then boyfriends. Some girls are high strung and driven and compare grades (I never did that until I was 47, after I had mastered comparing in all other venues). Then we have houses and babies. Or babies and houses, depending on how you order things, and the comparing moves from an amateur to a professional level. How many of us have visited a neat and tidy home of a mother of 5 and gone back to our own cribs of chaos with the dog hair and the sticky counter tops and the mountains of laundry and the smell of rotting broccoli coming from... from... somewhere and felt terribly inferior by comparison? Even James Dobson has said that the worst thing that one mother can do to another is to clean up before the other mother comes over for a visit. The mighty Dr. Dobson knows that we will compare with one another. It's what we do.
Envy has always been a huge and driving force in my life. From my earliest years when I was painstakingly shy, to when I was so aware of another's popularity or beauty, to the years as an awkward, hormonal teen with a grill of metal in my mouth and the coordination of a herd of cattle. Everyone else was pretty. Everyone else was popular. Others got into the good clubs. Others got elected positions. I "trailed and failed" at pretty much everything. Envy went deeper.
College brought much of the same, with possibly the inklings of understanding that there was a God who created me. I was given respite for a few years as I made my way into adulthood and marriage. Then came motherhood and it was all over.
There is nothing... NOTHING... like becoming a mother to dig up every insecurity known to man... or woman. Motherhood is the comparison game on steroids. From pregnancy weight gain to birth stories to feeding choices to sleeping styles to schedules vs. non-schedules to discipline styles to education choices. It can be a wretched, wretched world, motherhood, and some are so very competent at it while others are so very pale in comparison.
I could go on and on with descriptions of my insecurities but I won't because the point is that, no matter what stage of life I'm in, I will find myself comparing myself with others and always, always come up lacking in some way. And envy, taken root and blossoming, produces a hideous fruit. I see that. I see that in myself. And I go to the Master Gardener and beg him to remove the weed that is choking the life out of me, choking out my ability to love others and embrace life because my eyes are on myself and not on the one who made me—for it is he who has made me.
Friday, April 20, 2012
I Don't Know Nothing 'Bout Birthin' No.....
I've always wondered about those ladies that give birth who never knew they were pregnant. My last four posts were about my own experiences and there is no way I wouldn't have known. The missed periods. The nausea. The barfing at the drop of a hat (or at the scent of bacon or the mention of pizza). The greenish tint to my face. The wobbling of the alien in my belly. The belly that slowly morphs into an overinflated yoga ball. It just seems uncanny to me that anybody could miss this. But people do.
After watching numerous episodes of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" on YouTube, I have picked up trends with these poor women who are completely clueless to the baby making factory at work inside their bellies. It seems that a number of them continued to have periods or had repeated negative pregnancy tests. Some had been told they were infertile. Others were on birth control. They attributed bodily changes to stress or gas or lifestyle changes. I can KIND OF see how this could happen. If you are a large woman, at least, and have never had a baby.
What I can't understand are the women who have been pregnant before and yet don't know they are pregnant again. Does nothing seem remotely familiar to them? That kicking was a baby last time but dancing gas bubbles this go round? I guess if this undetected pregnancy is so totally different from the other pregnancy, you could even rationalize that.
But this is what I don't get. In every single episode the woman begins to describe this awful pain and cramping, which we, the snickering audience, all know is labor. She usually ends up running to the bathroom and plopping the baby out on the floor (head first, of course) or, better yet, straight into the toilet. Sometimes it actually takes the baby squawking and doing backstroke to get the lady to even look down and come to grips with the fact that what she just pushed out was NOT a result of last night's adventures at La Cucaracha House of Beans.
How..... HOW does this not feel the least bit familiar? I can understand that if you haven't given birth there is no way, unless somebody informs you beforehand, to know that giving birth is the sensory equivalent of pushing a watermelon out a hole the size of a lemon. Or rather POOPING out a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon. Nobody prepared me for that one, either. (Come to think of it, our cat had her first litter of kittens in the litter box. One can only assume she went there awaiting a huge deposit and was met with quite a surprise....five of them.)
But if you've already given birth once, assuming it wasn't a caesarean, certainly some of this would ring a bell to you. Maybe? Perhaps these ladies opted for the epidural too soon first time around and had no clue what labor really feels like. I don't know. But that is another reason that I like natural childbirth. If you know what it feels like when you KNOW you're pregnant, you're better prepared next time, even if caught off guard.
After watching numerous episodes of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" on YouTube, I have picked up trends with these poor women who are completely clueless to the baby making factory at work inside their bellies. It seems that a number of them continued to have periods or had repeated negative pregnancy tests. Some had been told they were infertile. Others were on birth control. They attributed bodily changes to stress or gas or lifestyle changes. I can KIND OF see how this could happen. If you are a large woman, at least, and have never had a baby.
What I can't understand are the women who have been pregnant before and yet don't know they are pregnant again. Does nothing seem remotely familiar to them? That kicking was a baby last time but dancing gas bubbles this go round? I guess if this undetected pregnancy is so totally different from the other pregnancy, you could even rationalize that.
But this is what I don't get. In every single episode the woman begins to describe this awful pain and cramping, which we, the snickering audience, all know is labor. She usually ends up running to the bathroom and plopping the baby out on the floor (head first, of course) or, better yet, straight into the toilet. Sometimes it actually takes the baby squawking and doing backstroke to get the lady to even look down and come to grips with the fact that what she just pushed out was NOT a result of last night's adventures at La Cucaracha House of Beans.
How..... HOW does this not feel the least bit familiar? I can understand that if you haven't given birth there is no way, unless somebody informs you beforehand, to know that giving birth is the sensory equivalent of pushing a watermelon out a hole the size of a lemon. Or rather POOPING out a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon. Nobody prepared me for that one, either. (Come to think of it, our cat had her first litter of kittens in the litter box. One can only assume she went there awaiting a huge deposit and was met with quite a surprise....five of them.)
But if you've already given birth once, assuming it wasn't a caesarean, certainly some of this would ring a bell to you. Maybe? Perhaps these ladies opted for the epidural too soon first time around and had no clue what labor really feels like. I don't know. But that is another reason that I like natural childbirth. If you know what it feels like when you KNOW you're pregnant, you're better prepared next time, even if caught off guard.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Parenthood: Pregnancy and Chilbirth
Take #4
Much to the surprise of most everyone we knew, and to the chagrin of many of them, we actually conceived Baby #4 on purpose. At this point the other kids were 5, 3 and 1 and let's just say nobody ever viewed me as the most competent mother on the planet. One friend, upon hearing the news, actually came up and whispered "I'm sorry" to me, assuming that she was comforting a shocked and overwhelmed mother.
Shocked? No. Overwhelmed? Yes. But our thought was why not just go ahead and lump all the chaos together? They can all be teenagers at the same time. That will be fun. Right? RIGHT?
I was as sick as ever this time. Not necessarily throwing up but nauseated beyond belief. I could not cook. At all. If I cooked it and ate it I threw it up. At one point I lived on McDonald's cheeseburgers and orange drink. This was the summer of 1995 and Jars of Clay had just come out with their first album. We had the cassette tape and my husband played it over and over and over again, ad nauseum (quite literally), so that for years afterwords, every time I heard a song from that album, I could taste the McDonald's cheeseburger and the big orange drink and feel the wave of nausea wash over me.
When I found out I was pregnant, I knew that there was a possibility that this might be my last. I really wanted a good birth experience. I was frustrated by the way I was treated by the eye rolling, sarcasm oozing triage nurse when I went to the hospital with Baby #3 and I had had a very bad experience with the postpartum nurse after his birth. I had also struggled with pretty severe postpartum depression and didn't want any events that might make that worse. But mainly, I really, really wanted to give a home birth a try.
We interviewed our midwife and were pretty impressed when she said she had quit counting after she had delivered 2000 babies. She was a Certified Nurse Midwife, which appealed to my law abiding side (lay midwifery is considered a misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina), and brought along all sorts of important stuff like Pitocin and oxygen, which appealed to my cautious medical side. I was also more comfortable with the idea since we lived about 7 minutes from the hospital.
My only concern was that she lived in Mars Hill, about 20 minutes north of us, but regularly went to visit her sister over the mountain in Johnson City, TN. And this was February. One time I thought I might be in labor. She was in Johnson City and it was snowing on Sam's Gap, the highest part of the highway between the two cities. But that petered out.
Well, my due date (2/9) came and went and no baby. I had really thought that perhaps this one would come early like #1 and #3. I had even gone sledding and chased the garbage truck down the road, but to no avail. No labor. On Wednesday, February 14, she checked me and still not a lot was going on... maybe a centimeter or two. We planned that, if I hadn't gone into labor by Friday, I would make a milkshake with castor oil in it which would get certain things moving below which would then, hopefully, stimulate other things to get moving.
By noon on Thursday I was about as crabby as I can ever remember being. And hungry. I ate everything I could get my hands on. A friend came over for a while and while we were talking , around 2:30 p.m., I started having contractions about 10 minutes apart. That went on for about 1.5 hours and got a little closer together. I called my husband to come home from work and he said he would start walking. We only one car at the time and I had it. I blasted him with "What the **** are you thinking!" (remember I was very crabby). A friend gave him a ride home.
I took a shower and the kids took late naps as we timed the contractions. They got closer together and finally we called the midwife around 6:00. She told us to call her in another 30 minutes to report back. Around 7:00, my husband took the kids across the street to a neighbor's house and then I got in the bathtub. Funny how that tub had seemed so deep when I was leaning over bathing the kids. Now the full tub of water only covered about half of my bloated belly. I lay there, like a hormonally devastated whale, groaning through contraction after contraction.
The midwife and her assistant arrived at 7:30 and started setting up shop. I was so afraid that she was going to say that I hadn't dilated yet. At 7:45 she came in to check me and said the most beautiful words: "You are a good 9." She told me to have a couple more contractions in the tub and then move to the toilet and try pushing.
I got to the toilet and had one outrageous contraction that apparently expanded my limited vocabulary of expletives. Good thing it was winter and the windows were closed. (Houses were close together in our neighborhood.) With that contraction, my water broke and another contraction jumped in on the fun. My midwife said in a gentle, sweet voice, "OK, when you have a lull we need to get you to the bed." And all I could squeal was "LULL? WHAT LULL? THERE IS NO LULL" over and over again.
The midwife, who I guess had seen it all, looked knowingly at my husband, who had almost lost a piece of his ear in the last contraction, and they picked me up and carried me across the hall to the bed as Baby was crowning. My husband landed on the bed. I landed on my husband. And Baby #4 popped out. (Reminding me of what my former midwife had said about what I would do if I ever got hold of a small, anterior baby).
Our little girl was born at 8:00 p.m. weighing in at a precise 7 lbs. An hour later the other kids came back home. It was peaceful and wonderful. I would do it again, if I were younger and still had the necessary equipment.
Shocked? No. Overwhelmed? Yes. But our thought was why not just go ahead and lump all the chaos together? They can all be teenagers at the same time. That will be fun. Right? RIGHT?
I was as sick as ever this time. Not necessarily throwing up but nauseated beyond belief. I could not cook. At all. If I cooked it and ate it I threw it up. At one point I lived on McDonald's cheeseburgers and orange drink. This was the summer of 1995 and Jars of Clay had just come out with their first album. We had the cassette tape and my husband played it over and over and over again, ad nauseum (quite literally), so that for years afterwords, every time I heard a song from that album, I could taste the McDonald's cheeseburger and the big orange drink and feel the wave of nausea wash over me.
When I found out I was pregnant, I knew that there was a possibility that this might be my last. I really wanted a good birth experience. I was frustrated by the way I was treated by the eye rolling, sarcasm oozing triage nurse when I went to the hospital with Baby #3 and I had had a very bad experience with the postpartum nurse after his birth. I had also struggled with pretty severe postpartum depression and didn't want any events that might make that worse. But mainly, I really, really wanted to give a home birth a try.
We interviewed our midwife and were pretty impressed when she said she had quit counting after she had delivered 2000 babies. She was a Certified Nurse Midwife, which appealed to my law abiding side (lay midwifery is considered a misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina), and brought along all sorts of important stuff like Pitocin and oxygen, which appealed to my cautious medical side. I was also more comfortable with the idea since we lived about 7 minutes from the hospital.
My only concern was that she lived in Mars Hill, about 20 minutes north of us, but regularly went to visit her sister over the mountain in Johnson City, TN. And this was February. One time I thought I might be in labor. She was in Johnson City and it was snowing on Sam's Gap, the highest part of the highway between the two cities. But that petered out.
Well, my due date (2/9) came and went and no baby. I had really thought that perhaps this one would come early like #1 and #3. I had even gone sledding and chased the garbage truck down the road, but to no avail. No labor. On Wednesday, February 14, she checked me and still not a lot was going on... maybe a centimeter or two. We planned that, if I hadn't gone into labor by Friday, I would make a milkshake with castor oil in it which would get certain things moving below which would then, hopefully, stimulate other things to get moving.
By noon on Thursday I was about as crabby as I can ever remember being. And hungry. I ate everything I could get my hands on. A friend came over for a while and while we were talking , around 2:30 p.m., I started having contractions about 10 minutes apart. That went on for about 1.5 hours and got a little closer together. I called my husband to come home from work and he said he would start walking. We only one car at the time and I had it. I blasted him with "What the **** are you thinking!" (remember I was very crabby). A friend gave him a ride home.
I took a shower and the kids took late naps as we timed the contractions. They got closer together and finally we called the midwife around 6:00. She told us to call her in another 30 minutes to report back. Around 7:00, my husband took the kids across the street to a neighbor's house and then I got in the bathtub. Funny how that tub had seemed so deep when I was leaning over bathing the kids. Now the full tub of water only covered about half of my bloated belly. I lay there, like a hormonally devastated whale, groaning through contraction after contraction.
The midwife and her assistant arrived at 7:30 and started setting up shop. I was so afraid that she was going to say that I hadn't dilated yet. At 7:45 she came in to check me and said the most beautiful words: "You are a good 9." She told me to have a couple more contractions in the tub and then move to the toilet and try pushing.
I got to the toilet and had one outrageous contraction that apparently expanded my limited vocabulary of expletives. Good thing it was winter and the windows were closed. (Houses were close together in our neighborhood.) With that contraction, my water broke and another contraction jumped in on the fun. My midwife said in a gentle, sweet voice, "OK, when you have a lull we need to get you to the bed." And all I could squeal was "LULL? WHAT LULL? THERE IS NO LULL" over and over again.
The midwife, who I guess had seen it all, looked knowingly at my husband, who had almost lost a piece of his ear in the last contraction, and they picked me up and carried me across the hall to the bed as Baby was crowning. My husband landed on the bed. I landed on my husband. And Baby #4 popped out. (Reminding me of what my former midwife had said about what I would do if I ever got hold of a small, anterior baby).
Our little girl was born at 8:00 p.m. weighing in at a precise 7 lbs. An hour later the other kids came back home. It was peaceful and wonderful. I would do it again, if I were younger and still had the necessary equipment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)