GuiltyMom Disease

I was driving to Peewee's 2 week doctor appointment this morning, minding my own business, talking on the cell phone to my best friend when out of nowhere I got pulled over. So let me just say, the phone was in my hand but it was on speakerphone and I was planning on shoving it in my cleavage soon but just hadn't gotten that far yet. Regardless, I was busted, with my newborn in the backseat. Ugh, does that make me a bad mother? I pull into a parking lot and the motorcycle cop walks up and says he saw me on the phone. I don't know what came over me but I reverted back to age 17 and blurted out, "but it was on speaker!" in a slightly whiny voice. The cop must have felt bad for me or thought I was just really dumb because he was nice about it and said "well, it's still in your hand even if it's on speaker." so I said "oh, ok" and reached back to pull the sun visor over Peewee to shade her from the sun, on purpose so the cop would see I had a newborn, thinking maybe that would help my cause. He asked for my license which of course had the wrong address on it from over a year ago. The cop asked of it was my correct address and I said no because we just moved here, but then he asked when...I faltered because it's been a whole frickin' year now but I stumbled a little and then said "over 9 months. Sorry." Shockingly the cop was still nice, probably because he thought I was such an idiot. He asked for my registration to see what address was on that, well when I opened the glove compartment, it was so packed full of junk I could barely pull the registration card out which had the wrong address in it too. Damn! So I explained that address was my husband's cousin where we lived for 3 weeks when we first moved here on a long drawn out explanation. At this point the cop just gave up and said it was ok and just gave me a fix it ticket for my address on my license. As he walked away, I yelled out to him "I won't talk on the phone anymore! I swear!" As I drove away, the guilt overcame me and I apologized to Peewee in tears, of course, the whole way to the dr office.

This next wound is still fresh but I'll spit it out. I hate nursing so I quit. I was pumping but I'm now trying to quit that too because I hate it. My boobs hurt and it's tough to give Bubu a hug so I gave it up. Much to everyone's disappointment. Including my own. I was so determined to breastfeed better than I did for Bubu and I failed. I thought that whatever I put my mind to I could accomplish but I was wrong.

Finally, I had an ice cream sandwich after dinner tonight. Oh the guilt. The guilt of ice cream. I've totally contracted GuiltyMom disease.

Let the Workout Begin

I've noticed that the older I get, the more I like to research things. I research the price of anything I want at multiple stores, online, and survey my friends and family repeatedly prior to purchase. Maybe it's just a way for me to kill time but I enjoy it. So, Peewee is almost 2 weeks old now and even though I'm still in a mild state of discomfort, I can't wait to get rid of this huge muffin top mid section I have now. I guess some moms would probably be trying to bond with their new baby right now, but I am researching the arm shaker weight that I saw an infomercial for last night at 3:30am. I figure the bonding will occur naturally but destroying the muffin top, that will require effort. Oh and for the moms-to-be out there, yes, you will be awake at 3:30am to feed your baby and no, you won't be drunk, and yes, you will watch infomercials if that's all you can find on tv. So I thought I'd make good use of my 3:30am tv time and do research for the next 4 weeks. Yay!

There are quite a few workout plans and diets in the market I've discovered. It's actually kind of confusing, almost daunting. There's the celebrity workout, the 6 week workout, the 90 day workout... Then there's weight watchers, Atkins, Jenny, Tracy, lions, bears, oh my! Which one do I do??

I'm not sure if it was just the exhaustion talking at the 5:30am feeding, but I settled on the coffee and white wine diet.

We have 4 weeks though, we'll see what happens. All I know is that the muffin top has to go.

The Circus is in Town

You know how there are those moments in life where you wish you had a camera crew following you because you could sell the video and be some reality show on TLC? Well we have been home from the hospital for a few days now and I'm about to post an ad on craigslist for a camera crew to hire.

I will start with my disclaimer. I love my Mom.

My Mom is staying with us for a month to help us with the new baby, Bubu, and house stuff. At the hospital, my doctor said to just come into the office in a few days and they will take out my staples. No appointment needed, just quick drop in. So Monday sneaks up on us and my mom and I pack up Bubu and the new baby, whom we call Peewee, to go to the doctor and grab groceries for the week and head home. Sounds easy enough, right?

Let me just throw some advice out there for everyone, never believe the doctor who says you don't need an appointment when you have two kids in strollers and your mother going to get staples removed from your stomach. Just call ahead and announce your arrival because sure enough, someone will poop their pants, and get hungry, and that one toy in the waiting room will get old and boring in 8 minutes. And if all this happens, yes you guessed it, you have a toddler meltdown in your doctors office. This was arena one in our Thornton family circus.

So over an hour later we head to the grocery store. I forewarn my mom that moving quickly through the store is key when you have kids but she's kind of hobbling these days due to arthritis and I had a c-section 5 days ago so I am hobbling also. But we need food so we plow ahead into the produce section, two Indian women hobbling through the Safeway with a five day old baby and 17 month old little boy singing baa baa black sheep and playing peek-a-boo down every other aisle. At this point I've checked ego and self esteem at the door and lost my ticket. We finally get to the check out (whoo hoo!!) and Bubu starts crying if I move more than 3 feet away, it's 45 minutes past feeding time so Peewee starts crying, my mom seems to lose all mental ability and forgets everything she's learned about the credit card machine so I start calling out instructions to her yelling over the sound of two crying babies. The store clerks at staring at us in shock as we continue to sing Old Macdonald as we walk out the door. Welcome to the main ring at our circus mr grocery store cashier.

As we are driving home, I realize that my moms driving is a weird torture for me. But we made it, got the kids inside, fed, and groceries put away. Was it that bad? No, but let me just say we aren't going to Target tomorrow like planned. I think it might take a few days for the circus to venture out again.

The Joys of Childbirth

Due to the graphic nature of this blog post, parental discretion is advised to all women who don't have kids yet and men. Amidst all the happy, joyful feelings of the past few days, I have to admit, there are definitely some moments that trigger non-happy, non-joyful emotions. On June 15th at 8:02am, we had a beautiful little girl via c-section.

Let me just start with the good things about the scenario: since the surgery was planned, I had my hair and makeup done for the post childbirth photos and since surgery only takes 30 minutes, I looked pretty in my picture. I think that's about it for the good stuff. Now for all the other stuff: the medicine from the anesthesia made me puke during surgery and my husband had to catch it in a little pink plastic bowl. Yes, he really loves me. I cried throughout the surgery with that ugly crying face and the nurse and my husband had to dab my tears so as not to mess up my makeup. The baby weighed 7 lbs 4 oz so I'm still carrying the other 30 lbs I gained which makes me feel so incredibly attractive. I've been wearing my hospital gown for 3 days so I'm wondering why I packed anything in my hospital bag. My husband has seen my boobs in ways that make me worry that he is scarred for life by the images. He has also seen me in these hot gauze hospital panties that are one size fits all with huge pads in them. And I've, once again, had trouble nursing which makes me feel like a total failure, again. After finally being able to shower today, he had to put a clean dressing on my staples across my lower abdomen which was not a pretty sight. My body hurts everywhere.

Has the experience brought us closer together? Or do I just feel utterly humiliated and defeated? Not sure yet but I do know that overall, this whole process is extremely miserable. I love my kids more than anything in the world so of course all this sacrifice for them is ok but it ain't easy.

What channel is MTV?

The MTV movie awards were on last night and we actually knew about it this year. Whoo hoo! My husband and I decided that we wanted to record it since we don't stay up late enough to watch it all live, is that sad? Wait, it gets sadder, we didn't know what channel MTV was. It wasn't hard to figure out, but what struck me was, an era had unknowingly ended in our lives.

I remember The Real World seasons 1, 2, and 3, that game show with Jenny McCarthy, maybe some music videos here and there...then nothing. Is it amnesia? At what point did we stop watching MTV? It used to be such an integral part of our lives I feel. Anyways, so we watch the first 30 minutes of the awards show which happened to be before our bedtime and Twilight won every award. I haven't seen the last Twilight movie yet, so needless to say I told my husband to put it in our Netflix queue. Then Reese Witherspoon won some type of  lifetime achievement award and I almost fell over...she's probably my age by the way. Don't get me wrong, she's accomplished a lot and I love her, but does anyone else think she's kind of young to win a "generation" award? It was as if she was the oldest, wisest woman in the theater.

So I've decided that today we mourn the end of our MTV era as we watch the recorded awards show and celebrate the one we are now embarking upon with Dateline on the Investigation Discovery channel.

Change of Plans

First of all, I'd like to start by saying Birth Plan, Schmirth Plan. Why do I even bother? Two for two babies now totally testing my ability to "roll with the punches". My confidence in my doctor is also being tested but I'm not sure how to handle that one yet.

So when Bubu was born, we lived down in Southern CA, Orange County to be exact, you know, like those housewives on Bravo but not quite that fabulous. We really liked my OB and we had ultrasounds throughout the whole pregnancy. Then at the end, the OB said Bubu was going to be huge, over 9 lbs (which he wasn't) and I had no sign of going into labor on my own so she recommended a C Section. Well, that change of plan was tough for me, but I googled it and was okay with it eventually. Then my water broke the night before my surgery and we had to change plans again. No C section, but I survived and I learned all kinds of things from that whole experience. The stuff I learned was great and I was planning on using all that great knowledge to make this birth super smooth and perfect.  Here's what I learned:

1.) Don't let your husband go out drinking with his buddies the week of your due date. Make that 2 weeks.
2.) Pay attention in childbirth class, even if they have chocolate chip cookies.
3.) When you do your hair and makeup before going to the hospital, remember that this hair has to take a beating so plan for a pretty ponytail look.
4.) Breastfeeding is not so easy, so being doped up on painkillers does not help. Just say no to the morphine, but epidural is okay.
5.) Being doped up on painkillers also doesn't translate well on photographs.
6.) When they offer you cherry Popsicles or ice chips, either take the ice chips or plan to scrub your lips and applying gloss before delivering because you don't want all your first pics with the baby to look like you are a vampire who just fed on a big bloody animal. 

Since then, we have moved to Northern CA and yesterday I had my 37 week doctor appointment. This OB is way different than the orange county one. We haven't had a ultrasound since 20 weeks so I am starting to wonder, is it really a girl? how big is this kid?? is she in the right position now??? Does she have two heads and three arms???? So I asked for an ultrasound. I got a little resistance but I insisted and my OB finally gave in and I was right, baby is breeched, head up instead of head down like its supposed to be. Here we go again, scheduled a C section for June 15th now and my whole birth plan is ruined. They gave me some exercises to do at home but it's unlikely she'll move because there's not a lot of room. Now I'm wondering, how long has she been like this? Who knows because the frickin' doctor didn't check anything until I insisted on her doing her job yesterday, right? So, last night I google breech babies and it's all horrifying information that my husband finally made me stop reading. If she doesn't move by June 15th, then all my great experience is worthless. I hate changing plans.