Just So You Know ... Awesome Is Just A Word

First of all, if you tuned back in to read some awesomeness, then you really do have a sad little life.  There's this big building called a library, which has all kinds of written awesome.  Perhaps you should seek awesome elsewhere.  While I realize that would seem to make me yesterday's liar (about an awesome update), being yesterday's liar is only one of several things that I am, than can be published.  Anyhoo, on to today's yesterday update.

Having spent two nights in the hospital with Maribeth and Everley, I thought I would discuss everything I know pregnancy/childbirth and the aftermath.  It's going to be a short blog.

We'll start with pregnancy.  I was in that predicament - three times.  Each time I gained enough weight to give birth to a 9-year-old instead of an infant.  Every pound I lost via the miracle of birth was promptly regained, without benefit of shooting a baby through the v-j-j (think about it) a few months later.  I like to think of it as giving birth to a teenager, whose birth is usually much more traumatic than when that teenager was a newborn (just ask any mom whose sweet child suddenly turned sullen and moody overnight).  Luckily I had OBs who didn't seem too concerned about my weight gains - they also didn't seem too concerned about epidurals, but that comes later.

I mostly spent each pregnancy worried about how my life was affecting my unborn baby.  Was eating chocolate going to result in lifelong acne for the kid?  Was whatever whiff I was smelling (even the non-vomit inducing ones, which were few) going to cause a third ear to appear?  Was everything I was doing considered wrong, in spite of the books that said I was doing it right (which were the books I preferred to read)?  Of course we now know that everything I was doing was wrong and harmful, at least according to the current literature.  It's amazing that I have such beautiful, intelligent children, unless you figure in genetics, which we should probably just leave alone, and not bring up the crazy limbs of the family tree.  Let's just say while pregnancy was a blessing, it was also nerve wracking.  I was glad when I was done and could move on to delivery, which all the books said was going to be glorious, if I just Lamaze-ed my way through it.  They lied.

I breathed and counted and concentrated on my focal point.  IT STILL HURT LIKE HECKFIRE!!   I won't even mention pitocin, AKA "pit drip", AKA (my terminology) liquid hell.  Basically, it turns your guts into squeeze machines in an attempt to expel your uterine squatter.  During my first pregnancy, my sister suggested I ask my doctor about epidurals.  I did and he replied that there was no point talking about it, because it would be decided when I was in delivery (which I later found out that the only way Dr. Jerk was going to give me an epidural was for a Cesarean delivery, which didn't happen).  He was also the doctor that told me I needed to be quiet when I was trying to push the baby out and that I should quick jumping when he was sewing up the necessary shreds that happen when you give birth to a nine pound baby, even though I could feel every prick of the needle.  I should have suggested that he give ME the needle and thread and not jump when I sewed his balls together sans anesthesia, but I am a sweet Southern girl and wouldn't have said such things.

Then came infancy where I worried about crib death ("Please God, let him sleep an hour," and then 5 minutes into his nap, "OH NO!! IS HE BREATHING?" at which point I needed to touch him to see if he was breathing which in turn woke him up, since he was done with his 5-minute nap).  Then came toddlerhood, where it's a miracle they survived, considering I allowed them to play with the regular old-style Little People and watch "The Simpsons."  Then came teenagerism, when I REALLY wanted an epidural to get through the door slamming and general discussion about how I ruined their lives, because I chose to have a baby (that would be them).

Anyhow, somehow I managed to get through it al and eventually they grew up.  As my reward for all that,  I now have two beautiful genius granddaughters, for whom I just had to wait for a phone call.  And I didn't even need to request an epidural.

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Today's blessings:  Maribeth and Everley being discharged from the hospital; Molly making a spagetti dinner for Maribeth, Mathieu, and Everley; Target shopping and seeing Nan; Steve making a Wal-Mart run; slarty over at the Davidson-Perry home