Balls

by | Leave a comment

Hi. How was everyone’s holiday? Mine was good. I hosted. The turkey turned out okay, and could’ve been better, but was more than just edible. I think next year we’ll either buy separate turkey parts, or attempt to FRY! THE TURKEY! Everyone raved about the stuffing/dressing, including the non-stuffing eaters, so I consider that a major win. The chocolate pie was devoured within 24 hrs (thanks Vance!) and I accidentally left the pumpkin pie out over night and it spoiled before I got to eat my fair share of it (all of it.) The best part? EVERYBODY LEFT WITHIN 3 HOURS OF EATING. That was just plain awesome. We didn’t go shopping on Black Friday, but we did enjoy reading stories of pregnant women punching impatient deal-seekers in the face for ramming carts into their protruding bellies. Ba-fucking-zing.

I had originally started writing this elaborate post about how idyllic my vision of Thanksgiving at my house is, and how the reality of the actual day begins to haunt me in the days leading up it, and how it always turns out better than I expect, and how I love my family and the holidays, and blah blah blah. I didn’t finish it because it seemed somewhat anti-climactic against the news we were dealt yesterday.

Yes, dealt. Kind of like a blow. To the baby-maker.

We had our big 20-week ultrasound to determine the anatomical correctness of our new addition. I was a nervous wreck pretty much the entire day and night before. I wanted to know what we were having! You know, with my first unexpected pregnancy, I didn’t have any specific requirements or desires, because it was a baby! I’ve never really even held one of those before! And we get to see it! But this time,  we mistakenly walked into this experience with expectations and standards, and that, my friends, is the stupidest thing you can do.

Here’s what we knew: based on our 12-week “ultrascreen,” the baby has 2 arms, 2 legs, 10 fingers and toes, and a complete head, a 1 in 430 chance of having down syndrome and a 1 in 10,000 chance of having some other chromosomal or neural tube defect. So, as far as anyone could tell, a healthy baby that moves and kicks mommy in the bladder.

What we were expecting: a still healthy baby who would look good in pink.

What we got: A still healthy baby with 2 kidneys, no obvious heart defects, and a penis.

Yeah, not a girl. We really, really, wanted a girl. We were stupid enough to convince ourselves that there is no way it couldn’t be a girl! Right? It’s a girl. It has to be, or else we…I don’t know what we’ll do, but it just can’t NOT be a girl.

So when the tech dug around a found the baby’s parts and said “those are boy parts, it’s pretty clear, as you can see” the room got really quiet. I don’t know what she expects or usually sees, but I would find it odd to get NO reaction from a family upon hearing the gender of the unborn child, which they requested. I want to believe that maybe she thought we were just weren’t surprised, or just fascinated by the movements of the blood leaving the heart.

And there is no doubt that we are having a boy, because I had 3 ultrasounds that day. 3 ultrasounds: the anatomy scan, one to look at my bladder at the OB’s office, and another to look at my bladder at a urologist’s office. At the urologists’s office, the nurse was REALLY EXCITED to get to scan a pregnant chick, so she really wanted to see that baby. She instantly spotted his parts. I have to admit, her excitement made it a little easier to be okay with the situation.

So, there were tears. Lots of them. There was guilt, because we were crying over the news that were again blessed with a healthy baby boy. The guilt made the depression and sadness worse. Vance tried to tell me that it’s okay to be disappointed, and I shouldn’t be ashamed, but maybe he didn’t get it. I wasn’t just disappointed, at that moment I was devastated.

This is what the internet calls “gender disappointment.” There are websites, articles, and forums dedicated to the subject. Sometimes, it can be “extreme,” and some parents even consider adoption and abortion. I’m not extreme; just a control freak who has a really hard time accepting things I can’t change or have a say in.

I’m better now. I’m getting more used to the idea of having 2 boys. Deven is going to have a playmate of the same gender to run around with and be best friends with, and that’s a pretty awesome bonus. At first I hated the idea of having to find crib bedding for another boy, because I hadn’t liked a single thing I had seen for boys. I looked around again yesterday, and found cute green and brown  blankets and sheets with monkeys. I have found that I hate blue stuff, but can certainly live with neutral colors and themes. I’ve always been like that, though. I hate overly-boyish stuff with cars and footballs and dinosaurs as much as overly-girly ruffly things that resemble cotton candy. I can live with green and brown jungle animals.

And it’s not like I’m going to have a pair of obnoxious football-obsessed goons. We are not capable of that, seeing as Vance doesn’t really like football that much, or any sports for that matter. We are geeks, and we’re probably going to end up raising geeks. Video game-obsessed, Star-Trek loving, action-figure collecting, Stephen Hawking-reading geeks. It’s already started; Deven loves Firefly and Rush. It’s all we know around here!

I wish I could post the pictures, but all we have at the moment is video. We even got a couple of 3d/4d shots of his face. This early, I have to say 4d is kind of useless. All babies look the same at this stage, so I wouldn’t waste my money on 4d scans until at least 35 weeks. The regular 2d shots were really good. Like I said, I wish I could post the pictures and put them next to the one’s from Deven’s 20 week scan. You can see how different they look already. Yes, I know I just said all babies look alike on the 3d, but on the 2d we could see his features and make comparisons. This baby has a different chin, and eyebrows, and totally has Vance’s mouth.

The best and biggest surprise you get the day the baby is born is seeing what the baby looks like.

So there you go. When I get the scanner hooked up, I will post the pictures from the scan.

This little guy is due to make his entrance on April 13, 2011. His name is Archer Kain. If you think that’s bad, we came very close to calling baby #2 Goody Gee Goodwin.

Pregnancy pt II

by | Leave a comment

I am 16 wks and 6 days today, well established in the much-anticipated 2nd trimester. I can’t believe how fast things are going this time. Part of the reason for this is that I have a million other things going on right now, and so the least of my concerns is my pregnancy that is barely noticeable other than the protrusion in my abdomen. Okay, so I am probably just really busy.

So many things are different about this pregnancy from my pregnancy with Deven. This time, my acne is horrible and unrelenting, and STILL THERE. I swear, by now it was pretty much gone last time. My hair is falling out, as opposed to  growing thicker and more lustrous like it did with Deven in my tummy. I cannot wear contact lenses or chop onions because my eyes with BURN BURN BURN like nothing else. I had to stop wearing my contacts later, like in the last month or so of my pregnancy with Deven. I have an INSATIABLE sweet tooth with this baby, and I am luckily able to manage it. With Deven, I craved sweets, and then I would eat them, and then I would regret it half an hour later with a horrible tummy ache. This time, I eat ice cream and Milky Ways, am temporarily in heaven, and then I get heartburn. And you know, it’s okay. I’m fine with heartburn. I have never really been a heartburn person, but this pregnancy has brought the pain, and it is totally livable.

I have experienced a really unpleasant pregnancy first: LEG CRAMPS. Holy hellfire, they are not fun. I was awoken by one the other morning in my left calf, and it was EXCRUCIATING, and since then, my calf has been sore. It has made having stairs in my house really unpleasant. I never, ever, EVER had a leg cramp when I was pregnant with Deven. I had always heard of them, and I felt kind of bad for the women who had to experience them, but I never thought IT WOULD HAPPEN TO ME. Also, my hips and butt have been really sore and easily tired out. I have heard from many women that aches and pains in subsequent pregnancies tend to be worse.

Also, I haven’t felt this baby move hardly at all. I started feeling Deven move at 15 weeks, and he never stopped moving. This time, I have maybe felt a kick-or-two here and there, but nothing that I am absolutely sure comes from the baby. This could be because I am slightly heavier than I was before– about 15 lbs heavier pre-pregnancy, or it could be because I have an anterior placenta. It means my placenta sits on the front wall of my uterus. It’s not dangerous or anything, except that it could make getting a c-section a little more complicated than usual (I could bleed to death.) But that’s not going to happen. I mean the c-section. Ahem. Anyway, I’m sure that once the baby grows, I will be able to feel him/her/it move more.

We don’t know when we’re going to find out if this baby is sporting 2 legs or 3. I have my next check-up on Thursday, and I am sure my Dr and I will discuss when she would like to have that Ultrasound done. I would like it done before Thanksgiving, but knowing my luck, she will make me WAIT until the following week. That’s just not acceptable. I need to know what we are having so I can pick out the bedding and other accents to the nursery in time for Christmas. Thats right, we’re going to ask that family and friends buy us baby stuff for Christmas. What? We’re not asking for a shower or anything, and we’re going to need stuff, so whats wrong with asking for the stuff for Christmas?

There is so much to be discussed about big-brother Deven. I will save all of that, including the adventures in potty training Hell (more like potty-training purgatory) for another post. There’s just too much.

Potty time

by | Leave a comment

I’ve actually seriously just started the process of introducing my three year old son to the concept of going potty. I am saying “actually seriously” because I have in the past attempted to get this boy to try and go potty, and it was for various reasons unsuccessful. With each attempt, I would put my foot down and say “WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, YOU ARE GOING POTTY, DAMMIT” and I would take his diapers away from him and pull him kicking and screaming to the potty every half hour. Needless to say, it never worked. I would end up quitting inside of a day.  He wasn’t ready, and I was being too aggressive, and not paying attention to his needs and understanding. Not to mention, I made the process unbearable for me. I couldn’t stand the thought of going at this for more than one day like that.

Training this little one comes with it’s own unique set of challenges. He has delays, which we have not entirely pinpointed yet (he has an evaluation on the 26th of this month), but we know for sure these delays effect his ability to understand what we are saying to him. He doesn’t answer questions, and he doesn’t get certain concepts involving contrast features. (Like big/small, wet/dry. Make sense? Am I using the correct term? I have no idea.) It’s also unclear as to whether he can detect when he needs to go. He’ll tell us when he has gone poop or needs a change, and when he needs to “number 2″ he’ll go up to his room for a bit, but he doesn’t tell us that’s what he is going to do. It took a lot of tracking and observing to catch onto that.

The questions still remains as to whether or not he is sensitive to the sensation of needing to pee. He’s never been a really sensitive kid. He’s been known to skin his knees on the playground, and we wouldn’t find out about it until we find a trail of blood behind him several minutes later. He rarely cries or complain. That’s great in every other aspect except for this one. He’ll sit on the potty for 10 minutes or so, and then pee in his pull-up within 10 minutes of getting up. I’m unsure of how to go about explaining the concept of needing to pee to a kid with delays, or to a kid with who doesn’t seem to notice or care. We’ve tried the pee-pee in the cloth underpants thing. Unless he makes a mess on his floor, he is indifferent to being covered in his own urine. Right now I am thinking he’s not going to notice or care about pee until we throw him a party the first time he accidently pees in his potty.

I’m going at it very differently this time. I’ve decided to take a much slower, more patient Deven-lead approach. I’m trying to get him used to the idea of sitting on the potty by getting him to sit there a few minutes several times a day. As I said, before, the only way I would get him to the potty was by strapping on full armor and dragging him with his extremities swinging. Now, I’m actually LISTENING to him. If he says he doesn’t want to, then fine. It’s not a big deal, tomorrow is another day. But, being the strong-willed little warrior he is, he may never ever want to go and sit down on the potty. I have to offer him INCENTIVES. I started offering him stickers for every time he would sit on the potty for a few minutes. It’s worked out pretty well! Day 1 ended with him covered in 10 different kinds of stickers. It’s a reward for giving it a shot, for entertaining the possibility. Thank you, kid, for at least trying. I consider it a win if this gets him to go at least 3 times in a day.

On the off-chance he actually goes on the potty, he will get a piece of candy. I know what you’re thinking: OMG what a horrible parent, she is giving her kid FOOD as a reward! JUNK FOOD no less! Given the circumstances of my apparently numb-bladdered child, I’m not too terribly worried about childhood obesity just yet.

Of course, I’ve been reading him books on the subject of going potty, and I’ve been doing my own reading as well. I remember going to Barnes and Noble looking for a couple of books on the subject of potty training and being extremely UNDERWHELMED by the number of books for parents, and extremely OVERWHELMED by the books for kids. Seriously, parents need a variety of books on parenting the difficult/gifted/male/female/imaginative child, but none on potty training? Seriously, it’s not one of those things you are just PROGRAMMED to know how to handle. My biggest obstacle in this process has been my own lack of knowledge on what the fuck I am supposed to do. No one seems to have any direct answers, and there are no 24-hr help lines.  But, lucky for Deven, he’s bound to find a story or two (or ten…twenty) about a little boy just like him with a crazy mom who  is trying to get him to sit on this little bowl-seat-thing with eyes. He’s the lucky one.

This is going to be a long, difficult process, and I’m sure I’m going to have 2/3 less hair than I began with. But I am determined to follow through with this with minimal tears (from him), tantrums (from both of us), and guilt (both of us). We’re both learning here, and in the end, we’re going to come out a lot more skilled.

I am so very determined to have a potty trained toddler by the time we have a new baby here.