Tommy

Thomas Ray Jr
August 4, 2008
6 pounds 11 ounces
20 inches long
born in a 15 minute delivery during a tornado after 26 1/2 hours of labor

Get It OUT!!!

It's August, the month I am supposed to give birth. Hear that, little one? You can come out any time now. really. Any time you feel like it, even if it's NOW!!!

I've tried everything. Working in Ryan's garden, Evening Primrose Oil, spicy food, I've even done squats a couple times to try and bounce the baby down! So far the only things I haven't tried are red raspberry leaf tea, which apparently isn't sold anywhere near here, and jumping on Ryan's trampoline, but only because she won't let me and I don't think I could get myself up on it anyway. I want the baby out. Some days I'm fine but some days, like yesterday, I'm a sore, uncomfortable, crying hormonal mess. I want to see Ryan hold the baby she's waited a decade for me to have. I want to see Tom hold his flesh and blood. I want to see if the baby really does have Tom's chin, or his ears, or if this one will have any hair or not. I want to hold my baby and feel warmth, not bony feet in my ribs. And yes, selfishly and unrepentantly, I want to eat real food again.

Frozen coffee drinks. Pasta and rice and potatoes. Brownies. More than one sandwich in a restaurant at a time. I want to eat waffles again! Every morning I get to decide what I want for breakfast, a breakfast I'm more often than not, not even hungry for. I can have one cup of yogurt, or one granola bar, or if I really feel like putting in the effort I can make myself 2 slices of french toast on special whole wheat bread, but I usually save the toast for lunch when I can have four slices and actually get full. This baby is full term, and has been for almost a week now. It weighs more than I did when I was born. It hardly ever gets the hiccups any more and it lets me know with increasing frequency just how much it wants to stretch out. So how can I get this baby to finally come out?! I'm dilated to 2 cm and I'm 50% effaced as of last Monday afternoon. I just really want to meet this nameless, faceless, sexless baby. And I'd like to meet it preferably during standard business hours, so that I can send out for food soon after.

Only The Most Awesome Shower Ever

Diaper Cake by Ryan











Diaper Cake by Tom



















My ducky cake that Ryan decorated, complete with ditch lillies!







I know I'm all bloated and splotchy, and my mother looks panicky, but look! I got my diaper genie! And doesn't my crown look lovely?



More pictures to come once ICC* sends me the ones from her camera.




























*Iconic Cousin Chandos

Abba I aint

You can walk, You can pump, Desperate to push out a life
See that girl, watch her pain
She's the contraction queen

L&D and the lights are low
Doctor says it's too soon to go
"Need to dilate a few more,
You should go walk the halls"
Just get this out of me!

Any doctor could be that guy
With an epidural he'd save my life
With an IV of Stadol, everything is fine
I'm in the mood to push
And as long as I don't poop . . .

I'll be the contraction queen, Young and strong, Breathing hoo-hoo-heeee!
Contraction queen, "Count it out and just push for meeee!"
I can breathe, I can writhe, finally pushing out life
Ohhhh, see that girl, watch her cry
She's the contraction queen, oh yeah!

It's starting to get old.

Tom has started saying goodbye by telling me when I can or cannot go into labor. "You can't have the baby Tuesday night because I'll be in East Michigan. Have it on Thursday when I'm in Sperry and can be home in 2 hours." My birth plan is courtesy of mapquest now. The excitement is wearing off even for the eager first-ish time daddy. He stole my cell phone the other day and put it in my calendar for August 18, labor from 1:30 to 8:51 pm.

Two days until my shower. Yesterday we picked up and made the mints, and Ryan worked a couple hours in the garden and then selling Kool-Aid to the builders adding on to the house next door. Today we have to finish picking up/hiding the clutter in the house, and then dust and windex the house. Tomorrow we vacuum and mop, and Saturday we rearrange chairs and such and decorate, and then Tom will leave at ten o'clock to drive halfway across Iowa to pick up a car from his brother to replace the car that went boom. Oh, and someone will have to run up to the grocery store to buy some helium balloons. It doesn't seem like much, but when you consider that I'm now on the verge of being 37 weeks pregnant and that picking up/hiding clutter includes at least 3 loads of laundry, it becomes almost overwhelming to think about. And of course I help nothing by sitting here on the computer doing nothing to shorten the list except listening to the dishwasher and washing machine run simultaneously.

I'm tired of ignoring housework because of my belly. I'm ready to ignore housework because of my baby.

Face Decoder

For those of you who sucked at those mall pictures, and for Tom who is on the road and can't decipher the picture I sent to his phone, here's the baby's face, decoded. Now just look at the original picture and look for the features without the blue walmart smiley-face. I think it looks like Tom. I see his chin. Also, I think that my uterus behind the baby looks like a skateboard half-pipe, which would explain some of the action in there.

Just a routine appointment until . . . .

Monday afternoon I drove to my 35 week OB appointment and Dr Rickerl checked me and told me I was dilated to 1cm and 50% effaced. Yay!!! Then he told me that's nothing really for someone who's had a baby already. Boo!!! Mondays are his on-call days and he was yawning in the office so I told him to go home to sleep and I left. I couldn't make an appointment for next week though, because it was after five and the office staff was gone already. After I left the office I called Tom on the cell phone to tell him that I'm dilated and effaced but don't freak out, and of course I had to explain what effaced means.

My clinic is in Clinton, Iowa (about 20 minutes or 15 miles away), so there's always time to fill Tom in on the way home. So there I was driving home, on the bluetooth explaining my cervix to my husband, when my tire blows out and shoots the car across the highway and I hit a cement overpass wall at 60 mph. The bluetooth flew off my ear, the phone flew off the seat, and I started screaming for Tom to "Call 911, I had a wreck!" Finally I saw the bluetooth on the dash so I undid the seat belt and grabbed it. Tom was all "Are you okay?" and I just said "Call 911, I'm on Rt 30 under the train overpass, I wrecked your car." Meanwhile, the pickup that was behind me had pulled over and a farmer guy in overalls was running across the highway talking into his cellphone while I was calling 911 myself. The guy came to the car and asked if I was okay, he was talking to the hospital. I opened my door and told him I'm 35 weeks pregnant, so of course he went completely panicky then.

More strangers stopped and 2 guys helped me get out the passenger door (driver's door was only about 6 inches from the wall and I was having trouble getting my legs over the shifter in the console so they kind of had to pull me out) and into someone's car on the shoulder so I would be clear if someone came and hit my car, since it was in the wrong lane and all that. I kept concentrating on my belly and really everything felt okay. No pains or anything, but I couldn't feel the baby move so I was freaking out about that. Plus, I was bawling anyway because I had just slammed into a wall really fast, which apparently makes me just completely lose it. Soon I had cops from 2 different towns plus the county there, along with a fire truck and an ambulance, and they closed off the highway to get me in the ambulance. They strapped me to a backboard and put a neckbrace on me, despite me telling them not to lie me flat on my back because pregnant women are not supposed to lie flat on their backs. I did manage to get a picture of the car before they carted me off, though. What can I say, I'm married to a truck driver and it's been pounded into my head to document the scene.

I got to the hospital and they checked me for dilation, no difference there. They tested me for amniotic fluid and I hadn't leaked any. They cathetered me for urine to check it for blood (hurt worse than the wreck, I don't recommend it) and got none so they gave me a bedpan. And then they called Tom and my mother because they were both listed as ICE (In Case of Emergency) in my cell phone and sent me off to x-ray and ultrasound. Nothing was broken and the ultrasound tech was so nice she gave me a 3d of baby's face and never even went near the crotch so our surprise is still safe. Finally I got sent up to L&D for the night and got put on the contraction and heartbeat monitors. I never did use the bedpan, although I had such bad foot and rib pain (the car folded on my left foot and the seat belt just killed my ribs) that I crawled to and from the bathroom all night. I just don't get bedpans and I'm too shy to ask someone to help me with it or risk having to tell them I overshot and peed the bed or whatever. My main nurse was SO great. She said they only had diet coke products but she dug me up a bottle of diet dew somewhere and then put another one in the fridge for the morning, with a sticker matching my ID bracelet on it so no one else would drink it. I really hope she's my nurse when I have the baby! She also asked the Dr if I could have anything stronger than Tylenol when the other nurse wouldn't even let me take my own Extra Strength Tylenol from my purse because the Dr had only okayed me for "2 Tylenol." I hope that lady slips in afterbirth. As for Nurse Vicodin, I hope she gets a raise.

I made it through the night and Dr Rickerl came today to release me. He gave me a prescription for Vicodin with 2 refills and checked my cervix again. Still 1 and 50% so apparently nothing will get this baby out, not even major trauma. I had had some minor contractions early in the night but they stopped while I slept. I didn't get my blood sugar monitored and the kitchen kept sending me food I couldn't eat (???) so the Dr told me not to worry about it until I got home. I specifically told Nurse Vicodin my carb limits and watched her put them in the computer, and then I got cereal, milk, and toast for breakfast, and a lunch that said "No Concentrated Sugars"and was almost entirely pasta! Probably not eating is why after I left the hospital I threw up my vicodin and my contraband diet dew.

My ribs feel better today (at least I can breath deep again) and they gave me this giant foam and velcro boot to wear so I can walk, and my neck is really sore so I assume I have whiplash. I am sitting here now at 11:30 pm dreading, yet needing, my vicodin pills. I don't want to puke anymore, but the weight of the sheets hurts my foot and I can't roll over with my ribs the way they are now. I recommend, if given the chance to decide, that you drive between the walls of the overpass, not into them. It tends to work out better that way. Well, here's pics of the car and of little Tommy/Ivy:
See how the front tire by the wall is facing you, and the front tire by the road isn't? Apparently that crooked one is what caused the problem because at the junkyard I have 3 full tires and only the one flat one.


Step back and look and you'll see the face. It's kind of like one of those hidden 3d pictures at the mall that looks like little squares but turns into a sailboat if you stare long enough.

My diaper cake. . . .I think

Ryan and Tom made a diaper cake for the shower (I know because I helped roll the diapers), and it's in the kitchen under a black garbage bag so I can't see it, and it's kind of driving me insane. I really want to know what they put on it. Also, Tom let slip something about ducky candies for the cake (I assume an actual edible cake this time) but told me "never mind" when I looked confused. Those two spent forty five minutes in Hobby Lobby yesterday looking at shower stuff and I'm completely in the dark. I like it that way, since I don't want it to seem like I planned my own baby shower and I want to be able to look back at it all later and not have to try to remember what was Ryan's idea and what might have been mine (or Tom's, but who can shut him up?), but it's like knowing where your Christmas presents are hidden! I'm fine with not knowing the baby's sex. I'm fine with waiting to learn what my gifts are. But this is sitting on my kitchen table! I am going to be eating mere inches away from this trash-bag encased surprise and it's partly up to me to keep the surprise! This is too much.

OMG it's getting close

Went to the doctor today for the routine tape measure and heartbeat check. Everything was fine and the baby doesn't look huge or anything. I go back next week.

I'm up to weekly appointments now; that means I'm getting close to the end. I'm not ready to be close to the end yet. I have a shower to go to on the 20th, and one here on the 26th. Tom's still in on-the-road training for another week and a half. I have school supply and school clothes shopping to do! I'm not even registered at the hospital yet! A baby right now would be really inconvenient.
I'll need to pencil it in for sometime next month.

Grow Up!

Men who refuse to buy feminine hygiene products for their wives/girlfriends need to grow the fuck up! No one in the store is going to think they're for you, and you're not important enough for the clerk to care what you buy anyway, so grow the fuck up.

Women who freak out about stretch marks need to grow the fuck up! You're having a baby and your entire life is about to radically change in just about every way imaginable and you're concerned about next year's bikini season? Get over yourself and grow the fuck up.

Stepparents or live-ins who think that by virtue of being older they somehow have instant parental authority over the kids need to grow the fuck up. Fine, you're an adult and it's your home so you can set some rules, and when you're alone with the kids you get the babysitter power, but otherwise you're just Mom or Dad's spouse/live-in, not an actual parent. Your job is to back up the real parent, not to step in and pretend you have the authority that comes with having been there from the start. It doesn't matter how much you want your friends to respect you for taking on someone else's kid or how much you want the former single parent to see you as their savior, the kid's not going to fall for it and the hero worship you expect ain't coming anytime soon either, so grow the fuck up!

Parents who want to be "cool" need to grow the fuck up. When I was 16 I swore I'd never be as strict as my mom was but I know what I got away with and now I swear I'll be twice the bitch she was to me. Buying beer for the neighborhood kids or letting your kids have sex in your house doesn't make you cool. At best it makes you a joke to the people your age who've actually matured in their lives and at worst it makes you a flat-out bad parent. Maybe they'd do it anyway and you'd just rather they did it at home, whatever "it" is, but the fact is that they'd do it a lot less if they had to go to some trouble to get away with it. Put your daughter on the pill and give your son condoms, but don't sit at home with the TV volume turned up so you can hear it over the party in the next room! No teenager is going to name their neglectful parent as their best friend anyway and any authority you might otherwise have had will be washed away with your horrible displays of judgment, so just grow the fuck up!

Adults with kids who can't prioritize need to grow the fuck up. If you've got 2 kids who can't afford school clothes in the fall but you've got a new tattoo and a Harley, you need to grow the fuck up. I don't care how nice your hair looks with 3 shades of highlights or how sexy your man looks in his leathers if your kids are living off of mac and cheese and state-funded school lunches. It's a lot easier to respect someone who sacrifices it all for their kids than one who works overtime to go out drinking with friends while the kids sit home in a trailer with a bad roof, so grow the fuck up!

People who think they're better because they have a "clean" job and you have a "dirty" one need to grow up. If you have a drug conviction and 2 DUIs, I don't care how white your collar is compared to my truck-driving husband's. The label on your jeans or the price of your haircut don't mean shit to some people and believe it or not there are people in the world who don't keep score. If you really want to know who "wins", see who's happiest. It might be the guy with grease under his nails and not the one with the corner office. If you think status is everything, you really need to go grow the fuck up!

People who try too hard to be different need to grow the fuck up. I was one of them back in the day but guess what, I needed to grow up! If you have to spell your baby's name Mickaeylah and over-complicate things just so people will know you're "edgy" and "unique" then you're not. If you have to have 3 different colors in your hair (black, blond, and pink?) just to stand out then you don't. Want to really be unique and different? Take up quilting, or learn to square dance. THAT'S the stuff you don't see every day. But trying to stand out by doing what everyone else is doing just shows you need to grow the fuck up!

I'm sleepy and forgotten.

All night I dreamed. In between nearly hourly trips to the bathroom and waking to hip pain and rolling my cumbersome ass over, I dreamed of the most mundane and uneventful daily happenings possible. I weeded Ryan's garden, tried to decide what of my limited food options I was the least sick of so I could eat at the appointed times, and searched baby shower websites for rubber ducky decorating ideas per Ryan's instructions. I woke up at noon to find Tom and Ryan watching TV and myself still utterly exhausted. I don't feel like I slept at all. I feel like I was up all night in the garden and in the fridge and on the computer. So what have I done today? I weeded a little in Ryan's garden, I searched for food ideas every 2 hours, and I looked up ducky themed baby showers online. Oh, and I answered an email regarding my June 26 baby shower. I wonder how many of the invitations went out with that mistake on them. In case anyone who reads this got the wrong info, it's July 26.

My birthday is on Tuesday. Last year Tom gave me cash, which I HATE because it's the same lazy thing my dad always did (the gift that says, "You're not worth a trip to the store,") and although I've dropped hints about him and Ryan going grocery shopping, he doesn't seem to be interested. He says we can buy groceries tomorrow if there's something we're out of. I only really want 2 things this year: a tape deck attachment for my mp3 player so I can play it in the van, and the new Prey book by John Sandford. I'm guessing Tom doesn't remember me mentioning either of these things. In fact, if my due date wasn't his father's birthday he'd probably forget how far along I am. Then again, I haven't asked him lately so maybe he has.

It's Official

I am having a baby shower. Ryan's been saying since the beginning that she wanted to throw me one, but she's only ten and that's a little young. But then Tom and my mother both said they'd take her to the stores she'd have to go to, and my friend Christina (the shower QUEEN) is in email communication with her regarding planning, so it looks like I will be possibly the first person I've ever heard of to have a baby shower hosted by a ten year old.
She's already designed, printed, and mailed the invitations. She found the background online, modified it and added text in MSPaint, and then filled each one out individually. She's got a notebook full of ideas for games and decorations, and already bought ducky candy molds for the cream cheese mints, which she's going to make with Splenda so I can have some.

Yeah, I got the perfect kid. And I'll have the perfect baby shower too. I'm so damn hormonal right now I cry whenever I think about it. Now I just have to keep the baby in until after the 26th.

I'm sorry, the cervix you have dialed is out of service . . .

How can you be 8 months pregnant, let alone be on your second or third kid, or have grandkids, and still spell it "dialated"? It's a word that's spelled out quite clearly in every single pregnancy book, pamphlet, magazine article, and website out there. You dilate to ten centimeters, the doctor begins checking you for dilation around 35 weeks, drugs may be given to speed dilation if it doesn't occur on its own. Hell, in grade school science class they taught us about how pupils dilate in the dark. I don't know what these women think is going on down there but no calls are being made, no one is dialing anything. Some people even pronounce it "dialate", as in "She was dial-ated to seven."

Add this to the list of idiotic things some women say that makes them sound too stupid to bear children, like that they're prego or that they're having comtractions. I feel bad for their kids.

My Prison Diet

I have, as my readers know, a horrible case of gestational diabetes. I am allowed only nine servings of carboydrates a day. For those who don't know, one serving is between twelve and nineteen grams of carbs, ideally fifteen. So I basically can't eat shit all day, although I have to eat somethng every two hours. It breaks down like this:
Breakfast - 1 serving
Snack - 1 serving
Lunch - 2 servings
Snack - 1 serving
Dinner - 2 servings
Snack - 1 serving
Bedtime Snack - 1 serving

Now, this is a hard diet to live with since almost nothing has fifteen grams of carbs. For instance, one slice of bread is one serving, so I can't have a sandwich unless it's meal time. And although my obstetrician did send me to a dietitian, the problem was that she was a dietitian. She kept talking about protein and low-fat and organic food, things that had nothing to do with GD! I listened to her advice at first; I even spent the big bucks on the all natural organic peanut butter. Have you ever had all natural organic peanut butter? Same carbs as regular, but it's gritty and oily and tastes awful! So I quickly learned that I was on my own. However, in the last month I have managed to find some snacks that aren't half bad, and some that actually kick ass, that fit with my diet. I figured I would post them hear in case anyone else who reads this get put on a similar diet as I am. And keep in mind that if you're allowed more than one serving at a time, you can double up o the snacks. Yum!

• Sunbelt Golden Almond chewy granola bars. One bar (and not the tiny little ones either like those hard ones you get from your grandma)= 17 g carbs
• Blue Bunny Light No Sugar Added key lime pie yogurt cup. 1 cup = 11 g carbs
• The Skinny Cow Minis Frozen Fudge Bars. One bar (the same size as half of a twin pop popsicle)=10 g carbs!
• Edy's Fruit Bars No Sugar Added. One bar = 8 g carbs (I recommend having one fudge bar and one fruit bar, but then I'm pregnant in the summer too.)
• Quaker Granola Bites Chocolate Flavor 90 calorie packs. One pack (not too small but not huge)= 14 g carbs
• Hunt's Snack Pack Sugar Free chocolate pudding cups. One cup = 15 g carbs
• Breyers All Natural Pure Premium coffee ice cream. 1/2 cup = 15 g carbs
• Medallion Bite Size white corn tortilla chips. 24 chips = 15 g carbs (and salsa has no carbs so you can load up the chips!)
• Sara Lee 45 Calorie & Delightful Bread, 100% Whole Wheat With Honey. TWO slices = 18 g carbs. (Peanut butter and sugar free jelly make it a pretty filling snack. And an egg and some vanilla make for a great French toast breakfast.)

If you learn to bulk up your snacks with peanut butter, dips, and sugar-free jelly, you can stay reasonably full throughout the day and still keep your blood glucose numbers low. As for meal ides, that's been harder for me to come up with. But Tom's cooking tomorrow night so I'm thinking baked tilapia with lemon butter and Parmesan and some rice on the side. Yum. But damn, do I miss mac and cheese!

Why motherhood is more lonely now.

I remember when we'd been married maybe a year and Tom was still on the road all the time, he told me about a show he'd seen (Dateline or 20/20 or something like that) about how girl bullies in junior high. He was shocked! With boys a bully will hit you or pants you in the hall or something, he said, but these girls were ruthless. One case was a non-stop campaign of about ten girls to make one girl feel fat and ugly and worthless! I just nodded and thought, "how cute, my husband's naive." Any girl who survives public school knows how catty the female of the species can be. It's why it's not really a big deal if your best friend tells you that you look great when your skirt is tucked up in the back of your underwear. It's a natural instinct; she has to thin the competition.

All of this was brought back to mind today as I waited for an hour an fifteen minutes to see my obstetrician. (Why does he take appointments on his on-call days?) The waiting room had the usual line-up: menopausal woman fanning herself with a magazine, teenage girl casting desperate looks at her mother and wondering why she has to see THAT KIND of doctor anyway, twenty-something young mother telling her five year old to "Just sit down and shut up, God I hate how you act when you come back from your father's!" (the mother of the teen was of course trying to discretely point out that THIS is why she has to see THAT KIND of doctor), and the two requisite pregnant women. I would have loved to strike up a conversation with the other pregnant lady, but of course I didn't. And why? Because women are catty!

At some point during the last few years, pregnancy and childbirth became even more of a contest of strength than it had been. Hospitals started letting mothers make more decisions and more options opened up. In addition, birthing centers popped up, midwives stopped being quaint village characters from old Europe, and the word doula stopped sounding strange. Women decided to give birth at home in kiddie pools, modern pain management went from blessing to option, and it became perfectly acceptable to post photos of yourself online giving birth in a sports bra and crystals, bouncing on a giant kickball. Now, while I'm grateful that I'm not going to be strapped to the table like my mother was, that hospital staff is actually supportive of breastfeeding now, and that the whole "shave and enema" thing has gone out the window, I'm not too sure how I feel about being put in a position to make so many decisions while in constant hormonal flux. Everyone, from Ricki Lake to the ghost of Dr Spock seems to have an opinion and to present it as being the only viable choice if you care at all about your child. Somehow the thought of an epidural has become, to some, the equivalent of thalidomide. Women who smoke throughout their entire pregnancy will tell you how bad epidurals are and how if you really wanted what was best for your baby, you'd do it "naturally".

Come on! No, an epidural or an IV of Stadol isn't exactly the natural way of doing things, but neither are weekly urine tests, group B strep testing, gestational diabetes management, gender ultrasounds, or even the giant kickball to bounce your mid-labor ass on. I'm not saying it should be all or nothing. I'm just saying that these people shouldn't be acting like they do it all while we do nothing. If you want your polyvinyl ball then let me have my modern conveniences too, and don't judge me for them!

Back in the days of mandatory enemas, strapped down mothers, and nurses who doled out bottles of formula without any questions, mothers were part of an exclusive club. They could compare notes and reassure each other and form a real support system. I guess I kind of wish we still had that kind of camaraderie. Now it's either you didn't nurse long enough or you nursed too long or you're raping the Earth with disposable diapers or your epidural makes you less of a woman or you're the hippy-freak who gave birth in a fisher-price baby pool. I don't want to go back to enemas and bed straps, but I wish the progress toward options didn't have to mean a march toward superiority either.

On doctors and diamonds. . .

I had my thirty week appointment today, the first one since I've been tracking my blood sugar. I was sure the doctor would send me straight to the diabetes expert for insulin shots but he said my numbers looked okay. I guess I'm doing pretty well on the yogurt and granola bar diet, despite what my colon may think of it. The doctor also gave me the go-ahead to leave on vacation with my mom on Thursday.

I have been alternately dreading and looking forward to this vacation since Mom thought it up last fall. It sounds like a fun trip, but then again it also sounds like the worst vacation possible for a woman deep into her 7th month of pregnancy. Plus, there's the guilt of having my mommy pay for me to go on vacation with her, but since it was her idea I try not to feel too bad about it. She and Ryan (I'm just tagging along to watch Mom's dog from what it sounds like so far) are going to dig for diamonds in Arkansas. I dread the long car ride and the heat, but it sounds fun and I think Ryan will get a kick out of it. I might even wield a shovel for a couple hours in the mornings too. Maybe I can find a rock big enough to put Ryan through college. Oh well. My main concern is the bathroom facilities. Our cabin is supposed to have a toilet installed before we get there, and I'm hoping there's some drink stand with bathrooms near the dig site. The last thing I need is to be doctor-hunting with a bladder infection in Arkansas from holding it for too long. Also, infections aren't good for us diabetics, or so I hear. I really hope Mom means it when she says she expects to make a lot of bathroom stops during the drive. Just going to Omaha and back last month with Tom was bad. I would try to wait at least 2 hours between breaks but sometimes it wasn't in the cards. This baby thinks my bladder is a trampoline.

Not sure how the wi-fi will be at a cabin in Arkansas, so I'm not sure I'll be able to post anything until we get back. So until then, wish me luck. And wish me big old honking diamonds, too.

Ryan joins in the fun.

Not one to be left out of anything artistic, Ryan took her turn at painting my belly tonight. If I felt worldly yesterday, I feel absolutely stellar tonight!

And of course, I didn't want to be the only one not painting people, so here's my handiwork:

All "pregnant" fathers should have to see this.

I recently found a website that shows, un-airbrushed, un-photoshopped, completely honest pictures of women after childbirth. The saggy tummies, the deflated balloon look of stretch marks without the stretch, the pointing down boobs trying to hide in armpits, all of it. For all the men out there who think pregnancy changes only the size, and who then get disgusted by the texture and shape, this website is for you! And for all the women who think that Demi Moore magazine cover was real, and who think that every woman can birth twins and then wear an evening gown to the Oscars a week later in her pre-pregnancy size, this site is for you!

But most of all, for those of us who pray against all hope that this time we'll bounce back like Angelina or Katie Holmes, this site is for us.


*EDIT: also, add to the list of people who should be strapped to a desk chair with their eyelids glued open and these photos on the screen in front of them, sixteen year olds who want to have babies. Imagine stuffing that belly into a prom dress you fetal-minded imbeciles!

One half cup of YUM!

One serving of carbohydrates is 15 grams. I am allowed 2 servings per snack. I just looked and discovered, much to my surprise, that half a cup of coffee ice cream has exactly 15 grams of carbs. I am now eating ice cream out of a measuring cup. Yum! I thought I had to forsake ice cream, but now I don't have to. Happy time!

My husband, the artist

I feel so worldly now.