Similac . . . From Hell!

They've found melamine in baby formula. Here, not in China this time. Yes it's trace amounts, but who knows how ingesting trace amounts of an industrial cleaner for a year will affect a child down the line? Just another reason to breast feed.

I know not everyone can breast feed. Some women have to work in service or retail jobs where pumping isn't a viable option. Some women are post-mastectomy breast cancer survivors. Some women are, knowingly or unknowingly, given medications that compromise or decrease their milk supplies. But then there are the women who just don't feel like it, and those are the ones who tend to piss me off.

Yeah, I know. Mothers have the right to parent however they see fit, and even more they have the right to use their breasts however they see fit. But for now let's assume I have the right to get pissed whenever I see fit. Okay?

Women who look down at their infant babies and say to themselves, "It's only second best for my baby," bother me with their sheer incomprehensibleness. But even worse, infinitely worse, are the ones who make us pay for it. The ones who go to WIC or who use food stamps to buy the formula. It's like (exactly like) if I went to your employer and said, "I have a baby and I want to buy that baby bottled water, and I want you to take money from your employees' paychecks in order for me to do it. Now, I have superior water at home in my tap. It is nutritionally superior to the water I want to buy. It has over 100 nutritional compounds not included in the water I want your workers to pay for. But I don't feel like using it, so hand over the money."

Yes, yes, people have choice and they can feed their kids whatever they damn well feel like. But I can hold it against them if they let their kids eat chocolate all day long, and in the same vein I can pass judgement on those who electively formula feed.

And what would you like for Christmas little girl, a mass spectrometer?

When I was a kid, my mom would ask me to start my Christmas Wish List sometime around the first of November, and I would hand her a list 3 feet long in about a week, and continue adding to it right up until Christmas Eve. As I got older, my list went from Barbies and teddy bears to cassettes and clothes, but I always had my list, and plenty of catalog pages with the corners turned down too.

I asked my ten year old what she wanted for Christmas and this is what she said, "I don't know. Science stuff." She can't, or won't, elaborate, and the only addition she's made to the list of one is "Habbo cards". Spending real money on toy money, it seems dumb to me. SO what do I get her? She's not the average ten year old. She'd hate me if I gave her anything Hannah Montana, and she's never even seen a high school musical before. So . . . what? I can't give her a box full of gift cards, and I can't afford to get her the kind of science stuff she wants (think the Mythbusters store room plus a full forensics lab), and she's already told me in no uncertain terms how much she detests girly things like jewelry and make-up.

Ugh, Christmas was so much easier before she outgrew Barbies and teddy bears.

Yes, he did!

We won! Okay, not me per se. But Obama won. Tommy will grow up having absolutely no memory of a time when people wondered if this country could vote in a black president. Tom was about his age when Martin Luther King was killed for daring to dream that this could happen, and now Obama's been elected. Cool.

Probably I've lost it.

Tommy's only 3 months old, and he's getting bigger and cuter and smarter every day. But I'm starting to get that feeling whenever I see a pregnant woman, or a cute maternity top, or watch A Baby Story on TLC. I want another one.

Yes, I'm enjoying Tommy. And yes, I realize that 2 babies will be a huge undertaking. And yes, I know that I will have a lot fewer memories of Tommy's childhood than of Ryan's, in part due to lack of sleep and also due to jumbling his childhood up with the next baby's. But I still amd starting to look forward to my next baby.

Is this natural, do you think? Or have I just completely lost it now?

Merlot and Email, part 2

Hah! And now blogger is in an Asian language too. Will it never stop?

I'm a fat person. I never wanted to be a fat person, and last summer I was dieting to avoid it. But then came pregnancy, and now I'm nursing, and soon the holidays anyway, and I won't be able to diet again until next summer which is actually when we're going to try to get pregnant agin. If he can stand to touch me, that is, considering that I'm a fat person.

My ex was an asshole. A drunk and a world class asshole. But his ex was bigger. Incredibly hot, don't get me wrong, but bigger nonetheless. I wish Tom's ex was bigger, any ex. But no, he's a superficial old goat who values a low body fat percentage and so I feel bad about being a fat person. If I were still with the asshole, I wouldn't worry about turning him off. Mostly because it would be a good thing, but also because size never mattered to him. It matters to Tom, I think.

I don't want to be a fat person, although the laws of karma say I should be. I was always the skinny girl, my whole life. I hated wearing a bathing suit because I looked too bony. No matter what I ate, I stayed skinny. Hate me? Yeah, so did everybody else. But now, every potato chip, every Little Debbie Swiss Roll, goes straight to my burgeoning fat layer. And here I sit, eating said potato chips and Swiss Rolls because really, in a land of giant thighs and horrifically jiggly midsections, what's another thousand or so calories?
I'm a fat person who's given up for the time being. What's more pathetic than that?

My family

I have it all now.

Elmer Fudd, and babies!

I'm having a problem with my google toolbar. Every time I do a search from it, google comes up in random new languages. And since I can't read Arabic or whatever Asian or African dialect I might get, I have to randomly change the language until I get something Latin-based so maybe I can find the word "English" in the list. Last time I had to go to Elmer Fudd (an actual language choice). Then I had to click "Engwish" and "Save Pwefwences". This is a ridiculous glitch!

I met my nephew! My brother's girlfriend was in town and she brought the baby over. Adorable, as I of course knew already. But the surprising thing is that Tommy outweighs him by at least a pound. Tommy weighed 6-11 at birth, Collin weighed 8-14. Sure Tommy's 3 weeks older, but the day Collin was born he weighed more than Tommy did. Apparently, I make fattening milk. I hope so. And I hope that I lose every one of the calories Tommy gets, because it's the only weight-loss plan I'm using.

Someone please tell me how to fix the google toolbar thing. It's weally fwustwating!

The best baby sitter ever

She actually asks to change wet diapers and burp him. And he behaves better for her than for me.

Don't blog drunk!

Tommy took a bottle! Today was my hometown's annual marathon (complete with mini-races for the kids) and Paint The Town, where they block off Main Street and fill it with 3X3 squares you can paint for $10 a piece. Ryan is in fifth grade this year which means she got to choose between a half mile run or a full mile, and she chose the full mile. And she came in dead last. Like WAAAYYY last. She crossed the finish line after the people who tell you what number you are in the race left. So after the race she came home with Tom, Tommy, and I and about ten minutes later a friend of hers who had seen her finish came to the door. Ryan won the first place medal for fifth grade girls. It turns out that no other girl in her grade had had the nerve to run a full mile. So she finished last, but first, and who knows how she would have done if she had been competing against kids her own age. After that, she decided to paint her medal in her square, so now on Main Street (in front of Happy Joe's Pizza) is a 3X3 rendition of a solid brass first place medal. I will upload a photo soon.

So she and I were wandering the street, looking at the paintings, when Tom got tired and took Tommy home. He called a while later when Tommy was hungry, but we had milk in the freezer so I told him to feed him. And he took the bottle!

So tonight, I am drinking! I am on my second (and last) beer, and I have already emailed buzzed which is a no-no. And now I am blogging buzzed too, so apparently I will never learn.

I HATE BLOGGER!

Why is every word that blogger doesn't recognize in bright red bold print?! And how do I fix it?! Blogger pisses me off so bad sometimes. And all my contractions are underlined in red now, to alert me to their inherent evil, I suppose.

Wastes of money

Okay so I posted my favorite can't-live-withouts, so here's my list of things you don't need to waste your money on.

1. diaper bag. Not because they're not incredibly useful, but because the hospital gave me one for free, from Similac. I don't use formula, but it's a nice bag. And, it came with a cooler for breast milk and 3 freezer storage bottles.
2. Lansinoh cream. Ugh, where do I start? It's a goopy mess, and it doesn't work, or at least it didn't do anything for me.
3. burp cloths. I don't see the point in spending good money on something cute to be puked on. To wipe up spit-up I use wash cloths, and to put over my shoulder I use flannel receiving blankets because I've been given at least a dozen of them as gifts. And they're multitaskers; I've never swaddled a baby with a designer burp cloth.
4. jogging stroller. I wanted one, oh how I wanted one. They're sleek, they're triangular, they have wheels big enough to not get stuck in the train tracks that bisect this little town. But they cost almost $200, and unless you pay even more for a deluxe model the front wheel won't turn so you can only go straight, and an infant can't ride in one until he's old enough to sit up and hold his head straight on his own.
5. baby mittens. Just use a pair of baby socks, or buy shirts with long sleeves that have fold-over pockets on the end.
6. gym play mats. The whole point of the play mat is to give back-sleeping babies tummy time. So why put a big Saint Louis arch of toys over them? It seems like an over-designed rip-off. Buy one of the tummy-oriented ones instead and stick hanging toys on the car-seat handle instead.
   
7. baby food. Yep, that's right. I see baby food as a waste of money. Well, except for the meat, because there's just no way to turn meat into a smooth paste yourself, or at least I've never found it. I buy canned vegetables and fruit, rinse it, and pop it into the food processor. Fifty cents for a can of sweet potatoes that makes 2 jars of baby food, or a dollar fifty a jar for prepared stuff? That said, I always have a couple jars of the store-bought stuff on hand because it doesn't have to be refrigerated and so it goes well in the diaper bag.

Again, I will add to this as it occurs to me. Or, more likely, I'll forget and this post will never be touched again.

Reccomendations

The last time I had a baby was a decade ago, so there are tons of products out now that weren't out then. These are some of my favorite things, some old but mostly new discoveries.

1. Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe blankets.
2. playpen/bassinet/changing table combo. Last time I had the plain old square playpen and I love the new combo thing, especially since we don't have room for a crib yet.
3. Travel systems with car seat bases. Ten years ago I had a car seat with no handle, and a completely separate stroller. And I had to tighten the seat belt every time I drove anywhere because it had to go over/through the car seat. These things are so easy and so great.
4. Diapers by the case. I love buying diapers by the case because it's cheaper and I don't find myself running out every couple days.
5. Diaper Genie II. Last time there was only the diaper genie, which took very expensive bags and had an easily worn-out twisting mechanism to give you mile-long sausage ropes of diapers. This new version, however, is much easier and simpler and keeps the stink well-contained. I mean, it sits literally 2 feet from the head of my bed and I smell nothing.
6. Sleeping gowns. They were around before and I loved them then too. SO much easier to change a diaper without waking the baby too much without threading the legs through some sort of pants.
7. Simethicone colic drops. I use generic but these things are great! The baby hurts from a bubble, you give the baby drops, the baby burps and sleeps. Voila!
8. Gerber Breast Therapy balm. WAY better than Lansinoh. Hard to find in stores but well worth the gas to get to one or the shipping. Buy it before you give birth.
   

It's late so that's all for now, but I'm sure I'll add more later.

Quick updates

Tommy's doing great. He has my cleft chin but other than that I can't tell whose features, what with smooshed baby nose and nursing blisters on his lips. I hope his eyes go hazel like his dad's. He had colic for a few days but I ditched dairy and it seems to have cleared up in the last couple of days. No more cappuccinos or ice cream for me but my waist didn't need them anyway.

Tom's sister and brother in law came into town for labor day weekend. She's a photographer and she took some pics of us. I haven't seen them yet but I hope they're good.

My brother's baby was born last week. I haven't heard much from them but I did see some pictures and he's a cutie, but what baby isn't. He was big so my sympathies go to his mother. Vacuum extraction, ouch.

I let Tom win the circumcision fight and then the idiot geriatric OB nurse over-simplified the after-care instructions and the skin got stuck back over and now the pediatrician had to pry it loose. I am SO anti-circumcision now it's not even funny. Not only did we hack a perfectly good piece of baby off, but we screwed it up and now it may need to be done again. What's worse than being circumcised without giving your consent? Being circumcised TWICE without your consent! Poor baby.

Here's a treat for ICC. I hope to see her soon.

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.