beanski

introducing isaac

Our sweet baby boy arrived on December 8th, 2011 at 12:44pm weighing in at a whopping 8 pounds 9.5 ounces and was 21 inches long. He's perfect and sweet and cuddly and fits right in to our little family. Big brother Cameron LOVES him and spends all of his time kissing him and talking about how cute his feet are and big sister Renee has pretty much ignored him all together :) Once in a while she'll tell me that he's cute but she pretends he doesn't exist for the most part.

Isaac Christian

His first name means "He will laugh", his middle name is the same as his daddy's and we aren't sure if we'll call him Ike or not. It will depend on him, I suppose. RIght now he's still just Isaac. Or baby. Or sometimes dad calls him Eyes-Dawg which is met with a groan and an eye roll from mom.

If you need me, you can find me in my chair nursing and holding my brand new sleeping baby. I don't intend to put him down until he's two. I know he's our last and I'm soaking up every gassy, sleepy smile, every groan and even every middle of the night feeding. I've been overwhelmed by the love and support of our family and friends. You know who you are. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. We truly are blessed.

Happy Holidays!

sunny side up

Still pregnant. Still contracting. My baby wants out and my body won't let him out. I've been in and out of labor for weeks. I've spent the night at the hospital with that monitor registering "labor" contractions every three minutes. I'm still having contractions. Strong contractions. Contractions that come 3-4 minutes apart for six hours at a time and then just stop. You have no idea how frustrating that is and how many nights I've laid awake wondering if this is it.

After I asked her outright after coming to the conclusion myself, my OB confessed to me that my baby is posterior. Which means he's faced with his face up instead of his face down. He's trying to get out but he can't get enough pressure on my cervix to throw me into active labor. Why she waited until 38 weeks to tell me this I'll never know because we're to the point now where there just isn't very much room for him to turn around. All of the hands and knees and birth ball rocking I'm doing is pointless. I know it's pointless. I'm doing it anyways.

I'm doing it because I haven't slept for more than a few hours in weeks. I'm doing it because I'm still holding out hope that he'll perform some miracle and I won't have to go through a major abdominal surgery next week. I'm doing it because I don't know what else to do. The septum in my uterus rears its ugly head again. It caused Renee to be breech and come out too early. It has caused this one sunny side up and coming out too late. I don't know how Cam pulled off his miracle but it is hard for me to not feel like my body is failing my baby.

On top of all of that I'm still working. I'm still required to be a mom and a wife and Santa Claus and the Advent calendar lady. Life in general is spiraling out of control...totally independent of the baby in my belly. My daughter has been throwing up since Thursday. She's pale and her eyes are sunken and my heart hurts to look at her. I wonder how much more I can take. I cry thinking about missing The Polar Express and about missing Renee's school program after they cut me open next week. I cry because this just isn't the way I wanted it to all go down.

But, at the end of the day, I know there isn't another way. I know that we have to get through it. I know that it doesn't matter how bad I want to crumble and break or how annoyed I am that the world continues to spin around me, I know that the best thing I can do is curl up on the couch with my sick girl and cry right along with her. Because after the last four and half years of doing this mom gig, there is one thing I know for sure.

This too shall pass.

i've reached the breaking point

SERIOUSLY.

Today is one of those days that I really wish that I could really just say fuck it and give up. Forget my son's third birthday. Quit my job. Just don't bother with my work forms for my maternity leave. Give up on the nursery and the nesting and the, well, EVERYTHING.

I went to the doctor today and the baby is measuring small. He has been measuring small for a while but my OB had been shrugging it off until today. Then today she sent me for an ultrasound and I had to spend five hours worrying that something was really wrong with my baby. The ultrasound looked OK but I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. His movements have slowed down. He's only in the 20th percentile for size and my belly is measuring at 33 weeks when it should be measuring at 36. Despite the fact that everyone and their brother thinks I'm enormous, he isn't getting much bigger. And I feel so guilty because I wonder if it is because of the stress I have allowed myself to be under.

I wonder if it is because I can't just say no when work calls over and over again. The phrase "Poor planning on your part does not create an emergency on my part" comes to mind but I can't get myself to put my foot down and say ENOUGH. ENOUGH working at night and on weekends and ENOUGH treating me like I did something wrong because you didn't bother to get a plan together for me being gone until now. When it's too late.

I wonder if it's because I'm so far behind on Cameron's birthday party and this is the first birthday party out of the seven parties I've thrown for my kids where I don't feel like I gave it my all and I really hate that. I want my boy to feel special and I have a lot of guilt that other things (namely work) have taken his special day away.

I wonder if it's because of the Diet Coke I drank or because I didn't drink enough water and I wonder if it is because I'm just not getting enough rest. I lay down to sleep and between the peeing and the restless legs and the three year old flopping around in my bed and the stress of my job, I can't sleep. I can't rest. I can't sit down on the couch without feeling like my skin is crawling because I just have too much to do.

I don't know what to cut. I can't cancel his birthday. I need my job to be there in the spring when I go back. I can't make my body slow down. I can't. I can't. I can't.

the word busy doesn't cut it

I mailed out close to 800 busy bags yesterday. Once I got over the initial shock that the boxes I had asked $5 for return postage were going to cost me from $12-$20 each to send, I breathed an enormous sigh of relief that I actually managed to get them done. Renee has played with a few of the bags and she LOVED them. I'm excited for everyone to get them and to hear how their kids do with them. I was up with contractions all night long a few nights ago and was starting to seriously worry that my dining room would be covered in busy bags forever because I was certain I was going to go into labor before I got a chance to mail them out.

That isn't the case. I'm still pregnant. Hugely pregnant. Wearing my husband's shirts and cringing when I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror pregnant.

My friend Heather has been insistent on taking some maternity pictures of me before this baby comes and I have given every excuse in the book. The first being that I just don't feel or look at all cute, followed promptly by I'm just too effing busy to do anything except survive. But, I am going tomorrow morning and I'm going to own my fat face and my enormous, three times stretched to an oblivion baby belly. Because this really is it. These kicks to the pelvic bone that knock me off of my feet are the last painful baby kicks I'm ever going to feel. And I'm sure someday I'll even look back fondly on my three chins.

The baby has dropped, of that I'm certain. The heart burn has turned into pelvic pain. I honestly feel like he could fall right out at any moment when I'm walking down the street. I got the project I've been working on at work for the last five years done, saw my mom through a minor surgery and now I just have to throw a 3rd Birthday Party for my first son next weekend and after that, #3 is absolutely welcome to fall on out of there anytime. I mean, as long as someone is there to catch him.

Dear son, could we go into labor mid-day instead of the middle of the night crap your brother and sister pulled? Just once, I'd like to show up to L&D with a husband with the other kids at daycare and not racing around in the middle of the night waking up all of my friends and starting the whole birthing process exhausted. Work with me here, OK? Please?

I'd ask you to sleep through the night on our first night together and to try not to shred my nipples too bad when you're learning how to nurse but after the other two, I know those are unrealistic expectations. All I'm asking for at this point is morning or mid-day start to labor and for you to come out healthy and happy. After that, well, we'll make it work.

And if you do, by some act of God, manage to sleep and eat like a good little boy, I'll promise to buy you a pony. That your brother and sister won't be allowed to ride.

all over the place

The reason this blog is private is because my ex brother-in-law is being a huge douchebag. I won't go into details but let's just say that he doesn't need anymore ammunition to harass anyone in my family.

My job has been INSANE. You would think that I've only been pregnant for like 10 days for how they are freaking out about me going on maternity leave. We're talking working weekends here, people. I don't work on weekends.

My daughter has her mind made up that she doesn't need pull-ups at night anymore. Except that she DOES need pull-ups at night as she is hardly ever dry in the morning. I'm sick of changing sheets. Someone tell me one day she won't sleep like the dead and will be able to stay dry all night. I need hope.

How is it that every single pregnancy can be so different? This time I'm dealing with high blood pressure and restless legs syndrome. With Renee I had sciatica, with Cam I had carpal tunnel and tingling hands. With all three I had the peeing and the low back pain and the fat face syndrome. The pregnancy ailments? They just never stop.

I'm 33 weeks pregnant. That is MIND-BOGGLING, especially considering I had one kid at 36 weeks the other at 38 weeks. I had my weekly progesterone injection today and I'm going to miss my ladies at the clinic in a few weeks when I don't have to get them anymore. They are so nice. I need to make them some cookies. Yum, cookies. I will now have a one track cookie mind until I eat the cookies.

I'm can hardly wait to meet my baby boy.

nesting

Have you seriously ever seen anything cuter?

austin

The kids are both adamant that the baby's name is going to be Austin. We came home from the Twins game this weekend and they had Nena and Grandpa convinced that was his name and that the kids had spilled the beans.

Austin. Seriously, no offense against that name really, I think it's a fine name. But it is totally not our style and it makes me laugh out loud every time the kids mention it.

It will always remind me of this one night when my sister and her husband were at the grocery store after a few too many cocktails and Taber had selected a box of Hot N Spicy Cheezits and when they went to checkout, the price didn't ring up and the cashier who happened to be slightly on the feminine side for a young, college male put his mouth to the microphone and in his favorite gay man voice said:

"AUUUUUUSTIN, WE NEED A PRICE CHECK ON THE HOT N SPICY CHEEEEEEZITS."

Everyone should get to hear Taber tell that story after about eight beers while sitting around the campfire. I can't do it justice in writing but I do know in ten years when I go back and read this, I'll still hear the impersonation in my head. And I'll remember fondly these months where my four year old and my two year old are so very sure that we are actually going to let them name their new brother and how each and every time one of them say it, I literally laugh out loud. It really never gets old.

So yeah. Apparently we're having a son named Austin the first part of December.

friday night leftovers

1. People generally treat you like a freak when they find out you are pregnant with your third baby. They automatically assume that if you are having a third that it was automatically an accident and they look at you with sympathy instead of excitement. This assumption gets even more pronounced when you already have one boy and one girl. I love the perplexed look on people's faces when I tell them we have a girl and a boy and are having another boy. It is as if they are not really listening to me but busy getting their "well, now maybe you can have a girl/boy" comment out for when I inevitably say we're having a third because I wanted a little girl or something and when I shoot down that obvious conclusion, they don't even know what to say next and they just stare blankly at me as if I'm totally crazy. Only a fool would want to have three children. Clearly.

2. Men are much more sympathetic when you say that you are experiencing back pain due to pregnancy than any woman could ever dream of being. Even if those women are doulas and are actually paid real cash money to be sympathetic towards pregnant people. I don't know if it because the men are afraid of pregnant women and just agree with anything they say or if it is because men are generally way less rude and bitchy than females.

3. One can get heartburn as a direct result of drinking a glass of water.

4. Your husband can only put up with your complaining for so many weeks before he starts ignoring virtually every word you say. You know how your kids don't listen when you ask them nicely and only respond when you're all up in their face DEMANDING that they listen? Yeah, husbands do that too. And it's equally annoying.

5. The three hour gestational diabetes test is cruel and unusual punishment. I would like to know why I ALWAYS fail the one hour test but merrily pass the three hour. At least I'll won't have to do that effing test a fourth time. Gross.

6. UPS leaves no fewer than five boxes on my front porch on any given day. Coming home from work is like Christmas. Most of it IS for Christmas but it is currently the only fun part of my day. Not counting the seven seconds after I get to school/daycare to pick up the kids as they are excited to see me for exactly seven seconds before they start crying to to go out to dinner or demanding that we go to the playground.

7. I want my mommy.

8. Now that I go back and read these, #4 actually cancels out #2. The men at work may seem like they are being nice but chances are they just aren't listening to a word I say. EPIPHANY.

9. I ordered no fewer than five pairs of boots all excited about the prospect about wearing leggings and long shirts and scarves and boots. I'm still laughing at my stupidity because I forgot that I can't even bend over far enough to touch my toes. You should have seen me attempting to try those bad boys on. Pathetic.

10. I want a new phone and can't decide if I should wait until Apple decides to grace us all with their next generation of the iPhone or if I should just get an iPhone 4. Dear Apple, I know you think you're the popular kid at school and everything but could you at least just release a date that I could get my hands on an iPhone 5? Inquiring minds want to know so they can, you know, budget. Is that too much to ask?

the guilt

You kind of forget about this part of pregnancy. At least I did. The part where you feel like time is ticking by too quickly and it is running out on your other kids. You watch them play and you soak them in and you hug them extra tight because you just know that you'll wake up one day a year from now and the baby haze will be lifting and you'll have a five year old and an almost four year old and you'll wonder where they went.

When he begged for me to lay down with him at naptime today, I did it even though I had a lot of work/cooking/projects already slotted for naptime. I laid down with him because he usually picks dad and has lately been picking mom and it is a wonderful change of pace for me. I laid down with him and I smelled his hair that is getting courser and courser by the day because I know. I know that in a couple of months I won't have the luxury of laying down with him for an hour. I know how much I'll miss him.

When I took her last week to for her well child visit (three months late) and the doctor wanted to get her caught up on her shots and I agreed to let her have four shots at once, something I never ever do with the kids because I'm so afraid of pumping them full of all that crap at the same time and them having a reaction and me not knowing what it is from and she cried so hard and made desparate noises that I never hear come out of her, I totally took her straight home and curled up on the couch with her. I felt so motherly, so protective of her. I just couldn't bear the thought of sending her to preschool after that. I couldn't bear the thought of being away from her after that. I took her home and I let her watch 14 episodes of Scooby Doo and I let her eat her lunch in the living room and then took her to the mall for new books and make-up and few dozen rides on the carousel. I let her do what she wanted for an entire day because I know that it won't be long now and I won't have the option of spending an entire day with just my favorite girl. 

After a week of panicking about not getting enough done, not being ready for the baby to come, being angry and annoyed with everything going around me, I stopped tonight for a few minutes to look through the pictures I've taken in the last two weeks and I realized something. I am getting something done. I am spending time with my children. I am soaking them up and I'm taking them out for breakfast and then to the Rose Garden to play and then to Great Harvest for cookies after because right now I can and in a few months I know I'll have a newborn's schedule to contend with. I'm using my vacation time to make sure my girl knows how much I love her instead of sewing crib skirts and I'm getting down on the floor to play trains and legos and Polly Pockets even when it hurts because in just a couple of months I'll have arms full of a baby and I I know that I won't care what isn't done in the nursery, I'll just miss my big kids.


I realized today that I do have control over what is going on around me and I'm making the right choice. I'm choosing my kids. And for the first time in weeks, I think I'll sleep OK tonight.

so much to do

My emotions seesaw like the waves on an ocean. One day I’m convinced everything is going to be OK and the next I’m laying awake all night long worrying endlessly about things I have no control over.

I’m very unsure of myself. I’m very unsure that I am capable of taking care of this baby. A pretty much useless back has left me helpless and I can’t do anything for myself. There is laundry and toys piled in every single corner of the house, a habit of my husband’s that makes me want to throw things at the wall even when I’m not pregnant and can actually do something about it.

And there has been some of that. I’m not necessarily a nice, happy pregnant person this time around.

It’s hard for me to admit that because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’m never doing this again. Come December I’ll never feel what it’s like to have a baby kicking around on the inside again and honestly, those kicks in the wee hours of the morning are the only part of this pregnancy that has been any fun.

Decorating the nursery started out fun but as of now, I have all but given up on doing the things I wanted to do in there all together. It makes me so angry when I walk by his room piled from floor to ceiling with clothes and crap that I hoped to do something with to welcome him into our lives. Money already spent that I may as well have just thrown straight into the garbage. I’m resentful that I haven’t gotten ready for Christmas like I planned to do and that I haven’t planned Cam’s third birthday party. It makes me mad that I haven’t started freezing food. I’m resentful that I never get any time to do the things that I want to do for me.

Between the fantasy football drafts (seriously, does one person really need three fantasy football teams) and making sure the kids get enough fun in over the summer and celebrating our anniversary and visiting family and taking and editing pictures for a whole lot of different people, there just wasn’t time for me. And now, here I am, starting my third trimester, life slowing down to the point where I might actually have the time to do something for myself and now I struggle physically to even get in and out of my car. After eight hours of sitting in my chair at work, I can’t even walk so now even the evenings are useless. I’m capable of lying down on the couch to watch some stupid TV show that I hate or reading book after book after book.

My husband went out of town for four days over Labor Day and I spent the entire month leading up to the trip completely TERRIFIED of how I was going to do it all, the baths, the meals, and the clean-up at the end of the day. I mean, I can’t even physically get the kids up to their rooms for a time-out. To my surprise, my kids were very helpful and supportive and the weekend at home alone with them was way easier than the week following the trip has been. We’re at each other’s throats, all of us. Renee started preschool full-time and isn’t pleased about it. Ski is tired from his trip. Cam is Cam. I’m hurting and have totally unrealistic work deadlines looming. Deadlines that are impossible to meet when I’m constantly running to the clinic for a shot of progesterone that makes me even more emotional than I already am or to the chiropractor for an adjustment that is costing me thousands of dollars and doing basically no good all. Or to the pediatrician for well child visits and shots that my kids are already so far behind on and loading her up with five vaccinations at once because I don’t have time to bring her back and she ends up sick with a fever for days on end. We all need to get to the dentist. I need to get clothes/boots/hats/mittens/Halloween costumes/ etc for fall and winter. I need to spend some time working with Cameron on the potty. The baby has basically no where to even sleep. I’m exhausted. I just can’t keep up with all of it. I’m paralyzed with the enormity of just how much there is to do that I almost can’t do anything at all.

 I look outside at the most perfect weather I could possibly dream of and it makes me sad that I have absolutely no desire to go out and enjoy it. I have tomatoes in my garden that look red and delicious but I can’t physically get myself to walk out there and pick them. What I really want to do is just curl up in my bed and sleep until Christmas. I don’t want to talk to anyone; I don’t want to do anything except mope around.

I tell myself over and over and over again to let it go. I tell myself that it isn’t that big of a deal. I look through pictures on my phone of Cameron a year ago with his curly little mullet and his chubby baby thighs and I know that it is all going to be over before I even know. My head knows it. Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to get the rest of me to believe it.

I thought maybe writing it down and admitting defeat, accepting that I can’t do it all would make me feel better. I think it made me feel worse.