Reality Check...Part 2

REALITY: You will never be more terrified, excited or aflurry with as many emotions as you will be when you get ready to give birth to your child.

I'm crazy. I admit to it. I went to work, in spite of my better judgement, and was going along fine. Then came 5:45. And, an almost heart stopping braxton-hicks contraction. (I.E. False Labor) Oh, its fine, i'm cool. Almost an hour labor another heart stopping contraction. Come the third one in the 7:00 hour and it hits me...I am in the early stages of labor. Grrreeeeaaaaat!

Terrified. I'm going to completely mess up my child and destroy him some way or another. I don't know how, I just know I will. Oh sure, I've babysat. I worked in the kids camp at the YMCA. I took care of the boy's nephew all last year from 2 months on. But, i'm about to become a mom. Why in the world would God let ME become a mom?! I'm a walking disaster case. I'm selfish. I've only cared about my career before this point. My life will never be the same EVER AGAIN!

Excited. Oooh, he's finally almost here! Probably 24-36 hours at most! I finally will get to see my lil jellybean! I hope he's cute! I wonder if he'll have a lot of hair like me. Do I have everything? Did I take care of everything? I need my checklists! Do his laundry! Hell, maybe I should do my laundry! EEEEEEEEHHHHH!!!!

Anger. I need more time. Who the hell does this kid think he is? I'm not ready. The boy's not ready. WE are not ready for this! How dare he! (This emotion really only lasts about 5 seconds when you remind yourself its not your kids' fault he's coming into the world.)

Its all there. All these emotions. Spaz attack central. As of this point, we're estimating i've been in labor for just over 12 hours today. I'm still at home, obviously. They don't want me to go in until my contractions are 5 minutes apart for an hour. Right now, i'm at 23-25 minutes apart an hour. OMG! This is gonna take way too effing long. But, we are hitting the home stretch.

Letting go...

I'm in a complicated stretch of my life right now. My young son, who's newest favorite thing is to shove parts of his body against parts of mine, is arriving in about three months. This is good. I've gotten through the first two trimesters. But this is bad...i'm a procrastinator and I have a ton to do like I said last time and its a bit overwhelming. At least i'm not doing it alone though. That makes life easier.

The biggest thing, out of everything we have to accomplish, besides getting our car fixed (which we are almost there with, yay!), is clearing out four rooms of this house in three months. It used to be five rooms, but in a pure moment of manic nesting syndrome, I dragged my family out to the garage and we cleaned it! Well, most of it. We easily got rid of TWO TRUCKLOADS of crap to the dump and about a truckload and a half of stuff to Goodwill that had been sitting in our garage for the last 22 years or so. We've lived here a long time, since right before D.R was born. Time has not been our friend in terms of accumulation and we are all bad for it. We found old toys (like my Alvin and the Chipmunks doll I got for Christmas 1984 with the pull string on the back that I pulled so much, his voice doesn't work anymore, we chucked him), D.R's stories he wrote back in school (with his overactive imagination, I can't for the life of me figure out why he doesn't try writing...or becoming a lawyer...i still need to have a dictionary beside me to have a conversation with him sometimes), things my mom had meant to send out to her family in South America and about 3 bazillion tool boxes that my dad has. Anyways, we cleaned it. It was weird. It was the most room any of us had seen out there in about 10 years. And, it left us with enough room to shove a queen size bed, a desk and a trunk out there from my room.

Yep, we cleaned my room. Well, we cleared out stuff, how about we say that. My queen size bed was replaced with a California king size bed, that i'm really surprised we fit into my room at all. The mattress is only two years old though, and very comfy. I'm sleeping much better. My desk is gone, which sucks, because I have nowhere to put bills and stuff, but its making me get rid of shit, which is good. I still have a lot of crap that I have to figure out what to do with. I'm getting rid of most of the evening gowns I have, except for two (one for a trash the dress photo shoot and one that I just like and should still fit me once I have the jellybean), I need to organize and pack away my CD collection and then start going through and converting my DVD collection to blu-ray. Plus going through my clothes. Which is gonna be weird, considering I've decided to give MOST of it away that I was wearing pre-pregnancy and start over again when I have the baby. I still have a long way to go, and i'm not sure if I'm going to be done by the time the baby comes. But there are still three other rooms of this house to clean.

Next, is the dining room, which is about 15 years worth of crap from soccer balls to camping equipment, to board games and books. Its gonna take some time, but its a smaller room compared to the garage, so I think it'll work out faster in the end. Then, we gotta clear out the living room, which has pretty much become baby storage stuff. Then, D.R.'s room, who has graciously agreed to move into the living room so that the baby can have his room. Basically, all the cleaning is a method of madness of sorts. And this is boring, I know. But the mess has consumed my life. Its like being underwater, and just wanting to burst up to the surface for air. Its left me consumed in memories when I stumble upon things.

In a real shocker, I've actually gotten rid of photographs. As an amateur photographer, this is so not my style. But, I find in my current emotional state, I'm almost allowing myself to feel emotions other than happiness, and while some of the photos stay because they make me happy, other have to go in the trash because they make me angry. I think its what I knew all along. I clean up my home, maybe i'll clean up the rest of my life. Get rid of other things that make me angry. Learn to continue to be happy with the person I am. I may not have a title, a million dollar paycheck or even a clean room. But I have a family who loves me, a man who cherishes me, faults and all, with no judgement for my past and an adorable little man coming into my life. So, why do I keep holding on the past, besides wanting to remember the good times? Isn't it time to let go of the sadness, the anger? To stop punishing myself for whatever things I did against others that I've already apologized for. To stop allowing myself to feel inferior because I don't have this, that or the other, or don't do things a certain way. I've digressed completely, but I was trying to get here. Its where I've been for months, maybe years. And, its hard to get out of the cycle once you're in it. Once you allow others to allow you to feel inferior, its hard to escape. Its such an easy mold to fit. I'm not this because I don't have that, and I'm not that because I don't do this and I don't love so and so because I do this instead of that. Screw it all. Holding on to photographs that make me upset, doesn't make me a better person. Trying to hold on to things that don't bring back good memories doesn't make me happy. If I'm really going to try to start anew per say, isn't it time to just let it all go?

Being Cool...

I have been cool approximately 10 minutes of my life. Total. Maybe.

I have had really cool stuff happen to me. This does not in fact make a person cool. This simply means you were in the right place at the right time. Which is true for me about 75% of the time.

Being cool is this thing that always seems to just escape me. I never quite say the cool thing. I never quite make it on wearing the right clothes at the right time. I always just tried a little too hard in high school. Actually, high school was mostly about just skating on by, except for my Student Council days. But that didn't make me cool. That was just leadership and decorating skills and planning skills.

I was never athletically inclined. I danced. I was pretty good. Not fantastic. If we had the money, I probably would've gotten good at it. Other than that, not an athletic person. Cheerleader...in the first grade. Softball...Rec league, where no one really cares. Soccer in high school...i played the last 10 minutes of every game because the coach took pity on me.

College was really my blossoming years, as a person and as someone who knew the way she wanted to be. But years of knowing I was never cool still followed me to college and affected the kind of person I was not, not as badly as it had in high school, but enough to where I can still tell the difference between how I used to be and how I am now.

The way I got through high school and even parts of college, was being a people pleaser. I wasn't cool, I didn't quite fit in the way I wanted to, so I was really kind and really helpful. Sometimes to the point where I let myself be talked to in a way that wasn't kind and to where I allowed myself to be in bad relationships because I just wanted to be accepted. Because I had a hard time accepting myself.

I'm a very dorky, awkward, kind of hilarious person. No matter how much weight I lose after I have my baby, I will never be 'petite' or 'cute'. I will always be taller than average. I will always have a tendency to just kind of say whatever is at the tip of my tongue because its how I feel or because there is no point in holding back anymore. I will trip over my own feet, but dance rather gracefully because I had 4 years of ballet training, which makes me semi-graceful. I will read for the rest of my life, because it is how I learn and I like to learn and know and have 7 million random facts floating in my head for conversations with the many different people I know in my life. I like relating to lots of people and I like helping people, but I learn more and more everyday that helping and pleasing is not a way to be accepted. It is a way to be used and abused and mistreated.

The funny thing is, is that when you start changing, people don't like it. I understand it, to an extent, but i don't. Its hard for me some days, because I want to slip back into people pleaser mode to keep the peace. But, i'm not so good at keeping peace anymore. I get aggravated when I realize my kindness is being taken advantage of. That really creams my corn, a lot. And people don't want to take me seriously. They think that i'm nice and so they can do what they want and I'll come back for more. I have friends, good friends, and a nice family and the wonderful boy and a baby coming. I have a pretty full life. I'm tired of adding people who want to use me for my car and my perks at the radio station and other such nonsense. But then people get angry when i stand up for myself. If it was them in my shoes, they would act much the same way. I'm not mean. Not yet.

What concerns me the most, is that if i don't stop now, my child will follow my path. I already want so much more for this little person. I mean, you can't help personality, you are what you are. But, if mommy is not a pushover, baby will not be a pushover. I find more and more, everything I do is not only for the betterment of myself, but the betterment of my future child. It makes it a lot easier to not slip back into people pleaser mode.

Geez, my emotions are in overdrive right now. I need my pregnancy hormones to chill out!

Stubborn Biatch

That is thy name.

Sorry, its the harsh reality right now. As of right now, I'm 13 weeks pregnant. My feet are starting to swell, my face is breaking out, i'm getting chubbier and nausea still makes it impossible to eat somedays. Oh, and i'm an emotional nutcase.

The problem with being an emotional nutcase is that I don't react to things in a rational manner. (Not that I ever really did.) But I'm much more honest. I'm holding back a lot less. I'm coming off as a henious, stubborn bitch and I don't care.

Its not a personal thing. I've spent two-third's of my life being nice to people and finding a kind way to say things about people because I am just not fond of confrontation. Once confrontation surfaces, I normally avoid it like the black plague and go into hiding in my shell and just keep my thoughts to myself and stew. I seem to have lost this ability to be able to do this sort of thing all the time. But I can't say that I'm truly upset about this.

I love my boyfriend's family. I do. They are kind people, with redneck tendencies, but a lot of people are. That I can live with. What I can't live with is being driven nuts!

First off, this is my pregnancy. Which means I'm the one that's carrying this kid. Which means I can handle this situation how I want. The boy and I get to raise this kid the way we want, which means we get to make decisions about how we handle discipline, schooling and other such nonsense.

Secondly, if someone tries to push freaking boy baby clothes on me before we freaking know what I'm having, i'm going to literally strangle the person who does that to me. We don't know what I'm having. I think I'm having a girl, but on the off chance I'm not, I want to know for sure. Until I know for sure, I'm not buying a single stitch of clothing. (Well, i did buy a really cute Bunny ears hat for easter. Sue me, I'm a new mom.) Stop pushing stuff on me. I don't need it. I have enough on me as it is.

Third, there are three major events in a woman's life, only two of which she's has some kind of control over, because at your funeral, you're dead, and quite frankly as long as no one just throws me in the backyard, I really won't care anymore. But, you can control your wedding and your pregnancy/baby shower. Please let me have a say in what I want to do. Its mine. I don't want to have to live vicariously through someone else because I didn't get to do things the way I wanted to. Save us all the hassle and save me the tears and let me do what I want, because at this point, i'm going to be pushed to pay for it myself, have it in the backyard and invite 15 people tops. I'm not in kindergarten, and i'm less and less fond of the idea of inviting people who don't like me and who i don't consider friends or family to this thing. And on top of that, why is this such a big deal, its a party for me to be a freeloader. I'll take care of it when I'm good and ready. I would like to accomplish the red tape of Medicaid first before I start worrying about whether I want chocolate or yellow cake at the party. And hey, maybe I want confetti cake. Confetti frosting is the shit, ok?

And finally, quite frankly, you don't know what I'm putting in my mouth. You don't ask me. You just assume. Yes, i know I'm fat. I've been looking at this body for a really long time, I know the flaws and the good parts. But, just because i'm fat and now having a baby does not mean that I am treating my stomach like a trash shoot. I have a salad everyday. I've severly increased my intake of fiber, in a concentrated effort to not have to deal with constitpation and hemeroids. I am literally force feeding myself milk so that I get my daily quota of calcium and don't develop Osteoperosis. (Literally. I chug 3 glasses of milk a day. I hate milk. But i do it.) I already worry about gestational diabetes (because my mom got it both times when she was pregnant), high blood pressure, and the effects of stress on a baby. I take prenatal vitamins everyday, do yoga five days a week and have cut caffeine out of my life almost completely. I am so worried about how much weight I'm putting on and am trying my damndest to not put on too much weight but make sure I put on enough so that the baby will be healthy. And quite frankly, instead of being worried about what I put in my mouth, why don't you worry about what you are putting in your mouth.

Side note: The people who this is directed at don't read this blog, at least not as far as I know. I've actually said most of this to the people who this is directed at. I just need to try to get it out of my system. Its driving me nuts.

The point of all of this is please, please continue to try to tell me what to do. Seriously. All you are doing is turning me into a hard-headed, stubborn bitch, who is not going to listen to you. Seriously.