Spoiler Alert: This blog contains info that may be disturbing to some readers- things about girl parts and labor and stuff

I can't figure out if pregnancy posts belong on my mom blog or our family blog, so this one is going on the mom blog because its contents could be disturbing to some people.

I hate my cervix. I had a doctors appointment earlier this week. My dr was going to do a cervical check and strip my membranes to get things moving with the whole labor process. She went in to check my cervix, and it is so tightly closed she couldn't even strip my membranes. Stupid cervix, closed up tight, and not even angled properly for birth giving. It is still pointing back instead of forward where it needs to be for the baby to come out. Did you even know they point backwards and then change angles at the end, I didn't until the night before my dr appointment when I read it in my book. My family all talks to my belly and tells the baby to come out. My sis-in-law Krit was doing it on Wednesday and I told her don't talk to the baby, talk to my cervix, she pretended to move my legs, it was pretty funny.

This appointment was on Tuesday, I have to go every week and the next opening my dr had was for the Thursday of the following week, the 22. My due date is the 24th, and the c-section is scheduled for the 26th, "just in case." I am really starting to lose hope that I am going to be able to do a VBAC. I want to so bad, and it's so important to me. I never thought I would care so much if I had to have a repeat c-section, but I don't want one. So badly I don't want one. I want to be able to have this baby naturally, I want to experience all the stages of labor. I want to know what it feels like to push a baby out of your body. I don't want to be high and drugged up and numb when my baby is sliced out of me. I want to be able to see the baby as it comes out of me. I even want to see the placenta after it is delivered. Is that weird? I have a child, and I've never seen a placenta, and I am really curious to know what it looks like. I don't want to be laying on a table shaking when my baby is cut out of me. I don't want to be laying in a recovery room for an hour or more before I can hold my baby. I don't want to be stuck with a catheter in and not be able to move from my bed (although when I had Simon it was nice not having to get out of bed to go pee, but that's because my abdomen had been sliced open and walking was nearly impossible). I don't want to have to yell at my husband and wake him up to shut the door every hour after the stupid nurse left it open after she checked my blood pressure. I would like to be able to get up myself and shut the door. I want to be able to laugh without it being extremely painful. I would like to be able to walk upright immediately, especially since I have stairs in my house. I can't remember how long it was after I had Simon before I felt like I could walk standing up straight, or even stand up straight.

I want and don't want a lot of things. But most of all I want a natural delivery and at the very least a vaginal delivery. I don't want to have another c-section. I want to prove to myself that I can do this, that my body can do this, and that I can have this baby in a normal way. I am just really losing hope. Every day that goes by without a single contraction is a day closer to that deadline I am trying to beat. That day the dr set that the baby needs to come out by.

I think if the baby hasn't come by my appointment next Thursday I will have Steve help me fight her again about the scheduled c-section date. I know that the due date of the 24th is wrong anyways and it's so frustrating. If you do the reverse from the due date to estimate the conception date it's December 25th through January 1st. Funny, my last period started on the 25th, so I know for a fact I was not having sex, and abstinence is 100% effective for birth control. It is impossible for us to have gotten pregnant then while I was on my freaking period and we were not having sex! But if you go with a due date of October 1st, well then it is possible and makes plenty of sense that we got pregnant then. Hooray for vacation baby made in Belize! So it just really sucks knowing we are getting shorted a week on the due date, and that this baby really has to come early, like almost a week early to make it out before the c-section. Which is possible, babies are born early all the time, but they are also born late all the time too. Simon came 5 days early, but that doesn't mean this one will. And even if he does come 5 days early, early based on when his due date SHOULD have been means a day after the scheduled c-section date. Sigh...

This was a good little vent for me. I have been majorly stressing about all this and it's nice to be able to type it all up and get it out. Steve hears it from me all the time, feels the same as I do, and is also giving up hope like I am, which makes it hard. How do you keep hoping for something that you want to badly, but your dr is basically setting you up to fail at?


On a side note, all day yesterday and this morning Steve and I both noticed the baby was moving considerably less than normally and we were kind of worried about it, so we called the dr office and talked to the nurse about it. She was rude and condescending but we went in to the office anyways and got hooked up to some monitors to listen to the baby's heartbeat and check for contractions. Heartbeat was fantastic, absolutely no contractions, the nurse was super rude to us and made us feel stupid for coming in, but the dr at the practice was really nice and told us it's better to come in when we are worried than be like a person who hadn't felt their baby for a week and didn't come in! The nurse even said to us, "You know the baby does need to sleep sometimes, it's not awake all the time and isn't going to be moving constantly." Uh yeah, we know it sleeps, but we also know how much he normally moves and that he was barely moving yesterday even after I ate tons of sugar and stuff, he would move a teeny bit if we were poking at him, but it just wasn't his normal movements and it freaked us out a little. And when we left the dr office the nurse totally said, "Bye Kari," in a very biotchy tone of voice and just seemed so annoyed with us the entire time we were there. She was the first person on that staff to ever be rude to us, except our very first appointment when the receptionist treated us like trash and told us we should go to the Pregnancy Center (a clinic for non-insured people and Medicaid) because I wasn't showing up on Steve's insurance yet even though I should have been. We just paid cash for the appointment and ignored her because we knew we had good insurance. So good in fact that it covers 100% of maternity- ha take that Stacy! Sorry for this last little rant, guess I am just a little annoyed and needing to express it, thanks for hanging in there with me for that!

Anyways, if you could please keep us in your prayers and if you want to suggest ways to ripen the cervix and get labor started go for it, though our dr says the only thing that works for ripening the cervix is sex. And I am doing evening primrose oil too and eating pineapple even though the dr says there is no point. And I'm not gonna try castor oil, sorry, but I don't think that I am going to be desperate enough to do that to myself.

funny Simon sleep story

Background:
Sometime last month Steve and I bought Simon a nice twin size bed (and nightstand) that we found on Craigslist. He has been doing pretty good sleeping in it, but still wants to sleep in our bed every night. We co-slept with Simon as a baby, and he just stayed in our bed after that. Steve and I were both fine with it, we loved it, and loved having extra cuddle time with our boy. Now that I am pregnant I am getting tired of Simon sleeping with us because he wants to sleep so close he is sometimes on you, and I just don't feel like tolerating it. And I also don't want him to be in our bed still when the new baby comes, because we plan on co-sleeping again, and I worry about Simon and the baby being in bed together. So I have been working really hard on getting Simon out of our bed and staying in his bed. Every night is a challenge, but he has been doing pretty good. It's normal for him to wake up around 4:30 to 5:30 and want to come into my bed, and I am normally so tired I let him, but the past few nights he has been staying in his bed all night! I have found that if I lay down with him, "just for a second" as he likes to ask, in his bed, he will stay in his bed, but I often fall asleep before him and wake up an hour or two later and head to my room. Anyways, now for the story.

The Story:

This happened Tuesday night.
On this particular night I didn't feel like laying down in Simon's bed with him, I was tired and I just wanted him to go to sleep in his bed and leave me along to sleep in mine. So I told him he needed to stay in his room. I said I didn't care if he played quietly as long as he went to bed in a little bit, but that he was not allowed to come in to my room and get in my bed. So we read our story, say prayers, say goodnight, and I remind him of the rules for the night. Don't come into mom's room or you will go to time out. So I proceed to my room to read for a little while in bed before going to bed.

About 10 minutes later I hear Simon fiddling with his bedroom door. He "snuck" out of his room ever so quietly, comes out of room, and then tries to quietly shut the door behind him, and pretend like he never came out of his room. At this point I am sure he is in the hall but I can't hear him or see him, so I keep reading and looking out in the hallway expecting to see him standing in my doorway, but not coming in- because then he will have to go to timeout. After about 5 minutes I hear him chattering out in the hall, so I climb out of my bed, and crawl across the floor to look out the open bedroom door and see what he is doing.

He was just sitting on the floor in front of my door playing with a ball and hanger and talking to himself. After a minute of watching him he looks up and realizes I am watching him, he got the biggest smile on his face when I caught him. I surrendered to his cuteness and asked him if he wanted to come sleep with me. Of course he said yes and climbed on up to my bed. Then I told him he was a turd, and asked if he knew he was a turd and he got a huge grin on his face, snuggled up to me and said yes! Little turd.
I am such a pushover, and if he waits til I am tired enough he knows I will just cave. But the rest of the week after that he has slept in his bed all night by himself and hasn't even came in the middle of the night!

potty training... again

I never mentioned before that potty training didn't work last time. Simon started to get really obstinate and had a lot of accidents and would scream anytime we tried to get him to go, so we switched back to diapers. I was actually OK with the switch back because he was having such a hard time with it and not doing very good, plus we had a lot of trips planned with a lot of airplanes, airports, and long car rides, and honestly I didn't want to have to deal with potty training on these trips. Especially since it was just him and I on all the trips and we were flying standby so we had to carry on all of our stuff- not the easiest to maneuver around the airport with and in and out of bathrooms with teeny tiny stalls.

Well, a week ago Simon and I were hanging out in the living room and he pulled off his diaper and said he wanted to go potty. So he pulled it off, ran into the bathroom and went to the bathroom on his little "Simon seat." Since then he wears underwear about half the day and diapers the other half. By the evening he starts having a lot of accidents, not sure why, maybe because Steve is awake and Simon no longer has my undivided attention? Right now I am not pressing the issue with him too much. He sleeps in diapers and when he wakes up and I take his first diaper off I let him he choose if he wants another diaper or underwear, he normally picks underwear. He will also go into the bathroom by himself, take off his underwear, go to the bathroom, empty his seat into the real toilet and flush it down, he is doing good!

We are just going to take it easy this time, and let him make the decisions instead of trying to force it. Wish us luck! Hopefully he will be totally out of diapers before the baby arrives, and hopefully he doesn't go back to diapers because the baby comes.

Worries about having two kids.

I love being a mom. I love my Simon-son. He is amazing, and so sweet and he makes me so grateful that I have such a fun calm, well-mannered little boy. Knock on wood. Let's hope he stays this way. I am grateful that I get to be a mostly stay-at-home mom, and that I could be a full-time one if I wanted, but Simon loves going to his Vovo's house and playing with his cousins and I love my job and my coworkers. I am also grateful that I am not working as much through this pregnancy. I am feeling pretty good nowadays, but am always tired. How did I work full-time through the last one? I actually worked two jobs last time and sometimes went a few weeks without a day off. How did I do that? How do other moms do that? I have no clue, but they are amazing.
Some days I wonder how I am going to handle having two kids. I feel like some days I have absolutely no patience for Simon and I thought I was a pretty patient person. What am I going to do when I have a crying baby and a whining Simon? I have a feeling it will involve watching more tv and movies than we already do. It may involve reading more books. I think it will definitely involve more sitting on the couch, though I already do a good deal of that because I am tired all the time. And hopefully it involves more walks but it will be getting cold out shortly after baby comes so we will have to bundle up! I do plan on getting a Moby Wrap or similar type of wrap to have the baby close and my hands free for Simon, I had a sling with Simon and didn't like it, all the weight on one shoulder was not comfortable.
I worry about Simon alot though. He has become much more of a momma's boy than he was already since I stay at home a lot more now. How is he going to handle having a younger brother? Is he going to get jealous, is he going to love the baby so much? I think he will love the baby, he likes to see my belly to see the baby, and when the baby is moving a lot I will take Simon's hand and put it on my belly so he can feel it. I'm not sure if he feels it or not but he giggles and he likes to kiss my belly. Hopefully he is still as fond of the baby when it is no longer in my uterus.
We went to register at BabiesRUs the other day because if I went and registered I got a free $10 gift card, so I figured why not, and also at the end we get 20% off anything on the registry not purchased, so even if no one else looks at it, we still a discount on the stuff on it like swings, bouncers, bibs, blankets, whatever! But while we were there I realized there is a lot of stuff we never had for Simon and for two reasons. 1. We were in a pretty small 1 bedroom apartment and didn't really have the space for a lot of stuff. 2. He was in daycare 5 days a week, and got to play with lots of cool toys there and when he was home I was mostly playing with him and holding him and didn't have a need for lots of things to amuse him and keep him occupied, because I was that thing. Now that I am a stay-at-home mom, and have another kid that is going to need attention too, I am going to have to buy a lot of that gear I never had before. With Simon we had a bassinet, a swing, a tummy time pad, and his crib. He never had a pack'n'play (which we aren't going to get this time either), he never had a bouncer, or a vibrating seat, or a play exersaucer thing, or a baby monitor (his crib was in the living room, his bassinet was in our room, and we co-slept), or a boppy (i just used a small pillow). We never had to buy an infant carrier (carseat) because we were given a used one by a trusted friend, but now the handle is broken and doesn't lock in place so we need a new one. I am realizing now that these things add up, there is tons of gear we have to buy and it's a little scary- so much money! We have a swing already, but I am thinking of getting one that is a swing, bouncer combo, and you can take the bouncer seat off, but maybe it's smarter to keep the swing we have and just buy a bouncer seat, but having the two in one saves a lot of space in our small place. We are thinking about moving, but want to stay here because it is so cheap, we would rather keep the extra $350 a month we would have to pay to live in a larger place. Oh goodness having another kid is a little scary. So much to think about and buy to get ready for the new one, perhaps a trip to Once Upon a Child is in store instead of stressing about the cost of all the new stuff. Thank goodness we are having another boy so we don't have to buy an entirely new wardrobe too, and thank goodness Steve has a real job now, so money isn't quite as tight as it used to be, though it's still a little tight since we have to pay off his school now.
So, sorry about the complaining about all the gear we have to get, really if we just worry about the basics, we'll get a carseat, a double stroller (buying from my sis), and a moby wrap, and we should survive. And as far as Simon I plan on giving him his own special time at night like we do now, where I will rock him and read books and sing to him before I put him to bed, I am hoping that his special time at night will help a lot and I will try to give him special Simon time whenever the baby is sleeping. Any suggestions on how you prepared your first kid for the arrival of a second one and still made time for the first one so s/he didn't feel left out would be appreciated. When we get close to delivery time I will ask for suggestions on the hospital/delivery part and what you did with the older kid during that time- but we will worry about that part in a couple of months. Simon wants attention now, I have been typing too long and he is hungry and needs Dora!

Up too late...

Now that I decided to name this blog, I realize it can have two meanings. The first and intended meaning is that I am up way too late right now because I am working on laundry. But then I realized it also applies to our late habit of Simon staying up way too late.

This new schedule of Steve's is still some taking some getting used to, and is definitely impacting our schedules a little bit. Through now fault of his though, I just hate cooking dinner for just Simon and I, and I can make enough for Steve too, but then it is cold and not as good by the time he wakes up, so I have big dinner most nights at 10, and have healthy snacks and smaller dinner earlier in the evening. It is still some getting used to, and I still have yet to develop a routine for our family, though it's only been a month, and new routines take some getting used to. Right? Maybe...

Who knows, but I have been better this week at cooking. I made us homemade mac and cheese tonight. Came out of the oven right at 10, it wasn't as good as I wanted, but Steve said it was good, Simon hardly ate any of his. I was hoping it would be creamier like Kraft, but apparently homemade in the oven doesn't come out that way. I even added extra cheese, but it wasn't very cheesy and definitely not creamy.

I don't know how stay-at-home-moms do it all. I am having a hard time with it. Not the mom part of it- that is so easy and fun. Simon is just so much fun, and is really starting to have an imagination and making up games and rules. He even put a balloon in time-out yesterday because it wasn't being nice to him! He makes being a mom pretty easy. The hard part is the homemaking part of it. How do they keep the house clean, especially with said fun two-year old running around? Which brings me back to my original point...

I am up way too late right now doing laundry. Why I am doing laundry, and why must it be done right now? Well, that is because I need whites, I had them all done and folded and on the sofa waiting to go upstairs yesterday when Simon fell asleep on the couch on top of said pile of laundry. You may recall that he is potty training right now... You see where this is going right? Well at some point during the waking up and whining process of napping, he must have peed, because my entire pile of whites was soaked. So sad, definitely need underwear because I work tomorrow, so I can't even wait until noon to shower after some laundry has gone through. Ugh! And I am going to Idaho for work and leaving Thursday morning, so I need all my clothes clean so I can sort through them and figure out what to pack. I always over pack for everything, so I will need lots of clothing options. Lots of folding and hanging has been going on. Just waiting for the load in the dryer so I can throw my whites in and then head to bed. Goodnight!

Oh Poop

I love when my son tells me he needs to go poo-poo. I tell him okay, let's go, and we proceed to run to the bathroom. I look at his little bum running ahead of me and he is running a little bow-legged and his underwear are drooping in the bum area.
He is doing okay with the potty training still, but I think poop is going to take him a while. He has a poop accident everyday, but is getting much better with pee. I do put him in a pull-up when we go anywhere still, and at night, and will probably do both for a while, at least until he gets better and more consistent with using the toilet. He only goes about 4 times a day once he is out of the pull-ups in the morning. He can hold it forever, and we haven't been staying as hydrated as we need to be. But still, he will hold it through a movie and wait for it to be over before he goes to the bathroom, it's so cool.
Now if he can just get a hold of the pooping thing. Not a fan of the run to the bathroom and I can see the poop hanging there in his underwear (though it does make me laugh inside to see him run like that)

Potty Training Update

So I think the potty training is going good. He has had less accidents today and yesterday.. but he also went 5 hours without peeing, and then had 3 accidents right after that yesterday, and they were all after Steve woke up. I think he is really learning to hold it. Simon does not like going poop on the potty and hasn't really done it yet. He's finished it off on the toilet, but he hasn't started out on it, at least since we actually started officially potty training, he has done it in the past. But yeah, he is good at holding it. He also stays dry during his naps which is nice since we typically take them on the sofa together and half the time he is in my lap.
He held it all through a movie today, and I was getting nervous thinking he should be about to go anytime, and I would push pause during it to show him the movie can wait and going to the bathroom is most important, but he wouldn't go. As soon as it ended I stopped it, and looked at him, a little wet spot was starting to form on his underwear like the pee was starting to leak out, but he still mostly had control, so we ran to the toilet and he sat down and went pee!
I think his biggest motivator though is the "potty snacks," he gets a pack of fruit snacks every time he goes. I think as he gets better we will cut it down to like 4 fruit snacks every time or something like that. I am trying to motivate him to go poop on the toilet by using marshmallows, but I just started that today, so we will see how it goes. Also when I go to the bathroom I make a big deal of it, and I get potty snacks too, just to try to be an example to him that if he goes he gets treats. He liked the sticker chart the first couple days, but now he doesn't care, he just wants fruit snacks!
I'm not really sure how trained he is, he isn't good at telling us yet, so I still haven't decided if he should go to Cindy's tomorrow armed with pull-ups, I'm kinda nervous about it and don't want him to regress by wearing the pull-ups and not being able to feel it when he pees and wets his underwear, I am just going to have to call her and see how much she wants to deal with with the whole underwear and peeing and accidents thing. And maybe promise to shampoo her living room carpet when I am over on Sunday! I will keep you updated, it seems to be going well if you ask me, definitely a lot of improvement since we started, I just need him to tell us when he needs to go.

Potty Training- Day 1

So I finally decided it is time to start potty training Simon, we have kinda done the letting him go on the potty/trying to get him to go on the potty thing, but I decided it's time to do it for real. I kind of judge things by when my sis does them with her son because he is just a couple months older than Simon, and since B did potty training around Christmas, well, now it's a couple months later so it's about time for us to do it too! Plus, I am only working part-time now (which I love by the way- more on that in a seperate post if you are lucky) so I actually have one-on-one time with my son where I can be the one doing the training, otherwise I would have had to say, yeah I am gonna do this, and then make my daycare do it (which is Steve's mom, and that's just not fair to do). So we started yesterday. Basically, we just try to get him to drink tons of liquids, have him running around in underwear and a shirt, and whenever he starts to go to the bathroom tell him no gross, yucky, etc., and run him to the bathroom. We also added in a sticker chart for some extra incentive which he is digging. He gets a little sticker for pee and a big sticker for poop. Last night before he went to bed he was kind of telling us if he had to go, and today he has told us a little more than half the time already, but by the time he realizes it he is already starting to pee. I think he is getting it pretty fast though, it's supposed to work in three days. We have tarps covering the living room floor right now to protect our already-needing-to-be-shampooed carpets. We are "cheating" at night and putting him in pull-ups because he normally ends up in bed with us halfway through the night and I definitely don't want to deal with that (pee) in my bed. So anyways, so far it is going good, and I hope he gets it, I am nervous to send him to daycare on Wednesday because I don't want him to pee all over Cindy's carpet, so I am thinking about doing pull-ups for daycare too. Wish us luck! I'll update and let you know how it goes. It definitely takes a lot of vigilance, you can't be doing anything else except watching the kid and making sure their underwear are dry and praising them when they are.