It’s hard to believe that it was only 2 months ago that we welcomed Bo to the world. In that time I’ve dealt with some tough issues like colic, reflux, and learning to juggle 4 children. What I haven’t much talked about is how over the last 2 months I’ve struggled not to lose my mind.

It’s not PPD (postpartum depression); I had that after Mira and it was BAD but much different then this. What I’m battling now is a total body flip out. You male readers out there may want to avert your eyes and click elsewhere. I’m about to talk about my girl parts in detail.

no.. really.. guys, I’m warning you. After this it’s a bunch of vag talk.

(more…)

Firstively I have proof of my bangliness.

WOOO! Hawt mama! I think my next move will be to get them Betty Page’d. RRRRrrrrrrow~ !

Seconditively, I am 3/4 a way through a glass of wine (1st drink in a year) so this may be riddled with typos and tend to ramble off on weird tangents… I mean worse then usual.

Thirditively, there was a mishap with the fabulous hair of the Fidget clan men. As I well know, hair mishaps happen but to suffer a duel blow and have paid for it? HEINOUS! FOUL! And tear inducing. My boy, the sunshine of my life, the one with the great hair

now looks like an Army recruit.

We had no choice but to buzz him. Really, it’s true. When we got home from the hair cutters butchers this is how my poor lil guy looked

It’s all lumpy, bumpy, chunky and just plain wrong!

I MIGHT have blamed it on a wiggly toddler except the same chick totally butchered The Hubster too! His hair is sticking up funny and one of his ears is totally white walled *shakes head in sorrow*

With every passing moment I was growing more and more irate. The hair choppers was now closed so I couldn’t even vent my rage on them and instead gave The Hubster permission to do something I’ve always denied him the pleasure of doing - shaving Levi’s head.

Thoroughly delighted with finally having obtained permission, The Hubster set to work

Of course, he was totally lacking the proper shearing implement and instead tried completing his task using the cooter cutters. Now this thing may do a stunning job on my crotch carpet, but the quality on head hair is just not there.

no matter how hard you try

Stunning

so I ended up at Target (for the 5th time this week) buying a hair shaving kit. When I got home Levi had an angry monkey flip out. I personally think it was because The Hubster was in the tequila while i was gone and Levi feared for his ears

(OMG Mom, Dad’s been in the sauce while you were out, don’t let him near me with clippers! My ears, dear god, think of my ears!)

Despite the margaritas.. or maybe because of? Things proceeded nicely

Of course right around this point

when I noticed my chubby cheeked little baby was being sheared into a little man, I hit the Pinot Grigio (sometimes mommy needs a little help coping).

But in the end, about $50 and 8 hours after the first lock of hair fell over at Not SO Great Clips, things turned out ok

that is if ok means mommy bursts into tears every time she looks at her bald headed boy.

this was my night

I have no pictures of myself with all four and The Hubster was MIA with a very conveniently dead battery cellphone (grumble grumble bitter bitter) so I drew my head on his body. Yes, it’s accurate. I am totally rocking bangs now. No, really I am. I would take a picture but the people of Fiji can see my bags from here; I need no photographic evidence of that!

Back to my very rotten no good evening. It all started when I asked the girls to clean up after their toys. The whining! Oh my heavens the whining! Tessa decided to sneak off to the bathroom and hang out instead of cleaning. She kept hollering “I’m pooping!” but nay, I could see what she was up to through the crack in the door- futzing, lots and lots of futzing. So, when she reluctantly emerged to a fully cleaned living room I sent her off to clean her bedroom where the pissing and moaning lead to screaming. When i told her that she was obviously tired and needed to go brush her teeth, she kicked me. Um, what? Oh hell fuck no. I wrapped that defiant child up in her bed covers like a burrito and held her down. She screamed, she fought and she shrieked. Boden started wailing from the stress of it all and then Levi, completely bewildered by the situation, joined in.

This wail-a-thon lasted over an hour, during which i attempted to call the Hubster 12 dozen times. I may have also hexed him for leaving me alone with the heathens. I questioned my parenting abilities and then decided I must have been smoking crack when I decided that kids were fun! and why not have a whole mess of them. This was the first time since Bo’s arrival that I questioned my ability to cope with it all. Then I cried.

It was quite a sight. Me crying and seething, Bo wailing, Levi freaking out and Tessa on planet insane. Mira was the only one not in tears but she made sure to do her part- she whined, incessantly, about the unfairness of the delay in getting her corn bread with butter and honey.

Eventually I was able to sooth everyone down. Tessa even went to bed early like I initially told her- heck she fell asleep before Mira went to bed. Punishment successful (you can’t ever let this kid win- never ever- she can smell weakness and capitalize on it). Boden fell asleep in my arms, softy sighing and I couldn’t help thinking I might like 10 or 20 more. Color me nuts. Which reminds me, when The Hubster gets home i owe him a swift kick to his….

Hair boredom is striking again. It’s summer, so of course I am wracked with the urge to lop off a foot of hair and flounce around town in a short sassy ‘do. But, once again I’m trying to fight the urge for my husband’s sake. He’s a long hair man apparently, which I find kind of funny because we met while I was in the midst of growing out a super short hair style. He must have seen my long hair aura or maybe it was my tits. They could make any man over look a lack of hair.

Since I’m STILL sleeping in the dinning room, I don’t want to do anything that might plunge the Hubster into a depressive malaise further delaying him finishing up the piddly stuff he’s already avoiding doing to get us back in our room. This leaves me with few hair alteration options. I could dye it but with a newborn I’m not down with the potential chemical load. I could trim it (booooooooooorrrrrrrrriiiing) or I could go for an over all design restructuring. What do you think? Could I go from

to a banged beauty

without looking like a member of the cast of Napoleon Dynamite

Boden, as cute and snuggly and sniffably adorable as he is, is COLICKY~ DUN DUN DUN! Oh yes that dreaded C word. Every night from 1-4am he’s been howling and shrieking nonstop… well WAS. At my doctor’s prompting I dove onto a special diet in hopes of reducing his reflux without medication and, in turn, hopefully reduce the wailing.

I started out looking at the low acid / low gas diet (here, scroll down to #14) but that was so overwhelming - my head felt like exploding from information overload- that I turned to one of my favorite bloggers who went on a similar I will keep breastfeeding anti wailing crusade of her own. She pointed me towards this. MUCH simpler

at only range-fed turkey and lamb, baked or boiled potatoes and sweet potatoes (with salt and pepper only), rice and millet as your only grain, cooked green and yellow squash for your vegetable, and for fruit, pears and diluted pear juice. Drink a rice-based beverage drink in place of milk on cereal or in cooking. Do not yet use soy beverage. Take a calcium supplement. (Rice products, such as rice beverage, rice-based frozen dessert, rice pasta, rice flour, and millet are available in nutrition stores.)

Only I can’t even eat everything on that list. Sweet potatoes seem to cause issues; heck, veggies of any sort outside of avocado seem to be fartoriffic so the yellow and green squash are out for now too. Then there are pears, ewww pears. I am not a fan at all. I rarely will willingly consume a pear. They are MEALY and gross unless picked at the peak of pear harvest perfection and even then I loath them unless slathered with some type of caramel sauce and sunk into a torte or dumped over ice cream. I’m just NOT pear person and the thought of drinking pear juices makes me gag.

Then, where does that leave me? I’m SO glad you asked. That leaves me with oven roasted turkey on millet bread. Jasmine rice with sea salt, white pepper and avocado and on occasion a boneless skinless baked chicken breast. I also found some puffed rice cereal that’s been sweetened with the tiniest touch of honey. I could have vanilla rice milk over said cereal but I gave that a whirl the other day and nearly vomited in my bowl of $5 a box cereal. It wasn’t a problem with the rice milk, nor with the cereal but apparently when combined the two became vomitrocious.

In any event, that is it. That’s all I’m eating and while it IS helping Bo, I on the other hand have become a snarling raging beast of a woman. I’ve had a headache now for three days. I’m not a headache person, never have been, and coping with one is not my forte. “Coping” and I use the term loosely means jabbing my finger into my temple as counter pressure while I yell at people to be quiet and stop breathing so loudly. I generally do this while pacing back and forth through my galley kitchen rifling the fridge and pantry shelves for ANYTHING mild I might add to my diet. There is nothing in there to add, I know it, but I still persist, longingly staring at shelves of forbidden foods like eggs, cheese enchiladas, peppers, blueberries, beef stew, hummus, ice cream, shrimp *drooling*…. you get the picture.

My body is reacting in other ways too. On day 3 of the diet, my face massively broke out. I looked like the teenage fry cook at my local fast food joint- much worse then i ever did in my teens. Day 3 also brought about the BO plague- I smell so bad I can’t live with myself.

I have to leave the house tonight to pick up more food supplies for my self imposed torture TED diet. I’ll be easy to spot. Just look for the woman crying in front of the cheese case with a horrible case of body odor and some whopping festering facial zits and heck by then I may even have a scrumptious case of backne.

Six years, one month, and some odd days ago, I had a very traumatic birthing experience, one where my 1st official words uttered as a mother were “Is she dead?” Mira had become what everyone thought was hopelessly wedged in my pelvis by her shoulders. She turned blue, then purple then black. A nurse leaped up on to me, ass in my face and began shoving downwards with all her might. My midwife pulled on her wee little head, other nurses wrenched my legs back and I bore down with all my might. The midwife began screaming for someone to get my doctor- they were ready to break my pelvis- when Mira came shooting out like some kind of cartoon projectile. The doctor walked through the door just in time to help pink her up and hear her first weak caterwauling. It.was.terrifying. and we were lucky, very very lucky. She suffered no expected ill effects of being stuck- permanent nerve damage is always a huge concern with shoulder dystocia.

Since then, my babies have been watched very closely for accelerated growth. No doctor wants to repeat that scenario and as enticing as repeating a double episiotomy is, I’ve wanted to avoid it too. Thus Tessa was booted from the womb at 36 weeks and 6 days. Her ultrasound placed her close to the 8lb mark and doctors decided that with the known discrepancies of late term ultrasound, it was time to act. Thankfully they did. Her birth healed me.

Levi was on size watch too when he decided to make his way into the world 1 day before his scheduled amnio, which is now required to evict a baby before 39 weeks. I have a feeling that overwhelming terror of that hollow needle on my part caused my water to break.

I would hope that those of you that know me personally and my long time readers realize that I do not take the process of pregnancy and birth lightly. I have experienced the highest heights of joy as well as the deepest sadness. I make what feels like never ending trips to various doctors so I can be carefully monitored. I read and research like crazy knowing that my doctors are just that- doctors- and not Gods or some kind of omnipotent beings. I listen to my body as it speaks volumes to me, aiding me in making the best decisions I can about what goes on with my treatments. I can tell you that over the course of 3 pregnancies, it’s made my high risk doctor pull more then a few fistfuls of hair out of his head. And right now? I’m listening to my body. It’s telling me that he IS big- whether fat or or long I’m not sure but judging by the pulling, the crushing pressure and my inability to waddle more then a few feet without searing pain shooting down my legs, he’s bigger then his brother was at this stage.

I’m hoping that this little person decides to make his own way into the world before I am cornered into signing a surgical consent form. But know, that if I feel that I need to sign that consent form, I will. It will suck and I will cry and I’ll probably be fairly hysterical about the whole matter but I never again want to utter the word “dead?” at the birth of one of my children nor do I want to end up that way myself which brings me to the topic of an early csection.

If the amnio says he’s ready and the ultrasound suspects he’s too large to pass safely, they will csection me early. This will not be a matter of convince nor a choice made lightly, it will be a calculated move to keep me alive. I take 2 shots a day who’s purpose is to thin my blood. Ideally it is stopped 48 hours prior to any procedure where bleeding is expected. 24 hours is often enough leeway but “often” isn’t good enough when the prospect of bleeding out is so very real. There is a medication that can act to reverse the effects of the blood thinners but it has it’s downside too- if the dosage given is too high the risk of a blood clot forming skyrockets and determining the dosage is no exact science. It’s a total crap shoot.

In speaking with my doctors, they also have a fear that one of these days I wont make it to the hospital in time. If I wind up in labor during rush hour, you very well might be hearing about my minivan baby. Now if he is too big and I’m all hopped up on blood thinners and it’s rush hour- we have a very serious, very BAD situation on our hands. I want to avoid that.

So in conclusion to this long and winding diatribe on why I am doing my best to keep myself and my son out of danger by possibly consenting to medical procedures I am none to thrilled with, I just want to say that I hope you realize that I am thinking with my brain and not entirely out of fear. Does fear play into it? Oh hell yes. I never want to relive the first birth experience but I will not let fear deter me from pursuing the birth that I want. I also won’t let my own stubbornness to achieve my goal of a natural as possible birth endanger the life of my son or myself.

If you miss my sparkling wit, you can always get a good dose in my archives or check me out HERE. For now, I’m crawling back under my rock.

The plague of allergy season has descended upon my household with a sniffle, hack and sneeze. My voice packed up for vacation and my sinuses are packed too- with snot. We’ve all been grody, though I have fallen victim to the brunt of this pollen pollution. I’ve turned into a genuine mouth breather. I’m tired of feeling crappy and need some comforting suggestions.

Tonight I’m going to make chicken soup, that should sooth the raspy throat and open up the goo encrusted sinuses but I need more comfort food suggestions. Normally I would be busily creating in the kitchen but over the last few days Ive swallowed a couple gallons of snot, leaving me unable to ponder the finer points of comfort food. The baby has made it clear by the overwhelming dizziness that I need more nutrients then your average phlegm ball provides.

Any suggestions for comfort foods to heal the body and balm the soul? Nothing too milky though, I need to keep the phlegm production to a minimum.

no one panic. I’m still pregnant. I’m just grouchy, tired and overwhelmed.

Levi finally got a proper haircut- no I did not do it

My days of puppy kicking and duckling stomping have finally caught up to me. I should have known that such heinous acts would result in bad Karma. Over the last 24 hours I have found a poisonous female black window spider in my son’s crib, suffered from a sudden 10pm flea plague, and ended up with an irreparable flat tire. I’m frustrated and angry and really tired (after having bathed 2 of the 3 dogs at 1045pm) and right about now a good puppy kicking, duckling stomping, spitting on rainbows, and childhood dream crushing session might do me some good. Oh I have a better idea, let’s try to pick out paint for the bedroom because Ive only been trying to do that for two years and if there was any way to make my day sunnier it would be by me pulling every last strand of hair out of my head.

People, if this baby comes when Levi did then I only have 6 weeks to work a miracle in my master bedroom. By miracle I mean moving everything out, painting, laying flooring, installing baseboards, moving everything back in and setting up my bedside baby station. Sometimes I feel like waving the white flag and crying into a bag of potato chips.