Welcome to the World, Pup

The Pope and I welcomed a baby daughter on Friday, December 19th.

Her real name is Auden.  

She was born at 1:13pm.  She weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

She is without a doubt the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.  

I can't stop staring at her and telling her I love her.  

I have never done anything in my life that made me so instantly and completely happy.  

Birthday

Posting very quickly to say that in four hours we will check into the hospital to have the Pup.

They will be inducing me at 7:00am tomorrow morning.  

The next time you hear from me, I will be a mom.  

How exciting!!!!!

Love,

Sal, Pope and Pup

Not Having Baby, Just Lazy

You know what's good?

Nilla wafers dipped in Nutella.    I have eaten almost half a box of Nilla wafers this way.

Except they're not Nilla Wafers TM, they are Safeway (tm) brand Vanilla Wafers.

Real Nutella, though, I found it one day at the Grocery Outlet.  I'm sure it was confirmed dosed with botulism in order for me to get it at $1.99, but it is Nutella, so suck it up intestines, here we go.

Well!  We are dilated 1 centimeter, which doesn't seem like much since it has taken approximately 3 days of intermittent cramping to get there,  our pelvic station is -1, which is good, and we are effaced 50%.  Which is unchanged from last week.  They tell me not to obsess about that effacement (to which I laugh, because they CLEARLY don't know my OCD with Google) because apparently you can efface to 100% overnight.

The baby is a huge monster, normal for tall people, and totally making me feel better about the whole problem quitting smoking thing I was having there for, oh, 8 months.  

Rest assured, guys, I have not had a cigarette in over a month.  I've been done.  My mom read somewhere that breastmilk of smokers tastes like smoke and when she told me that, I was done.  Well, not really.  I was done after the Pope was let go and I smoked four packs in seven days.  After that powersmoking binge, my vigorous and vibrantly moving baby stilled for two days.  I went to the doctor's office in a panic and spent 20 minutes hooked up to fetal monitoring to make sure that the baby was still happy and healthy and thank god it was.  THEN I was done.  Then I was so, so soooooooo way done. 

You know, things got so bad there, so many punches thrown, that by the end we weren't even ducking them.  We'd just look down, take the hit and then keep slowly moving, lost in our daze of what else could happen.  

Except that I've become a kind of ostrich hydra.  Every time some worry rears its head, I say to myself, can't fall apart over that, bury it.  Then the next thing, then the next thing.  Maybe one day all of these heads are going to look up from the sand and blink at me expectant-like, and I'll have to reckon with them.  Or maybe, the mountains I saw will just stay molehills in the dirt behind me, and I'll keep slowly moving.  

Speaking of my mom, she predicted the following on 10/14/08 (which oddly would have been my 8th anniversary, had I stayed married to my first husband).

Girl

Born December 6th

8 pounds, 3 ounces

21 inches long

Any predictions from the Carcharodonna readers?   

Too Much Information in 3...2...1...

So, today I received an unpleasant surprise.

It seems that checking your cervix to see how far effaced you are is NOT comfortable.  

And when I say it is not comfortable, I mean that I almost slapped my doctor.  

Eeyagh.

The baby dropped two days ago.  It felt like someone was pushing down on my stomach, these brief but strong feelings, three times in quick succession, and then all of a sudden I could take deep breaths.  My heartburn also pretty much stopped.

Let me pause and reflect, "thankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougodthankyougod."

Heartburn sucked.   Heartburn sucked in WAVES of suck.  Roiling, burning, gigantic waves of suck.  I fell asleep one night last week with a Tums in my mouth, and woke up with a trail of pink dried across my cheek.

The trade-off is that I have to pee CONSTANTLY.   Two nights ago, I peed five times in 30 minutes.  The urge was URGENT.  I would hoist my body up, disentangle myself from Lucy, pad over to the restroom and tinkle out about three teaspoons.  I do all my tricks, I lean very far forward, I wait a few seconds, I sneeze (this one is a sure-fire squeezer).  When I am sure I am done, I stand up and immediately feel the urge to pee again.  At one point, in extreme frustration, I mentally decided that I would pee the bed.  I would just do it.  My husband loves me, and he feels so sorry for me, he won't mind.  Well, he will mind, but I will act horrified and disgusted, and I will try to cry and he'll forgive me.  

The belly is huge.  It has its own zip code.  It has its own laws of gravity.  Walking around trying to support it and keep my balance now requires the waddle.  The other day I was sure I'd flattened the arch in my foot, just by wandering around the house.

We signed another offer on our house today.  This is the third.

We are happy, but it is hard to let go of our doubt and frustration.  We've been happy and excited two times now.  Two times now the deals have fallen through.  This deal represents the absolute bottom of our finances.  We don't make any money.  Before we countered the absolutely absurd* offer we received, we figured out how much we owe on the mortgages, how much the interest will be, how much the commissions will take, closing costs, etc....and countered with a number that allows us to clear all this.  That's it. 

*Absurd = Offering $300,000 for a house currently listed at $334,950.  

I am resurfacing from a couple weeks now of worry, doubt and fear.  I will say that the Pope and I are having fun together, and that is so incredibly rewarding.  If I have nothing but him, and our baby, and our kitties, then I am still very rich.  

We went over to my sister-in-law's house (the Pope's sister) last night for dinner, and we just had a blast.  I sat there, surrounded by my husband and his wonderful family, and we were all laughing and laughing, and talking, and marveling at the nieces, who are spectacularly interesting, and I couldn't help but think about how lucky I am.  How blessed we are, and how important it is to realize that.  

I hope I keep realizing that.  

Attempting Normalcy

In a nod to my husband, who looks super-darling sitting on the couch worrying through a football game, I am eating trail mix the RIGHT way.

I am not:

1.  Eating all the M&Ms out.

2.  Then eating all the raisins, delighting when I find a brown M&M I missed.

3.  Scrounging for and finding the cashews.

4.  Eating all the almonds.

5.   Walking over to the garbage and throwing out the remaining peanuts, because they are cheap filler nuts and bleccch.

That is all, it has not been a very interesting day and I am suddenly extremely uncomfortable.  My belly is huge and it gets in the way of everything I do.  I can barely breathe and if I eat something larger than a plum, I feel as if I've gorged in Roman times but been denied the vomitorium.

Weight Loss Secrets - Third Trimester of First Pregnancy

Yesterday at the doctor's office I found out that I have only gained 9.8 pounds at this stage of my pregnancy. I have 5 weeks until my due date. The baby is fine, the baby is healthy and happy, and my fundal measurements are excellent, perfect for the stage I'm in. There is no cause for concern, I'm told. The nurse actually told me not to tell anyone about this, because pregnant women everywhere will be upset at my genetic tranquility for pregnancy.

So I decided to blog about it, naturally, and tell everyone how I've managed to do this.

1. Overeat immediately upon getting engaged, and rack up the poundage to a terrifying state that gets you enlisted in your local Weight Watchers meeting after an unflattering photo is taken of your alarming lack of chin.

2. Drink heavily for many many many years preceding your weight gain.

3. Exercise only when in fear of death. i.e. Don't run unless you are being chased, get winded and smoke heavily when you attempt to garden, consider lifting the weekly wine purchases to be all the "conditioning" you need. 

4. Gain and lose the same 2 pounds for three weeks on Weight Watchers while introducing all kinds of leafy green vegetables into your diet.

5.  Get pregnant after almost a year of trying, presumably because the leafy green vegetables hit your ovaries first.  They certainly did nothing for your thighs.

6.  Negotiate transfers to be closer to family now that you're pregnant.  You have stopped drinking immediately, which surprises the hell out of you.

7.  Lose your job when the transfer for you doesn't work out.  You are still craving and eating lots of green vegetables, although pickles gross you out, inexplicably.

8.  Have the sale of your house fall through minutes after the moving company drives away with all your belongings.  Pop Tarts subsist you through the move, which you perform alone,  four months pregnant, while your husband fulfills his obligations to his idiot company who have no sympathy for your situation.  Obligations that he cannot be excused from include Miniature Golf, and last-minute impromptu dinners for "team building."

9.  Have the SECOND house sale fall through when the buyer is an incompetent deadbeat who can't really afford the house, with an estranged wife who is taking legal advice from her friend Doofus McIdiot, who is not actually a lawyer.

10.  Get your husband's company to let him go three months after you lost everything to fulfill his transfer commitment.  It is best if they do this on the last day of the month so that your health insurance expires instantly.  

11.  Voila.  You have only gained 9.8 pounds, yet you manage to have a happy, healthy baby in there. 

Baby, I promise you that I will never treat you the way life has treated us while we were waiting for you.

Oh God

The Pope and I had a 3D ultrasound done last night, so we have an idea of what the Pup looks like now, which is BEAUTIFUL.  I will scan and post soon.

They gave me a diaper bag courtesy of Similac, and inside was a bottle cool pack and some samples.  There is a sample for Aquaphor, for the "baby's sensitive skin," and a sample of Preparation H portable wipe, presumably for the mother's ripped apart butt.

God help me.

Disgusting Pregnancy Facts

No one ever tells you that:

1. Pregnancy makes your underwear smell like a petting zoo.

2. Your numerous farts will be disproportionate to ANYTHING you could possibly have eaten. For example: I had an orange earlier today and for the next four hours I farted what had to have been gorgonzola-covered chili beans that sat in the backseat of my car for eight days in direct sunlight.

3. You will be unable to keep your eyes and hands off your own boobs.

4. That might just be me.