Starting a post with a disclaimer always feels sort of cheap and pointless, because if I’m able to sum up everything I’m about to say with “I don’t really MEAN it” then why write the post at all? And why would you bother to read? But blogging is the equivalent of spending 45 minutes picking lint out of your belly button so I’m going to do all the navel gazing I want and you can just come back tomorrow for some pictures of my TWO YEAR OLD.

Here’s the disclaimer: I’m not pregnant and don’t plan to be any time in 2011. My uterus is taking the year off.

Here’s the introspection:

I was approximately a week pregnant at Little Evan’s first birthday party. We had decided to start trying for baby #2 once baby #1 was 12 months old. We picked that date totally arbitrarily – it SOUNDED like a reasonable age gap – but I was really really not ready just then. Evan was not an easy baby. But because – TMI ALERT – I never got my period back we weren’t really trying trying but weren’t not trying and then bam! Knocked up. No time to think about how Little Evan was still nursing 6 times a day, still wasn’t eating any solid food, didn’t drink milk from a cup, didn’t sleep through the night, and didn’t listen to a thing I said.

Three months later he had totally weaned, drank whole milk like it was going out of style and slept 12 hours straight at night. He still doesn’t listen but if I waited until that happened before getting pregnant he’d be an only child. So besides the time during those first 3 months when I lay on the floor wishing I could go back to being totally childless (nothing like getting up at night with a toddler screaming for milk when all you want to do is hug the toilet) having babies 20 months apart seemed like a totally reasonable choice, even though the first baby was a, uh, challenging infant.

At my first prenatal appointment with Caroline, the doctor looked at my chart and said “Have you considered what kind of birth control you’ll use after you have the baby?” And I said “Can you put in an IUD while I’m still in the hospital? I think 2 babies in 2 years is enough.”

Three months later, I’m a little sorry I got that IUD. I mean, NO. GOD NO, being pregnant again so soon would be AWFUL. The last two months of pregnancy kicked my ass so hard I need at least a year to recover. The kidney stones, the time in the hospital, the pre-eclampsia…Ugh. I’m exhausted just thinking about how exhausted I was. But in some sort of cosmic apology for all that, Caroline is still a super easy baby. She’s happy and smiley and a great nurser and a good sleeper and I’m not struggling at all the way I was when Little Evan was this age.

I guess what I’m thinking is, if I was ready for baby #2 after a year with a really difficult baby #1, how long can I possibly want to wait before having baby #3? But if baby #3 is going to be my last baby do I really want to be done having babies so soon? On the one hand, finishing up all the newborn stuff now sounds really appealing. No more diapers! A wardrobe that doesn’t involve boob-accessibility!  A child-free bedroom! On the other hand, I know my baby fever will be COMPLETELY out of control in a few years when my friends are getting pregnant and I don’t want to end up fighting with E over whether or not 4 is too many kids for us. We have not yet decided with ANY certainty how many children we’re going to have, and I know even if we did pick a number now it’s not like someone etches it in stone somewhere and I couldn’t possibly change my mind 5 years from now. But it sort of feels like I’m using up my baby allowance rather quickly. I never did learn how to save my babies. Er, pennies. No wait, babies. I think I killed that metaphor.

Now here’s the part where you unload your thoughts on child spacing and family size. You know you want to.

I dislike my Google Reader on Mondays.

Mondays are the day everyone weighs in, literally, regarding their diets – especially the dozen or so bloggers I subscribe to who participate in a meme called “McFatty Mondays”. Now, I know the name is in jest and will not be writing an angry ranty post about something that’s not meant to hurt anyone. The people who participate are doing so willingly and no offense is meant. I also know the point of the meme is women encouraging other women on their weight loss journeys (and support IS very important when you’re making a life change like weight loss) but seeing McFatty McFatty McFatty over and over bothers me. But it’s not just that meme, it’s a lot of women recapping their weekends. “Oh I was so BAD! I cheated! I’m terrible! I’ll never fit in my jeans again!” It’s like a cacophony of everything a woman as ever said across the table to her girlfriend as she orders the cheesecake.

It’s taken me a long time to order the cheesecake. I like the cheesecake. The cheesecake and I, we are friends.

——————————————-

When I was 19, to hide from the cheesecake, I tried to disappear. Literally. I gave up most food and existed on diet shakes, diet pills and Diet Coke. I slept a lot, because when you are sleeping you cannot eat. I volunteered to ride the ice cream bicycle all day at work so I could squeeze in 2 or 3 extra hours of exercise. There’s nothing that says “Maybe you have issues with food” more than spending all summer riding a bike around a campground in blazing hot weather selling ice cream out of a cooler and never once having so much as a freeze pop because those 90 calories might mean the difference between losing 1 pound and 2 pounds this week. I was addicted to watching the numbers go down, the same way a drug user is addicted. I would do anything to lose weight.

I would like to fill in this part of my story with lots of reasons. I was in a really unhealthy relationship that mainly consisted of who could be the most screwed up and one of our daily dysfunctional rituals was fighting over who could eat less. My college had an unusually high proportion of gorgeous, tan, size 2 girls and comparing myself to every single one of them was my favorite hobby. I was on my own for the first time in my life and the way I chose to maintain control was through food. Maybe I read too many issues of Cosmopolitan and it brainwashed me.

But it doesn’t really matter. The point is I spent my sophomore and junior years of college very thin and very miserable. One of my most distinct memories is watching an MTV True Life episode about people who hated their bodies and thinking “Wow these people are straight up crazypants crazy” Until the girl on the show said she weighed 115 pounds and I cried because I weighed more. I used to daydream I passed out from not eating during work so maybe someone would finally say “You might need help” instead of “Wow, you look GREAT!”

Maybe I did look great. I don’t really know. There are very few pictures of me from those years because I was convinced I looked fat and wouldn’t let anyone take them.

————————————————

So now, when I say cheesecake and I are friends, maybe you can understand why that’s a big deal for me. I don’t want anything to trigger those old thoughts and behaviors. I’m afraid if I start counting a few calories I’ll end up counting them ALL (I already had to delete a food tracker app from my phone because I freaked out about eating anything that wasn’t specifically listed). Losing 20 pounds is never enough. It has to be 30, 50, 80 pounds and it has to be now! Yesterday! I need to get my body back! (Because apparently my baby took it somewhere. Maybe I should just ask her.) Swimsuit season is coming! And then I am miserable again.

To be honest, all my pregnancy weight from baby #2 is already gone. Being sick so often was a really effective diet and fevers burn a lot of calories. Maybe this time breastfeeding is sucking out all my fat or chasing a toddler really was all the exercise I needed. (Wow, I’m practically a celebrity mom! Alert US Weekly!) My body is back to the weight it likes to maintain when I’m not trying to diet, a weight I’m not particularly happy with but one that isn’t going to hurt me. I have clothes that fit and can smile into a camera instead of running away.

That’s not to say I’m not trying to be healthier. I’m back at Stroller Strides and feel good to be working out again. I had a yogurt for breakfast and am proud of making a wise choice. There is broccoli in my fridge and I have plans to actually eat it.

But I also plan to eat the cheesecake.

I *should* write a big wrap up of all my best posts from 2010 but that seems really time consuming and I’d rather watch this repeat of 30 Rock and stuff my face with the cookies I made this afternoon with my Amazing New KitchenAid Mixer. Maybe I should just write a love letter to my Amazing New KitchenAid Mixer and call it a day. Or I’ll save that for 2011.

Besides, I can’t really pick my favorite posts. I loved playing party planner with the eight zillion different posts about Little Evan’s first birthday and Caroline’s Baby Shower. I met some AWESOME new people with blog hops like the Home Tour and the Tat-Tour. There were posts I was really proud of, even if they were about silly things like my kid’s hair or baby kicks or not going to BlogHer. I got my first DSLR and took a zillion pictures of birds and gorillas and Little Evan with a toilet on his head and that conference I went to in Minneapolis. And then of course there was big stuff, like E re-enlisting,  a new pregnancy and a new baby and all the excitement that goes along with that. So yeah, hard to pick which posts I would include in a best of wrap-up.

So instead I’ll just say thank you to every single person who ever read my little bebehblog, whether you comment on almost every post (I SEE YOU AND LOVE YOU) or accidentally clicked over here once after Googling “fat person will belly button ring” (two hits from that one today!) I appreciate your readership. If you’re a reader who doesn’t comment, please feel free to join in any time. If you’re a commenter with a blog, please make sure I know so I can add you to my Google reader. And if you think this whole blogging thing is kind of silly but keep coming back for cute pictures of my kid, I promise there will be EVEN MORE (now with Girl Bebeh!) this year.

I hope we can be better friends in 2011. Happy New Year!!

I can honestly say that I was TOTALLY UNPREPARED for life with a newborn – mostly because apparently my first child wasn’t a human baby at all but some sort of puking, crying, fussing, alien monster who refused to nurse, stressed us out like crazy with jaundice, and generally made life miserable for at least his first four months of life. Looking back now, E and I are both going “Wow, we REALLY should have complained more to the doctor about that puking thing because obviously we were clueless about normal human babies”.

(Although honestly, we mentioned it ALL THE TIME and all we got was “Meh, some babies throw up a lot“, even from my lactation consultant. Clearly it wasn’t normal but since he was gaining weight no one cared how miserable it made everything in regards to our home life. If I hadn’t spent so much time doing frickin’ laundry the first time around maybe I would have gotten more sleep and not been quite so…well, horrible to everyone. Especially E. It was really sucky y’all.)

THIS baby is an angel. I would take a dozen of these babies. She spends all her time sleeping, only waking herself up with hilariously loud poops to get a new diaper, nurse for a while and then cuddle with anyone who holds her. She falls asleep again without any complicated shushing/swaddling/burping/dancing/begging/crying rituals in her swing or the (broken so it doesn’t actually bounce) bouncy seat or the co-sleeper or lying on the floor. She only requires one outfit a day and 90% of the laundry is a result of my overactive milk ducts and their ability to soak through anything in .43 seconds and not projectile baby puke.  When the baby nurse came to visit last week Caroline had already gained back all but 4 oz of her birth weight and I’m going to go ahead an predict by her 2 week checkup she’s already closer to 10 lbs than 8.

In further attempts to be absolutely nothing like her brother, Caroline has perhaps the world’s strongest latch and no doubts about using it to suck on pretty much anything (I’m hoping this is a good omen when it comes time to introduce a bottle). I’ve had to drag out my old nipple shield to deal with the tenderness and bruising – nothing serious or horrifying, but when she cluster feeds for two hours straight the pinching gets to toe-curling levels of painful. It’s not anyone’s fault – I don’t need a link to “how-to-get-a-better-latch” videos or whatever – just a result of her mouth being small and my engorgement being massive and a few lazy nursing sessions that did a little damage. Fortunately, my body remembered it WASN’T feeding a whole litter of babies this time around and I’m already back to normal nursing sized boobs instead of GIANT PORN STAR WHO STAPLED THESE BASKETBALLS TO MY CHEST??? sized boobs.

ALSO: I have a tip for sore nipples that doesn’t involve buying those super expensive gel pads I loved so much last time. Tea bags. Seriously. The baby nurse suggested it (she’s also an LC) and it’s amazing. Just steep two tea bags in hot water, let them cool off and stick them on your nipples. The tannic acid in the tea combined with the coolness helps soothe the bruising and pinching. The internet backs me up on this with science but my nipples back me up even more with “OMG THANK YOU”.

MORE ALSO: In the debate between “No, breastfeeding should NEVER hurt” and “A little nipple soreness can be normal while you’re adjusting” I am officially in the later camp. I know the difference between a good latch and a bad latch and even when we have it PERFECT I get a little sore after 30+ minutes of constant nursing. It’s definitely improving though, and I bet in 2 weeks I don’t even remember what I was complaining about.

As for the rest of my I-just-had-a-baby recovery, I can barely tell I just had a baby. I hesitate to say that I am AWESOME at giving birth (because someone awesome at giving birth could probably do it naturally in a wheat field at sunset instead of with an epidural) but my BODY is certainly prepared for labor and delivery pushing out an 8+ lbs baby, even if my brain is not prepared for that kind of pain. Like I said in my birth story, even my above average baby didn’t do any damage. She did so LITTLE damage in fact that I don’t even pee my pants when I sneeze anymore, something I was doing at 9 months pregnant. I KNOW. IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. The worst part of my recovery was actually the stupid Tdap booster they gave me in the hospital that made my left arm practically useless for two full days and the rhogam shot I got in my left hip that hurt almost as much. That soreness combined with my milk coming in made me want to just hide under the covers and not let anyone touch me ever again – especially a toddler who thinks “jump on mommy” is the best game ever.

Oh but THEN I got another kidney infection, less than 24 hours after being discharged. I spiked a fever in the evening and another in the middle of the night but held off on calling the doctor until office hours and then talked them into letting me do outpatient lab work to confirm (although REALLY? I know what a kidney infection feels like by now. Swearies) and calling in antibiotics to my pharmacy rather than possibly readmitting me. I did NOT want to go back to the hospital, especially with a newborn nursling. I feel infinitely better after almost a week of antibiotics. But this probably means I should reschedule my March kidney stone removal appointment to some time sooner or the infections might keep happening and that doesn’t seem fun.

And now that I’ve told you how well everything is going, don’t be surprised when I take it ALL BACK next week. It’s the first law of blogging and I just broke it. I hope you’re happy internet.

Not right now, but probably before the weekend is over. My blood pressure was still high today, combined with some elevated numbers for my liver function (I should really pay more attention to WHAT exactly those numbers are and/or mean, right? But when the doctor is frowning at me my brain goes blank) means my OB was concerned enough to send me up for a couple of hours of monitoring in L&D. I have absolutely no other symptoms of pre-eclampsia – no swelling, no headaches, no blurred vision, no protein in my urine – and my blood pressure STILL isn’t quite high enough to be official pre-e (at least according to Wikipedia) so I managed to talk them into letting me out of labor & delivery tonight. If there was a record speed for getting your pants on, I totally broke it on my way out the door.

As long as I keep feeling fine, I’m free until 5 pm tomorrow, at which point they’re starting my induction.

That’s right, I said 5 PM TOMORROW. SATURDAY. Which might even be TODAY by the time you read this. SOON. My mind is having some trouble processing this time frame, in the same way my mind would have trouble processing the entire room turning upside down and all the furniture sticking to the ceiling.

The baby, for the record, looks FINE and still doesn’t care that her mama might be sick. Girls, I tell ya, trouble right from the start.

But now I have approximately 22 hours to finish up my Super Important List Of Things To Do Before The Baby Comes, including getting these boxes of Goodwill donations out of my kitchen, organizing baby clothes, finishing the nursery and picking my mom up from the train station. Because I CANNOT have this baby until she gets back, despite the amazing collection of frozen meals now filling our basement freezer thanks to my awesome friends from Stroller Strides and E being on stand down from work. I need my mom here to feel prepared and relaxed and calm and all of the good things one should feel when bringing a new life into the world. I’m already nervous enough just hearing the words “induction” and “pre-eclampsia”, I don’t need to feel overwhelmed by the huge pile of unwashed laundry and the dirty bathrooms and the fact that I STILL haven’t been to the grocery store since I was sick. E is helpful and all but really? His idea of a clean house means you can walk from the front to the back without tripping. Mom understands CLEAN.

So, internets, wish me luck for Saturday night/Sunday. And no more guesses in the birthday pool, since it looks like the weekend is for sure. But the 19th is my mother-in-law’s birthday and also the day E and I got engaged 7 years ago so not a bad day to have a baby overall. If you want to follow along on Twitter I’ll be over there as much as I can & you don’t need to have an account. Just look at my page here and try to focus on the tweets that don’t have an “@” somebody in front of them, since you’ll only see half the conversation. That is, if you’re interested in live birth updates. If not, come back Monday or Tuesday for fresh-baked bebeh pictures.

P.S. I would really appreciate happy, it-wasn’t-so-bad induction comments since the majority of the stories I’ve heard are not so good. Even with the drugs everyone’s labor seems REALLY long and hard – not to mention my mom’s induced labor with me which was long & hard and DIDN’T involve drugs.

P. P.S. I thought I had more time to ask for these, but if anyone would be willing to write & share their own birth stories while I take a few days off that would be awesome. You can be a blogger or not a blogger or have it written already and send me a link or write it now or write it in the next two days. Just send me an email at bebehblog@gmail.com so I can post it here. It doesn’t have to be rainbows and butterflies or involve meadows and wheat fields (although if it does PLEASE sent it), I just want to hear your story and take a few days off to, you know, give birth myself. And everybody loves a birth story.