The DieDie Blog

The title of this post  may seem like a no brainer, but it’s good to state the obvious once in a while. Many people that know us are under the impression that we have a super awesome baby. While that may be true 95% of the time, they generally aren’t around for that 5% where she is a hellion child. We try to plan it that way. It is by no mean feat that we are able to pull this off. There is a ton of timing involved because all it takes is one missed nap to turn our awesome baby into a demonchilde. So when we are sitting around the table late at night planning out the nitty gritty details of the Great Baby Con, we have to factor in every nuance of her schedule.

One example of this is my Fridays. Since I work from home I come in once a week on Friday to participate in our weekly artist meeting. It gives me a chance to get some office time in as well as pawn Amelia off on Dustin for a few hours. Not to mention hang out with my coworkers whom I do miss on occasion. Now with this in mind I make sure that Amelia takes her morning nap and gets at least 3-4 hours sleep. She’s generally up by 11:30am -12pm. We go through the same routine of a diaper change, putting on her clothes for the day while chasing her around her crib to the sound of many delightful giggles and squeals, and finally sitting in the kitchen and eating lunch together. All of these things serve as an important routine building block for her. It’s familiar and she knows what to expect. So while she’s eating her lunch I’m making sure to make extra bottles of milk for the day and am picking out the toys she’s been playing with the most lately. I’ve also got a stash of Ritz crackers and Animal Crackers in the diaper bag now that she has teeth. We complete the bag with a blanket or her snuggie for taking her naps with and she’s pretty much set to go anywhere.

This is the easy part when a schedule has already been put into place and followed. It helps with making her an easy going child. Either that or we are one hell of a set of awesome parents. But that’s not to say that the road to figuring out Amelia’s routine or even setting it up has been easy. For example, trying to get her to sleep in her crib for her daytime naps was a nightmare. For many months we had her take her morning nap out in the living room in her swing chair. She loved it and I dare say it was easy for me to put her in it and set the swing in motion and let her fall asleep. But we had begun to notice a pattern. While this would work perfectly during the week as I would be in the computer room working and there would be no noise in the living room to wake her up, it wasn’t the same on the weekends. Dustin and I like to get our gaming on, so playing video games in the living room while Amelia took her nap seemed like a good idea at the time.  But because the living room was neither quiet nor unoccupied she’d only take an hour nap and would be up the rest of the day. It was frustrating because I knew she needed more than what she was getting, but try as we might we couldn’t get her to go back to sleep. She was just so enamored that her father was home that she didn’t want to miss a thing. We had tried a couple of times to put her in her crib to sleep, but she was so used to the swing chair that she just cried for ever. So being the tougher one, I told Dustin that was I going to try and do it during the week too so that she would get used to sleeping in her crib whenever it was nap time. It took me about a week and a half, but she now sleeps in her crib for her morning naps. Sometimes even for her afternoon naps as well. Was it easy? Heck no! She cried as soon as I would put her down instantly waking up no matter how passed out she was. So I would have to sooth her and try to get her to go back to sleep then sneakily put her back in the crib. Some days I just let her cry. It made me feel bad, but I also had a work load to balance out. Luckily for us she’s a quick learner and gave in to the new nap atmosphere. The benefits we get out of having a few hours to ourselves in the morning, priceless.

It’s the small victories like that, that enable other people to enjoy a happy interactive kid that doesn’t scream all the time.  She hasn’t been perfect all the time, however, and being a parent you can only do so much. Case in point we had gone to a surprise birthday party and yelled out surprise right as our friend came into the room. It was all fun and games until we realized we’d startled the crap out of our daughter as she broke out into tears. But we were prepared! We had her favorite snuggie with us and a bottle and lots of comforting words. Within 5 minutes she was back on track and climbing the couch like the spider monkey she is. It makes me wonder though. You see those children in the grocery store throwing crazy tantrums while their parents just ignore them or try to soothe them by giving in to whatever whim has possessed them. How do you get to that stage? I know Amelia’s still young, but we have already experienced her mini tantrums at home. Whether it’s a sudden melt down because we aren’t picking her up or because she’s fighting sleep, it still doesn’t change the fact that we are the parents. We are responsible for what our daughter interprets as right and wrong, what’s acceptable and what’s not. When she’s screaming about not being picked up, we tell her she’s being silly and then start playing with her toys to get her interested in them. Most of the time it’ll work and she’ll stop crying. Fighting sleep is the easy one, the snuggie is our secret weapon and even though she’s just about outgrown the need to be swaddled we do find that sometimes we have to hold her still to make her go to sleep. In both cases we don’t give in to the tantrums.

I know this is all well and good for now and that as she grows her attitude will change as well. But isn’t that our job as parents to adapt and continually figure out what methods work without compromising your own sanity? 9 month olds aren’t very complex in their needs and I’m sure that when the teenage years roll around it’ll be terrifyingly hard to figure out if she’s tired from school work, stressed out over friends, or a plethora of other factors. But I’d like to think that we’re on the right track as parents. Firm yet still there for her. If we build on that now, shouldn’t that help mold how she’ll develop over the course of her lifetime? I hope so.

So last week I went into great detail about my experiences with pregnancy horror stories. This week I intend to discuss those little strange things that happen that you don’t normally hear about. I’m sure it may have been secretly stashed away in some random pregnancy guide, but alas I did not see it.

Nose Bleeds: I’m the type of person that has never really had nose bleeds. Maybe once or twice if the air has become too stuffy. So imagine my surprise when I go to blow my nose in the morning and I’m instantly greeted with a tissue full of blood. Now clearly I’m not freaked out by the sticky red liquid as obviously I’m a woman. But to have it come out of my nose and continue to come out of my nose was a bit disturbing. This didn’t just happen once, but multiple times during my pregnancy. The culprit? Hormones.

Pelvic Popping: As the months progressed I began to notice a strange phenomenon. Whenever I would turn over in the bed at night, my pelvic bone would pop loudly and painfully. For only lasting a second it was definitely a rude way to wake up. I found myself trying different ways to avoid that bone crunching gasp, but it was no good. Even if I turned very very slowly it still ended up popping at the end of my flip. I finally found that having a gigantic pillow between my legs helped a bit. But overall it was with me til birth. The culprit? Hormones.

Cravings: It is entirely possible to not have weird cravings. I’d watched the crazy romantic comedies where the husband is running away from a screaming pregnant chick to get her ice cream and pickles, but I never actually experienced that myself. Thankfully neither did Dustin. There was one thing that I wanted a lot of and that was fries. Nice salty McDonalds fries. But, I love fries any day of the week so just because I wanted them and could now get them on a constant basis doesn’t convince me that they were real cravings. I had been accused by some gleeful work ladies of having cravings because of my cucumber and cheese sandwiches. But I was sorry to disappoint them with the fact that I’ve been eating those kind of sandwiches for years. Maybe it was that strange diet that prevented me from having the dreaded pickles and ice cream curse.

Water Breaking: I am so glad that this happened when I was at home. If my water had of broke while I was at work I would have been devastated. It is not as mild as the movies would have you believe. What To Expect stated this: “By now you’ve no doubt lost a night or two’s sleep over when and where your water (your amniotic sac) will break — because you’ve heard (or seen on TV) one or two horror stories about a pregnant woman’s water breaking in an inconvenient (no, make that humiliating) time and place (like in the middle of a busy sidewalk at lunch hour, or at a jam-packed mall on a Saturday morning).  But your reality show will probably be a little different. First, because fewer than 15 percent of women experience a rupture of the membranes before labor begins, and, second, because if your water does break in public, it’s less likely to come as a torrential tidal wave, and more likely to come as a slow leak, a trickle, or a small gush.”

I have highlighted the last description for a reason. I was fortunate to have my water break at home. It was very convenient as at about 1am I got up to go to the bathroom. I pee and then splash! I hear a bunch of water hit the toilet bowl. Awesome! I thought. My water couldn’t have had better timing! I was quite smug about the whole thing, even breathed a sigh that it wasn’t at work.  So we pack up and away we go to the hospital. When we get there I explain to the nurse that my water had broke. She escorts us into the exam room. I change into the awesome hospital gown while she goes and gets a few things she needs. Apparently nurses don’t really believe you when you tell them your water has broken. So in order to convince them, my body decided to do something unexpected. I was sitting on the end of the exam table when all of a sudden fluid began to pour out of me. I instantly stood up in reaction and flooded the floor with yellowish liquid. OMGOOSES! I thought something was wrong because to me I’d already had my water break and it was the mild “small gush” What to Expect had described. This stuff also wasn’t clear as to me that’s what I was expecting with “water breaking”. So what the fuck was this?? The nurse returns and sees whats happened and says, “Oh yeah clearly your water broke.” Thank you Captain Obvious. It turned out to be normal but definitely wasn’t “What To Expect.”

There are tons of pregnancy websites out there that do a great job informing you about the pitfalls of being pregnant. Whattoexpect.com did an awesome job for me. Just keep in mind that you may experience some things they don’t cover. As long as you and your doctor are aware of them it should be no problem. So if you’ve experienced or are experiencing some of the same things I did, feel safe in the comfort that you aren’t alone.

Let’s face it. We’ve all heard the crazy horror stories that practically every mother goes through while being pregnant. I’ve heard tales of 3 month early babies, excruciating back pain, inappropriately timed morning sickness, 30 + hours in labor, and just about everything in between. So I just want to say that I’m thankful that I turned out to have one of those rare normal pregnancies.

To all those women who told me their crazy stories I appreciate it, but you guys suck! This was my first pregnancy and while I know you were trying to help, scaring the crap out of an impending mother pumped full of hormones is not cool. After every story I’d look down at my round belly and whimper. Silently sending thoughts to my little one with pleas of “Please don’t hurt me!” I’d cringe at every sordid detail until I realized that I wasn’t going through any of that.

I’m going to go through a list of Scare Tactics vs DieDie Facts for my pregnancy.

Scare Tactic: Morning sickness will make it almost impossible for you to function.

DieDie’s Fact: I did not get morning sickness to the extent of praying to the Porcelain Goddess every morning. I did, however, feel nauseous at night resulting in some early bedtimes for me. That meant hitting the hay at 10pm rather than 12am. It also meant forgoing sex which was the biggest downer. The good news was that it didn’t last very long. I was done right on cue with 12 weeks, the normal time morning sickness wears off.

Scare Tactic: The extra baby weight will prevent you from doing a lot of activities.

DieDie’s Fact: One of the biggest compliments I kept receiving was how well I was holding up. I was still going on our walk breaks at work. We took them every day at 10am and 3pm with an occasional lunch walk thrown in. The mothers at work seemed amazed that I was able to do this and sited their own stories of being too tired to do anything except relax on the couch. Say what? I know I’ve gained a lot of weight before I was pregnant, but to just lay around when I was perfectly capable of walking somewhere or doing something seemed outlandish to me. I kept going on walks til about my 9th month. It was July and hot as hell outside which is what made it difficult for me to keep going.

Scare Tactic: Get ready for the most intense pain of your life! Labor for 30 + hours and beyond!

DieDie’s Fact: Hmm I’m on the fence with this one. I have a pretty high tolerance to pain. I don’t know what other women would consider intense pain. I do know that I started having contractions on Sunday July 19th at around 12pm in the afternoon. They were the confusing kind that were erratic and not falling into any particular rhythm. So as a newbie to this pregnancy business I dismissed them as false labor. They didn’t hurt and felt like mild menstrual cramps. The day wore on and they’d dissipate for a bit and then return. Still didn’t think anything of it until 1am when my water broke.

I’d like to say the contractions got worse. To an extent they did, but they weren’t unbearable by any means. I’m not sure if mine were just mild or if I’m just a super chick. I’d like to believe the latter. So after 24 hours of labor pains I shrugged and asked for the epidural. I figured we might as well hook that up in case things do get intense. I didn’t want to be in a situation where I’m in the pushing position and in dire need of medication only to be told it was too late. The epidural just so happened to be a good idea as you’ll see next.

Scare Tactics: Vaginal tearing with a big baby.

DieDie’s Fact: My baby was an 8 pounder and one of the worries of my doctor was she’d have to be delivered through a c-section if she got too big. That option had been given to me, but it was not something I wanted to go through. Everything was looking good for a vaginal birth though. So the fear of having my sensitive girl parts ripped open was a very real possibility to me. But it didn’t turn out that way. After many hours in labor my body decided to stop dilating. I was stalled out at 5 centimeters. The nurses even tried to give me a high dosage of Pitocen, a drug that induces dilation, but to no avail. After many more hours of waiting and still being stuck at 5 centimeters it was decided that a c-section was necessary. This was about 8pm on July 20th.

Scare Tactic: Having a c-section is scary stuff.

DieDie’s Fact: I agree with this one. Here’s where that epidural decision came in handy. In order to do the c-section they had to pump me full of drugs injected directly into my spine. This would help deaden the feeling to my lower body. The epidural was already in place so all they had to do was inject the drugs and we were good to go. Anxiety and fear were my buddies here as a c-section was the last thing I wanted. As scary as a vaginal birth sounded, a surgery where they cut me open seemed a hell of a lot worse. Thankfully, Dustin was with me the entire time. He kept me calm and it was over in less than 20 minutes. Easy peasy!

However, a c-section is no joke. They deaden the area where they are cutting, but you can still feel them tugging on your insides. There was no pain, but more of a perceived horror at knowing someone had you laid open for all to see. And Dustin did apparently see. Sorry babe. =(

After the surgery my meds began to wear off. I couldn’t hold my baby right away because this wave of intense pain began to emanate from where I’d been cut. I can only describe it as a burning sensation. So while I survived the labor pains I had to grit my teeth against this aggression. I summoned every ounce of my awesome pain dealing abilities and battled with the fire as my nurse kept pumping me full of medications. Morphine wasn’t working and it finally took a cocktail of drugs to quiet the beast. But I survived, I worked through it and my nurses took excellent care of me. After the pain was under control I was able to hold my little girl.

Scare Tactic: If you have a c-section your going to be on bed rest for a while.

DieDie’s Fact: I think both ways of delivery have their complications. Factors depending on your mental stubbornness and physical condition probably have more to do with it than just the surgery alone. Yes it sucked but I didn’t let it control my life. I had to take it easy as would anyone having gone through the birthing process. I was armed with pain killers and IB-Profen which after 9 months of only Tylenol was a blessing.

Getting around had it’s challenges. I had to slide off the couch and bed in a rather amusing snake like fashion as to avoid pulling my staples. At times I would be stubborn and refuse to take my pain killers muttering hostilities at them such as, “I don’t need no stinkin meds!” Only to crawl back 4 hours later with whimpering apologies because I had turned too fast and pulled my incision. I’m sure those who delivered via vaginal birth didn’t have to worry about those situations. But from reading various forums I can say I was back to having sex way sooner than those vaginal mommas. Score one for the c-section. Plus I also didn’t have to worry about a baby with a squished head. She was perfect when she came out. Score two!

That’s my review of the many fun things other mothers can tell you.

To sum it up I’m glad I had a normal birth. Sure I had some complications but nothing to really freak out about. I had a good support structure with my honey Dustin and managed to pull out of it without any trouble. To those that don’t have it as easy as I did, hang in there. Remember that in a few months you’ll have a pure bundle of joy to take away all the pain you went through. You know it’s worth it. But as your retelling your tale to a new expectant momma keep in mind that you might be scaring the crap out of her for no reason. It’s good to be prepared but chances are she’s probably already read everything she can get her hands on about the whole process. So be supportive and offer advice when it’s requested. Remember us gals can handle a hell of a lot more than we give ourselves credit for.

I had never really thought too much about schedules before Amelia was born. I was generally spontaneous and did what ever idea popped into my head. From running off to clothing optional spas in the middle of the night to staying up playing video games til 4am. To an extent I still do that. Parenting hasn’t changed me too much. BUT! My daughter’s schedule is a different story.

I’ve recently become rather protective of her sleeping and eating patterns. From my Florida Mum’s visit and others I’ve found that new people excite my daughter. So much so that it distracts her from her normal sleeping schedules. It’s difficult for her to go to sleep because she wants to participate and interact with what’s going on. Plus with her being so incredibly adorable it ads to the excitement of the people around her. She’s constantly being passed around.

Now on the one hand this is a good thing. I want her to be acclimatised to a variety of people so that when we go out she won’t be upset. So far I think we’ve done a good job on that. But on the other hand if it interferes with her schedule then that’s where things start to get complicated. She’s a bear when she misses her nap times and it becomes a fight just to get her to close her eyes.

So in order to try and starve off these crazy times, we’ve been sticking to a constant schedule. It goes as follows:

7:30am – 8:30am – She wakes up and gets her breakfast. She’s generally only up for about 45 minutes to an hour. From there on she takes a nap anywhere between 3-5 hours.

11am – 12pm – She’s up from her morning nap and ready for some lunch. We play around on her play mat and try to get some tummy time in. She’s normally awake for about 2-3 hours at this point until she tires herself out.

She takes a small afternoon nap for about an hour or two. By that time it’s 5pm and she’s usually awake to greet her Daddy when he gets home. For the evenings she’s up the longest period of time. She gets some dinner and then sleeps for a few minutes around 8pm.

10pm – 11pm – This is her normal bedtime schedule. We give her a bottle and swaddle her and she’s pretty good about falling asleep. Sometimes she sleeps through the night and other times she’ll be up at 4am for some food and then back to sleep she’ll go.

Overall this is what we try to stick to. I’m not going to lie, however, there have been times when I’m working that I let her take longer than usual naps. I figure her body is obviously needing the extra rest and I need the extra time. Most times this doesn’t backfire on me, but it has in a couple of situations when we’ve had plans later on in the day. It can sometimes throw her schedule off and cause her to fall asleep much later than normal. I’ve since learned to try and work around that.

Bedtime Crasher will mess you up if you screw with the baby's schedule!

As parents we’ve learned that Spock is wrong. The needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the little one. While we have developed the necessary skills to handle her cries, we’d rather do what we can to avoid that situation in the first place. So if you’re ever over at my place and you get the Momma’s Look of Death: Sit Down, Shut Up and wait til she falls asleep. After that you can be as obnoxious as you want, she sleeps like a rock.