The Long and the Short of It

What's been going on around here lately, the short version:

• Fell into the tub trying to hang towels on the towel rack. Cursed.
• Packed maternity clothes, pump parts, and baby clothes that no longer fit the chunk. Cried.
• Booked too many plans for the month. Collapsed.
• Played with Merrill. Smiled.

And now, if you have any interest in being bored out of your mind....



What's been going on around here lately, the long version:

• I love our shower. It was one of the things about our house that I loved most when we bought it, and one of the things we get the most compliments on. It's an enormous shower/tub combo, built into a raised section of our bathroom with tile surrounding it. It has an oversized overhead rain faucet. It's glorious. That being said, as much as I love it for the shower, I hate it for the tub. The huge shower I love so much translates into a tub I can't take a bubble bath in, because I can't touch the foot of it with my toes...so I slide. Since it's built into the raised section, it sits so low that you have to lean down into it...meaning it's a bitch to clean. Now I have one more reason to despise it...it's impossible to bathe a baby in. Not a good thing when you're trying to wrangle a slippery wiggly infant. Also not a good thing when you're leaning over the step, trying to hang towels on the towel rack...balance lost, momentum gained.


• I decided to pack up my maternity clothes and the various items from my pregnancy, such as vitamins, books, stretch mark creams, etc...as well as the clothes that don't fit Merrill any more (a shockingly large amount) and the breast pump & parts since that is no longer a part of our routine. It hit me with enormous force that I am no longer pregnant, that I have a three month old, and that she is a formula fed baby. I'm still trying to write about my feelings concerning breastfeeding and our experience with it, and I haven't been able to find the right words. For now, let's just say it still gets me. Packing up these items and putting them in the attic served as a glaring reminder that time is flying past me in leaps and bounds, and I'm simply standing with my mouth hanging open, watching it rush past me. Every time I look at Merrill's sweet face, and realize that she's not a tiny newborn any more - and beyond that, no longer being carried in my womb - I am amazed at how much the past three months have changed our lives, and I can't even remember life without her.


• We've been going nonstop lately, what with a family vacation, my mother-in-law visiting for a week, my husband's best friend from college surprising him with a weekend visit, a trip to Mississippi to visit my grandparents, my nephew's birthday party, one of my best friends from high school coming to town....the list goes on and on. I've overextended us physically and mentally, and Merrill has been a trooper...but it's time for us to slow down and relax.


• There's not a long version of this one. The short one speaks volumes.

• 

What to Expect When You're Expecting

While I was pregnant, I read a lot about birth plans and how very important it was to know what you had in mind for your labor and delivery. Every book I opened and every website I visited made me feel that if I didn't have a plan going in, I. Was. A. Failure. It baffled me. All I could come up with was that I had no control over the situation, nature would pretty much determine the course of events for me, and aside from knowing that drugs would most DEFINITELY be a part of it, I didn't have any sort of notions as to how it would or should go.

As it turned out, I was right. Developing HELLP syndrome at 35 weeks and delivering via emergency c-section pretty much took any preferences I may have had regarding childbirth and threw them out the window. It was wholly unexpected and entirely out of my hands...and while not what I envisioned, I couldn't be happier with my experience.

I've heard of women who get truly upset when birth doesn't go the way they wanted - a c-section when a natural birth was desired, an epidural that doesn't take place due to time constraints, etc. I've had people ask me how I feel about Merrill's birth, whether I'm upset that I didn't get to experience labor and a natural delivery....and I don't know how to answer what seems like a fully loaded question. I didn't have a single contraction, never went into labor, and never got to push. These are all things that in theory, I'd like to experience at some point in my life. However, our experience resulted in a perfectly healthy, beautiful baby - so why shouldn't that be the ideal scenario?

I think I spent the entire pregnancy thinking about the end result - but I never really thought about how we'd get there, so for me that wasn't really the point. The point was that no matter how our baby was brought into the world, it was the right way as long as everything turned out okay. And unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, it did.