It's Been a Thousand Years

... or at least it feels like it. In any case, it's time for an update.

The monster is 2 years, 8 months today, the hobgoblin just passed 12 weeks. They both continue to be wonderful.

Monster, despite his total refusal to eat just about everything, keeps on growing and seems pretty healthy. He continues to amaze us with things like being able to name all 50+ of his toy cars, using words like similar correctly and trying to learn everything about everything (most recently, studying world maps and asking where places are). His newest obsession is knowing why printed words say what they do, which makes every bedtime book take about 1000x longer, because knowing what it says isn't enough, he has to see where and how each word is spelled. The result of this is that he decoded his first word. He has quite a few sight words, but this was the first one he actually sounded out. He also taught himself to count to 10 in French, because why not?
 
He's really taken to his new role as a big brother, and is really protective of the hobgoblin. If we call the goblin any disparaging or silly nicknames (ie: Stink-butt) we are emphatically told "He is NOT an Stink-Butt; he is an hobgoblin"). The monster is slowly allowing some leeway, but mostly we're expected to refer to the goblin by his full name or one approved (and common, not at all silly) nickname. As is proper for a big brother, he doesn't feel these rules apply to him, so he is allowed to call his brother "Poop."

The Hobgoblin's personality has really come out to shine. He's pretty laid back and easy going, and really only cries if he's wet, dirty, hungry or gassy. He likes to be held and snuggled, but he doesn't mind being put down for long chunks of time, which is a lifesaver with two. He's very vocal and loves to laugh and smile, and getting a smile and a coo out of him is as easy as offering him one first. He's also a giant (but no longer in the 95th percentile), now wearing mostly 6 month clothes and the stuff that's on the bigger side of 3-6. If he keeps up like this, I think he'll end up taller than the monster, when all is said and done.

Me, I'm not doing great.

After 3 trips to the ER, I ended up having emergency surgery to have my gallbladder removed. That was a few weeks ago and I'm pretty much physically recovered. The process dicked up breastfeeding for a bit and I hated being away from my kids, pumping and dumping because of painkillers and everything else that went along with it. Mr. Wolfman was a rockstar and carried everyone through (though I'm pretty sure neither boy got a bath the entire time I was in the hospital).

At the hobgoblin's 2 month well-check, I did the questionnaire for PPD screening and scored pretty high. I need to pull myself together and go through the mental health intake process today, because I don't want it to get out of hand like last time. I just feel run down and panicky all the time. Basically anything beyond sitting still and doing nothing is immensely stressful for me. Basic things, like the boys' baths, are starting to slide. I have to fight back tears over minor, ridiculous things. Yesterday, Mr. Wolfman made a special trip to the store to get me something I wanted. He also got cookies for himself, and I started to get upset because I couldn't eat the cookies (due to an allergy, Mr. Wolfman wasn't being greedy). I felt actually betrayed that he'd get cookies I couldn't eat. And then, of course, I felt like a ungrateful child, getting whiney and upset because him taking the time to go out and get me exactly what I asked for was somehow negated by him not also getting me something that I hadn't asked for. And then the supreme guilt started to creep in, which I think is the backbone of PPD and PPA. I just constantly feel like I'm not doing enough, or like what I do is wrong, like my kids are suffering, my marriage is suffering, my mental health is suffering, my future is non-existant, I'm going nowhere and it's all my fault. Guilt, and a constant feeling of being overwhelmed, of not being able to cope, of not being good enough.

Mr. Wolfman seems to have a better understanding of what's going on this time. If I'm honest, I think me being stuck in the hospital and our first attempt at an extended family outing opened his eyes to a lot of what I do day-to-day and how incredibly stressful it can be, even without ppd/ppa hanging over my head.

The hobgoblin needs something. A mummy's work is never done.

He's Here!

Actually, he's been here for nearly 2 weeks, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write about it (well, not much of a chance; it's time for him to wake up and eat soon).

*possible trigger for a scary situation, which turned out ok*

I went to see my sister last Saturday and she told me she hoped I would go into labour that night. I didn't hope so; I was determined to have a March baby. But I guess the Hobgoblin listened to his auntie, because sometime after midnight, I started getting woken up by what I thought was an extreme need to pee.

At about 3, it occurred to me that I was likely experiencing contractions and downloaded a contraction tracking app to see how long they were and how frequent. At that point, they were about 8 minutes apart and one minute long. The app grew more and more aggressive as I progressed, first telling me I should get my hospital bag ready in the car (6 minutes apart) and eventually giving me the all-caps message "GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW" (4 minutes apart). Since said hospital was 45+ minutes away, it really was time to go.

Mr. Wolfman was very good about not telling me that he couldn't see a damn thing on the drive there. It was (of course) very dark; the road is not lit at all - and it was snowing very hard and it was also extremely windy. The contractions were at yelling on the pain scale, so I wasn't really paying attention. I did take a picture when he asked me to, because he said it was like Star Wars with the snow, but I still didn't realize we were driving blind.

Despite the crazy snow and my ever-more-frequent shouts of pain, Mr. Wolfman got us to the hospital in one piece in just over 55 minutes. The contractions were so close together by that point that I didn't even make it across the parking lot before another one hit.

The admissions nurse took one look at me, asked my last name and called an L&D nurse.

I progressed for a bit without pain meds, and it was awful and I wanted to die*. Eventually, I gave in and asked for fentanyl, which worked extremely well for a while, and then stopped working and I gave in again and asked for an epidural. The anesthesiologist had to come from home and (it seemed to me) took his sweet time getting there. By the time he arrived, I was getting an extremely strong urge to push with every contraction. When I mentioned this to the nurse, the anesthesiologist got wide eyes and wordlessly left the room. Apparently he was afraid he would have to deliver me if he stuck around.

OB showed up, anesthesiologist came back and after they determined I was at 7cm, I spent about 15/20 minutes getting an epidural. Sitting still through contractions was not easy, especially since I couldn't even scream at that point, because I had to keep my back really, really still. But I managed that, and after 5 attempts, they got the epi set and put the drugs in and then I was a happy camper. I think the nurses mentioned to the anesthesiologist that I'd been complaining about him yelling at me when I had the monster, because he was overly nice. He told me before he left that I have scoliosis, so that's fun.

I'd been really worried about the epidural because of the thing where the monster's heart rate had dropped off when I got the epi with him. But they were really good about monitoring the hobgoblin and his heart rate stayed totally fine throughout.

Everything after the epidural was super smooth and really relaxed. I only used the button once for some extra meds, so I could feel all my contractions still. They hurt, but I could breathe through them, and talk if I really needed to. When it came time to push, I had enough energy and my OB (the one I had never met until that point) talked me through everything. If we planned on having more kids, I would definitely request her again.

At the last minute, the hobgoblin decided to pull a Superman and his head and one arm came out first, the other shoulder got stuck. It went from "you're doing great" to "Get help in here now!" and I couldn't see anything, so of course I was freaking out. I kept asking what I should be doing, should I be pushing, should I wait, etc. Dr? stayed really calm and answered me when she could and between her and I, we got him out.

Before pushing, they'd told me how they delayed cord clamping, how they'd take him out and put him on my chest (or belly, depending on the length of the cord) and we'd do an hour of skin-to-skin. That didn't exactly work out. They pulled him out and put him on me, but he wasn't breathing. DH and the nurses kept trying to tell me he was ok, but I was screaming that he wasn't breathing and they cut the cord and took him away to a table to work on him.

Brilliantly, he started breathing and crying on his own. I've never been so relieved in my entire life. They gave him back to me and he was and is just perfect.

I think because I waited so long for the epi and didn't press the button for extra, I didn't end up needing a catheter and they discharged me just over 24 hours after the hobgoblin made his appearance. He's a giant, over a pound heavier at birth than his big brother.

We're at home, getting into the swing of things. It's not exactly easy with 2, but we're slowly figuring it out.




*I have a very ranty rant about one of the nurses, but I'll save it for another day.

Can I Just Bitch for a Minute?

Yesterday left me so tired and stressed, I'm still very much feeling it today. I'm in an absolute funk and don't seem to be able to claw my way out of it.

So Saturday and Sunday nights, I worked graveyards, as per usual. Sunday before work, I was talking with Mr. Wolfman about the monster and how advanced he is, and how we need to figure out what we're going to do for extra academic stimulation in our tiny town. I made some comment about how we may not even be here by the time he starts school in a couple of years and if we move somewhere bigger, they may have more options for special classes*.

Mr. Wolfman then starts asking me what I'm talking about, and come to find out, what I thought was our very solid, agreed upon plan of finding out in the spring if there's any more room for advancement in his current job - and if not, looking for work outside of this town - was actually not our plan, and that the earliest we will likely move is the end of summer, 2018. 18. We will have been in this shit village for 5 years. I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE. It's not really a shit village. It's nice, if you're an outdoors person (I'd like to be, but I can't take the monster out hiking alone, because there's a reasonable chance we'd be eaten by wild animals - not an exaggeration. There are wolves, bears, mountain lions and coyotes around here). It's also nice if you're into winter sports (I'm not. And anyway, I'm pregnant this winter, next winter I will have a toddler and an infant, the next winter I'll have a preschooler and a toddler). Property here is prohibitively expensive, daycare here is prohibitively expensive. So basically, I'm going to remain a mostly SAHM until 2018, whether I want to or not (not that there's anything approaching a fulfilling job for me here, even if I had the education and experience, which I don't). At which point, I'll still have no education, and I'll have been out of the workforce for 4 years. I'm sure that'll look great on my resume.

So I went to bed, woke up to none of the food DH had said he was going to cook, went work at 11pm in a shit mood, got home around 8am, Mr. Wolfman let me sleep until almost 11, so nearly 3 hours, yay. I wanted to go out, Mr. Wolfman said he needed to shower before doing anything else. Two hours of sitting on the couch  later, he finally has his shower, comes out saying I should be ready to go (even though he hadn't said whether he wanted to go anywhere), because he thought he was driving me to the store to buy a plunger (oh yeah, I clogged the toilet on Saturday). I said I could walk to the store, so he says ok and sits back down on the couch and reads until it's time to go to work.

My plan was to work on cleaning the new glider (I got it for free from a buy&sell site. One of the things about our small village is that people leave frequently, and big, ugly furniture tends to get given away, so it being free was not suspicious at all. She said it was smoke and pet free. The lady's house smelled a little funky, but I didn't want to sniff this thing right in front of her. I should have. It smelled awful, but I didn't realize that until I got home and started to clean it. I had already gone out on Sunday afternoon to buy pet odour and urine stain remover). The cleaning solution seemed to bring whatever locked-in stench to the surface, so I was going to spray it, open all the windows, then go out to buy the plunger. I also needed to go grocery shopping because DH had decided that he didn't want the meal he didn't cook on Sunday night, he wanted something else that we needed more supplies for.

It took over 2 hours to leave the house, mostly due to the monster getting a tiny bit dressed, then needing to pee. So I've been smelling this stupid cleaner/random chair stink this whole time and starting to get a headache.

We finally got out of the house, walked about 15-20 minutes, then the monster has to pee. I tell him hang on, we run to the nearest bathroom (about 3 mins away) and he's had his first accident in over 2 weeks, soaked through his underwear, pants, shirt and sweater and wetted his coat and stroller. Get him cleaned up. But it hadn't occurred to me to bring an extra shirt or sweater and it was cold outside, so I put him in my hoodie ("Monster will have no sweater. Too long!") and go to the store to find a shirt for him that doesn't leave half his chest exposed. No luck there. He needs to pee again, so we end up using the staff bathroom in the back of the store. Grab plunger.

Go to an outdoor store and buy him an expensive base layer shirt. He has to pee again. Rush him to the nearest toilet.

Go to go to another store because I just got invited to my sister's baby shower (3rd in 4 years) and I need to find a reasonably cheap present for her.

Go to the bank. He needs to pee again. Bank is closed, so the nearest one is about 7-10 mins away. I tell him to hold it, finish at the ATM and bloody run to the grocery store. He's already had another accident. Change him, get him cleaned up (thank God I had a ridiculous stash of clean underwear and pants with me). Put him in a random diaper I found in the stroller, because fuck. Finish grocery shopping.

Go to visit Mr. Wolfman at work to drop off the apple he'd requested (at this point I'd been out for some 3.5 hours, on food, dealing with all of this).  The monster fell asleep on the way there, so after dropping off the apple and a snack for Mr. Wolfman, I go home, leave the monster in the stroller and collapse for a bit (maybe an hour and a half).

At the monster's bedtime, he was still asleep so I carefully transferred him to his own bed, go to cook food, and of course he wakes up. Wants food, wants stories, wants EVERYTHING.  Mr. Wolfman gets home and immediately starts complaining about various things that I haven't done around the house. He hangs up laundry - after complaining, because he works - then sits on the computer, because apparently getting the monster ready for bed is 100% my responsibility, for no fucking reason. I said I could cook and he could put the monster to bed, or he could cook and I could put the monster to bed. He is really resistant to doing bedtime.

Oh, and during this time, I discover massive haemorrhoids. I've been insisting I need that stupid damn glider for ages and telling Mr. Wolfman that if he keeps making me do bedtime (I usually have to sit on a step stool, because the monster's bed is so little), I'm going to get them. DH didn't see the point of buying a glider or any comfortable furniture and thought it was a waste of money/space. I only got the one I got because it was free. So yay for fire ass for the next 15 weeks.

So I finally get the monster ready for bed, get him to pee again (his diaper, after all that, was miraculously dry). Finally drag him to bed, read him his stories and try to get him to sleep. He won't sleep. After nearly an hour, he's asleep, I try to sneak out of the room, he wakes up and starts crying. I have to lie in his toddler bed with him and hug him until he's asleep, apparently. So I do this. He drifts off.  I'm about to sneak out when Mr. Wolfman opens the door, letting in light, then comes and stands over the bed, waking the monster up, then goes back out of the room (... thanks?). So I lie there some more and eventually both the monster and I drift off. Mr. Wolfman comes back in to go to bed. I get up to take my pill and find some food (Wolfman didn't cook anything, big surprise), monster wakes up and starts crying. I take my pill and hurry back to bed without even brushing my teeth.

Eventually I bring the monster to my bed, because, remember, I'm doing all this on 3 hours of sleep and I don't have the energy to enforce him sleeping in his own bed. By now it's well after midnight. He squirms around and fusses and takes probably another hour to fall asleep. Then he tosses and turns all night, waking me up repeatedly, but, of course, not Mr. Wolfman, who sleeps through anything.

Monster is up before 8am, because why the fuck not?

aaand, that's been my week so far. I'm starving and now have to cook dinner for lunch because Wolfman's insistence we get ingredients for a meal he apparently didn't even want (he ate at work, so he was fine) screwed up our budget for today.

Fuck. I'm so exhausted and so bitter and so at a loose end. All I want to do is curl into a ball and sleep for the next 10 years.  And this is supposed to be the relaxing time, before number two gets here.

Fuck.


*Maybe jumping the gun a bit here, but the monster has surpassed every non-motor-related milestone (as well as a few motor ones) incredibly early, so far. He already knows the alphabet, his shapes, colours, how to count to 10 in two languages and can count in his head. He can name all 30(!) of his toy cars (just make and/or model, not year). Generally, I think a lot of the stuff he knows is stuff that they go over in JK, two years from now, so we're a little concerned.

Survey Says...

It's a boy!

I don't know why I put that in blue, it's a bit gendery, but whatever, it looks nice.

I was absolutely sure I was having a girl - and absolutely shocked to feel actual disappointment when the doctor told us otherwise. I honestly and truly believe the only difference is what's between the legs, and since I already know how to change boy diapers, I've no idea why I was suddenly overcome with what I felt, which was grief.

It's not that I wanted this baby to be a girl. I was sure he was a girl. Like, deep down in my soul, sure. I think I'd built up this fictional daughter in my mind, I knew her name, I had dreams about her being born - I knew what her face looked like. So I think it was more that I was mourning a child who never existed. Part of it is knowing that number two is our last, so I know now that I'll never have a daughter. It's not that I think I'm going to miss out on mother-daughter bonding, or tea parties or dress up, either. None of that has anything to do with the sex of my baby.

The worst part was the doctor, suddenly going from saying they were really quite sure to maybe you'll be surprised in the delivery room - not because it was so fake, which it was, but because I could tell it was a reaction to my reaction - that I had utterly failed to hide my totally irrational feelings.

I cried pretty much all day. Mostly because I was so mad at myself for being anything other than over the moon with excitement. Because I know that my son is who he is and will be who we raise him to be, and that his genitals have nothing to do with any of it. Because Mr. Wolfman kept trying to comfort me by saying we could have a 3rd child, like this one is somehow insufficient.

Anyway, it only took me a day to get comfortable with it. One more day to get over my initial reaction completely, and now I can say I'm really excited about boy #2, our little Hobgoblin. Mr. Wolfman and I have been talking over names, and I feel like we're almost decided. We're leaving room for the possibility we'll see him and rethink our choice, but I'm pretty happy with our current selection, and I feel like it'll stick.

We don't stress sex and gender, so I don't think the monster has any idea what a brother is, vs. a sister. He's excited about the fact that the baby will have a bed, and he has his own bed, which has blankets and a pillow. Also, he knows that the play kitchen in fact belongs to both of them, but that he doesn't have to share with the baby until he can walk, which won't be for a long time. And, as the monster is fond of pointing out, he can already walk, and no one is stopping him from playing with the play kitchen.

Also, the monster knows that the baby is in my belly, that we went to the hospital in [town] and the lady pushed buttons and we saw the baby on the computer screen - but none of that is anywhere near as exciting as the fact that the lady pushed some other buttons and the bed came up. That was clearly the highlight of the trip for him.

I have a rant coming, about Dr. Ginger and the absolute clusterfuck that was my genetic screening blood work - and possibly one about yesterday, the horror show that wouldn't end,  but I'll save those for another day. Right now, the monster has (yet again) ransacked the entire apartment and between that and trying to get stuff ready for Mr. Hobgoblin,  I have a lot of cleaning to do.

A Kind of Big Update

I haven't posted for a while. For once, that's been intentional. I have one IRL friend who knows about this blog and I wanted to talk to him IRL before having him read it on here. I didn't think I could post about the monster and my day-to-day without spilling the beans, as it were.

So yes, as you've likely guessed from my none-too-subtle introduction, I'm pregnant again :) Mr. Wolfman and I are very, very excited. The Monster likes babies as a general rule, but I'm thinking he still doesn't really get what's going on.

It's actually been really difficult not to post anything about this. We found out pretty well right away (I knew right away, but didn't officially confirm it until a few days before my period was due), but I had a sudden feeling of superstition and didn't want to tell anyone until at least 12 weeks. We still haven't been able to reach Mr. Wolfman's parents, except for a couple of brief phone calls to make sure they're still alive, so they still don't know, which means we haven't really told friends, because it feels weird for the grandparents to find out last.

So, to play catch up:

• The first trimester is done. Hooray. I didn't get daily vomiting like I did with the monster. Instead, I just had this pervasive nausea that would not leave me alone. I spent about a month and a half of it on my couch, barely able to move, getting up only to change the monster (toilet training came to a screeching halt), go to the bathroom and take care of food (for the monster). I lost a chunk of weight, though not as much as at the beginning of my first pregnancy. Baby will be along in early March.
• I started showing way earlier this time. I was right around this point when I first started to show with the monster. This time, I'm already in maternity clothes. I can't even do the hair-elastic trick to hold up non-maternity pants. Basically now, I could probably lie my way out of it, but without question, the first assumption people will make is pregnancy. Not complaining about my body, though, I love that I'm all bump again.
• I told work this morning; it was getting awkward to pretend like nothing was up. My manager was super happy (maybe a little too happy).
• Once again, my sister is pregnant at the same time as me. This time she's due about a month and a half earlier.
• We already have most of the necessary baby gear, so we bought an expensive baby carrier, a "winter" (early fall. Not warm. Damn) maternity coat for me, and we'll buy a toddler skateboard stroller attachment thing* and that's pretty much all we need. The kids'** closet is bursting with clothes, so other than special occasions, we're all set there.
• The monster is an absolute little chatter box, he's speaking entirely in sentences and is fully bilingual, to the point where you can ask him to repeat something in the other language, and he will. I'm a little worried about how he'll handle no longer being the centre of the universe, but I think when it comes to it, he's going to be an amazing big brother.
• Everything non-baby related is same-old, same old. I'm still working nights on weekends, still perma-tired, still trying to make longterm plans with not enough money or information. But it's all good. We're getting there.

I think that covers everything for the moment. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I suspect I'll be updating quite a lot more. We don't get our anatomy scan until early October, so hopefully everything stays uneventful until then and we can look forward to learning the sex (not sure why I'm so concerned about it, to be honest. We're not pink for girls, blue for boys people).

That's it. More to follow, I'm sure :)

*I'm up on all the latest terms. Look how lit I am, fam. Lit is a thing, right? And fam? Those are things.
**Such a weird concept for me. I'm still not quite used to it.

I should be sleeping.

The monster is sleeping.... and I am damn tired.  Instead I keep taking those annoyingly unhelpful early pregnancy quizzes online.

A bunch of symptoms that could be otherwise explained (including fatigue and tender breasts), 2 negative HPTs, nausea, lightheadedness, gas, constipation, lemonade cravings, brain fog, 3 weeks late. And a partridge in a pear tree.  My appointment (with some rando doctor, as Dr. Illegible is on vacation) is on Xmas eve.  It's so far away.

Except nowhere near far enough away, in another sense, because I have yet to finish making DH's present and I'm too queasy to work on it atm.  I also have to finish making my niece's present and make something for my nephew.  At least the monster is taken care of.

I should be sleeping.