tubby time!

my baby hates the bath. hates it with a passion. He screams and wails the second that his little body touches the water. I feel so bad! He wails and looks at me with the saddest little expression on his face.

tonight i tried to bring him into the bath with me in the hopes that he would take to it more. It didn't work. He still screamed only this time he was up close and clinging to me like "why mommy??" it broke my heart!

i gave him to Ryan and wrapped him up in his Shark hood towel (thanks to Emma for getting that for us!) and dressed him but i still wish he didn't hate it so much. Poor little guy!

my mom assures me that eventually he'll come around and like the bath. I hope so! Until then, sponge baths it is :)

about the baby

I am going to work on updating this thing more often. That was always my intention once the baby arrived - to document his growth and experiences (and my growth and my experiences) in a public forum like this. I think it will be fun and worthwhile.

Of course, i had no concept of how difficult it would be to get onto a computer at all in the first few weeks of mommyhood, let alone having the time to update my blogs properly with photos and witty little quips (please let me think that i am full of with and quips here).

I would like to also mention that it just figures that the first time i sit down to do this my son who was blissfully slumbering in his fisher price my little lamb swing (such a great swing) wakes up. Ohhh but he seems to be falling back asleep again. Let's hope!

Also, this blog works best if you leave comments here and I get a chance to respond. Especially if I am asking questions and you know the answers or have some helpful advice. I would love to have an archive of that advice and the best place for it to go is right here in the post where I am asking for it! Just my thoughts on things :)

His little eyes are open again so I'm on a limited time-frame here because he is making little monster grunting noises.

I wanted to just say the following and then hopefully the next time i come back I will have an actual topic to discuss: motherhood really is the most insanely challenging experience ever but it is also the BEST thing I have ever done.

I know, i know, how cliche right? That's what everyone says. But like everything else, people say it because it's TRUE! It's so great. He's so precious and wonderful and just all around perfect and i love him more than i thought possible. And at the same time being a mommy is like running a marathon that never ends. I am exhausted, i've reached my "limit" several times already but have somehow powered through. I guess it just shows that there is no limit and that really all of life's difficult moments and experiences are basically just a matter of getting your mind in a place of empowerment and positivity.

It's not all easy and rose petals but there ARE more wonderful moments than ones where you want to pull your hair out (or other people's hair out). I have had to put the baby down (somewhere safe) and walk away just to regroup and regather myself once or twice but that's okay, that's normal, that's part of adjusting. And other times I haven't wanted to pass him over to anyone else to hold because i wanted to just keep him snuggled in my arms for hours and hours where i can shower him with kisses and snuggles any time i want. Most of our experiences live in between those extremes which is a good thing and which i think shows us that we're adjusting well to one another (he to me and me to him).

I have more to say but i also have more to do before I have to get him and feed/change him (lather, rinse, repeat) so I'll be back, i promise. I want to get better at taking photos of him that are with a camera better than my phone camera but for now that's mostly what we're working with.

my birth story

I was originally intending to write a separate version of this for this blog. But i have no time ever and since i just want to get this posted i decided to cross post this from my Friends Only blog to here. Feel special lol

here it finally is, my birth story...directly posted from my more personal blog so it's got all the details ;)

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okay this got VERY long and took me an incredibly long time to write. I would love it if you would read it though...this is definitely a story about the most significant thing that has ever happened in my life. And i don't mean that just because i had my baby but because of what happened during the birth...i just, i'm not sure even how to begin recovering honestly but i know that i can.

so here we go: The Birth Story of Henry Ryan

so it's my due date.

I'm posting because i feel like I should since it's officially our Due Date™. As of now, there's no baby in my arms. He's still scrunched all up in my tummy and despite the fact that I have been in prelabor (affectionately also known as "false labor" (sarcastic emphasis on the word "affectionately" there in case that wasn't obvious)) for a full 23 days of torture and torment at this point, it doesn't seem like he's too eager to make an appearance today. Although there are still four hours of today left so who knows (how's THAT for optimism? the glimmering little thought that even though i am posting this at seven pm that i could 1. still go into labor today and 2. that if i DO magically somehow go into labor (oh please oh please oh please) that he would be out within four hours. Ha!)).

I am so distraught over this whole i-haven't-had-the-baby-yet scenario that I am actually on a hiatus from the internet at the moment (aren't i doing a good job? lol. Although in my defense, this is literally the only site i am at and i will close up firefox after i'm done updating this blog). Why am i on an internet hiatus? Because I just can't handle it. I just can't. There are a lot of well-wishers out there and my phone, my facebook and other blog have been all atwitter (oh, and twitter) with comments to me today wishing my luck and pointing out that The Day has officially arrived. And while I honest-to-god do appreciate the kind sentiment behind the well-wishes I guess I can't fully handle all of them. I specifically can't handle the "so where's the baby" comments (even though they ARE being made with a smile and I know that they are meant well). I just can't. I can't even handle the "Happy Due Date!" comments because with every ticking minute that goes by it feels less and less happy honestly. 

Every day that passes with more fake-labor and less baby-birth makes me feel like some kind of failure in some way or another. That and it makes me cry my eyes out because it signifies another day that I have to go through being massively pregnant and equally uncomfortable. Truly at this point I am a globe. A huge, hormonal, uncomfortable globe with a pulled muscle in my hip and thigh muscles. And i have one resident who lives on this giant cranky globe and despite the fact that the globe is closing up shop soon, he seems to refuse to take a hit and GTF out of there.

So that's sort of my current state of existence at the moment. I am a hormonal, crazy clock-watcher who pretends to distract herself with other things but who is really unable to focus on much besides the millions of Braxton Hicks contractions I have per day (or the times when I'm not having any and wondering why). It's really a lot of fun to be me/to be around me at the moment, I'm sure you can imagine (which is another reason why i went on hiatus from my internet life).

Oh, and I really have done EVERY trick there is to naturally induce labor aside from Red Raspberry Leaf Tea (i'm allergic to raspberries) and Castor Oil (waaaay too dangerous for me to even consider doing). Nothing seems to be working. I've massaged pressure points, I've walked at least a marathon's worth of laps around the mall this week alone, I've taken baths, I've eaten spicy foods, i've done jumping jacks...I've done it all, i swear i have. This is just one stubborn little baby. I blame his father for that one (even though i'm sure that's my trait...but Ryan is a taurus so i get to shift the blame to him for stubbornness).

If you're the praying type, please send me some prayers right now (i've tried that too though, obviously. I've prayed, meditated, talked to the baby and outright begged God to help me with this...none of it has worked yet but i'm still trying to find the magic combination of deities to make my case to).

so there we have it. My Due Date update. I really was hoping that I would have a baby by now and that he and I would giggle as i kissed his little feet and said, "today was supposed to be your due date little cutie!" but i guess he'd rather shove his feet up into my ribs than let me kiss them with my lips. *shrug* to each their own, i suppose.

our journey

We're getting closer and closer as the days go by. As of Tuesday we were officially one month away from our Due Date! This is so exciting and so unbelievable to me.

I remember in February on the day when I took the pregnancy test on a whim and found myself looking at two little pink lines instead of the one I expected. November seemed to be a lifetime away from then (and i guess, technically it was, wasn't it??). I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be winding down my pregnancy, I had no idea what I was going to go through in the coming months. All I knew was I was (and am) elated and overjoyed and somewhat terrified, too.

I took three tests that day at least...all while Ryan was at work. I went out shopping and bought the baby his first stuffed animal, the namesake for this blog actually: a yellow giraffe. I also got the movie Juno and bought Ryan a book called The Expectant Father. I waited nervously for him to come home and when he did I handed him the bag of items with a shaky hand and watched as he took out the book, a confused look on his face.

"Thanks!" he said, thinking that I was somehow hinting that we should start trying for a family or that I was getting him ready for some distant day in the future when he would be an expectant father himself. I looked at him hard and said, "Do you see the name of the book?" and he looked at it again and then back at me and i nodded. Then i said, "Dude, I am so pregnant."

Ryan really didn't know what to do with himself. He smiled and hugged me and I showed him the pregnancy test - by this time i had several but i showed him the one that was the clearest...a digital test that said "yes" on it. He kept saying, "really? really?" over and over again and I nodded. He said, "can we trust these tests? are they real?" and i said, "yea they're real." and he hugged me and wandered around and said, "I think i need some water" hahaha

and over the next few days as it all sank in we just became more excited and more in awe and more thrilled to realize that there is a little life blooming in me and that sometime in the future that little life would become part of our family. That he would become the most important and driving force in our lives.

And now here we are, 8 months later and I am getting ready to meet that little man; the one who started this all off and who caused his father to pale in the kitchen on a February night (and who then a few minutes later had the biggest grin on his face that I've ever seen and threw his arms around me and hugged me tight and said, "we're going to be parents!").

So while things have sunk in a little more over the past few months, and while we've gotten used to the idea of it all, it's still been a whirlwind rollercoaster ride. We've had a lot of scares and a lot of changes. I had a subchorionic hematoma which threatened my first trimester with bleeding and modified bed-rest. That was followed by a lovely second trimester with minimal problems and the thrills of feeling the baby kick and move and watching my body grow and change to accommodate him.

and now as the third trimester winds down I find myself anxiously anticipating the moments when I can hold him in my arms and look into his eyes. i wonder if he'll recognize me? I wonder if I'll recognize him? I can't wait for his little hand to close around my finger and for me to lean down and kiss him on his head. I can't wait for Ryan to hold him and to say hi to his little guy and to finally feel like this is all really real.

This has been a real journey. We've moved homes, we've changed plans, we've purchased more baby stuff than I ever thought possible and now we're waiting to meet our little man, the one who all of this has been for, the one who made everything possible.

Sometimes i get to have dreams about him. In those dreams I'm holding him in my arms and talking to him and i can see his little face looking up at me and I can feel his little body in my arms. Those dreams are so perfect and so amazing. I can't wait until they're a reality.

Until then, stay put little one and keep getting bigger and stronger and healthier in there. I can't wait to see you and to hold you and love you. You have been a gift since the very first second I've known about you and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us all. Our perfect little family. For always.