My friend Helen is about ready to have her baby - I think Sunday is her due date.  I got this note from her and a picture to go along with it:

We took this photo after dinner this weekend (trying to get some dinners in before baby comes… I’m wondering if this will be our last date free of the worry of children/ babysitters, etc).  Anyway, thought you’d get a kick out of how superhumanly/ grotesquely big my belly has become.  I’m off now to join the circus.

Helen

It’s funny that she thinks she’s huge or circus-freak like because I think she looks great - one of those very annoying pregnant women who only look pregnant from the front or side. She’s managed to avoid the unfortunate ass-widening that I experienced.  Someone tried to tell me that they were just “child bearing hips”.  Yeah, whatever.  You go, Helen,  You look fabulous and you’re going to have a great baby, even if Dave insists on naming him or her “Dante Bertelli”. 

On the Today show this morning, I happened to catch a segment about the burgeoning rates of c-sections for pregnant women.  It blew my mind.

Way back when I had Lily, I remember our Bradley instructor talking about how many OB/GYNs were quick to wheel a laboring mom into the operating room.  She felt the rates were rising because so many doctors were in a hurry, and weren’t willing to “wait around” while letting nature take its course.  I also knew some mothers who chose c-section because it made it easier for them schedule friends and family.  I knew some people who were induced to accomodate either their own schedule, or their doctor’s (because god forbid, who wants to go into labor at 3 AM???). 

The news this morning featured an OB/GYN who decided to have a c-section with her first baby because, in her words, she “didn’t want to risk problems with urination after childbirth.”  My mouth literally fell open.  Okay, so sometimes after childbirth you might pee when you sneeze or laugh for a while until your pelvic floor muscles tighten up.  The alternative?  Having your baby cut out of your stomach?  Oh my god. 

It’s no big secret that I had a tummy tuck last June.  So I’m not unfamiliar with elective, invasive, and major surgery.  But the only person my surgery affected was ME.  I think it’s just difficult for me to accept that we are now so concerned with timing and everything being perfect that we, as women, are more prone to scheduling the one thing that was never meant to be scheduled:  the birth of a child. If I took one thing away from Bradley class, it was that children will be born when they are ready.  That might be 39 weeks - it might be 42.  Trying to force a baby before they’re even born to conform to a schedule - yours or your doctors - is about the most selfish thing I can think of. 

And what next?  To avoid stretch marks in pregnancy, we’re going to start removing the babies at 20 weeks and incubating them elsewhere?  Come on.  It’s just ridiculous.  Having children changes your life drastically.  It changes your body, too.  Faking yourself out before your baby is even born that you can control everything is laughable.  And talk about reality when you realize you can’t get the sleep you used to! 

Before anyone flames me on this post, I’m speaking only about elective c-sections.  I’m not talking about emergency or medically-necessary.  Before I realized what I was looking for in an OB/GYN, I went the traditional route with Lily.  I had a well-respected OB who consistently warned me (during my 15 minute, cattle-call appointments in her office) that all of us “natural mothers” who were intent on having the least medical interventions were always the ones who ended up with c-sections.  I always thought it strange that she seemed to enjoy telling me that.  Much to my joy, I escaped both a c-section and an epidural.  And when pregnant with Arden, I switched to a hospital that was friendlier to non-medicated childbirth AND had the midwives help me through it all.  The difference between a midwife and an OB was huge.  I still actually miss them all - but not enough to get pregnant again. 

I’m alive - so is Mike - but just barely. We both feel as if we’ve been hit with a large bus right about now. No, that was just Lily’s birthday. I reminded him tonight what it would have been like if we’d had 19 screaming kids in our house. Good lord. It still took us a few hours to clean up all of the stuff Lily got. It was obscene. I guess I didn’t really think about that when I invited all those kids. You can tell I have working mother’s guilt - the more the merrier! Bring it on!

Her party was a lot of fun and I think the majority of the kids really enjoyed themselves. With a few exceptions, the parents were nice, friendly, and probably relieved that the kids were playing without a whole lot of hand-holding (unless, of course, someone got kicked in the face accidentally or fell on their head).

The festivities continue tomorrow at school, but it’s pretty mellow compared to today. I’ll take some cupcakes in around 2.30, read a book that we’re donating to her classroom, and then head back to finish some work. After that, no more birthdays for the kids until OCTOBER!!!! Hooray!

Meredith and Phil come in 2nd place in the “most annoying toy” award category. Why is it that the loudest toys are always the favorite? They got Lily a tambourine and a microphone and she LOVES it - she kept banging the tambourine and looked like a miniature Steve Nicks. Arden got ahold of it as well and she also fell in love with it. Coming in 1st place was Steve and Vicki and the “Dance Dance Dora” floormat complete with a screaming Dora voice telling you where to step next and some highly irritating tinny technopop blaring at the same time. Thanks, everyone! Much love. And just wait until your kids have a birthday . . . MUAH HA HA HA HA!!!

Lily loves her new Bitty Baby doll that Risa and family sent, and she cradled it in her arms, shoved a bottle down her throat (note to self: do not allow Lily to feed Arden - EVER), pushed her around in the buggy, and changed her clothes. She loves the little suitcase she got with the doll to store all her things in. I finally convinced her not to try to sit in it. She likes the doll because the doll has darker hair and brown eyes like she does. Most of them are blond and blue-eyed.

We had a great rest of the day - had lunch with the family, Jennifer, Troy, Sophia, and Julie, opened more presents, ate a lot of stuff that is bad for us, and just finished cleaning up the kitchen and living room of all of Lily’s loot. She was in hog heaven tonight going from one thing to the next. Arden, thankfully, is still very amused by the wrapping paper and boxes (and that damn tambourine). Everyone went to bed early tonight thank god. I think Mike and I aren’t far behind.

I still can’t believe it’s been 3 years since Lily popped out into the world. It feels like a long time since I was that inexperienced and nervous, but I can still clearly remember my labor nurse telling me, “Girl, stop screamin’ and start pushin’!” I can also still clearly remember that very distinct sensation of my body being torn in half and my spine breaking and the immediate relief that comes after you get that baby out. I don’t remember with such clarity the first year, other than certain brilliantly illuminated memories - like me crying while Lily nursed, sitting topless in front of my sister at the lactation consultant and thinking in a vague, detached way, “Thank god I’m so tired, otherwise this would be REALLY weird,” sleeping in the morning with Lily passed out next to me, playing with her on the hardwood floor in the living room while Delilah snored next to me, hours of feeling incredibly isolated and lonely, and hours of incredible joy and awe where I would just look at her and wonder how on earth Mike and I ever produced such a thing.

Now I look at her in her full-size bed, playing with dolls, talking up a storm, using the potty without me reminding her and articulating with frightening accuracy the things she knows or remembers, and I realize how a parent can wake up 18 years later and wonder where all the time went. It really does fly.

We are back from the beach, somewhat sunburned and wishing for more. We had a great time and although Arden got an ear infection halfway through our time in Corolla, we still enjoyed it very much. The house was amazing. I took pictures and when I get around to developing them, I’ll post some. I now want heated floors and heated towel racks along with a steam shower in MY bathroom. It was luxury . . .

Tonight as we were feeding Arden her bottle, Lily informed us that she wanted to “take Arden”. We asked her where she wanted to take her, and she told us “to the garbage can. I’m going to throw her away.” Isn’t she loving and sweet? She was somewhat devilish and mean to Tori while at the beach, but now has asked repeatedly where Tori is and why she is in Texas and not in our guest room. I feel like telling her, “If you were nicer, maybe she’d have stayed!!!” Can’t do that, I suppose. She’s going through her very terrible twos and hopefully it will be over soon. Potty training is not going so well, but considering there are only 2 out of 18 kids in her class out of diapers, apparently I’m not the only one having problems with this.

Things back in Richmond are moving along. The moon is out of alignment or something because everything has been going slightly wrong. First Jennifer ended up on bedrest with more than 2 months of pregnancy left. I vacillate between feeling like I’m going to puke with worry for the baby and wanting to close the business up so I can go do laundry and feed her. She’s still working from her “bed office” (not home office) and that’s helpful in terms of keeping her sane and keeping us in business. I also had my follow up visit with the plastic surgeon, who took one look at my upper stomach and said, “Ooooh, that’s not right.” Okay, out of all the things you want to hear come out of your doctor’s mouth - that is not one of them! Basically my muscles didn’t stay stitched together and now I have this lovely “balloon” of skin and it won’t go away unless I have additionally surgery in the next 3-4 months. The surgery isn’t as major as the original surgery, but it’s still major and will put me back on no lifting for ANOTHER four weeks. Maybe by then Arden will be walking and it won’t be such an ordeal. In addition, we came back from Corolla and the roofing guys had shown up to fix our cedar shakes. Whatever they did caused every ant, spider and silverfish to converge on our house. We are overrun with bugs and hoping Western Pest can detonate a small, insect-sized atomic bomb in here. It’s just gross - one ran across my arm while I was typing this. Ewwwww.

Here are a couple of pictures from the beach. Of course, none of Arden - those will be posted later. These came from grammy’s camera and apparently only Lily was at the beach when she took these.

I keep hoping the next post I write will be announcing the birth of a child, but so far, no such luck. Last night we had a bit of a scare. On the way back from my parent’s house, I started having painful contractions - I figured they were “fake” ones (whoever thought of that was crazy). However, I had to eventually pull into a parking lot and get out of the car to see if walking around would stop them or at least make them less painful. Lily, meanwhile, was trying out her latest vocabulary word after eating lunch at Chik-Fil-A. While I’m circling the car clutching my huge belly, Lily is screaming out the window at me: “CHIK-A-LAY! CHIK-A-LAY” and giggling hysterically. For whatever reason, she thinks that is a really funny word. I was trying not to laugh because laughing hurt, but how bizarre was that? I’m thinking I’m about to drop a baby in the parking lot while Lily recites her lunch at CHICKALAY: “chitsen (chicken) . . . hot . . . CUT! . . . knife . . . blow . . . CHICKALAY . . . milt (milk) . . .” It would have made for an interesting birth story, that’s for sure.

I’m gritting my teeth and just trying to get through the next couple of weeks. Not sleeping and having no energy has made me sort of cranky, to say the least. I try to keep Lily entertained, but with activities that do not require me to chase after her because at this point she is twice as fast as I am and has no conception of the word “STOP!” I really may have to consider the leash idea . . .