I never would have imagined that it was possible to love something so much. I've loved a lot in my life - people, places, things - but there is no doubt in my sleep-deprived mind that I have found the love of my life. Once upon a time, I thought that I would never love something as much as I loved R...once glance into the slate blue eyes of my adorable offspring and I was forced to reconsider (Sorry, babe!).
I must admit, it's terrifying. Terrifying to know that you love something so much. Possibly more than life itself. No, not possibly. Absolutely. It's hard to believe sometimes that I created the being that snuggles in my arms for 12-18 hours a day. It's equally hard to believe that you could have ever lived without it. And the worst thing imaginable becomes the thought of what you would ever do if you were to lose it.
Unthinkable.
People told me when I was pregnant how much I would love my child. How all of the discomforts of pregnancy and childbirth would disappear the minute I looked into the eyes of my baby boy. How I would become consumed by my love for this little person. They were right.
I have to be honest, it didn't happen immediately. My labour and delivery seem like a bad nightmare - in which only the moments of sheer terror and pain remain. I don't even really recall a sense of relief or ecstasy as my baby was born. Except for the relief that the pain was finally over, and a brief thought to how I was going to ensure that my next child was born in a hospital that offered an epidural. I felt numb.
The week or so immediately following labour and delivery passed in a blur of sleepless nights and days of exhaustion. I felt like a jersey cow, with my milkbags permanently on display. Somehow, through the haze of new motherhood, the day came when I looked into the eyes of my newborn son and realized that I was doing the single most important job of my entire life. I had already spent nine months "cooking up a good one" (as the random woman in Walmart told me last week)...now I was to spend the next 18 years nurturing the soul of this little man I held before me. A great responsibility had fallen upon me...and unbelievably, I actually felt up to the challenge.
20 November 2008
20 September 2008
S is for "Sleep Experiment"
When I was pregnant, everyone said to me, "enjoy your sleep/time/freedom while you have it...soon life will be very different!" Although I knew that there was surely some kernel of truth in their words, I chose to brush them off with a sort of nonchalant "yeah, that's what I hear...". Unfortunately, it's difficult to enjoy your sleep, time, or freedom when you're 11 months pregnant. You can rarely get comfortable (whether sleeping or awake), and the only time you feel remotely free is when you're in a swimming pool or floating in a lake - mostly beacause you don't have to exert any energy to move your enormous girth about. Turns out I should have tried harder to follow everyone's advice. I had no idea exactly how different life would be. The euphoria that came with the birth of our son quickly wore off as the reality of life with baby set in...
Sleep? Non-existent. Every two to three hours I am woken by a small being rooting around for a nipple. He wants milk, and he wants it now. If he doesn't get it, let the games begin! His cry (which we were led to believe didn't exist while in the relatively peaceful calm of the maternity ward) pierces the night, sending the cats scurrying to the basement to escape the horror. I read somewhere that REM sleep is the sleep that allows adults to sort out their thoughts, put their brain back into working order, and get the deep restful sleep that we all need so much. This is all fine and well, except for the fact that REM sleep is the last part of your sleep cycle. It only occurs after a number of hours of uninterrupted slumber. Coincidentally, a great number of hours more than is usually absorbed by the likes of a new mother. New mothers only ever sleep an hour or two at a time...therefore, they can usually say goodbye to REM sleep for at least the first year of their child's life. Which means that they never feel rested. They are always beat. Half deranged with lack of sleep. Overly emotional about everything.
Lesson to new fathers: new mothers are under the influence of a similar sleep experiment to one used on chinese war prisoners long ago. They are woken up every hour or two to feed and change a growing, squirming, pooping, crying being on demand. This type of frequent wakefulness is akin to torture. In fact, it is a type of torture. One that is still being used in military prisoner camps around the world.
DO NOT TEST/TEASE/PLAY JOKES (no matter how harmless they may seem) ON THE NEW MOTHER. IT MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY/DEATH TO DADDY.
Time? A word that has lost it's place in my vocabulary. Unless, that is, if it's said in the following contexts: "time to feed the baby" or "time to change your bum!" My husband occasionally asks me what day it is...you're asking the wrong person, buddy! I rarely have any idea what day of the month it is, or even if we're still in the month I think it is! The response I usually get is "Must be nice to not know what day it is." That's what you think!
And freedom?
Let's not even go there. Welcome to motherhood. Enjoy.
Sleep? Non-existent. Every two to three hours I am woken by a small being rooting around for a nipple. He wants milk, and he wants it now. If he doesn't get it, let the games begin! His cry (which we were led to believe didn't exist while in the relatively peaceful calm of the maternity ward) pierces the night, sending the cats scurrying to the basement to escape the horror. I read somewhere that REM sleep is the sleep that allows adults to sort out their thoughts, put their brain back into working order, and get the deep restful sleep that we all need so much. This is all fine and well, except for the fact that REM sleep is the last part of your sleep cycle. It only occurs after a number of hours of uninterrupted slumber. Coincidentally, a great number of hours more than is usually absorbed by the likes of a new mother. New mothers only ever sleep an hour or two at a time...therefore, they can usually say goodbye to REM sleep for at least the first year of their child's life. Which means that they never feel rested. They are always beat. Half deranged with lack of sleep. Overly emotional about everything.
Lesson to new fathers: new mothers are under the influence of a similar sleep experiment to one used on chinese war prisoners long ago. They are woken up every hour or two to feed and change a growing, squirming, pooping, crying being on demand. This type of frequent wakefulness is akin to torture. In fact, it is a type of torture. One that is still being used in military prisoner camps around the world.
DO NOT TEST/TEASE/PLAY JOKES (no matter how harmless they may seem) ON THE NEW MOTHER. IT MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY/DEATH TO DADDY.
Time? A word that has lost it's place in my vocabulary. Unless, that is, if it's said in the following contexts: "time to feed the baby" or "time to change your bum!" My husband occasionally asks me what day it is...you're asking the wrong person, buddy! I rarely have any idea what day of the month it is, or even if we're still in the month I think it is! The response I usually get is "Must be nice to not know what day it is." That's what you think!
And freedom?
Let's not even go there. Welcome to motherhood. Enjoy.
17 September 2008
V is for "Vegas, Baby!"
I decided tonight that it was about time I stopped neglecting my blog. It's been a good 8 months since I've written anything here...and a lot has changed in that time. The last few entries took place over the Christmas holidays. On Boxing Day I made a wonderous discovery - I was harbouring a new life inside my body. It was no wonder those 2 glasses of wine at Festivus made me ill...there was a tiny being inside of me saying, "MOM, I don't LIKE wine!!"
We got married shortly after. Just to clarify...it was not a shotgun wedding...we'd sent the invites out in September. The wedding took place on March 8th, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We had managed to keep the news of our little bun in the oven a secret so far...but did we ever have a surprise for everyone at the wedding dinner!!! Needless to say, the whole crowd was pretty shocked - especially our parents and siblings. Suddenly, so many things became clear to so many people...the reason why my friends poured an entire bottle of red wine (minus one glass) into the sink at my bachelorette party...why I was the designated driver at every event over the holidays (including New Years!)...why I kept refusing R's mom as she attempted to inebriate me with her extensive wine collection...why my mom kept having dreams about babies (seriously, she did!)...the list goes on and on. I actually can't believe that no one figured it out earlier.
And so, the weekend wedding in Vegas came to a conclusion, all of our friends and family headed home, and we drove off into the sunset in our rented Mustang convertible. :-) We did an incredible figure 8 loop through Zion, Kaibab National Forest, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Kern Valley, Sequoia National Forest, San Francisco, Big Sur, Pismo Beach, and back to Vegas. It was the most amazing trip ever. I saw oranges and lemons on trees for the first time...and ate the single most delicious mandarin orange of life. That's right, of LIFE.
The only downside was that for the first half of the three week wedding/honeymoon combo, I was still suffering from morning sickness...this made it nearly impossible for me to eat anything except cucumbers in white vinegar (which is mighty difficult to find in the United States...apparantly no one eats anything but cider vinegar!) and Wendy's Spicy Chicken sandwiches (not so difficult to track down - except in Las Vegas!). We spent almost an hour trying to find a wendy's in the suburbs of Vegas. It sucked, but man did that Spicy Chicken taste good. And although I am in no way endorsing Wendy's...but they really were the only thing that tasted good for about 4 days. The bonus for Ryan was that he got to eat all the meals I ordered but couldn't stomach.
While our trip was fun while it lasted, it had to end sometime. After our stay in Big Sur (the Ripplewood Resort comes highly recommended...what an incredible place!) and 3 nights of relaxation in Pismo Beach, we beelined it back to Las Vegas to hit up the MGM casino once more before we caught our flight home. Ryan got swindled by promises of big money by the airport slot machines, while I revelled in the beauty of free wireless in the waiting area. We sadly left sunny California and the heat of Nevada far behind, and exited the plane in Winterpeg...to endure the remainder of winter in Whitedog.
We got married shortly after. Just to clarify...it was not a shotgun wedding...we'd sent the invites out in September. The wedding took place on March 8th, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We had managed to keep the news of our little bun in the oven a secret so far...but did we ever have a surprise for everyone at the wedding dinner!!! Needless to say, the whole crowd was pretty shocked - especially our parents and siblings. Suddenly, so many things became clear to so many people...the reason why my friends poured an entire bottle of red wine (minus one glass) into the sink at my bachelorette party...why I was the designated driver at every event over the holidays (including New Years!)...why I kept refusing R's mom as she attempted to inebriate me with her extensive wine collection...why my mom kept having dreams about babies (seriously, she did!)...the list goes on and on. I actually can't believe that no one figured it out earlier.
And so, the weekend wedding in Vegas came to a conclusion, all of our friends and family headed home, and we drove off into the sunset in our rented Mustang convertible. :-) We did an incredible figure 8 loop through Zion, Kaibab National Forest, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Kern Valley, Sequoia National Forest, San Francisco, Big Sur, Pismo Beach, and back to Vegas. It was the most amazing trip ever. I saw oranges and lemons on trees for the first time...and ate the single most delicious mandarin orange of life. That's right, of LIFE.
The only downside was that for the first half of the three week wedding/honeymoon combo, I was still suffering from morning sickness...this made it nearly impossible for me to eat anything except cucumbers in white vinegar (which is mighty difficult to find in the United States...apparantly no one eats anything but cider vinegar!) and Wendy's Spicy Chicken sandwiches (not so difficult to track down - except in Las Vegas!). We spent almost an hour trying to find a wendy's in the suburbs of Vegas. It sucked, but man did that Spicy Chicken taste good. And although I am in no way endorsing Wendy's...but they really were the only thing that tasted good for about 4 days. The bonus for Ryan was that he got to eat all the meals I ordered but couldn't stomach.
While our trip was fun while it lasted, it had to end sometime. After our stay in Big Sur (the Ripplewood Resort comes highly recommended...what an incredible place!) and 3 nights of relaxation in Pismo Beach, we beelined it back to Las Vegas to hit up the MGM casino once more before we caught our flight home. Ryan got swindled by promises of big money by the airport slot machines, while I revelled in the beauty of free wireless in the waiting area. We sadly left sunny California and the heat of Nevada far behind, and exited the plane in Winterpeg...to endure the remainder of winter in Whitedog.
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