June mamas: April 4-10 - Page 4

[eilonwy]

nursing is really killing my back, and my lap has almost vanished... but eli wants to nurse more than ever and is already working his way back to where he was before. i wish i could pull my spine out and put it back in a more comfortable position!

a chair, a chair, my kingdom for a chair!

[3girlsmommy]

Rynna- Have you tried putting a boppy(or any nursing pillow) behind your back and a pillow off to the side of you and have your little guy nurse in the football hold? That's just about the only way I can comfortably nurse sitting up otherwise I feel like I can't breathe!

[eilonwy]

It's a folding chair, there's no place to put a boppy and expect it to stay, and there's no place to put Eli, either. . I'm just extra whiny about it this evening. Mike has a cold, and he seems to think that that's justification for throwing off all my plans. I did 5 loads of laundry today (two of diapers) and killed my back because Eli needed to be carried a lot and do I get a break? No... plus, while Eli has recently acquired his four first molars, he still seems to be in teething mode so he's biting me (thankfully not my nipples.. too much : ) when he gives kisses. I just want to cry and pull my hair out and scream!! AAAAHHH!!! He gets to sleep when he's not feeling well.. why don't I get a massage when my back hurts, hmmmm?!?

[Smithie]

Why don't i get a massage when my back hurts, hmmm?

Because you are Mommy, Martyr to the Universe. Didn't you get the memo?

[mattjule]

Tain is getting his canines. Of all his teeth, these have been the worst, both in his attitude (so I am assuming pain level) and duration of feeling yucky.

I think I got colostrum in b/c he has started nursing more. He used to nurse to sleep at naptime and to sleep at night (since I have been pg and lost my milk). Now he is nursing at 4 am again, and he asks to nurse during the day-I think I have nursed him twice today. So I guess self-weaning is not going to happen before Rowan is born. At least he has boundaries now so tandem nursing seems A LOT more manageable. It's probably better if he still nurses, too, sharing me in other ways is going to be hard enough.

Matt is sick with the flu. It seems to be a 24-48 hour thing, thankfully, b/c he seems a lot better today, but last night he spent the whole night in his chair in the living room and he looked terrible.

I cleaned house today. I didn't want to, I have a sewing project and my back and ds only allow so many hours of individual time a day. But it was a disaster and I couldn't stand it. With Matt sick and Dale covering for him at work, it wasn't likely I could get them to do it. And truthfully, it needed my touch. 6 months of not getting QUITE clean means there were a lot of little things to do. But Tain wants to be held and I just can't lift and carry him, so that has been hard.

Sounds like we have had similar days, Rynna!

It's snowing again. I guess we had a really warm spring last year and that was our first year here b/c I feel so cheated right now. Where is the beautiful weather that will let me take a walk and let my poor ds play outside?!

[Smithie]

Take care of your back!

... if it's my sewing project you're talking about, it can wait. My mom went 43 weeks, remember? And it's not like James will notice if his windows don't have valences right away.

I'm trying to clean out my disater of an office - the carpet cleaner comes on Monday. Talk about back pain. Aaaaaagh.

[eilonwy]

Re: Why don't i get a massage when my back hurts, hmmm?

Originally posted by Smithie
Because you are Mommy, Martyr to the Universe. Didn't you get the memo?

I'm sure I did... it must have been shoved in among all those papers I got from the NICU and I lost it (along with everything else)... I probably signed and agreed to it, too. :

I hereby retract that memo!! I'm *getting* a massage, if it's the last thing I do!

[Greaseball]

Does anyone else have this fear that if the baby is a gender they already have, that it won't be as good looking as the other one?

That's what I've been thinking about lately; that if I had another girl she wouldn't be as pretty as dd.

Probably won't happen, but...

[Modesto Doula]

Greaseball- I can totally relate to that fear... One of my serious fears when preg with DD was that she'd be an ugly child. (Isnt that awful??) I think it comes from feeling like the ugly-fat duckling of my siblings (even though I really wasnt). Anyway, now that DD is gorgeous- just gorgeous, I fear that my other future girls might feel like that. Im not too worried about boys, though. DS is beautiful too, and he's a super charmer when he wants to be, so Im not worried about him feeling like an ugly duckling, but another girl... It makes it tougher cause there are a few traits on DH side I dont want my kiddos to have!!

I feel like this baby may have dropped down for real today. I can feel his head when I walk now, like Ive got a baseball between my legs KWIM? And I dont feel hugely pregnant like I have been. Of course, it helps that Im wearing a giant shirt today, people have been giving me the <pregnant or fat?> look, even though Im still obviously hugely preg... Maybe this one wont turn again... the bad thing is my sciatic is killing me today.

I think Ive finally started some nesting around here... I just went through the kids clothes and put away the winter stuff to make room for all their summer stuff (its already 70s-80s here, should be 90 tomorrow). I actually have one almost empty drawer for baby clothes!! I have two drawers of diapers LOL, with some overflow into baby's drawer... Of course, one whole drawer is larges I can hardly ever convince DS to wear now, but I cant bear to pack them up. I hope once he sees the new baby in cloth he'll go back to good dipes =)

Also, Dh and I are looking into the possibilty of buying a house right now. We had planned to wait another year, to get our credit better and save a down payment, but we know of a house that will soon be available we might could get for a deal. Plus its probably the only place we will be able to find in our price range where we can stop the owner from putting in noxious carpet or paint. This way we will be able to replace the nasty carpet with wood as soon as we are able, and paint with low fume paint before we move in... Im not real optimistic on our chances of qualifying for a loan right now, but we are crossing our fingers.

It means we have to put off buying a van for a while. Im not sure how thats gonna work, considering that there is no way to fit our three car seats in either of our cars... I dont like the idea of being stuck at home with a new baby, backyard or not.

[mattjule]

Smithie-I WANT to do the sewing project INSTEAD of cleaning! I just had to choose today and am bummed to be doing something chore-like instead of something fun. That's okay, though.

Rowan has been moving a lot-all day yesterday and most of today. Usually he has some long sleeping times, but not lately.

I worried that Tain would get all of our unsavory features and be ugly. I'm not a person that thinks all babies are pretty so I worried about that a lot. But he turned out very nicely. We got an u/s with this one and the 30 sec 3-D image looked startlingly like Tain as a newborn so I think they will look a lot alike. Plus I comfort myself with the knowledge that a lot of ugly babies grow to be really beautiful adults and vice versa so you never can tell...my mom likes to tell the story of my brother-sitting on the couch, looking at this newborn thinking "he really isn't very cute, is he?" He grew to be such a handsome man. At least I think so, enough that it kind of weirds me out. He really was cute by the time he was 1, probably sooner if I could remember.

With Tain, the first time our friend Levi saw him he said "Oh, he really is cute! I am so glad I didn't have to lie to you guys about that!" It was pretty funny.

[mattjule]

Paula-I just read your rollcall about insensitive things people say about your children. Thought you might get a kick out of this story: My parents adopted 8 kids from the foster care system. Due to the nature of the adoptions (most of them were older, all had been taken away from birth parents) they all knew their birth parents. So my brother is about kindergarten age or so and comes up to my mom one day. "Mom, who is my real mom?"

" I am"

"No, you know what I mean, my birth mom" (my mom really objected to the kids calling their birth parents their "real parents" she would always tell them "I'm your real mom")

" I am"

" No mom, seriously"

" I AM!" It took a lot of convincing and I am not sure he really believed her that he didn't have another family lurking somewhere. He looked like he felt cheated to only have one mom and one dad and live with them. :

Guess when most of your siblings are adopted, you sometimes feel like the odd man out instead of the other way around! :LOL

edited for grammar-pregnant brain!

[irishgreengables]

Julie, what a funny story! I sometimes wonder if our 3rd child will feel jipped for not getting an "Adoption Day" celebration or having us talk about the family who is also thinking fo them on special days etc. Thanks for sharing.

re: cuteness. I am soooo worried about this. My children are truly gorgeous...this is not just the bias of a mother...we always say that we could not produce more beautiful children...and here we are pregnant now. EVERYONE comments on how gorgeous our children are. People stop us to admire them...not in the "ooggling children who look different than their parents" way (although we get that too)...but to say how gorgeous they are -- because they ARE!!! I am soo worried that this one who carries our plain genes is going to feel left out. I know that WE will see her as beautiful....but what about when all the people stop to look at our other 2? I stress about it...and I like to think I am not shallow...but I am indeed worried.

Peace,

[eilonwy]

I don't know that I ever worried about Eli not being cute. I did worry that he wouldn't have any tush to speak of, because Mike doesn't have one and it still weirds me out sometimes ("What are you sitting on?!? Doesn't that hurt your back?"). Well, he hasn't got much tush, but there's a bit more than Mike has.. for now. :LOL My nieces are both cute even though they look nothing like one another; one favors our family, the other their father's. They're both adorable children. I guess I have faith in mixed genes; even a child who is funny looking by mixed baby standards tends to be cuter than average. :LOL

What I worried about was that he would be... intellectually average. : I know, it's a bit wrong, but I seriously worried that he would be totally average and that I wouldn't be able to relate to him, or that I'd find myself being inadvertantly cruel to him as a result. I was soooo relieved the first time I looked into his eyes and saw him looking back at me, instead of the unfocused, glazed look that is so common in babies. When I saw him turn his head to my voice and watched him track my movements, I was so relieved and I never really looked back. He's not moving along quite as quickly as I did as an infant/toddler, but he does different things and has his own interests. My mother said "You had better diction at that age, but you never said "National Geographic" or pointed out Albany or Mount Everest or the Alps or a glacier on a map."

Interestingly I've worried a lot less this time around. Just seeing how great Eli is turning out makes me feel a lot more relaxed about this child and his/her prospects. I guess I feel like I already know that we can do it right, yk? So while Eli is beautiful, I feel like we've got enough 'beautiful' to go round to all our kids. Maybe I should think about it a little more; I'm with Julie in that I don't believe that all babies are cute/pretty/beautiful/whatever. But I remember that when I first looked at Eli, I didn't see a beautiful baby so much as a familiar face, in the most literal sense of the word: he really looked like family. I remember thinking how strange it was that I could look at a face I'd never laid eyes on before and know with absolute certainty that he was mine, because while he didn't look exactly like anyone his features were so definately familial. We run toward cute babies, so I can deal with that! Even if NewBean looks nothing like Eli, there's potential for amazing beauty. Even if NewBean thinks nothing like Eli does, there's potential for amazing brilliance. So I'm cool with it, and I'm just waiting to see who pops out.

[3girlsmommy]

Rynna- I worried that my oldest would be completly uninterested in books. I was so afraid that I would have a child that would just throw the book across the room and not want to read. I'm a reading teacher by trade and this was my biggest fear. Bazaar I know but that was my fear. After I saw how much she loved books and that she was reciting favorites at 2 I relaxed and didn't worry so much about the second one and I worry even less this time around.

I also worry about the attractive factor too. My two girls are beautiful! It amazes me how beautiful they are. I worry that our third will not be as beautiful and will always feel like an outsider. sigh! The things you worry about as a mommy!

[mattjule]

That's funny about the books, b/c right before I read your post that was going to be mine too. Dh and I are avid readers and I always thought that the biggest let down in my children would be to have a kid that loved football and hated to read. Okay, the football thing is extreme b/c that just isn't going to happen (we are a rugby family-that would be sacriligious!). But the book thing, well, I have a ds that doesn't really like books. He not only throws them he rips them up, which just kills me. I have such a reverence for books that it makes me wince. But he has a favorite pop-up book he has pretty much destroyed, though he still loves to have it read to him all the time. And in the last week we have started reading a book at bedtime-always the same one (it has a sentence a page and isn't long. He has limited tolerance for pages) and he really likes it. I caught him saying bye-bye to it today while looking at it (he always says that at the end-the last words are good-night). I don't want to push the book thing, I think he needs to discover them for himself if I have any hope of a lasting interest. So I hope and I let it go. There are enough things about him that I never expected, like his superb mechanical abilities (which I have and dh REALLY doesn't) and his fascination with nature. So if he never becomes an avid reader, I'll be a little sad, but I don't think I'll be as devastated as I once imagined I would be.

[rubelin]

LOL about the book thing! I think the throwing and ripping is totally a 2 year old thing. Ben mangled some of his favorites last year and it's hard for him now that he wants to read them and they are missing parts : We're big readers so I think it would be hard for him to not pick it up if it's not a genetic thing.

I don't worry that this babe won't be beautiful, but I do think about if he'll look anything like Ben or not. My sister and I barely have any passing resemblance, most people are stunned that we're even related, so I know first hand what a crap shoot genetics can be. It's like we each got a totally different set of genes from each parent. That makes me wonder if the same thing will happen with my kids.

I think I'm finally nesting (Dan rolled his eyes when I told him that the other day, lol!) Ben was on Spring Break this week and I worked on all sorts of projects mostly to avoid getting into any fights with him. I rearranged the bedroom a teeny bit to make room for the new dresser that I hope we'll be able to afford before the baby comes, got baskets to put on the shelves over the changing dresser for dipes (even put my NB dipes in them ) dyed up the fabric for my sling (which came out WAY to dark so I had to bleach it back out and I think it's finally a color I can live with). I've also been working quite a bit and am thisclose to being done with my latest work project, though my Dad's large-size printer died today when we were starting to print out the bulk of the project. It's good that I have so much to do, it's helping to keep my mind off of my money worries

OK, better get finished up here and get some more work done on my work project. Hope you're all having a good weekend!!

[Smithie]

New thread

New thread here:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...hreadid=133432


Happy Easter!