Project: Fix the Yard - Step 2

In my last post I detailed how I was tackling the fixing up of my front yard. I've attacked the out of control weeds around the driveway with weed killer. I've cleaned out 95% of the weeds out of one of my flower beds and yanked out a bush that's been dead pretty much since we bought the house a few years ago. I also wiped down one section of my deck railing with vinegar and water, which has made the color go from a dirty green to a much nicer white (that still could use a fresh coat of paint.)

I didn't get a ton done over the weekend because of rainy weather and having to supervise a toddler who would love to run off down the street by himself. However, my mom and sister came over for a bit on Saturday, and we were able to get that hydrangea in the ground, as well as the pretty pink plant that I'd bought on Friday.

I still need to pull a few of the little weeds that escaped the first cleaning session. I'm hoping to be able to go buy some more vinegar tomorrow to start working on cleaning the rest of my railing. And once it stops raining every day, my husband can actually cut the grass and get up around the area that is going to be the worst to get to. It's going to be a huge pain to get in there and sort out what everything is and what needs to go, but I'm hoping I can start into it sometime this week.

We'll see how it goes!

Project: Fix the Yard

I'll admit, since becoming a mama, I've had to let a lot of things go. Working a full time job and then coming home to care for a toddler is exhausting. I barely have enough energy to make sure the laundry is done and the toys are, if not put away, then at least shoved over to the side so I won't kill myself by tripping over them.

So, it should be no surprise that I've let my front yard go to pieces. Oh, my husband cuts the grass, but my flower beds are overrun with weeds, my trees and flowers have become this one giant ball of nature that may or may not house birds, bugs, possibly snakes and probably Bigfoot.

[It's a giant mass of green. I think there's a hydrangea bush in the back somewhere ...]

Now that summer is here, the itch to clean up the mess has been constantly nagging at me. Every time I pull in or out of the driveway, I inwardly wince and think, "I really need to do something about that. Do you think the neighbors have noticed this jungle growing in my yard?"

Not that I've had much time for gardening. By the time I get home from work, it's time to feed my 2-yr-old his dinner, give him a bath, play a little bit, then get him to bed. Then it's time for me to eat, and consider doing a chore like the dishes or laundry so the inside of the house doesn't turn into as big a disaster as the outside. Then it's dark out, and I'm certainly not braving that snake pit of a front yard in the dark.

Well, this evening I got a break. My son was completely run ragged at his grandmother's house and zonked out at 6 p.m. I grabbed a shovel and some gloves and attacked a bush out front that's been dead probably since we bought the house two years ago. I yanked up handfuls of weeds. I dug a hole in preparation to plant a hydrangea that somebody gave me like 2 weeks ago that desperately needs planting. (Going to wait to get some good soil for it before I plant it, though.)

[You can actually see dirt here, instead of a blanket of weeds!]

I also pulled all the plastic chairs off the deck and hosed them down. Now, when I'm sitting on the deck while my child plays with his water table, I don't have to be afraid of a giant spider crawling out of one of the crevices of my chair. Also, apparently the neighborhood birds thought the chair was the perfect place to perch and then poop all over the back of it. Gross.

While hosing down the chairs, I noticed that the railing on my deck was a lovely green. I'm not sure if it's pollen or mold or a combination of both, but it looks awful. So, I rummaged around in my cabinet for my vinegar. I put it in a spray bottle and had just enough to attack one portion with the vinegar and a scrub brush. It looks a million times better, though it could also use a fresh coat of paint. But one step at a time, here.

[Before.]

[After. Quite a difference, no?]

After that, I was tired, and I'd lost most of my daylight, so I decided to call it an evening. I'm hoping the weather stays clear tomorrow so I can get a little more done. There's still tons more to do. I need to finish scrubbing the rest of the railing. I have to plant my hydrangea. I have to plant a little potted plant with pink flowers that I bought today. Then I need to tackle the jungle on the other side of my porch, trimming back my overgrown plants and praying I don't get attacked by Bigfoot while I'm back there. But at least I've made some progress.

And at this point, any progress I'm making feels like a major accomplishment.

Still here!

It's been quite a while since I've updated! My son is now two years old and I'm busy with the everyday stresses and pleasures that come with being a mom to a toddler.

This has been the most challenging two years of my life. Having a miniature person looking to me for basic needs, teaching, fun and direction has been overwhelming much of the time. A lot of the time I felt like I was doing it wrong. I'd listen to my friends talk about their kids, or see them post their perfect photos on Facebook that seemed to suggest that raising kids was easy. I'd get discouraged. Why was it so hard for me? What was I doing wrong?

And then a coworker whose children are now a little older than me asked casually, "Oh, do you cry? I used to cry all the time. My son was so difficult."

I hesitated only a moment before nodding. Yes. Yes, I cry. I feel like I'm the stupidest, most incompetent mother on the planet. You mean that's not unusual?

Since that day, things have gotten better. My coworker's stories of raising her son have made mine not seem so bad. I don't find myself crying in the bathroom any more. And even though my son is still a bigger challenge than I'd expected, I feel like it's a challenge I can handle.

It Didn't Happen Like I Expected

It didn't happen when we first met. There were no heavenly choirs of angels singing. No tears. I was just happy to have given birth and be done with that part of my life. I was also pumped up on drugs after being in labor all day only to have been pumped full of more drugs when we resorted to a c-section that night. I'd feel that spark later, I thought.

It didn't come the next day either. Nurses had thrust my squirming son into my arms once every three hours for feeding. I wasn't very good at it and needed help frequently. I only felt frustration and exhaustion when nurses responded to the call to take him to the nursery. I hoped they weren't shaking their heads and calling children's services because I didn't want the baby in the room with me after feeding was done.

It didn't happen when we came home from the hospital either. I just felt terror. My husband and I had this baby now. No nurses. We were on our own. Everything I ever read beforehand went out of my head. My son did not follow any rules.

I was afraid I had made a mistake and was not mother material. I was embarrassed: family and friends gushed over how beautiful he was, how I must be so excited, so in love. I looked away and nodded. I said what I was expected to say.

Then one evening, I sat with him laying in my lap. Exhausted, I turned on a children's radio station on my computer, and sang along with the ones I remembered from my own childhood, hoping to quiet my fussy son.

That's when it happened. He looked at me, focusing his eyes as if seeing me for the first time. He smiled and made a soft coo. I found myself smiling back. He had me. I was in love. It didn't happen like I thought it was supposed to, but that's okay. It happened in our own time. And I have a feeling it will only grow as we get to know each other better.

How He Got Here

My baby boy is finally here!

The journey to bring him into the world was quite an adventure for someone who has a pronounced anxiety around medical equipment. I thought I’d better write about it before the memories started to erode from lack of sleep.

On April 10th, I arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. to be induced. I’d gone several days past my due date, yet had been having frequent periods of strong, close together contractions that kept tapering off. In fact, I was already having these contractions again when I got to the hospital and started getting set up in my room with my husband and mother.

They soon hooked me up to the first of many very uncomfortable devices I would have to endure that day: the IV. I winced, but took it, throwing my blanket over my arm and pretending it didn’t exist. About an hour later the doctor came in and broke my water – another uncomfortable experience, but it was over quickly, so I managed fine.

As I relaxed as much as possible and watched my contractions on the monitor beside my bed, I realized that I could watch the contractions of the several other ladies also in labor in the other rooms. Theirs were little blips on the screen, while mine were rocketing to the top of the charts. My husband, mom and I joked that those ladies just needed to go home. They couldn’t possibly be in active labor.

Ironically, every single one of those women gave birth before I did.

As another hour ticked by and things progressed, the nurses started suggesting I think about ordering an epidural since it took an hour from the time it was requested to the time I could receive one. I put it off at first. I wasn’t in that much pain, surprisingly. Finally worried that things would start happening too quickly and I wouldn’t have time for an epidural at all, I agreed.

An hour later, the biggest, most anxiety-causing needle entered the room. Not that I ever saw it. But from my husband’s expression as he looked over my shoulder, I knew it was bad. I then spent the next few minutes trying to hunch over a pillow while relaxing my shoulders and trying not to think about the diagrams in all the books I’d read that had “helpfully” illustrated exactly what they were doing to me. My hands were trembling from anxiety while my husband held them and the nurses prepped me. I’m pretty sure I came close to fracturing a few of his fingers when the anesthesiologist started her work.

That finally over, I lowered myself back to my bed and within a few minutes I was blissfully numb from the middle of my back down to my toes. It quickly took care of contraction pain and had the added benefit of making me unable to feel when the doctor had to make checks as well as insert what would have otherwise been highly uncomfortable devices. It was like I really could throw a blanket over the lower half of my body and pretend it wasn’t there. I was encouraged. If I was this numb through the whole thing, childbirth was going to be easy.

If only.

Hours passed and nurses kept upping my dosage of drugs, but for some reason things weren’t progressing. Morning tuned into afternoon and started fading toward evening. I was a little disappointed about how slow things were progressing since things had seemed to start so quickly. But I was still in pretty good spirits, all things considered.

Until the shaking started.

Nurses said it was a common reaction to the drugs being used to induce my labor, and I’d been hooked up to an increasingly heavy dosage all day long. Wasn’t dangerous, they said, but there was nothing that could be done to stop it. So I trembled. And trembled. And trembled. If I used every bit of my concentration, I could will myself to be still for 30 seconds or so to try to rest my body, but then I’d just go back to trembling again. This continued for hours. My epidural started wearing off. When a nurse came in to check my progress after several hours and revealed I was exactly the same as before, I broke down and cried. I was complexly exhausted from my shaking, I had been facing down some of my biggest phobias all day long and I desperately wanted something to eat or drink – and now I was embarrassed to be crying.

My doctor came in for a check and agreed that I was making no progress. He encouraged me to give it a few more hours before deciding if I wanted to opt for a C-section. At this point I was so completely wiped out from trembling that I didn’t think there was any way I’d be able to push a baby out into the world myself. But then again, I’d read all about the surgery and what it entailed, and was slightly terrified of the procedure. (Any procedure that keeps you awake while your insides are being cut open is not OK with me.) I told him I’d wait one more hour.

The time came and went. Doctor checked and confirmed that I was exactly the same. With a shaky breath I agreed to the C-section. As soon as I uttered those words, a team of nurses descended on me to start prepping me for the procedure. As I was poked, prodded, disinfected and pumped full of more drugs, I had the fleeting urge to tell the nurses I’d changed my mind about this whole giving birth business. I’d just leave the baby where he was, thank you very much. Just send me home and I’ll just be pregnant forever.

They wheeled me into the operating room and strung up a curtain across my chest so that I couldn’t see what was going on – again, just throwing a blanket over my lower half and pretending it didn’t exist. Of course then they strapped my arms down like I was in some sort of medieval torture device, which along with all the medical professionals and surgical equipment surrounding me should have been enough to send me over the edge. However at this point I was so completely exhausted and pumped up on so many drugs, I realized vaguely that I should be terrified, but really just wanted to go to sleep.

My husband was escorted in, all in scrubs, a few minutes later. He looked nearly as terrified as I knew I should be feeling. It wasn’t until later that he told me that the surgery had actually already started when he was ushered inside and he got an unpleasant peek at some of my internal organs. In fact, I was so out of it from the drugs that I didn’t even realize that we’d started the procedure until I heard a baby cry. I remember looking over at my husband, confused, and hearing somebody say, “Wow, look at the size of him!” just shortly before I spotted a nurse coming around the corner to lay a little squirming body down on the nearby table at 11:37 p.m.

Unlike many birthing stories I’ve read, I didn’t hear a chorus of angels when I first saw my son. I didn’t break down in tears. I just stared, bleary-eyed and grinning like crazy as the nurse cleaned him up and checked his vitals. I hardly even heard the doctor directing the nurses on how to put my internal organs back the way they’d found them. (Yeah, ew, right?)

The nurses let me get a closer look at the little boy I’d just brought into the world, and then took him and my husband away to the nursery. As I lay there, waiting for the medical team to finish stitching me up, I couldn’t stop grinning.

I’d just faced down and conquered some of my worst phobias. And even though the idea of trying to raise a child is scary in its own way, I’m ready to face that challenge now, too.

Dominic has arrived!

Dominic was born April 10, weighing 9lbs 15 oz, and measuring 21 and 3/4 inches.

As soon as I don't feel like the walking dead, I'll write about my experience. It definitely was not what I expected!

Counting Down the Days

(This column was originally printed in the Herald-Citizen, minus the images).

Well, my husband and I survived our month-long birthing classes, despite my doubts that I’d make it through. As I’ve mentioned before, medical facilities make me anxious in the first place, and the thought of needles and other unpleasant medial instruments make me squeamish. I can’t count how many times I’ve read a few pages in one of my books about the birthing process, made a horrified face and then shut the book and went to pick up a nice novel instead.

So I knew I was in for a very long evening when women groaning in pain was the introductory “music” for the hour-long video we watched in one class. And then there was the zoomed-in view of these women giving birth — the VERY zoomed-in view. And the video of a woman getting an epidural. Plus the animated diagram of exactly what an epidural entails (a needle jabbed in between your vertebrae that they then thread with a tube and leave in your back for the duration of the birth — at least I think. I had my eyes closed for some of the explanation.) And the likewise animated diagram of what happens during a C-section (It’s a much more involved surgery than I originally thought).

Most nights I left educated but brimming with anxiety. After each class it took me a day or two to go from believing I was going to have a humiliating anxiety meltdown in the labor/delivery room to being able to tell myself “It’s not that bad. I can do this.” Then the cycle would start again after the next class.

Though after about the third class, I’d had to watch so much video of the labor process that I finally started being able to stomach it better. I could even watch the epidural process without grabbing for my husband’s hand under the table.

I’m hoping when it comes time to face labor myself, I’ll be able to just focus on dealing with each needle and other uncomfortable medical intervention as it comes. I’m also praying that I’ll take after my mother, who was in labor with both me and my younger sister for only two hours each time — instead of following my mother-in-law’s 27-hour labor experience with my husband.

However, one thing I will remember clearly about each night of the (sometimes slightly traumatizing) two-hour classes is when my husband and I would get to pause at the nursery and see the newborn babies sleeping soundly in their bassinets. It was a sweet reminder of exactly why I will be facing my medical anxieties head-on in a few weeks. I know it will be worth it.