Lawrence.com

Warning: the following blog is nothing more than a blatant abuse of my status as “blogger” to update my friends and the modest yet loyal following of readers I’ve amassed over the past half decade or so of blogging on this site as to the past eight months of my life. Any expectations of this blog being topical, or even mildly entertaining to those who aren’t parents themselves, will be grossly disappointed.

Now that that’s over with, hello, all! It’s been, what, roughly eight months since I blogged here last? Too long, I know, but with good reason—I don’t write when I don’t drink, and I don’t drink when I’m pregnant. Also, when I’m pregnant or caring for a cuddly newborn, I don’t spend nearly so much time paying attention to the world outside my home, or getting pissed off at those few events I do manage to witness. And it helps that the rabies neighbors moved away—ooooh, update on that—it turns out that Mr. “I Can’t Reduce A Simple Fraction” also had some serious impulse control issues, since we found him on the sex offender registry for beating the shit out of and raping a teenaged girl while his wife was pregnant with their second child. Yeah, it was a little difficult explaining to our four-year-old daughter, who thought the neighbor girls hung the moon, why she wasn’t allowed to play over there any more. I overheard her at the fence telling the eight-year-old, “I can’t come over. Mommy says it’s complicated.” I know, I know, he wasn’t a convicted child molester, but still—court records of past circumstances documented a marked lack of judgment on the parts of both mother and father in that situation, even if our own experiences with them hadn’t shown them to be hysterical morons.

On to more current events. Gwendolyn Claire, more commonly known as Wendy, arrived at a little after 6 pm on March 27, weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs, 8 oz.

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And no, your monitor’s color is not off, she was very, very purple. “Blue”, they called it, but I say it’s purple. Apparently it’s difficult to fit that much baby and an umbilical cord through the average vagina without them both getting a little smooshed. No worries, though, all was well within a minute and a half, and she’s as healthy and smart as you’d expect any spawn of mine to be.

Oddly enough, labor was easier this time around, as was delivery. The fact that I wasn’t deathly afraid of an epidural probably helped—with Penny, I had seen my father become paralyzed for life by a botched epidural when I was four months pregnant, and was therefore understandably terrified of the procedure. No matter; after about eight hours of pitocin-induced hell I told the nurse that I really didn’t care if I never walked again, she was going to get that goddamned needle into my goddamned spine and she was going to do it now. I still lasted seven or eight hours before getting a spinal piercing this time around, but those hours were spent fucked up on Versed, watching “Juno” (highly overrated but still entertaining) and the previous night’s episode of LOST on my husband’s laptop. (When my OB told me the dates of my hospital check-in and induction, I tried to talk her into moving it all forward or backward a day, because I had only started watching that show this year, and gorged on four seasons in two weeks, so having to wait a whole week between episodes was hell enough without adding an extra DAY into the equation. Yes, I am completely addicted. If you watch, you understand, and if you don’t, then you need to shut up and go Netflix it.)

This time the epidural was apparently pushed too far into my spine—I felt that part, and dammit, but that was one of the strangest sensations I’ve felt in a life spent mostly chasing unique sensations via drugs and unhealthy sex. Anyway, for several hours I was feeling the contractions in one half of my uterus, which was again, really freaking strange. At least I didn’t feel my episiotomy like I did last time, thanks to my apparent resistance to all sorts of anesthesia—more on that later, when I recount my experience with the Asshole Dentist From Hell. Luckily, they had another anesthesiologist, this one competent, on hand to fix the problem while uttering off-color witticisms, which I always enjoy.

And extra bonus—the literally crippling lower back and pelvis pain which had me spending most of my third trimester shuttling between my physical therapist and the pharmacy that refilled my Vicodin prescription cleared up within hours after birth.

Anyway, Wendy. She’s perfect, of course, because we make excellent babies. She has my hair and eyes and feet. Penny is proving to be pretty much made for the big-sister gig—the only jealousy issues we’ve had to deal with so far are of the “Mommy, you’ve had Wendy long enough. It’s MY turn now!!” variety.

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She resembles, expression-and personality-wise, her non-biological grandfather Lawrence, who many of you may remember as the infamous troll “Snoop” here on the blogs---she looks quite concerned most of the time, although she’s nowhere nearly as grumpy as long as she’s allowed to nurse as much as she likes.

Warning the second: the following passages contain graphic discussions of nipples and breasts, and nothing that will turn on anyone but three Japanese teenagers and one German man who collects pictures of decapitated grannies over the Internet.

That took a while, though. When I nursed Penny, I had issues with nipple pain, cracking, and bleeding, but thanks to a convincingly friendly RN who told me that since I was fair-skinned, it was to be expected, and I just had to soldier through it, and a mother-in-law who recounted how she had rubbed her nipples bloody-raw with steel wool to toughen them in preparation for nursing, I just gritted my teeth (and cried a lot when no one was looking) and we got through it somehow, and with flying colors—Penny had maybe half a can of formula between birth and weaning at 20 months. This time, however, our first visit to Wendy’s pediatrician confirmed what I had been suspecting due to her incessant, panicked crying, her increasing jaundice, and signs of dehydration—that my milk was taking far too long to come in, and that even if I was producing it, the enormous scabs I had to soak off before each nursing session were probably prohibiting delivery. We started supplementing her with formula, and thus began my three-week Trial By Lactation Consultant. Between the La Leche League and the hospital’s consultants, I spent the first three weeks of my baby’s life in a constant haze of confusion and inadequacy. You function as best as you can on the two or three hours of uninterrupted sleep you’re granted per day, and count yourself blessed to get another hour of not-baby-time in which to shower and maybe even take a poop in private. When you have to use what mental energy and time in which both hands are free to consult via email and expensive appointment with counselors of varying sorts, to search every possible cause and correction for your nursing issues, it gets even more exhausting than the average new-mom experience.

We managed to finally resolve all that within three weeks or so, and nursing is back on track. Thank god, because I’ve got even more weight to lose than last time—I started the pregnancy off a good fifteen, twenty pounds overweight, and then put on 40 on top of that. With Penny I got pretty damn skinny (for me, 125 is skinny. I’ve been down to 104 as an adult and was an emaciated wreck, despite what the superficial bitches in my dorm said), but this time I think I’m going to need a little help. This past year I’ve watched my mother-in-law go from triple-chinned and waddling to “rawr!” on the South Beach Diet, and it’s not too far off from what I had to follow to keep my gestational diabetes in check, so I’m going to be starting on it soon. I fucking HATE being fat. I’m miserable. Not only do none of my clothes fit, but my thighs rub together when I walk, I’ve got a pretty substantial double chin going on, and I’ve got incipient bingo wings at the age of 30, for christ’s sake. This is not acceptable. I don’t like it, my joints don’t like it, and despite his kind words and healthy erections, I’m pretty sure that my husband doesn’t like it. And I’ve struggled with insulin issues for the past six years or so, any “diet” that re-trains my metabolism to not think it needs refined carbohydrates is hardly an unhealthy step to take. I’m just going to really, REALLY miss my sourdough baguettes for a month or two, until I’ve got my pancreas bitch-slapped back into shape.

So there you have it. I’m back, in all my fat, exhausted, cranky glory. I hope to be blogging more in the days to come, but if I don’t, you’ll know why. It’s because I’m sitting in my kitchen, shoving cotton in my ears to dampen the sounds of infant wails and wondering how many carbs are in real baby-back ribs.