Moo

Our second all about baby class was yesterday. We arrived a few minutes early so we walked across the street from the hospital and grabbed a cup of coffee for me and cocoa for Ryan. I only felt mildly guilty for walking in to a room full of pregnant women with my hand wrapped around a cup of warm caffeinated goodness. Only slightly. I saw a couple of other women with the juice, too.

To take away all caffeine from a pregnant woman is wrong. It should be a crime. For the woman who consumes caffeinated beverages before she is pregnant it would be doubly hard to give it up cold turkey during pregnancy.

Why, the first 12-14 weeks kick off your pregnancy with out of this world fatigue. Alcohol is easy to give up during this period. It is a depressant and while the woman is (usually) thrilled to be beginning her journey into motherhood there is no energy to even lift a glass of the spirits to your tired lips. The woman does manage to eek out just enough strength to put her one daily allowance of coffee to her lips and sip the rich bitter-sweet nectar that will give her just enough energy to keep her worried co-workers from calling the paramedics. The co-workers are sweet to be so concerned about your health and the death-warmed-over look on your pale face with droopy eyelids.

The second trimester alcohol is still easy to not partake of. The I-never-want-to-get-out-of-bed fatigue from the first Trimester is usually gone and replaced with I-want-to-get-back-in-bed-at-4-in-the-afternoon fatigue. You feel like a new person because you can hold your head up at your desk - it's weird how your head weighs 30 pounds in the first tri and goes back to normal after that.

Alcohol starts calling back to the mother-to-be during the third trimester. It's not the fatigue, the aches and pains but the ADVICE. All of the advice that drives mom-to-be to want to drink her Bailey's Irish Cream straight from the bottle.

If I was less civilized I would sum up how I feel about that with a big fat juicy curse.

It's not all advice from all women that drive me, er, the pregnant woman mad. Advice from your new mom girlfriends, great. They tell you what did and did not work for them. It's from the moms (and worse, childless woman and men) who tell you what to do.

First, I'm on edge at all times. I'm a wee bit of a wench. So back off! If I have a question I will ask. If you want to offer a suggestion, great. Give it as a suggestion and not as the Gospel truth.

Second, if you ask me how I'm doing and I say, "Fine." Take it. If you say, "Really? I don't believe you." Then I will tell you how I really am: tired, grumpy and in pain. IF you pulled that out of me do NOT proceed to tell me how good I have it compared to your pregnancy and say that I have nothing to complain about.

Insert cursing here.

Third, if you are the person who drags out of me how I'm feeling and you ask how I am the very next day don't be surprised if my answer is, "Does it really matter?"

Grr.

Well, that rant went on long enough.

After reviewing my posts I realized I haven't written a lot that is positive about pregnancy.

Here are April's highlights of carrying the miracle of life inside her abdominal cavity:

1. I wanted a baby and God gave me one.
2. People let me cross the street at a snails pace and still smile at me.
3. I get to take as many naps as I want to when visiting family and on the weekends, no questions asked.
4. I get to put my feet up while other people fuss over me (it does take some getting used to but once you get used to it...)
5. You get to feel your baby move inside of you.
6. I have a cute belly.
7. I get to wear white canvas shoes with every piece of clothing I have, dresses included because nothing else fits my feet.
8. I'm the hot one now. (My built in furnace keeps me toasty).
9. People tell me I make a cute pregnant woman (it's nice to hear because I see a bloated version of my old self when I look in the mirror).
10. I get to meet my baby soon! I'm so excited to meet the little guy.
11. I am so blessed that I get to stay at home and raise my baby.

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I think I like the Korean way of age determination. When a baby is born it is already one year old. In our society you are born and are zero days old. After carrying the baby around for almost a year you realize it is alive and developing and when it enters the world it is new to the outside but it has still been alive for 9 1/2 months.

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Ryan was able to attend the class yesterday. Ed couldn't work on Saturday so I didn't have to be the sad woman by myself.

Class was good. The first half was all about breastfeeding. Good times. There was a lot to be learned but it still made me feel like a cow. I have offspring which gets its nourishment from my body. Moo.

The instructor told a very funny story about her own experience with breast feeding. She and her husband were at a restaurant celebrating their wedding anniversary and their 2 month old daughter was at home with a sitter. Somewhere in the restaurant a baby started crying. Poor woman, she knew the baby in the restaurant wasn't hers but her brain didn't know so it sent some milk down for her to feed the stranger's crying baby. She had to two big wet spots on her silk blouse. She put her napkin over her chest and that too got wet.

I would be mortified. I think the morale of that story is to leave a clean shirt in your car at all times.

The second half of the class dragged. It was all about caring for the newborn. Bathing, diapering, keeping it safe. Blah, blah, blah. We learned when you should call the baby's doctor (anytime you have a question) and some funny ways of soothing a crying baby if nothing else works. Hopefully I'll remember their techniques because that one segment was probably worth coming for the whole day.

I made a funny in class. We were all given a sticky note with a 'problem' on it. We went around the room and said if we were supposed to call the doctor or not. No wet diaper for 7 hours, call the doctor. Temperature of 101, call the doctor. Mine was, "should you call the doctor if your baby has vaginal discharge." I said it's normal because of the mother's hormones being passed to baby. The instructor said, "Would you call the doctor?" Me: "Yes, I would call the doctor if my son had vaginal discharge."

Everyone laughed and the instructor said that was a good ending point. Woo-hoo. We didn't want class to run long since it was a 6 1/2 hour class.