While They Still Be Three

As baby time gets closer and closer I get more and more nervous. Not about Mason. Not even really about labor. Not about dealing with a newborn again.

Nope, what I’m worried about is mostly out of my control. I mean, yeah I can influence how it goes some, but for the most part, it just isn’t up to me.

Now see, what I am worried about is how my current three kiddos are going to react, when all is said and done, with a new baby in the house. The boys are actually old enough now to really have strong negative feelings towards Mason coming. I mean Zach has been battling negative feelings on it since the beginning. He never even wanted a new baby to begin with. He was actually pretty darn adamant that he did not want a new baby. Before I got pregnant, Ryan was desperate for us to have another baby, and the boy hasn’t had second thoughts since. It was wonderful during our shaking beginning to the pregnancy to have someone just so overwhelmingly excited about it. I sincerely hope and pray his positive attitude about Mason carries through once Mason actually arrives.

Bella – Bella’s a tough one.

She isn’t really old enough to really understand it all. Sometimes she’s happy, sometimes, well, sometimes she seems sort of like “Eh, OK, enough about the baby now.” I don’t think she grasps the fact that the baby will be here to stay. There won’t be any mommy coming at the end of the day to take the baby away. He’ll be here to stay, and he will cut into her Mommy-Bella time.

I know all about making the kids feel apart of caring for the baby, and making sure I keep time just for them, and all that other fun stuff. BUT… at the core of it, it comes down to them. Well, I have decided to use this break from work before having Mason to devote everything to them. Mason is going to come and change a lot in our house, and for now, I want them to see and know just how important they are to me still – especially the boys since our time together will be full of Bella and Mason. (Bella will still get a little more one-on-one time with me than the boys)

We started our time yesterday (my first actual day off work) by playing at the park and then doing a little picture of taking of the kiddos just as three. (Especially since the next time I do group pictures they’ll probably be four.)

And lastly… me and my boys.

Mason’s Pregnancy Book So Far

Before I share about the milestone I’ve made in working on Mason’s pregnancy book, I should first share my Facebook post from this morning. lol It very much applies to my blog seeing as how I did my complaining here last night.

Guess who gets to look bad this morning? Last night I complained about John always sleeping late on the weekends and making me get up with the kids... today he let me sleep until 11 and he went and got donuts.

Don’t you just love it when your husband makes you out to be a liar?
That butthead…

I reached a big milestone in Mason’s pregnancy book this week! I actually have about 15 pages done for it, but this past week I filled in the blank pages in the beginning so I now have 10 pages done that go in a row! (Well nine plus the cover…)

Cover:

next pages in a row:

(all are linked up to web-sized views where you can get the credits for them)

I am now on maternity leave I guess. I say I guess because as a substitute it’s not leave so much as in don’t call me to come in until sometime after I’ve had this baby. lol I really hope my mom continues to take Bella a few times a week because the two of us have been driving each other crazy when it’s just the two of us all day every day.

Now on to some bad news… I’ve lost my memory card reader. I think I need to really get on finding that…

Say what?

Um… where did the idea come from that everyone should be quiet and let the dad sleep late on the weekends. I do believe my pregnant mom butt is the one who has been home all week with the kiddos, and working part-time to boot. Wouldn’t you think then that it should be MOMS who get to sleep in on the weekends so that we get an extra break? I mean, I love John for supporting us (basically on his own – my checks are pretty pitiful) but keeping three kids quiet so he can sleep in??? Um, no thanks. I was with them – without him – for roughly 20 hours during the week, can’t he give me a little much needed, and deserved, break?

coming to you via the kindle

So, I figured since the only times I sit at the computer is to get the bare minimum done on computer things I need to do that I would try something new. Well here I am, attempting to relax on the couch while I tap all of this out on my kindle. Smart idea, eh?

((Lets just hope that my kindle doesn't do the crazy word swaps that it loves to do on Facebook... or if it does I actually catch them.))

This whole relaxing bit is such a sham. I can't relax anymore. These stupid, stupid braxton hicks are killing me. Or we hope they're braxton hicks, because my goal is for Mason to stay put until at least March, and we have 5 more weeks until D-Day. These stupid "fake contractions" just can't make up their mind. They come regularly, but we hit the five minute mark and those suckers go random again. I've never had them this much before, and yes, I definitely plan on bringing them up Wednesday at my next appointment.

Well, this has taken FOREVER already so I will stop here for tonight.

Breast or Bottle?

I didn’t really want to bring this over to this blog. I got tons (as in most) of my blog hits at the old blog on my posts regarding breast vs. bottle, and I really don’t want that here. As a matter of fact – before you even continue reading this – know this, this post is not a debate on what is best, it’s me trying to work through my own feelings on this in relation to the fact that I’m about to be having another baby.

And another for the record – the fact that I would even need to add a disclaimer is freaking ridiculous.

I have never ever gone into these weeks leading up to having a baby trying to figure out how I would feed said baby. I just always knew that I would breastfeed. After having Zach I was like determined-obsessed because nursing him was wonderful and I was able to nurse him until he self-weaned around one. Ryan refused to breastfeed. I tried. I tried until we were both red faced and crying and angry. This, however, just made me so much more determined to breastfeed Bella; I was desperate to have that same sort of experience that I had with Zach.

Those first few months breastfeeding Bella were wonderful. It was just like with Zach all over again. She took right to it, my milk more than came in, she seemed to be attached to me constantly – but I didn’t mind too much, I was just so happy to have a good experience with breastfeeding again.

And then it all came crashing down around me. Bella was diagnosed as failure to thrive after only gaining two pounds in the first four months of her life. We went into massive debt taking her to different doctors and getting tests done. She constantly got sick. One boy having a slight stuffy nose would cause her to have pneumonia or bronchitis. I held her down so that the doctors could take vial after vial of blood from her, so they could poke at her, so they could do yet another set of x-rays. And when all was said and done it was determined that since they could find nothing wrong, and since she started gaining weight beautifully when she was switched to formula that the problem was, well, me. There must have been something wrong with my breast milk. How the hell do I reconcile myself with this?

So now here we are. I’m weeks (hopefully) from having Mason and I don’t know what to do. I deep down ache and long to nurse him. I dream about it. I can picture it in my mind. I can remember what it feels like to have that warm little body cuddled into me and nursing. And I want it again so badly. After going through all we did with Bella, and Ryan refusing to nurse, I’ve kept a firm line of no, I can’t do it. I can’t put myself through that again. I won’t. Deep down inside me, right next to that longing to breastfeed a child of mine again, is a deep dark fear. What if it happens again? Can I seriously go into this knowing I might be endangering another child?

I know that Bella was probably just a fluke. I know that Ryan refusing to nurse was just a fluke. But lets face it, my track record kind of sucks. I don’t know if I can put myself through all this again emotionally. Even if Mason is a champion nurser, even if he stays healthy and gains weight, I’m going to live in fear that the doctor will have to tell me bad news again… and that again it will come down to this. I am just so tied up and confused about this all and I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried praying about it, but obviously I haven’t determined an answer from that. I don’t talk to people (well, other than my mom and John) about it. I can’t. I’m so sick of people saying with Bella and Ryan I should have just tried harder, or ignored the doctors and continued breastfeeding. I’m sick of having to even justify the idea of not even trying to nurse. So tell me, how am I supposed to sit down and talk to someone about it?

Oh, and if even one person comes on here and says – “Well, just remember, it all comes down to the fact that the breast is always best” I will delete your comment and find some way to make your life hell.

When your morning looks like this

it’s perfectly acceptable to just say screw it and go back to bed when the older two have headed off to church.

(Not a bit) Wordless Wednesday

First…

Let’s just put it here and here.

So, we have this big ticket question…
Where the hell have you gone Trish???

Well, no, no baby or anything like that. We can take giving birth to an adorable baby boy off the list because as the picture above (from today) shows, I am still very much pregnant. 34 weeks today to be precise. At this point, I’m feeling like I’ll be pregnant forever; it totally doesn’t matter that the two weeks between my last check up and my one today seem non-existent.

A tad bit of cuteness from over this weekend…

Now to the not-so-cuteness…

I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been waiting to be in a better mood. Every day something happens to put me in a major pissy mood, and then I just want to get on here and not only vent it all out, but to also verbally rip into and tear apart everyone that has been pissing me off.

And no, as one friend put it, I don’t want to just always put on a happy façade. I won’t lie. I am not always a happy person. BUT. I always come to regret the very personal rants that I would post, and then they never went away. They would bring in tons of views to my old blog, but that isn’t exactly what I want people coming to my blog for.

But for brief not so pissy recap:
- People piss me off.
- My family (not John and kids) are going back and forth frustrating and pissing me off.
- John is sometimes really pissing me off.

Yes, each one involves the word “piss” but trust me, that’s way less pissy than any of the posts I’ve made about those. And extremely less than the Mommy Diary videos I made about them.

Then lets add a little insult to injury.
Parent/Teacher Conferences were last week. Zach’s conference was the first (and hopefully only) time I’ve gone into a conference and not heard a single good thing about one of my kids. And then having it be Zach… I almost expect to one day have to have a conference with one of Ryan’s teachers where nothing good is said (because he will one day outgrow the whole “but he is also so sweet and lovable.”) but I never expected it of Zach, which made it soooo much worse.

Long story short, Zach is very, very, very grounded. As he will be for a good long time.

These hormones just suck. They make every thing so much freaking worse.

Lets end on some happy notes shall we?
These came in the mail last week from my great friend Sara. I met her online on Justmommies.com several years ago, and with our mutual love of digital scrapbooking we’ve gotten to know each other very well. I totally ((heart)) me some awesome hand-me-downs. Especially boy ones. Now I don’t feel so totally unprepared for Mason.

And hopefully this is the start of me kicking my butt out of this funk and getting back to the regularly scheduled blogging fun.