New Mommy: Take Three

A numbness had settled in as the weeks droned on. I felt like I was reduced to just heaving myself through the day. I was unmotivated. I wanted to do nothing and what was worse, I was in a mental ditch that felt more like a canyon and I was trapped between the mountains on either side. I was tired and I just didn’t care.
I was pregnant. It was my third child and as lazy as I felt, my husband felt the same for frustration towards me. I wasn’t completely milking the situation. Every other day I really did feel like I couldn’t move without feeling a wave of severe nausea. It’s been a cruel nine weeks. I have been given the nose of a dog, yet, ironically, certain odors make me vomit. I’ve been cursed with a severe increase of hunger that I am unable to satiate because of that on-going nausea.
It doesn’t take more than a week before I realized I was playing a numbers game. Four out of five food attempts will cause me to vomit regardless of what my choices will be. After the cabbage, pickles, cereal, and ice cream, the peanut butter sandwich is bound to come back and haunt me.
To make matters worse, my loving husband has anointed himself official coach over my nausea and diet.
"You know you can’t eat that! It’s acidic!"
"Last time you ate vegetables you threw them up!"
"You know you can’t eat that stuff!"
Occasionally, I use the last bit of my remaining strength to lift my head out of the toilet and glare at him with my evil eye in hopes that he’ll gain the hint and abandon me at my post in peace.
But it never fails. Shortly after my stomach has found a moment’s peace, I’ve retired to the couch to regain my strength. It wouldn’t be complete without my retch referee reprimanding me about my lack of motivation and poor eating habits.
"I told you not to eat that stuff!"
"You’re bringing this on yourself."
"Maybe next time you’ll listen to me."
I can’t believe I have allowed myself to forget this from the first two rounds of pregancy.

Keeping Strength

by Angela Tadlock
It seems, no other topic rises such rivalry when a woman becomes pregnant than the bottle vs breast debate. breast feeding, as wonderful, natural, and nutritional as it is, is hard. Though I not always believed this.There was no need to think about it, I thought. My grandmother breast fed. My aunts all breast fed. My mother breast fed. I would breast feed. Like most new moms not yet introduced to the truth about parenting, I was arrogant. Breast feeding is natural. If cave women could do it then I sure as heck could! I went in prepared with a plan.I would have my child. Then, before I would plant my first kiss on her cheek, I would take her to breast and we would bond. Beautiful bonding in a picture perfect scene.I did not foresee the emergency c-section. The thirty minutes in the recovery room where I had to argue with a nurse about bringing me my daughter. I did not plan on my morphine making me so comfortable that pain from an inappropriate latch did not send the signals to my brain telling me that her latch was incorrect.By the end of the first day my left nipple had cracked so much that it looked as if the nipple was lacerated. The pain was enough that I screamed when Emily suckled on the left side. The lactation consultant came to instruct and correct, but the damage was done. The next month would be filled with excruciating midnight feedings. My milk supply would diminish on my left breast making me look lop-sided and grossly unbalanced.Every night my husband pleaded with me to formula feed until I was healed, at least. But I knew that once my milk dried up, I would have no milk. It was not an option. I bore down on the pain and suffered through it and finally, FINALLY, after a long month of a torn, bleeding nipple being suckled off with every feeding, I healed.My daughter was breast fed – as was my son and my second daughter. Only now, I’m wiser and less arrogant.Breast feeding is work, but the reward pays off. Go in knowing that it will be hard at first and that the process will "toughen up" your nipples. The first week is the most difficult and challenging. But don’t place your child’s nutrition on the line if it ends up being more than you bargained for. The difficulties you experience end a lot sooner than the benefits your infant will gain from breast feeding.

Snake Noodles and Turtle Socks

by Angela Tadlock
Being a mother of two - two toddlers that is - has taught me a couple of valuable lessons I’ll always take to heart. My three-year-old, Emily, constantly shows me what seemingly goes unnoticed. My two-year-old, Danny, teaches me everything I missed the first time around. Despite the stress accompanied with mothering two toddlers, Emily’s continual lesson in the English language has earned a smile on my face more than once, from "snake noodles" (spaghetti) to "He has issues" (In reference to her brother’s tantrums).
With every day I look for ways to compliment and praise my children. One way to go about this easily, I found, is to allow my three-year-old the gratifying pleasure of dressing herself. But that occasional sock that doesn’t go on quite right can be enough to start an array of frustration, the prelude to any tantrum. The sock becomes twisted. She pulls harder. The sock then catches on her toes and she screams. Regrettably, the turtleneck is much like a sock one attempts to fit over their head instead of their foot.
One day, while my daughter attempted to squeeze her head into the extra-long neck, she became quickly flustered when her head didn’t slip through as quickly as it usually does. Seeing frustration on the rise, I stepped in.
"Emily, slow down and think." I reminded her. "This is a turtleneck."
"A turtleneck?" She inquired calmly. I could see her little nose protruding slightly through the fabric. I find the quickest way to avoid a tantrum is to teach something new. As I pulled the sweater off her head I proceeded to help her dress, confirming that yes, it is a turtleneck and the neck is longer.
By then the sweater was on and I rolled the extra fabric down around her neck. I picked up her pants and she presented me with her newest inquiry.
"My turtleneck?" She asked again. "Are these my turtle pants?"
I permitted a chuckle as I pulled her pants on then went on to her socks.
"And are these my turtle socks?"
The rest of the day was committed to a repeated fashion show of turtlenecks, turtle pants, and turtle socks. I can’t wait to see what new perspectives Danny has in store.

Operation: Birthing Eli

by Angela Tadlock
"How many kids do you have?"
"Three, just like you."
My doctor had just lifted Elizabeth out of me and was currently sewing me back up. I laid there feeling a pulling in my abdomen as I chatted with my doctor. I could hear my baby girl crying from the corner of the room and was gasping for air out of relief. The baby had rested high and for nearly five months my lungs had been unable to expand to their full capacity disabling my breath.
We hadn't planned this one. She was an accident. And the most wonderful mistake we ever made in our lives. I was crying all the same.
I don't believe in God. But each time I see a sleeping babe I am convinced that they came from Heaven. Where else could something so beautiful come from?

My husband kissed the top of my head as a cleaned, bundled Elizabeth was placed down beside my face. I kissed the little white and pink face through my tears. In a moment she was carried away and my husband followed her to the nursery.
I laid there wide awake looking around the room. The stainless steel surrounding me. What else was there to do besides chat with my doctor as she put me back together. Visions of the show House flashed through my head. I knew what was happening on the other side of the sheet in front of me.
Don't think about that. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and began to study the room. My cousin was a nurse in that hopsital and she was able to assist my doctor in delivering my baby. Periodically I looked for her or called out. It would be another twenty minutes before I would be taken to the recovery room.
A flash of metal caught my eye as I glanced at the metal cabinets. I could see the tools in the doctor's hand reflected in the cabinet - And beside me I could see . . . well . . . me. It didn't scare me or make me sick. I was curiously interested in the miracle before me. There I was wide awake on the table. I had been opened and my child taken out of me. I had spent that time talking, crying, laughing, and memorizing and now, I was watching my own surgery.

Another Monday

by Angela Tadlock

"Momma! Momma! Danny is playing in the cat boxes again!"
I threw the covers against the wall as I leapt, in one breathless bound, from my bed to the door. My eyes adjusted to the sun light flooding my living room as my brain attempted to grasp the possibility that I just might be out of bed. I made it to my son's bedroom expecting the worse and discovered that it was much worse. I scanned the horror before me.
Handfuls of cat litter had been thrown everywhere. Cat litter covered his bed, the bookshelf, and his toys. His Geo Trak was buried under a mound of litter and beside the mound sat the three year old culprit complete with shovel in hand next to his dump truck. The sight was enough to snap my pre-coffee brain wide awake. The anger in my chest had swollen into my throat as I took in the vast mess before me. Only a couple words were able to break past the anger in my throat.

"YOU! BAD! BATH! NOW!"
I took hold of the boy and began to pull him out of the litter towards the bathroom. Emily followed behind us gleefully dancing as she began to tell Dan how gross he was. Danny had other things on his mind.
"Mommy, you angwy?"
I didn't bother answering him. While I started to strip him in the bathtub a new shriek cut through the air. My five week old newborn was now awake and was looking for mommy . . . That would be me.
I glare up at the clock as Emily shouted from my bedroom.
"Mommy! Elizabeth is crying!"
"I'm with Danny right now! I'll be there in a second!"
A moment later I heard Emily squeaking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Elizabeth took that as cue to find another level of pitch so high that the neighbor's dog could hear her.

Boy stripped. Water on. Hands washed. Now on to the infant. While I fed the youngest, Emily walked by with the broom.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to clean up Danny's mess."
"No. Mommy has to do it 'cause it's dirty."
"But, Mom. I will clean it and then it won't be dirty."
She turned back toward the litter room.
"Emily! Out!"
"It's okay, Mom. I'm just going to clean it."
"I don't want to give you a bath too!" I gasp! BATH! I had left the water running. I gently, but swiftly placed Elizabeth on the couch and dashed for the bathroom. My son was now in a sea of water that was running out of the tub and onto the floor. I stepped into the pool and turned the water off. Then I pulled the plug.
"NOOOOOO! I wan' the plug!"
I decided not to reason with the toddler and, instead, I headed off to his bedroom to join Emily in cleaning the cat litter off the walls with my Danny screaming behind me.

An hour later I was able to call his room clean. I locked the cat boxes . . . again . . . and set off to pull Danny out of the empty tub. Emily had plopped herself in front of the TV for the past thirty minutes. I hate the TV on in the morning, but that morning I was willing to let it slide.
I entered the bathroom to find that Danny was no longer in the tub. I froze and the knot that clenched my stomach that morning had returned.

I went into the kitchen where I found the boy standing on a chair, naked and covered head to toe in granulated sugar. I screamed. Beyond anger a took a wrist in each of my hands and carried him back to the tub where I held him down and scrubbed him from toe to head to toe again. I pulled him from the tub and walked him to his room where I selected a pair of sweats, held him down, and stretched them over his head and legs while he screamed and kicked in protest. I walked him to the living room where I sat him before the TV in hopes to now mop up the sugar and the bath water.
Just another Monday and I haven't had my coffee yet.