Maybe it's just me, but every book I read, every site I visited, and every tidbit of advice I received didn't even remotely prepare me for most of the stuff I REALLY needed to know the first year of my child's life. We recently celebrated her first birthday, and in light of the responses I got from my last post, I decided to come up with another list: The list of things that I wish someone had told ME about giving birth, post-baby-body, and being a mommy.

- How come nobody told me how emotional I was going to be in the months after giving birth to my daughter? I think my books made passing references to "baby blues", but they didn't tell me that I'd be sobbing hysterically after watching diaper commercials, or bursting into tears because I'm pretty sure that  the complete stranger driving next to me is mad at me because he may or may not have given me a dirty look out of the corner of his eye as he was changing lanes. Seriously. "Baby Blues" should be changed to "You're going to cry eleventy billion times a day for at least three months after you give birth, so invest in Kleenex".

- For those of you that are blessed with curves: I've always had big boobs, okay, but I have never in my entire life imagined that the letters of the alphabet went so high in bra sizes. And when my lactition told me that I would experience some "slight discomfort", I'm still not clear whether she was referring to the burn of let-down or the pain of my boobs being swollen to the size of watermelons. Once I got into the routine of nursing, it wasn't so bad....but then I weaned my daughter. And then, like sad little balloons, my boobies deflated. And now they hang somewhere close to my belly button, where they've become best friends with my stretchmarks.

- For being so small, babies sure have a lot of stuff inside them. And who knew that poop could be so exciting? My daughter went a week without a bowel movement, and when she finally went, I called my mother, my grandmother, my sister, and told seven women at work. And while we're on the subject, a word from the wise: once you've changed a diaper, if you still smell something, it's probably on you somewhere. Poop is sneaky like that.
 
- I've never even ONE TIME in my life EVER even CONSIDERED walking up to some random stranger's child and touching them. Not on the hand, not on the face, not on the head. And I've never asked if I could hold the child of a stranger. NEVER. But I am not like most people. Most people don't think about the fact that only about 30% of the population wash their hands after using the restroom, and they handle money, which is completely disgusting, and they wipe their noses and cough into their hands and probably all have malaria and ebola and staph infections and MAD COW DISEASE AND DON'T TOUCH MY BABY WITH YOUR DISGUSTING HANDS I DON'T KNOW YOU AND I AM ABOUT TO RIP YOUR ARM OFF AT THE ELBOW.

- Your mom was right. About everything. All of it.

- I've always been a carefree chick. I really never worried about too much of anything. But since I've had my daughter, I've turned into Psycho-mom. Seriously, my daughter will be lucky if I let her go to kindergarten, lest she be shot on the playground by another 5-year-old that's pissed cause she stole his Tonka. I worry about taking her outside because she might get bitten by a mosquito and catch malaria. I worry about her riding with my mom, not because my mom is a bad driver, but because there might be a police chase involving 83 squad cars like you see on COPS. I worry about her eating too much, or not enough. I worry about immunizations, but then worry about what would happen if she DIDN'T get them. I worry, worry, worry. And you know what? I don't think it goes away. I don't think it's supposed to.

- When it comes to your baby, everybody has advice. Everybody is going to tell you what to do. Your pediatrician is going to tell you one thing. Your mom is going to tell you another. Your mom-in-law will probably tell you something completely different. The lady in line at the grocery store will spend 45 minutes telling you all about her brother's step-son's second cousin, and what SHE did. And by the end of the day, you are going to be so sick of everybody telling you what to do that you may just turn on the next person that speaks to you like a rabid dog. But I've found that, surprise surprise, I know what's best for my baby. So when it comes to the small things, like food and naps and the way your baby reacts to certain things, just trust your gut. Babies aren't mass-produced on assembly lines. Your baby is unique.

- Finally: I can't tell you how many people, upon hearing that I was pregnant, said, "Welp, your life as you know it is OVER." It was annoying as shit, but you know what? It's TRUE. But not in the way that you think. We've all heard the saying (cheezy though it may be), "to every beginning, there is an end, and to every end, there is a beginning." So yeah, your life AS YOU KNOW IT, is over. This will feel especially true to those of you who are having "surprise" babies like me (I DESPISE the term "mistake", babies are NOT mistakes). But, I've noticed, the life that I began with my daughter is lightyears past the one that I was living before I got pregnant. It is BEYOND incredible. I've found that the biggest surprise of all is the amount of love that I hold in my heart for my baby girl.

So here it is. Take it or leave it. These are just a few things that I wish someone would have told me. Good luck to those of you expecting or new mommies!!!

"If I hadn't made me, I'd've fallen apart by now." -Incubus

My whole life I've been one of those people that has to know. How does it work? I have to know. What's the end of the story? I have to know. I have to see all of it. Understand all of it. I have to be a part of it. Be in on it. It's not about curiosity or being 'in the know'...it's about having as much information as possible before I kick the bucket. I don't know why. I'm like a kid collecting lightning bugs in a jar just to sit and watch them glow. There's no point to it. I just want it.

Now, for the first time in my life, I'm terrified of knowledge. I want to clap my hands over my ears and sqeeze my eyes shut and relieve myself of any external stimulation. I don't want it anymore. No more, please.

It's funny because on the other hand, I've always been sort of naive when it comes to people. You know how when you're little, you don't really question the character of the people that surround you? Or maybe that's just me. I don't know. I, for one, have had a hell of a time over the years because I keep finding shit out about the people that I love...the people that I grew up admiring and modeling myself after....and for some reason, I'm constantly let down. I guess I've always known that they weren't perfect, but damnit, they're all complete shit! It doesn't seem possible that I've been completely wrong about everyone in my life. That can't be right! Yet, that's the way things are turning out. I can't handle it anymore. Shit.

On a more positive note: I have incredible, amazing, stupendous, fabulous, phenomenal friends. They've been more of a family to me the last few days than my own family has. I've gotten phone calls from people that detest talking on the phone, just so that they could keep my mind off this shit for 30 minutes. I love you guys.

Sometimes life smacks you in the face. It's so strange...so out of the blue. Sometimes you're walking along and suddenly *BAM*....you're left with a red cheek, double vision, and absolutely no clue as to what you should do next.

My life has changed completely in the last 72 hours. Not in a little way. In an earth-shattering, brain-exploding, face-melting way. Everything that I've known about my life and the people in it has been wrong. My family is a lie. Everything that I've believed in....all of it....wrong. Over the last two days I have felt my stability begin to crumble beneath me.

The worst part? Nothing's different. See....things have been the way they are for all of my life. The earth-shattering part is that I never knew it. I feel so unbelievably helpless.

"I face the facts: I can't face my face." -T.M.

You know what? I need to vent. So here I go.

How many of you know me well? Most of you, right? I'm an easy-going, fun-loving, bad-dancing kind of girl. So how do I get sucked into the situations that seem to endlessly arise around me? I don't get it. Maybe I'm unconsciously releasing some sort of hormone that is attracting these situations. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I'm just sick of it.

Sometimes I don't want to be me. Does that make sense? I look at what's going on in my life and I wish that I could just take a break from being me for a while. I don't want some of my thoughts and feelings. I'd just like to hiatus while I'm having them, so I don't have to deal with the consequences. I'm not an emotional person. I don't deal well with emotions. They give me hives. Well...not really. But I don't like them. I don't have them. Lately, it seems I've been caught in an emotional hurricane, or, more accurately, an emotional shitstorm...with mine and other people's emotions enveloping me. So now I'm covered in shit. Nobody likes to be covered in shit.

I want to be done. I don't like for things to go one way for a period of time, and then have them change completely. I feel one way, then I have to feel another. I don't like it. It makes me put on my angry pants.

I want my brain to stop. I want my thoughts to calm themselves. I want serenity and a chance to have one day this month where I'm not thinking about something that I don't want to think about. I know this is all very vague and probably makes no sense....but I'm okay with that.

I want a break. Somebody take me to Hawaii.

"It seems like I'm a shell. Like maybe there is something hard on the outside...fragile, delicate, but hard just the same....it's on the outside....but if it were to break...yeah, man...don't let it break....because there's nothing on the inside.." -T.M.

"Once there was something in me. Now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more." -Robert Frost, Winter Dreams

 

"My secret is my pain. My secret is that it is inevitable." -T.M.

I like noticing things that nobody else notices. Like a look that crosses between two people in an elevator when they're completely infatuated with eachother.

When I'm in my lab, if I turn and look out the window, my only view is the sky above the highway. Sometimes I look out and I see a bird...I'm sure it's a different bird every time but I pretend it's always the same bird....and it hovers in one spot, riding the updraft from the cars and the wind on the highway. For some reason, it always makes me happy to see my bird. Don't know why.

"My silver lining is tarnished..." -T.M.

Sometimes I step back and look at the things that we think are important. By 'we' I mean the people that I interact with, my friends, coworkers, family....a generalization, and by no means does it include everybody. Anyway.

The things we think are important are...not. Everybody, including myself, seems to be so focused on things that, when put into the big picture, are so very, very small. Things like money, popularity, boyfriends and girlfriends, cars, toys, clothes.....these things are such a big part of our lives but they're so small...so insignificant....half of the people that I associate with will not be in my life ten years from now. I will not wear the same clothes or drive the same car. I won't have the same job (hopefully!!)...my life will probably be completely different...even a year from now...

I think that everybody has lost track of life...of living...especially the people my age. I know I'm guilty of it too....I've found my self obsessing over the smallest, most ridiculous things...opinions that people have...people I don't even care about...people I never see and don't really have to interact with...

Sometimes I stop. I stop and I stand still. I look around and take in everything that I have. My family is wonderful...my parents are both still alive, we have a great house, my brother is amazing, my sister is doing well...my grandma and all of my aunts, uncles, cousins....I have food to eat, a roof over my head, clothes....I never really have to worry about anything...not if I don't want to....and that's the thing...that's how it is for so many people. So many people. If you really break it down...really look at things....really see your life for what it is...it's not that bad. It seems like we create drama...create misfortune for ourselves...just so we can have something to worry about...something to be upset about....I don't understand it...

Things are good....if you can look at them objectively...look at your life from someone else's point of view...

Things are never as bad as they seem. Think about it. You just got a DUI. You just got divorced. Somebody just died. And as terrible as all of these things are...as tragic as life can be....one day...things won't be so bad anymore. Because time passes...and though it might not heal all wounds...time does go on...it softens the jagged edges...smoothes the cracks...

I have really bad days sometimes...everybody does. Maybe I'm an eternal optimist...one of those people that everybody hates...I can bounce back from a bad day, or a series of bad days, and come out smiling.

It's just interesting. That's all.

"I'd rather be skipping." -T.M.

"BE BRAVE" -my ring

I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I haven't worked since last Friday...I had this entire week off....please don't make me go back....

I finally feel relaxed. I was driving home from work on my last day, and I could literally feel the muscles in my shoulders loosen. I could feel myself lighten. It was so wonderful. And now, as I write this, I'm tensing up again.

I need to go away for a while. I need to just go somewhere where nobody knows me....maybe not to live but to visit....just for a little while. I want to run away from my life.  

Alright....deep breaths everybody...I'm back!

Vegas was...interesting.....to say the least. I'd love to go again, but not with my parents and sister and ten-year-old brother. I felt like I should have been walking around covering his eyes!!!

It's definately appropriately named.....

Anyway....what's up this weekend?

"It's not hopelessness that I feel, rather the lack of, which could be infinately more frightening if I were able to feel a sense of fear. I lack anything....it's as though my soul has lost it's substance and my heart is suspended in an empty fluid. I wish for alarm...for fear....for a depression so overwhelming that my brain would crack open and spill onto the asphalt. ....I look at the suffering that I cause and I think of the dirt under my nails. I pay special attention to the cobweb in the corner. The tears mean as much as the laundry I should be doing now. And this is the ultimate atrosity....that I should feel nothing for the lives I have touched for so long. Yet, I cannot bring myself to care. I cannot summon pity, shame, guilt....I feel nothing. I am nothing." -T.M.

"He could not name the thing he wanted of life. He felt it here, in this wild loneliness. But he did not face nature with the joy of a healthy animal--as a proper and final setting; he faced it with the joy of a healthy man--as a challenge; as tools, means and material. So he felt anger that he should find exultation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost when he would return to men and men's work. He thought that this was not right; that man's work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them. But he dreaded the sight of the first house, poolroom and movie poster he would encounter on his way. 

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto--or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers--show me yours--show me that it is possible--show me your achievement--and the knowledge will give me courage for mine."-Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Just something that I wanted to share.....hope everybody's week is fabulous. I need to talk to someone about Ayn Rand, by the way. Let me know if you've read her.

(^^)