A New Blog for Stork

Greetings, old friends!

Is there anyone still out there?

This will be my last entry here, as I have started a new blog.

Heisenberg will be two years old on the 26th, if you can believe it. As I have mainly been chasing her, I have written little to nothing since she was born.

Now that she is more mobile and I have more help, I am chomping at the bit to be writing again. Although this space was WILDLY, crazily important to me and more importantly INVALUABLE - I have a couple of reasons for writing this last entry, and starting anew someplace else:

1.) I feel like the people this blog will help the most are people still in the TTC trenches - and those people are also possibly the ones that would be HURT the most by reading about someone with a baby. So I'd like to leave it here where they are *mostly* safe from baby talk, and if/when they are up for it, they can find me!!

2.) Seeing as I haven't written in 9 million years, I need a fresh start with no reminder that there was ever a lag!


The new blog is NOT a "Mommy Blog" - I'm just going to be writing about whatever the hell I feel like - but that will sometimes include Heisenbaby. (But mostly ranting).

I love you ALL and thank you so much for finding silliness in the awful with me when I so desperately, desperately needed it.

So IF and when you're ready - please, please come find me and I'll be waiting! (I should also mention that while this one is anonymous, the new one is not. If someone from IRL asks me for the stork link I'll give it to them, but I'd like to try to avoid them getting it without my knowing first, if that makes sense. So I'm just Jenny, over there.)

New blog is called "Dear Moof" and you can find it here.

So very much love to all.

A Petty Facebook Fight

Happy Saturday, my fellow fucked-fecundity friends.

The wee one is at Grandma's for the night. I've been unsupervised for 2 hours and feel as though I'm doing something illegal. About once a month she has a babycation there for an evening (good for marriage, good for sanity, good for baby - what happens at Grandmas stays at Grandmas and all that).  While others may scoff at this once-a-month-plan I know that it's good for us - however, every single time I spend about two hours blissfully doing nothing, followed by becoming completely bored and inevitably staring at pictures of her and willing myself not to clean because that seems like a lamesauce waste of a day off.

This week was marked by weirdness but yesterdays gem takes the cake. A cousin of mine, who is not someone I talk to more than once a year, called me out on Facebook for, apparently, posting my entire life online.

As is the usual, once daylight hits and Heisenbaby woke up I took her into our bed and shoved my boob in her mouth to try to talk her into dozing for a bit longer. When it worked for her and not for me, I pulled out my phone to dick around. Facebook asked me if I would allow it to post a tagged post to my timelines...

Damn me for not taking a picture of this because I knew it would get deleted eventually, but to paraphrase:

'Shout out to my cuz Stupid Stork. She has a high IQ and her sense of humor rivals mine...'

(DEAR GAWD IN HEAVEN)

'.... I don't unfriend I just remove people from my feed, it's nothing personal. I just don't need your every move, your every selfie, your every pity party, your every issue. No love lost.'

Now in the event we're not friends on the dreaded FertileBook (and why the eff aren't we? EXPLAIN YOURSELVES) you should know I am psychotically, unabashedly goofy on there.

You could complain about the number of pictures of Heisenbaby, and I would respect it.

I know how obnoxious baby pictures can be - and I put her cute ones into albums like "March 2015" for example. Bub doesn't particularly like that I post pics of her online, and I know how it is when you're trying (5 years, ya'll) seeing babies online. My reasoning for it is I waited so. long. There are a few things I don't do out of sensitivity and some I allow myself because they were things I was so looking forward to as a Mom and don't want to deny myself (which is hard). I'm not a California native so this is a way to keep in touch with people (who are all. over. the. place.) without actually having to keep in touch via 4,000 different avenues and frankly it's a good place to store some of her photos in case anything happens to them.  So you could be irritated by that, for sure, and I'd totally get why a person would want to 'unfollow'.

You could also be irritated that I'm so silly. I LOVE silly - LOVE. Some people don't. I just don't see Facebook as the avenue to bare my soul.

Which is why the rest of it is SO. CONFUSING. Self pity? Selfies? Issues?

The closest I have to a pity party is when I posted a few days ago my plan to meet new Mom friends: Sit atop tree in front yard. Bring large butterfly net. Wait.

I feel like the sarcasm is pretty evident in that one. It genuinely didn't occur to me that I should make clear that I'm not ACTUALLY sitting in a tree hoping to catch Mom friends. UNDIAL 911.

What makes this even more confusing is that this is a person who I talk to maybe at the family Christmas party for 5 minutes and I had absolutely no idea they were paying attention to what I was doing on Facebook.

Even more confusing, what is the point of tagging me in a public post? There is a handy-dandy unfollow button and I would be none the wiser. (It should be noted, that he does consider himself a bit of a thug I suppose - so my only guess is sharing this made him think he would seem very particular, coveted, badass... The flaw in this plan is that I'm a 33 year old writer/stay at home Mom so the only street cred I could give him is if he wanted to have a dance off. I do a mean robot.)

I commented 'What is happening?' and then a few minutes later I was going to post 'somehow I will move on and pick up the pieces of my life, surely there is a support group for people like me' but it had since been deleted.

So I posted the following:

I thiiiiink (?) it was just pointed out to me I put my whole life on Facebook? So now I'm going to narrate my every move to you IN ALL CAPS. BUBBA JUST PUT THE DOGS IN YOU GUYS.

And spent my day, when I had a free moment, making the following observations:

YOU GUYS I JUST GOT TO A DOCTORS OFFICE AND THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO PARKING BUT THERE WAS A PIGEON.

YOU GUYS EVERYTHING IN THIS BUILDING IS TAUPE I THINK TAUPE IS GOING TO BE HUGE IN THE DOCTORS OFFICE DECOR CIRCUIT.

TAUPE IS A GAME CHANGER. I REPEAT, TAUPE IS A GAME CHANGER.

YOU GUYS IT'S SO HARD TO DRESS FOR THE GYNECOLOGIST I'M TORN BETWEEN EASY ACCESS AND PLAYING HARD TO GET.

YOU GUYS I WAS JUST PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED BY A BUTTERFLY ON MY PORCH.

YOU GUYS MY DOGS SQUEAKY TOY ELEPHANT JUST REAPPEARED AFTER BEING MISSING FOR OVER A YEAR. QUESTIONING WHETHER HE WAS ON VACATION. VIVA HARRY ELEFANTE.

YOU GUYS WHY ISN'T WACHOVIA'S SLOGAN 'WACHOVIA WE WATCH OVA YA'.

YOU GUYS I THOUGHT I HAD A CANCEROUS LOOKING MOLE BUT IT TURNED OUT TO JUST BE A STRAY BIT OF HEISENBABY POOP.

YOU GUYS I HAVE NO IDEA WHY PEOPLE THINK HUMMINGBIRDS ARE AWESOME EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME I HEAR ONE I THINK IT'S A GINORMOUS BEE AND I HIT THE DECK.

YOU GUYS I HAVE THE FEELING WILFRED BRIMLEY'S MUSTACHE IS AUTONOMOUS.

(Source.)

In other news, yesterday I found out I'm getting a laparoscopy hopefully as soon as possible (first one in 15 years). I've been in crazy pain for quite a few months, so they're going to open me up to see what's the haps and if necessary look into an excision surgery.

So on a bright note, my cousin actually gave me a lovely distraction. Asshat. 

An Oversimplification of Everything I Know About Pregnancy Volume 1

Happy Saturday, ladies of interwebs.

I reread that title and not to sound the dreaded spoiler alert alarm but the answer is NOTHING.

I know NOTHING.

I caaaaaan, however, give a run down of what it was like for me. Which still means close to nothing because if I've learned anything it's that the yet-to-be-pregnant infertiles are far more qualified than I (like I've said before who gets out of the arctic waters and into a lifeboat first is completely illogical) and that the ever-so-boring adage of 'pregnancy is different for everyone' is unfortunately/fortunately true. I did mid-pregnancy attempt to record some observations here, but now I have the benefit of hindsight and something resembling sanity.

I'll still give the rundown for a few reasons. First, I was scarcely present during my pregnancy. Second, I need to be more present now and we have some catching up to do. Third, and most important, if/when you're pregnant maybe you'll run across one thing and go 'yesssss!!!!' because I myself found catharsis wildly helpful.

So again let's rewind many-moons so we can get to the present one. Forgive me for my utter lack of logical order, and for spreading this across a few entries.

(My pregnancy in a nutshell - note the excessive amounts of sweat and desperation).

1. If you have to do PIO shots for many weeks, don't panic your ass may eventually go dead. Mine did. The first week was a nightmare - Bub complained (HA) that you could actually hear the needle ripping through layers of skin, and it regularly felt like he was hitting my tail bone. We need to start making "IT GETS BETTER" videos for this.

2. Don't have a birth plan, or at least have a very loose one. Okay that sounded bossy. Forgive me. The argument for my case - the whole labor and delivery process is like riding a fucking bull. By all means, visualize the hell out of it if it eases some anxiety before mounting it. But if you try to choreograph every one of the 8 seconds  from the point of your toes to the flow of the bulls hair, while that's adorably type A it will probably be utterly useless information mid-ride and only serve to create unneeded anxiety. Just mount the damn thing and hang on for dear life.

3. No matter how pregnant you are when it occurs to you maybe you should change your Doctor - if it occurs to you at all, change him.

4. You may go completely batty. I don't mean adorable romantic comedy about a pregnant woman batty, I mean someone should be chasing you with a giant butterfly net batty. 

An Example: Stork is not the most emotional of beasts in her natural state. I maybe have 2 good cries a year. I have that man-quality of if you have a problem, solve it. 1 + 2 = 3, what goes up must come down, etc. etc. 

At one point when I was very pregnant, I was retrieving something out of Bubba's car when I saw a single, solitary dry noodle in his passenger seat. It took five seconds for my brain, hopped up on hormones, to conclude that this CLEARLY meant he was having an affair with some noodle eating whore. Obviously some boney ass harlot had enchanted my husband, and insisted he buy her cheap Chinese take out before doing her high-on-lo-mein twerking routine on his crotch. I do not exaggerate when I say that this was the ONLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION MY BRAIN COULD CREATE.

So after approximately 75 heated texts to him, he simply responded 'I know you're not feeling well, but are we really getting divorced over a noodle?' to which I replied 'What's the bitches name?'

5. You will spend weeks looking paunchy but not quite pregnant. On some visceral level you will know that you're one of those obnoxious girls sticking out a post-pizza-belly and saying "OMG I'm so huge look at this". Conclude you will never look or feel pregnant. Then one day, you or someone will take a picture of you and as if it happened overnight - holy shit you look pregnant.

( Bedroom prior to demolition.)

6. Your baby will move when you're trying to sleep and sleep when you want her to move.

7. You will have a symptom. You will get used to said symptom. You will finally feel relaxed in that you know what a healthy pregnancy feels like. Said symptom will totally disappear causing panic. Symptom will be replaced by totally foreign symptom, causing even more panic. Wash, rinse, repeat until Doctor says "she's crowning".

8. Take a gawddam babymoon. This is more important than a birth plan. This will be the last time you will be able to have sex with traditional sound effects, no rush, and no one wondering if the 3 week old lump in a bassinet has any concept of what is happening. And on the subject of things that are more important than birth plans, get a membership to Amazon Fresh.

9. If during your pregnancy you have any passing flirtation with a summer or late spring month, check that your air conditioning is in working order long before. Check that shit. Check it now. On a 100 degree day I came home, found that it wasn't working, hurled myself on the ground in an epic temper tantrum and declared I would be spending the rest of my pregnancy at the Beverly Hilton. I had the emotional maturity of a two year old until some sainted swarthy Russian man agreed to come fix it within the hour. We are all lucky there were no casualties.

10. All the things you said you would never do or feel as a pregnant infertile, you will do them and you will feel them. Forgive yourself.

Birth Story Part 3

The Grand Finale...

The young nurse literally has her hand still in me, and is calling for the older nurse. (I NEED AN OLD PRIEST AND A YOUNG PRIEST).

(Source.)

They explain to me that the baby is ready to pop out and that the Dr. is on his way, we're just going to hope he makes it.

There is a flurry of activity around me - they're setting shit up for an actual BABY TO BE IN THE ROOM.

Let's pause on how strange that is. 5 years of trying to get one of these things, a pregnancy that went by in the blink of an eye (during most of which I was completely insane but we'll get to that in another entry) and there's going to be a baby soon. My baby. In the room. Just like we were. I had spent all night looking at her little bassinet in the room not being able to put that together.. and now she was going to be here. It was like if someone authoritatively said "the unicorn and leprechaun will be here soon - we need to get the pots together to collect gold and chop chop with setting up your cameras so you can take pictures of their choreographed dance of celebration". WHAT. ARE YOU. TALKING. ABOUT.

I remember the nurses hand was in me as if she was holding things together (it was awhile - if it were the 50s she would have had to have pinned me by now so as to not create a social scandal). Around this time Bub started to look peaked.

Correction... Looking back, Bub looked increasingly peaked that whole night starting from when my water broke and I completely went off the pain rails. It's a moment where I completely and utterly handed over alpha status to him, I think (normally we're pretty even stevens - I don't do damsel in distress, but boy was I in distress). They say that a woman becomes a Mother the moment she learns she's pregnant (and in my experience, years before then, really) but a man becomes a Father when his child is born. This, in my experience, was 1000 % true. I don't think Bub viscerally got what was happening until those last few hours (which makes me pity men, really, because that's quite a short little period to have it sink in).  So I didn't really notice it at the time, but in hindsight he did start to get this wild, panicked look in his eyes when things started moving along. 

And he's a type 1 diabetic so looking peaked generally means shits hitting the fan, anyway. So I remember even though I was about to push a HUMAN BEING FROM MY LOINS they were thrusting juice at him and insisting he sit down because he would not be the first father to hit the ground.

I was aware of way more people being in the room than moments before, and that this was probably the most attention I was ever going to get in my life. The older nurse sort of took over in the event that Heisenbaby popped out while the Doctor was parking.  

I was on my back, a nurse holding one leg and Bub holding the other. Mind you, after an epidural your legs are USELESS. And I was approximately 948 lbs at this point and Bub was on the particularly useless right side (I don't think the epidural fully kicked in on my left side) which meant I was not helping him at. all. She explained to push like I was going to poop.

I realize poop is taking a larger part in this story than one would perhaps think.... I would like to assure any pregnant women reading this that I in fact DID NOT POOP on the table. I think it was in part because I have endo and am always to some degree constipated, and I had had drugs that stopped me up pretty good. But a poop free experience is possible! 

ANYWAYS.

I can also thank my endo and constipation because pooping a particularly tricky poop is something I have experience in. So I started pushing right at 8 AM.

The older nurse who was seemingly less nervous than the younger nurse kept saying "wow! you are a GOOD pusher!"

Honestly, the pushing part? Easy pacheezy. After all the needles, heartbreak, chemical pregnancies, a miscarriage, Pitocin, getting pre-partum OCD and wondering if I would ever have anything that resembled a real family - easy. Easy, easy, easy. 

I couldn't really feel too much of what was happening, but I was familiar with the concept of poop, like I said. So I just went like I was constipated. Wouldn't have known anything was happening except for the shouts of 'good job!' and 'wow we have a pusher on our hands!'. Bub to my right, looking increasingly gaunt.

The Doctor arrived, the nurse told him I was a fantastic pusher, he said 'oh great', and she shuffled to my side.

He told me I was making great progress with every push. They asked me if I wanted a mirror to see the progress I was making... Now, for the entire 37 weeks I was shouting about how I would NEVER do this but the beauty of not having a birth plan is I was playing it by ear. So I said no the first time, and then I asked for it. I won't lie to you - it was really gross. But there was HAIR coming out of my patootie. HAIR. I was actually doing something.

When my nurse discovered the baby's head was in my vaginal canal I had Bub text my Mom to tell her we were getting to the gory part. So around this time she arrived, while my legs were akimbo and there was a mirror at my crotch. She came teary eyed to my head and brushed my hair out of my face and I had never been so happy to see her. We didn't have her for the actual birth so we just said our hellos and that she loved me and I was doing great - and that really was the last push that had it sink in that this was happening. (We didn't have her there for the birth only because we figured it'd be gory - and now that I have Heisenbaby I dunno if I'd be able to see her in that kind of pain.)

So when Mom left the room it was like 'okay, everybody's here... here we go.'

They would have me take a deep breath, let it out, take another deep breath and hold it while I pushed while they counted to ten. I remember staring at the ceiling and thinking I wasn't doing anything, but they kept reassuring me that I was doing great and I was meant to push.

On my second to last push I remember them saying "waaaaait! stoooooop!!!!!" which I didn't think too much of at the time. They paused for a moment, said it'd be one more push and she'd be out.

There was a great big gush - even greater than when my water broke. HUGE. Like you wouldn't think a human being could hold that much water, even knowing how much water we are. (As Bub so romantically put it later - it was like watching the people shoot out of the mountain at the end of Splash Mountain at Disneyland). And out she popped, and it was like a huge relief like you had had a 7 lb splinter someone finally removed in one, long piece.

The Doctor held her up, and she made a little squeak at which point Bub started to cry. I don't remember this part except Bub's reaction because I couldn't. Believe. It was happening. 

At 8:27 AM I was 37 weeks and 3 days pregnant. At 8:28 AM on July 26, 2014 she was born 7 lbs 10 oz. They put her on my chest. She didn't cry, she just looked like she was sleepy (and covered in goo since she was early). I stared at her for a solid minute I couldn't believe she was here. The only person I could coherently address was God.

At first everything was hunky dory, we were in mommy and baby bliss. Then she started panting. The nurse at first said it was normal - then when she kept doing it and doing it a little faster, they took her from me and called in one of the NICU Doctors. 

They started sewing me up (the "waaaait! stoooop!!!" part was my being a little too good at pushing and ripping my inside a little bit) and my Mom came back in the room. I said "the baby is over there!" and pointed at her little nook, and realized I was talking about my baby for the first time as a person.

They wheeled her out, and Daddy and Grandma followed. This was the loneliest time in my entire life.  It was just me, thinner and with some nurses who suddenly felt like strangers.

A million years later when Grandma and Daddy returned, they were both in tears. I asked how she was and my Mom said she was fine, they were doing x-rays, they just think her lungs weren't quite prepared for out-of-the-womb existence quite yet. I pointed at Bub who is an eternal pessimist and said 'I want to hear what he says. How is she?" and he said "I don't know". 

In short, her lungs were just adjusting to being outside. There was a day of fast breathing and looking like this which was terrifying  -

(That's her with her Daddy's finger).

She was the biggest and the loudest in the NICU. They frequently called me in the middle of the night exasperated to tell me my child was making a ruckus. It was terrifying and she was there for 6 days, and it was a heart breaking place to be. About once a week I think of a Mom who daily would hold her tiny, tiny baby and sing these heartbreaking lullabies to them.  Or the YOUNG couple who a day later were in the same boat as us - seeing the painfully young Father in basketball shorts looking completely bewildered like he didn't realize where he was.

Someday I'll write about that week. Someday.

BUT... she came home after a week and has been a completely healthy, crazy ham ever since. 

At least once a day it strikes me how fucking lucky we are and I could just weep.

Birth Story Part 2

Happy Thursday, Ladies of Broken Uteri.

Where were we? AH YES.

So I woke up around 5 AM ish - and I believe I texted Bub again to say 'no seriously something's happening'. I just felt... different. The best way I think I can describe it is it was like my body was more sensitive to gravity... things were heavier, lower, less in my control.

I think he arrived early in the morning, and my nurse started Pitocin.

I'm about to tell you something about Pitocin that will either be a great relief and you'll find it to be true, or at some point in time you're going to be in a room shouting in your head that I'm a liar: for me, at least, Pitocin wasn't that bad. The one 'okay fine I'll try to find a positive' thing about infertility is that, for me at least, all the 'pains' of labor seemed small. Petty. 'Is this the best you got?' and 'yeah.. but there's such a great thing at the end of this'.

It forces contractions. It's not like it feels good, but it's mostly just a strange sensation. It's like if you were laying down, not utilizing any of your muscles at all but someone was bicycling your legs furiously. Your body is doing something that somehow feels totally separate from you - and using the bicycle metaphor it's not so bad as long as you're not furiously trying to bicycle in the other direction. Contractions felt a bit like... If you're sitting in one of those massage chairs when you're getting a pedicure? And there's like that rolly bit that rolls down your back hard... only if that rolly bit were on the inside of your stomach.

It was a lot of me asking the nurse if we could crank it up some more. They start you at a low dose, and slowly increase it - I think it goes up to a max level of 20.

While others would wildly disagree with me - I should say that the BEST labor/birth/delivery advice I can give a person is to NOT HAVE A BIRTH PLAN. It was by far the best pregnancy related decision I made for myself. When I was 6 months pregnant I could not get enough of reading birth stories. Could not. get. enough. And as I was trying to put together a birth plan for myself, there was only one common thing I could gleam from reading so many stories... The women who had strict birth plans - it never went as they planned it, and it seemed to take something from their experience. They were always ecstatic that the baby came out healthy, obviously, but there was always an element of 'I just wish it could've gone the way I wanted it to'. So I decided to just scrap having one altogether and however she wanted to come out, that's how she was going to come out. And I'm so glad that I decided to go into it like that because by most standards I did NOT have the ideal birth - and it was friggin awesome.

ANYHOO.

Somewhere late Friday afternoon, my Pitocin was turned up into the teens. The only thing I really didn't like about this situation was that I was most comfortable on my side, but I couldn't stay on my side for too long because they would lose the baby on the monitor. So I had to stay on my back, watch TV, wonder if this baby was going to be born on the 25th or the 26th, and watch the light change outside of my room window.

They checked my cervix a few times - but honestly, for the most part they couldn't find it. It involved pushing and stretching and crazy positions and that thing was just not having it (honestly - had it not been for the pre-e I think I would've had to have been induced at 42 weeks. Girlfriend was snug as a bug in a rug.)

The drug options were epidural, and stadol (which they just put in your IV and takes the edge off). By 4 or so on Friday I was not quite ready for an epidural (if I was still grossed out by the idea of a bed pan then I figured I was still good to go without) so I decided to give the Stadol a try.

Thank you G-d I got a nurse during this shift who was great with words and explaining things, and she explained it perfectly. First of all, she said when she gave it to me she was going to give the heave ho to Bub and herself so I could enjoy it solo. Second, she said "you're still going to be in pain... you're just not going to care." And that last bit, friends, was the perfect description of this drug.

LADIES. If you want some good drugs, try the Stadol before you do the epidural. Holy guacamole I was high as a kite. It was the sort of high where you have to ask yourself 'did I just say that out loud? What am I talking about? Who am I talking to?' It lasted about an hour and after 17 hours of labor it was the perfect little break. And she was exactly right - I was still in pain, but I couldn't have cared less.

Somewhere around 8, I finally left my little monitoring room and went into the big delivery room. This was sort of a symbolic and crazy transition because this was THE room they kept shoving me in for months whenever I came in for monitoring. The idea that I was done with the monitoring and onto the big show was crazy - and my belly, husband, nurse and endless cords and contraptions travelled 10 very long feet to the big room. I was only 1 cm but since I had been in labor for almost a day, we knew one way or another she was going to have to come out soon.

At this point I had also had an Ambien which also helped me relax. Around 10 something my Doc came and visited me in the big room, and said 'I was kind of hoping you had had an epidural by now if you were going to have one so we could break your water'. He went on the epic hunt for my cervix again, with the crazy pushing and stretching and crazy positions, and before I knew what was happening he broke my water. It was like I was holding a giant, overfilled water balloon at the top of my vajay for months without realizing it, and it popped and went all over the place. It popped, it gushed, it continued to drip - you don't really realize how much water you can hold onto. It was inhuman.

He said 'things may move along very quickly now' and left the room to go about his Doctor business.

I got up to pee (still dripping like I had had the bad seat on a log flume ride) and still felt fairly normal. When I got to the bathroom, I noticed what can only be described as a giant loogey in my underwear (seriously - it's like my vajay had a sinus infection) and went pee. No exaggeration - and you can see it in the above pic it's about 7 feet - between walking from the toilet back to the bed, I went from feeling fairly good for a woman who had been in labor for 24 hours to feeling like I was DYING. DY. ING.

For me, at least, the flirtation with possibly going into labor was very long. The active labor and delivery part went SO quick. It took my body forever to get the hint but when it did it went into overdrive. I had been able to be my fairly jokey self and think about other things other than pain, and I thought 'hmm maybe if I don't have to have a c-section I won't even need an epidural' but literally in the seven feet between toilet and bed that all went out the window. This was the part where you can feel a shift from being the woman in charge, the 'it'll be okay honey we're going to have a baby and it's going to be awesome' to being totally and completely at the mercy of your partner because you can no longer do anything except be in labor. Your entire mind is PAIN. Relinquishing yourself to it and being afraid of it all at once. It's completely counter intuitive - like if you were attacked by a mountain lion and your only way out was to let him do what he wants so he'd eventually leave you alone.

I'm going to describe what this feels like because again, I was obsessed with reading about it and it's a close to impossible thing to describe so I'm gonna have to try to throw my hat in the description ring, here.

Imagine your body, your entire life, is like a closed tulip. And then suddenly, in labor, the tulip opens to the point where it almost feels as though the petals have reversed themselves entirely and are pointing down. You open from the inside out. Suddenly.

It was as if someone had dropped me from the roof of my house and I landed on my tailbone. It felt like everything in my torso shattered, widened, separated, made room. A sensation it was always capable of and even though you know that logically, there's no way to really appreciate how dramatic it is until it's happening (thank gawd otherwise we'd never do it).

Within minutes I felt like a ghost, like there was no way a human being could have this kind of sensation without it meaning death (and I've had kidney stones, surgeries, endometriosis - I have a freakishly high pain tolerance as a result of chronic clumsiness). You can barely make me out of this photo I look like something in a Japanese horror movie:

Bub pulled out our little portable sound system and put Pandora on my 'kill yourself' station (Sigur Ros) which always relaxes me. This bought me about a half of an hour.

The nurses all day had said how impressed they were with my pain tolerance and the Pitocin, same with my Doctor. I called the nurse in and said "I think I'm almost ready for my epidural". Bub sort of half suggested maybe I wait a little bit longer if I could, and the nurse took one look at me and said 'you know, if we call the anesthesiologist now I think it'd be a good idea because she'll take awhile to get here'. It was about 40 minutes between that conversation and her getting there, and it was the longest 40 minutes of my life, during which I kept asking when she'd arrive.

The anesthesia lady looked tired (this was the middle of the night at this point) and out of it, I didn't care. They rolled me over on my side and the nurse and anesthesiologist put the needle in and started to thread the epidural. It didn't feel right to me - I kept saying 'this doesn't feel right' which they didn't take seriously because I had never had an epidural before and of course it wasn't going to feel right. Then there was a giant popping sound (it felt like my spine had unnaturally cracked) and they took it out. Then they did it a second time and it worked - about 10 minutes later sweet relief (my back popped strangely for about a month after this.)

I will not be the girl to tell you to have a natural birth. I get that that is important to some people - but in my opinion, I am SO GLAD that I had it because I was able to enjoy myself from that moment forward. And I think with fertility treatments, and the pain of endo, PCOS, whatever - dude, your kid isn't going to question how much pain you were willing to go through for them. And I was able to be mentally present after it kicked in - because I was NOT able to be mentally present without it. I wouldn't have even been able to focus on the fact that this had anything to do with having a baby that's how much space was taken up in my brain by the word PAIN. So my advice is, if you're going au natural, to at least give yourself some wiggle room if you need it. Labor is different for everyone, but I'm a fucking kickass she-beast and I had drugs. Doesn't make me any less of a kung fu panda.

Once the meds kicked in, Bub looked a lot less panicked, and we drifted in and out of sleep. Him on his Daddy couch and me in my bed. It was awesome - and it was the last few peaceful hours where it would be just the two of us. EVER. And I could think on that.

I kept waking up every hour or so thinking "hmmm...do I have to poop?' You know how when you have just a massive poop coming and you can slowly feel it creeping down your body until it's at death con 5 level and you have to get to a bathroom? (Endo girls I know you feel me). So every hour or so I would wake up, think about Bub and how much I loved him, and then think "wait.. do I have to poop?" and then the next hour I would wake up and it would be worse, and I would start to panic about how exactly I was going to take this massive poop bedridden and long for the days where I couldn't even take a poop with Bub in the same zip code.

Around 7:30 in the morning a new, young nurse came in to check my cervix. As she was prepping she was telling me about how since it was my first child and I was only 1 cm a few hours ago, to not get frustrated if I hadn't progressed that much. I told her about my poop sensation and she brushed it off as probably just the beginnings of labor pains. She told me there had only been a couple of freakish occurrences like this in her career where people had to have Doctors rush in because the baby was almost out, but more than likely I would have just progressed a little and we would be calling the Doctor in a couple of hours.

She put her hand up me, her eyes got wide and she shouted "OKAY..... DON'T MOVE!!!!!!!"

To be continued....