Thursday, July 31, 2008

I Love You C

So today I am writing a post dedicated to the one dedicated to me.

I haven't had the best track record with relationships and neither has he. My last one was 5 years long and riddled with abuse. It wasn't so much the physical abuse, but more emotional, financial and isolation. A lot of people don't even realize they are being abused because they assume if it isn't physical then it isn't abuse. This is very untrue. I was one of those people. I was miserable with the man I was with, but I thought I "loved" him, and I was too scared to leave. He had isolated me from my friends and family, I had nowhere to go. If I moved out I'd be on the streets, he basically had me trapped. Until C came along. At that point I had had enough of my ex's controlling. When he told me I wasn't allowed to see or talk to my friend I told him it was my life and I'd do what I wanted to.

When we had that fight one night at 3am and he locked me out of the apartment who came to get me? C did. He's loved me and stood by me no matter what. When I broke my arm in half and had to have major surgery who spent the entire week in the hospital, sleeping half in a chair and half at the foot of my bed? C. He left only for work, and came back immediately after, he held my hand when I was scared, calmed me down whenever I was upset, gave me the courage to make it through. He took care of me when I couldn't do anything on my own, including bathe or pull up my pants or open doors.

And he opened my eyes to my abusive relationship. Not by forcing me to leave my ex, but by telling me that things weren't quite right. I realized it when I was doing research on something for him, I was looking up abuse and came across a list. It was "How to tell you're being abused" And as I read through this list I suddenly realized I could check off everything. The first thing I did was write C an email about it, and told him that I knew it was time to leave..

When I broke up with my ex I moved in with C and his room mates.. We fell in love and have been there ever since :P. It only made sense that after being there for each other for so long and being so dedicated to one another.

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Last night we went to the inlaws, and stayed a lot longer than I wanted to. I was cranky and tired when we finally left. I snapped at him and was just plain mean. I wasn't trying to be, but I was just so frustrated. And trust me, you spend 7 hours in a cloud of smoke (I HATE smoke. I make my parents go outside, but over there I can't. They just yell at you that it's their house.) and listening to his parents insult their children and each other and so on and so forth. I mean it wasn't all bad. There was icecream, and some of it was tame and uneventful. But really I would have been happier leaving much earlier than 9:30 at night. Especially since I had to work at 7 this morning.

Anyway we got home and I bitched and complained and was frustrated. He apologized and asked me what he could do to help me feel better. We spent the next 45 mins doing stretches and yoga in the living room in some gentle candle light, then he lovingly gave me a candle lit bath, dried me off and massaged my whole body.. Then we made love and fell asleep in each other's arms..

It sounds like I'm writing a cheesy romance novel I know. But it really happened exactly like that. So I just want to say thank you C, for everything you do for me. I never thought after such a horrible abusive relationship that I could be so happy with someone, and have someone who cares so much for me..

I love you.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Cannot Fathom..

Ok, so I admit I am painfully aware that every parent/caregiver makes mistakes (I accidentally closed the bathroom door while the baby I take care of, lets call her N, had her fingers in the hinge.. oopsie and ouchie.. she forgave me though) but sometimes I am apalled at some of these mistakes.

On my way to work today we were driving down the same busy street we always drive down, 4 lanes, high speed traffic. All of a sudden we're stopping in the middle of the street (no lights or crosswalks near by.) And what do I see, a tiny little girl, must be about two years old, walking back and forth in traffic! Luckily everyone had come to a complete stop on either side of the road. Searching either side of the road (there are houses on both sides though why anyone would want to live on such a busy street is beyond me) I see no parents/adults/caregivers in sight. And as I'm about to leap out of the car to grab her (we were aways back in the line of traffic from the girl) two elderly people get out in the front of the line and help the little girl cross to the house she is pointing at. They go and knock on the door and a dog leaps up at the screen, and is quickly shoved aside by a lady (I'm assuming the mom) who grabs the child and it appears she gives her a good whatfor as she drags her into the house. (Verbally, not physically that I saw.)

I just about had a heartattack. Here is a baby girl probably the same age as N, out in the middle of the road crossing back and forth by herself. I know parents make mistakes.. but you live on a very busy street, think about a.) investing in a fence, b.) keeping your doors locked so baby can't open them and go outside on her own.. or c.) my favourite of all, watch your toddler a little better. I barely leave N alone to go to the bathroom, half the time I take her in with me, and this is in her own house.. I understand you don't want a toddler tied to your leg all day long, and maybe I am paranoid but there is just so much she could hurt herself on.. She could climb up onto the couch and fall off, she could tip over the tv stand and crush herself.. I mean she is 2 she gets into everything!

When I do have to leave her for a few moments, like if I need to take a shower uninterrupted for a minute I'd put her in her excersaucer because she can't get out of that and it entertains her, and turn on some educational baby show. It isn't ideal and I only do it like once every few months, but at least I know that she is safe, and I leave the door open so I can hear her if she cries or whatever, (the tv is like 4 feet away from the bathroom, if I poked my head out I could see her and check on her). I don't know if I sound paranoid or what, but I watch her like a hawk because I couldn't imagine letting anything happen to her.

When I saw this baby out in the middle of traffic.. right after an emergency vehicle had passed down that street too, my heart just stopped. And an ambulance went by a few seconds after they had gotten her back in the house. I just hate to think what would have happened, she's very tiny had the ambulance not seen her and she walked out in front of it at the right moment she would have been history. I hate to feel like I am passing judgement on this mother for making a mistake.. I mean it might be a onetime thing.. maybe she turned around for second and the baby was gone.. It can happen so fast.. But on the other hand I keep thinking like couldn't you prevent that from happening a little better? I get that mothers have a million things to concentrate on at once and you get tired and little things slip past you.. but wow, just seeing that kind of thing makes my blood run cold.

What do you think? One time thing/accident? or neglectful mother who should be paying more attention?

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Quickening

Ok I will tell the story of my robotic arm.. Next post. Right now I am freaking out because I just felt the baby move for the first time tonight. C put his hand on my lower tummy and I felt it, like gentle waves rolling onto the beach.. His hand was still, it was crazy! Everytime I put my hand there nothing.. I can poke and prod at my stomach/uterus all day and baby ignores me but as soon as daddy puts his hand there baby starts up moving for him! Someone is a daddy's girl/boy/baby/seamonster..

Had another prenatal this morning and baby's heart is beating at 148 now. According to the old wives tale baby is now a girl. As opposed to last appointment when baby was at 134 and a boy. I joked to my nurse that the baby already has gender issues.. Poor thing..

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Memories

Warning: This contains some sad memories

So before writing my own posts I usually check in on all the blogs I read, and a common theme today seems to be memories, in one way or another so I am going to combine some of the comments I made on other people's blogs into a hopefully somewhat coherent post.

For some reason I seem to be dredging up some pretty sad/rough memories tonight. Like the death of my grama. She died when I was 11, I wish that meant I could be over it by now. I'm an adult, you'd think I could remember everything and not feel that pang of sadness, of missing her. I can still remember exactly what the inside of her purse smelled like. Juicy fruit and something almost indescribable. She was probably one sandwich short of a picnic basket at times, but a wonderful lively vibrant woman. She was Irish, and the passion that comes with the fiery red hair, and those loving green eyes is not to be taken lightly. The reason I say she was crazy is she had all those Irish superstitions that scare the piss out of you when you're a kid, and some I don't know if she made them up or if she heard them somewhere. She used to tell me and my brother that if we ate white sugar worms would grow in our stomaches. White sugar was a big no-no at grama's house.

She was only 4'9 or so at the end of her life, she had been probably 4'11 at some point but she shrunk in her old age (not that she lived to be too old, she was only 67 when she died) but for such a tiny woman you would not believe the size of her personality. She had no concept of 'indoor voice'. And she was not a lady that you messed with, she may have been small but boy could she fight, and swear like a sailor. She never hurt or yelled at (in an angry way) any of her kids or grandkids, but if anyone threatened her she could hold her own. (From what I've heard about her when she was younger, she used to get into bar fights and the like. Clearly by the time I was born she had passed this stage in her life, but she still had an air of "don't mess with me" about her).

She loved her grandkids dearly, and being the only granddaughter out of numerous grandchildren (all boys), I was like her little doll. She loved sewing and crochet, I learned from her how to make my own patterns and sew pretty much everything, and between her and my nana I learned to crochet as well. She would dress me up everytime I would visit, and take pictures of me in crocheted hats and handmade dresses wearing her "pearls" as she called them. (She had loads of costume jewellery).

It was very sad how she died. Towards the end of her life, I'd say the last 2 or 3 years, she began feeling sick and seeing her doctor frequently. He never gave any merit to the pains she was complaining about, and pretty much ignored her. He told her it was a cold or a flu, and gave her a new diet (not sure how that was supposed to get rid of this cold he was sure she had for 2 years..) Anyway in time it became so bad that my grampa decided she needed to be taken to the ER. They brought her in, and tested her for everything. They found out she had cancer and it had spread everywhere. There was no hope at all. They put her on chemo and told her that it wouldn't cure it, but it might slow it down.

All that it did was make her feel even more sick, and made her lose her hair. Which was something she had been very proud of her entire life was her beautiful auburn hair, even as she aged it never turned gray, she gained "gold" and "silver" hairs in amongst the red. She was very proud of her gold and silver hairs, and often I would comb her hair as a little girl while we sat on her bed and she told me made up stories.. Seeing her lose her hair was very painful. I resented the doctors, all of them. The one who had seen her for years and never even tested for anything, just sent her home with a list of foods not to eat. And these new ones, the oncologists who knew it would not help her, but gave her chemo anyway.

She lived long enough to come to my 11th birthday party. She died a few short days after. I remember the very last time I saw her, it was after the party. We were going to her house. My dad would not come with us, even though he loved my grama dearly (this is my mom's mother I'm speaking of). I didn't understand why at the time, but he explained it to me when I was much older. But I will always remember what my dad said to us before we left the house. With tears in his eyes he said "When you see your grama you give her a big hug and a kiss okay?" And I knew when he said that, that this would be the very last time I ever saw her. And it was. She died a few days later in the hospital surrounded by her children, and some of her sisters.

The night before she died, when my mom was staying at the hospital with her (actually it was the night she died, but I didn't know it at the time) I prayed that she would die. I went to bed that night asking the lord to take her up into heaven and take away all of her suffering. She was catholic, and even though I am not, I respect her beliefs and she was determined that she would be going to heaven, and so that was exactly where I wanted her to go. When my mother told me in the morning that grama had died, I didn't cry. I said "that's good." I wrote her a poem. I made an earthly offering for her of bits of nature, twigs and rocks and leaves. I wrote a letter that is to this day still sealed in an envelope. I no longer have any idea what it says.

She died early on Wednesday morning sometime in the wee hours of twilight. I did not cry for her death until Friday, at the funeral. And the only thing that got the tears flowing was a Hank Williams song, and no offense to anyone but I'm not a country fan. However my grama loved Hank Williams and a few days before she died, we had put on her cd for her, and she had asked that we dance because she no longer had the strength to. And when they played that song (Hey Good Lookin') at her funeral I burst into tears. It's the silliest thing, I mean that song is ridiculous. It would make me laugh if it didn't make me cry.

Anyway, wherever you are Dolly, I love you and I miss you and I think you know it. I hope you are taking care of papa, and Sophie.
I think Nemo is going to be like you, I can tell already somehow. I just have a feeling. You were one hell of a lady. And I'm so honoured that I got to know you, and be your granddaughter. I love you.


Next post I will tell you the story of Clancy, and how he got that name..

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

134

So according to some wives tales, anything under 140 is a boy and over is a girl. Well then I guess this little Nemo is a boy according to the heartrate and the old wives tales. We went again and listened to the heartrate today. Nice and strong, coming in at just under 140. Baby sounds healthy so far. The nurse said a lower heartrate means bigger baby, or something like that. Actually she used some analogy about elephants and mice, and said nothing about actually human babies. So maybe she was just going off on a tangent. Anyway this wasn't my usual nurse.

We decided to stop in at the Youville center after Baby & Me today, which is a clinic where they deal mostly with women's health, and educating people about health stuff, and breastfeeding, pregnancy, sex, all that. Because our Baby & Me group and our prenatal classess are run by people from Youville, and they mentioned that they will let you listen to the heartbeat at the clinic any time. And we have a student nurse doing her internship or whatever at Youville who comes to our Baby & Me. She hadn't witnessed hearing any baby heartbeats yet, so I gladly volunteered for her.

So she got to learn how to check for the heartbeat, and I got to check up on Nemo and make sure he/she is still swimming around in there. It's very reassuring for now to know that baby has a heartbeat, even if that could all change later. It's good enough for now. I'll deal with it later when any issues arrive..

Monday, July 7, 2008

Mocktails and Random Twinges

So I've set down a few times now to try and write this post. Odd I know. Cause I'm not even sure what this post is about. I want to mention that as I described in writing the feeling of a miscarriage talking about the blood and the pain, I felt a sharp twinge in my uterus. I'm not sure if it was a cramp or something or if it was the baby taking a swing at me. I'm apparently not supposed to feel any movement yet, but I did a few weeks ago I think. It felt like a fluttering, gentle, kind of tickly inside almost. Very odd. But this time it was sharp and sudden and I don't know what it was. It didn't really feel like a normal cramp. Not like my menstrual ones or the kind I had with the miscarriage. It was quick too, it was over as soon as I stopped thinking about the miscarriage in such graphic detail.

I don't know what to think of it. Every cramp, every twinge, every everything has me worried that I may have done something to doom this little one growing inside me who I've grown so attached to. Saturday marked my passage into second trimester and I must say I seem to have changed over night literally. I went from hating C for no apparent reason to clinging to him like a koala, and humping him randomly in the middle of.. well everything. I'm all of a sudden more horny, more loveydovey and sweeter than a honeypot full of chocolate. I'm not sure if my emotions have evened out so much as have gone the entire opposite way. Which so far I am enjoying far more than the fighting and screaming over nothing at all.

Tonight we're celebrating C's little sister's 18th birthday. Which means she's legal, and they're going to be drinking and she's sleeping over. Which is all well and good. I'm having shirley temples which I'm actually fairly excited about. The only thing is C isn't off work until midnight and I'm already passing out, plus I have to work at 7am tomorrow.. so this should prove to be fun. I want to take a nap right now, but I need to shower, and I have to go add more time to the laundry in 10 minutes. which is a pissoff. All it did with my clothes was make them hot and wet. As opposed to cold and wet. Gee thanks. Why call it a dryer at all? Why not call it a heater. Not to mention the washer left suds on everything.

I seriously hope these are the only things I have to complain about over the next 6 months. Just suds and machines that don't work properly to do the menial tasks in life. I want to hang on to this ability to be annoyed by the little things. Instead of overwhelmed by the big things. Little plum you stay strong in there, stay alive for mommy and daddy, we'll give you lots of love when you're born. And if you're really good sweetie and you make it full term and come out alive and kicking and screaming mommy will give you a tutu and a pony and a fire truck and uhm.. a kitten? And chocolate pudding, and wagon wheels. Just pleeeease be alright!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Bad Omens

Okay so I admit I might be superstitious of some of the stupidest things. Not the number 13, or Friday the 13th or 666 or black cats, none of that bothers me. However I will not open an umbrella inside the house, nor will I walk under a ladder. (Not so sure if that's because I'm afraid of bad luck or if I'm just afraid it will fall on me) But the worst of these superstitions is that I tend to draw signs from things. And I'm hoping that this sign is not what I think it is.

As I awoke this morning to find all my frogs belly up. I have no clue what happened. Maybe someone put tap water in their tank by accident, I don't know. But they are all mysteriously dead. I'm hoping this isn't some sort of commentary on my ability to keep things alive.
So my new plan for today is to convince myself that baby frogs and baby humans have nothing in common..

Thursday, July 3, 2008

No Internet Make Me Go Crazy

Ok wow it has been 1 week and I finally finally just got the internet today. I feel like I'm alive again. How did I write those last two posts you ask? Well I am nothing if not resourceful and determined. I used someone else's internet connection. haha. Oh the new apartment is so wonderful I feel like we're finally getting somewhere. Hearing the heartbeat was fantastic.

And this morning the baby I take care of was giggling so much when I tickled her with cookie monster I just about started crying. There is nothing like the sound of baby laughter. It just further convinces me that I will try as many times as I have to to get that. Here's hoping Nemo will be giggling by this time next summer..