Why I hate being pregnant

I don't actually hate being pregnant. I'm one of those glowy, happy (even through the constant back pain, heartburn, stomach stretching) pregnant women that wear pregnancy well. What I really hate is the worry. That fear you have from the moment you see the + sign until the moment the baby is put in your arms and you can see that everything is okay and they're healthy and perfect. That's what I can't handle.

I'm not a hypochondriac by any means, but with every pregnancy I carried around this sense of doom. With every little odd twinge of pain, or unexplainable "gut feeling", I grow more and more sure that something is wrong. Crazy? Maybe.

I got pregnant with Lily after 5 months of trying. Just a couple weeks after peeing on the stick I started bleeding. Not a lot, but it freaked me out so I ran to the emergency room. They told me I was having a threatened miscarriage. Miscarriage. That word made me throw up. But after an ultrasound confirmed that all was well the doctor sent me home with instructions to take it easy. He told me that if I was going to miscarry there was nothing they could do to stop it anyways. So after a few days when I started bleeding again I stayed home and cried. J didn't know what to do to help me. He was worried and freaked out. This continued on and off until I hit 12 weeks and we went to a friend's wedding in Mexico. As soon as we got there I stopped bleeding and my pregnancy went to completely normal, text book stuff. But for the next 6 months I ran to the bathroom 100 times a day anytime I thought I felt anything remotely like bleeding or cramping. It was stressful and emotionally draining. Lily was born almost 4 years ago and she's been a healthy happy kid from the moment she took her first breath.

When Lily was 14 months old we thought we were ready to start trying to get pregnant again. It happened pretty quickly which surprised me. And just like with Lily I started spotting shortly after reading the stick. I just figured this is what my body does and I rolled with it. We excitedly told family and friends that Lily was going to be a big sister. We started thinking about names and talking about how we needed a bigger house. But things were different. I can't explain how, but it just felt wrong. I told myself I was being paranoid and that everything with Lily had worked out great. I tried to relax but inside I was a twisted ball of stress and worry that I felt I couldn't share with anyone. Then one evening while Jason was out golfing I was sitting on the couch watching cartoons with Lily, surrounded by boxes ready to be moved to our new, bigger house that we needed for our growing family, when I got a sharp stabbing pain in my lower abdomen. It got stronger and stronger and soon I was curled up in the fetal position crying while Lily, just 16 months old was touching my face with her chubby little hand and smiling at me from the side of the sofa. I grabbed the phone and called the golf course and through tears asked them to find my husband on the course and send him home right away. Jason got home 15 minutes later and by then I had miscarried our baby. I was in tears and asked him to deal with putting Lily to bed as I couldn't stand up and couldn't stop crying.

The next few weeks were filled with sorrow and apologies and embarrassment. I apologized to Jason several times for my body failing us like that, to which he told me I was crazy, but I felt like I had really let him down. I was embarrassed to tell friends and family we were no longer pregnant as we had told everyone so early and I should have known better. Everyone was very supportive. It's amazing how many people confess to having had their own (secret) miscarriage when you tell them about yours.

It took me a few months to "get over it" (you actually never really get over that) and we decided to try again. I decided that I didn't want to waste any time and charted my temperature and took ovulation tests and sure enough we got pregnant in one try. But from the minute I saw that positive test I couldn't help but feel nothing but worry. Despite the fact that this pregnancy was "normal", I had no bleeding and no pain, I was so stressed out for the first 3 months I lost 9lbs. At 3 months we told family and friends we were pregnant and it was smooth sailing right up until Emily was born. But inside, I was still that twisted ball of stress and dread.

Now I'm pregnant again and the memory of that lost pregnancy still haunts me. Every little ache or pain I feel, every muscle or ligament pull sends me to a dark place where I fear for my unborn child's life. I'll be happy when this little guy arrives and I can hold him and know that he made it. Until then, worry. I hate being pregnant.

What I learned parenting someone else's kid

This is the last week of school. Kids everywhere are counting down the hours until they're free. And so am I.

For the last year our teen aged nephew has been living with us. It's been a long, frustrating year and to say that I'm excited the end is in sight is an understatement. Before I go any further I should say that's he's not a bad kid. He never did anything REALLY bad like stealing from us or harming our children in any way. It's just been a lot of little headaches all rolled up to make one gigantic stress on our family.

Why he moved in with us

My sister-in-law is a single mom. Her estranged husband passed away when the boys were quite young. My sister-in-law had to work, sometimes multiple jobs, to keep her family afloat. The boys were often left to babysitters when they were young and then on their own as they got older. They became unruly and their behaviour was becoming increasingly violent and disrespectful towards their mom. They started using drugs and drinking, and the younger of the two (who was just 15 at the time) was stealing his mom's car. Both of them were missing a ridiculous amount of school and they were failing everything. My sister-in-law, in an attempt to spend some time with her boys, took them on a little family trip to a southern state where her husband's daughter from a previous relationship lives so the boys could see their half-sister and her new baby. While there, an incident occurred at the resort they were staying at and state troopers were called. They were going to arrest my sister-in-law and deport the boys when my brother-in-law (her brother) was called and he managed to talk them into just sending everyone home.

As soon as they got back my sister-in-law kicked the boys out begging my brother-in-law to take one of the boys and for him to ask us to take the other. She was at the end of her rope and emotionally she just couldn't handle the stress anymore.

Everything happened so fast

In a flurry of late night phone calls my brother-in-law explained to my husband the situation and asked if we could take one of the boys. My husband is the youngest of 7 kids in his family, and we're the only ones with young children, but we're also one of the most financially/emotionally stable couples in his family. The older of the two boys is my husband's godson and my sister-in-law doted on my husband when he was little as she was 16 when he was born. My husband always felt guilty that he could never be there more for his godson as he was in high school when he was born and then away at university and working right after. Without really consulting me J said we'd take in his godson. Now, I believe there's nothing more important than family, and helping family whenever possible, but I was worried about how we were going to handle a troubled 17 year old while raising our then 2 year old and 6 month old.

I was hopeful but skeptical at the same time

When he got here a couple of days later he was beaten looking. He was heartbroken and remorseful and I desperately wanted to help him. I felt that we could provide for him what he never had, a stable home. He told us he never had a mom to come home to. That the only time they ate dinner together was on holidays and that he was jealous of his friends that got to spend time with their parents. My heart went out to him. I'd come to learn later that he's quite the little actor and manipulator. (While what he said was true, he really wasn't that broken up about it.)

In the hour leading up to his arrival J and I wrote out a list of rules. Things that would get him kicked out of here without a second thought, like doing drugs, stealing, or abusing the girls in any way; and others that were punishable offenses like damaging the house (they punched holes in their mother's house and wrote all over their bedroom walls), missing curfew and skipping school. We tried to cover every scenario and left him very little wiggle room. When we told him our rules he flinched at some, like curfew as he never had one, but took it all with a surprising amount of maturity for what I had been told he was like. We explained that the more he fell in line the more we'd ease up on the rules.

He earned our trust and we gave him use of the car as long as he paid his own insurance. His curfew was extended and we started letting him out on school nights. The first time we left him alone here for a few days to visit my parents I was nauseous the whole time but came home to a house that was still standing. He's pulled his grades up significantly and actually excelled in some areas. I'm proud of the effort and progress he's made. But it hasn't been an easy road.

What I learned this year

Discuss how you plan to parent your kids right through til college

Couples usually go through a natural progression in their parenting. We were thrown into the deep end of the ocean, literally, over night. We're new parents and thought we hadn't needed to discuss how we'd handle the kind of issues a teenager presents just yet. We thought we had done what we needed to do when we created the rules list. I urge you to sit down and discuss your parenting philosophy with your partner and try to get on the same page, cause before you know it your kids will be in their teens and you'll be smacked in the face with situations you aren't prepared for.

It's "you" against "them", stick together!

He presented us with challenges everyday. He wasn't used to rules and tried to push the lines every chance he got. "Can I stay out for an extra half hour?" "Can I take the car to school today?" "I want to go to a concert 3 hours away and then stay overnight at my friend's cottage." We got asked questions like this all the time. We discovered my husband is the softie and I'm the hard ass. I'd say no and then right behind me J would be saying "Yeah sure." I felt undermined a lot of the time and after our nephew would leave we'd end up fighting.

My frustration with the boy was often taken out on my girls or on J as he would be gone and I had no outlet to express myself. Anytime I tried to bring up a problem with my husband he thought I was just being mean and he didn't want to hear me complaining about the boy anymore. So I became more and more stressed out and angry. I was the one who was home 24/7 dealing with everything and I felt like I didn't have any support, so I kept my mouth shut and vented on twitter which, although helpful, wasn't helping the situation. I eventually had a complete breakdown, with ugly crying, and let J know that I felt like I was doing this alone AND he was working against me. He saw my side and came around to being my back-up, but for a few months there I saw the possibility of separation in our future.

Don't be your kid's friend

Kids need a parent, not a buddy. My sister-in-law tried to be their friend. I suppose out of guilt for always working, and them not having a dad. But what happened was when she tried to lay down the law they walked all over her. My mom was tough on me and soft on my sister (at my dad's urging to lighten up!) and the difference in how we turned out is quite evident. I know now that being tough, but loving, is the best thing you can do for your kids. We laid down the rules with the boy and for the most part we stuck to them and he followed them. His grades alone are proof positive that the discipline worked.

Kids will lie, don't be gullible

The boy is the king of "the story". He always has some long, usually ridiculous, story about why he needs to do something, or go somewhere, was late for curfew or borrow the car. And he always times these stories for when we're the busiest, most tired or most distracted (a source of a lot of frustration for me). You need to become an investigator if you want to make sure your kid is telling the truth and being safe. I don't necessarily mean tossing their room like a prison cell (although J did do that once), but scope out their facebook page, check their school calendars online, and call other parents if you have to. I know now that when my girls are older if they say they're staying a friend's house overnight, I will be calling to talk to that girl's parents to make sure everything is on the up and up.

Teenagers are expensive and messy!

Holy Hannah. Our water bill doubled, the boy takes 3 showers a day. Our food bill is at $1600 a month, which is more than double what it used to be. We put an extra $50/month of gas in the car. He wears hoodies, thick ones, once and washes them and he owns like 30 of them. I have to buy detergent every week! His room has an odd decaying grass smell. (If you follow me on twitter you might know why... chewing tobacco spit in a water bottle... friggin' gross!) You can't see his floor. The bathroom, which he shares with my girls, and is responsible for cleaning, is disgusting. He never puts the toaster away. He puts the milk back empty. He eats 7 times a day. He leaves his shoes everywhere. He spilled coke all over the basement floor and didn't clean it for 2 weeks. The car now smells like stinky gym clothes. He takes our clothes out of the washer wet and throws them on the floor to wash his. Half our dishes are in his room, despite the no eating on the 2nd floor rule, and all of them are growing something. He claims things of ours as his own, like my portable iPod speakers. He... phewf, I needed to vent!

All that to say, expect your kids to one day become messy, selfish and expensive. Be prepared, save some money and hire a cleaning lady!

Looking forward

We had originally signed up to have him live with us for two years (he has to do another year of high school as he didn't earn a single credit last year) but the stress has taken it's toll on both J and I so when we found out we were going to have another baby we talked to J's sister and she said she was ready to take her oldest son back (the other one is still not allowed to come home as he hasn't made much progress and was kicked out of my brother-in-law's house too). I knew I couldn't handle sleepless nights, 2 kids and the constant "Can I do this?" "What's there to eat?"
"Can so-and-so come over and play XBox?" (where they swear loudly and wake the baby). I look forward to having our house back. I look forward to being able to focus on our kids and the major change that's about to happen. I look forward to being able to go to bed at a decent time instead of staying up to see if he makes curfew.

I hope he keeps up the hard work he started here. He has one more year of high school, and thanks to some long talks with J, he has a career direction he'd like to pursue. He's learned respect, and to value his mom, who he actually did miss quite a lot while living here. I'm glad we were able to help her, and him, by giving them the time, space and tools to get on a better footing in life. I don't regret having had him live here for a year. But I am glad to be getting back to our own family and focusing on us for a while. We deserve it.

Whoa, I'm a slacker!

I can't believe it's been months since I updated this blog. I keep forgetting about it! I've been busy eh, get off my back.

Let's see..... what's new.... oh yeah, this:

YES!!! It's a BOY!

Yep. I'm knocked up again. This time was a wee bit of a shocker. Not planned, but certainly wanted. The first few months kicked my ass. I was on the couch praying to die as my children lived off a diet of goldfish crackers and juice since I couldn't stand the sight or smell of food. It was a rough time for all concerned.

Now I'm feeling pretty good. Sore back and all but nothing that I can't handle. I'm currently 25 weeks in, and I'm due September 30, but I can pretty much guarantee this kid will be early.

I'm in a wedding October 16th for my best friend Julie. Maid of Honour yo! Check me out in my dress...

Oh the humiliation...

... sexy huh? At least I know it'll fit after Juniour comes. Gonna need some MAJOR alterations though! I just hope I don't walk down the aisle with a baby hanging off my boob.