Tag Archives: pregnancy

Raw Meat In My Purse: A Primer to Images That Populate My Dreams

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Since my blog stats are already at a super low right now*, I am going to go ahead and talk about a dream I had last night. There is nothing I could do to further estrange my readership, so I figure that now’s as good a time as ever to write a post that is the blogging equivalent of showing you pictures of people you don’t even know at a fundraiser or something.

Google search "gala 2013" and many other thrilling images like this one are there for the taking. Source

Google “gala 2013″ and many other images full of strangers one will be yours for the taking. Source

*Seriously, though, thanks for sticking around. I’m still writing through it, and I hope to be on the other side of the doldrums soon.

Last night I dreamed that I was at a hospital waiting in a reception area for the results of a routine test that had been performed on me days before. I think it was probably a blood pressure exam or something humdrum like that. While I waited, B went to a drink machine to get a Coke. In his absence, a nurse came out to me with a pink and green book. She gave it to me and told me I was expecting twins and that one of them was for sure a boy. She could tell because he had a lot of hair. (I know.) I could look through the book to find more information on my babies. She told me all this out in the open, in front of other patients and with no confidentiality, which was odd to me even in the oh-it’s-totally-normal-that-my-husband-is-Kurt-Cobain reality of the dream. I asked her to stop talking so we could both wait for B to come back before she divulged more information that I was likely to forget or possess the wherewithal to convey to him. But she just led me to an exam room and left.

The exam room was just a huge, open warehousish space that was icy blue and separated with many curtain partitions. It had low ceilings and no windows. While I waited, I opened my purse and found a huge piece of raw beef that was in a Ziploc bag. I remembered that I had put it in my bag days earlier with the intent to throw it away. The bag was now punctured and leaking blood all over the contents of my purse. I threw it away in the exam room and decided to find a way to leave. When I left my partitioned cell, I noticed that all the teal blue equipment in the hospital was covered in splotches of blood too. So, dream me decided that my decision to leave was a good one because gross.

I woke up about then. My mind immediately went to the twins in the dream and how terrifying it would be if I were indeed pregnant (just to be 1000% clear with you, I’m NOT.) with not one new baby but two. Supes practical me started freaking out about where we would actually put these new humans if they arrived. Our apartment is small and we’re busting at the seams as C outgrows all her baby junk. Big girl carseat arrives this Friday and when I ordered it at Target.com I had half a mind to buy some training bras too.

Lying in bed, I probably chose to dwell on the practicality of housing two newborns rather than affording them – which would be the real issue we’d face – because it’s not as overwhelming. We won’t live in our apartment for more than another year, but I’m not sure we’ll ever be even modestly wealthy. Seriously, I don’t know if it would even be fiscally responsible for us to have another child. C’s cardiogram last month already wiped out the prospect of us going on a modest vacation this summer outside of the roadtrip to see family in Tennessee. You may have never heard this before, but kids are expensive.

DSC08845Then I worried about how C would handle being an older sibling. READ: I worried about how I could handle being the parent to more than one child. The tens of you who read my blog know that I am pretty much obsessed with her. She is the best thing that ever happened to me and her eyelashes demand my attention at all times. And while I know in my mind that if I had another child, I would not love her or the new baby any less, I cannot imagine my heart growing any more to accommodate another child. It just doesn’t seem possible.

Yes yes yes, I know it would be possible, and in fact having another child would make me love C more. Love is not something that you run out of. It begets itself. But remember that the same brain that you’re trying to explain that to is one that dreams of rancid Ziplocked steaks leaking all over Subway Sub Club punch cards in her purse. That’s what we’re up against, folks.

I don’t even know. I fell back asleep pretty easily. For funsies, I took a pregnancy test this morning just to make sure my uterus is 100% empty. It was. And because I am totally logical, that made me sad. Anyone want to swap brains for a sec? I’ll throw in some spaghetti I made in the Crock Pot to sweeten the deal.

♥

Likey me bloggy? Likey me Facey!

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A Big Announcement

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From the moment you get pregnant and realize that a family – your very own made-from-scratch family – is on the horizon, your thoughts shift. People will ask you what’s to come for your growing family, and as much as you resent their intrusiveness, you start to wonder if there will ever be more.

Once you get through those horrific, non-sleeping first months, your mind begins to meander. You can do this. You can make something again.

And you start to plan. The plan is good. Even though you don’t have a lot of money and don’t know how you are going to afford the baby you already have, you know that since you want this one thing enough, you will be able to make it happen because that’s what families do.

All of a sudden, that special, wonderful thing you had been planning and working so hard to create just EXISTS. Although your partner assisted you in creating that one special thing, you know that it was all you who brought it to its fruition. Your motherhood is engorged and you are elated.

So, without further ado, a major announcement:

Wee Cee is going to be an owl for Halloween. 

And I made her costume myself:

Here’s the back:

And one more:

What? What did you think I was going to announce?

Happy Halloween!

PS, Feel free to Pin the crap out of this post! ;D

The Other Side: Notes on the Sixth Month

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Six months and one day ago, I was still a pregnant lady who could (in theory) sleep as late as I wanted, go to bed when I wanted, take a shower in complete privacy, watch every single episode of Arrested Development in one sitting on a whim, and get more done in one day than I can often get done in the space of one week these days. And do you know what? My life is about a bajillion times better now. This little girl has made me sing for my supper, but it turns out that when you have to work – really work – you feel pretty dang amazing at the end of the day. She has taught me to appreciate the tiniest little things in life as miracles. I can so see now why new parents constantly feel like their babies are geniuses. When you see a child grow from being a tiny sack of crying sugar in their first days to actually being able to move around on their bellies, you know that it’s a big freaking deal.  She highlights every moment – even if she’s screaming – as the most special time I can imagine simply because she exists.

She’s pretty much the most adorable child in the history of the world.

Teeth have been happening. Last night, Miss C was gnawing on B’s finger when he let out an “ouch!” and followed it with a “no I mean really. OUCH.” I scurried over to pry open her mouth, and there I found a tiny white dot on her lower jaw. I squealed with delight at the prospect of my growing baby sprouting teeth and she was terrified at my squeal and promptly wept as if the news that Elmo had just been hit by a bus was trending. I have got to learn to keep the volume down.

Also, solid food is happening. FYI, “solid foods” is such a misnomer. There is nothing solid about cold pureed squash. So let’s just call it “human food.” She has been eating rice cereal for dinner for the past three weeks, and last week we started her on human food at lunch too. So far she has tried squash and avocado, both of which she likes. Not overwhelmingly so, but she has yet to reject the food, and I’ll take that.

She played, then she passed out. Extra points if you can spot the baby.

Her naps are becoming more consistent, although I know that now that I’ve said that she will likely go on strike and refuse to sleep for a week. It finally dawned on me that when she doesn’t nap well, it’s because she’s either 1, teething or 2, going through a growth spurt. I am so dense sometimes that it kills me. I console myself with the thought that I lit-rally have no idea what I’m doing as a parent and that I don’t have any family in town to help me. The learning curve is steep, but I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet on learning to be a parent whilst she learns to be a human.

She keeps a-rolling and a-rolling but hasn’t yet sat up completely unassisted yet. Interestingly, though, she has skipped ahead to what I like to call “pre-crawling.” On her stomach, she moves her legs and arms back and forth like she’s swimming and she gets super frustrated when she doesn’t go anywhere. It won’t be long, and she can take her sweet time as far as I’m concerned because I’m not ready to babyproof the apartment just yet. I’ve gotta finish making her Halloween costume. Priorities: I’ve got ‘em.

On the move

The more she does, the harder it is for me to re-calibrate my own life. Luckily, I’m finding it easier and easier to just give up control for five minutes and hand her off to B on the weekends and ask him for help when I need it. We got in a rut for awhile when I felt bad asking him for help and he didn’t really offer it because he thought I had everything under control because I never asked for help. But I’m getting more comfortable requesting assistance and resisting the urge to tell him he’s doing something “wrong” when he bathes her or feeds her. Of course, they get along famously. He can make her laugh in ways that I simply can’t. And he’s much, much better at coming up with new and interesting ways to entertain her, likely because he’s not here with her 80% of the time so he sees her with fresh eyes. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Actually, I do know: I’d be a crappy mom.

I know I’m biased but dear lawd my baby is beautiful.

So the sixth month. Happy half birthday to my precious Miss C! The love I have for her is just more than I can describe in a blog post. My life now is admittedly a lot harder than the one I had six months and one day ago, but I wouldn’t change it for all the tea in China. Or England. Or India. Or wherever they have good tea. She’s about 43,827,543,956 times better, easily.

The Person I Waited For

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Mondays and Wednesdays are B’s late days at work. He teaches evening classes those days and doesn’t get home until 7:30. So on those nights, I make dinner around 6:30 and then sit down at the table with Miss C by my side in her walker. I eat.

Monday night, I looked down at her while I ate and had one of those moments where you seem to be elevated over yourself, looking down at your life, which all of a sudden has taken on more permanence. Looking down at that little baby, I thought, “It’s you, the person I had been waiting for.” It’s hard to describe how I felt, as the knowledge that the child starring back at you is your own in an inextricable way is beyond what I can express with words. But she looked back, able to take for granted that I am her mother, unaware that there are relationships other than the ones she has with her father and me. Right now, we are all that she really needs.

I recognize this little girl as my own, and she recognizes me as her mother. It’s amazing how in sync we are with each other without really trying to be. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have difficulties; I think she’s had maybe one or two days in her whole life where she didn’t cry at all. Through all the crying and the sleeplessness and the shots and the gas, she is a happy girl because I can give her what she needs and she can trust me.

All I ever wanted was to have her so I could devote myself to her. I thought about the baby I would have someday long before I even became pregnant and I wondered who she would be. Even when I was a kid, I wondered what her birthday would be. Pick any random date, and I would think to myself, “Is this the day in 20 years I will celebrate my child’s birthday?” As she grew larger during my pregnancy, I constantly wondered what her face looked like and what her disposition would be. And now, all of a sudden, she’s here, looking right back at me. In a blink of an eye, the idea of a baby has become my reality.

It’s her.

Babies Are Absurd

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I was washing the dishes yesterday with Miss C in her little Rock ‘N Play thing next to me, just watching me. And it occurred to me.

Babies are ridiculous. Truly ridiculous.

Pocket-sized counterintuitivness

I think it’s like when you say a word over and over and over, and eventually it sounds like martian-talk. When you think about babies, really think about them, they are absurd. I needed to wash the dishes, but unless I was in her direct line of sight and could entertain her while doing so, she was going to get upset. So there I was, scrubbing the pots, with a person parked next to me. She had nothing else going on. Just looking at me, washing the dishes. She makes those people who play World of Warcraft 24 hours a day look downright industrious. But that’s where the silliness begins; even though she’s just sitting and watching and listening to me make dumb sounds at her, she’s learning more than I did in an entire semester of college.

The lunacy all begins with labor. You have a little person inside of you, but it can’t fit anymore, so you have to push it out. YOU HAVE TO PUSH A PERSON OUT OF YOUR LADY BITS. It’s nightmarish and science-fictioney, but it’s standard protocol. It’s how things work, and that’s absurd to me.

The person comes out, and it’s the shape of a human, but there is nothing remotely human about it. It has a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso, but it has absolutely no control whatsoever over its gelatinous state. If an adult were so schlumpy, it would be paralyzed. But being a 7-pound bag of Nickeldeon Gak is normal for newborn babies.

The silliness just compounds as the baby gets bigger. It throws up about 200 times a day, but this constant regurgitation doesn’t upset it as it would a normal person. No. What does upset it is if you don’t sing “Baby Beluga” for three hours nonstop. Well that makes sense.

All the baby really has going for it for awhile is that it is cute. It’s a good thing too because it can’t go to bathroom by itself, can’t feed itself, can’t talk, and can’t walk. It’s basically a rock that cries. It can’t sit up. I mean, come on. The kid can’t even sit up. It couldn’t even be a greeter at Walmart if it wanted to.

But it’s adored beyond comprehension. Ridiculous amounts of money is spent on it and its parents are obsessed with it. B and I are about to cancel Netflix mostly because we’d rather watch her make silly faces than watch Mad Men, and that’s saying something.

Grandparents may even buy shoes for it. Shoes. Think about that for a second. Miss C can’t even walk, but she has a pair of Toms. I don’t even have a pair of Toms. Miss C has more clothes than my husband has, and I obsess over finding cute new outfits costumes for her to wear, despite the fact that she will grow out of them within four months.

For awhile, the baby eats only one or two things; milk and/or formula. My baby has only ever tasted two things. She’s the equivalent of a sad college student who eats ramen noodles and Kool-Aid everyday and doesn’t even question it because she knows that’s her life. But to her, it never gets old. She still gets the crazy eyes when she sees me lift my shirt or prepare a bottle. Babies get so excited over eating. It’s ludicrous. Sometimes her gums hurt really bad and I give her some cherry flavored suspension gel to ease the pain. HOLY CRAP when she sees me take that stuff out she goes BANANAS. Have you ever looked forward to taking an Advil? Like you wish you had a cramp or a headache so you could whip it out? Probably not, because you’re not an insane baby.

Your life turns upside-down when you have a baby. You will likely have friends who do not envy your new position as a parent at all, but the absurdity is all worth it. My life is a madhouse, but the featured performer makes it all worth it.

******

Thanks to everyone who responded to my post yesterday and went over to Le Clown’s blog to vote for my blog! Honestly, I thought I would *maybe* get two or three people to go over and root for me, but I was astounded by the outpouring of love from your guys. I’m now in third place and up against some SERIOUS competition. (Dude, it’s Le Clown’s blogroll; of course people want on.) If you didn’t vote yesterday, please go check out my entry into today’s Mad Lib challenge. If you like it, simply comment “like” on it. And write your own Mad Lib too! C’mon. All the cool kids are doing it.

The B Word

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You should always have an ongoing project. Last year, my project was being pregnant. And it’s funny, but when I was pregnant with C, actually having a baby was still a hypothetical thing to me. This is probably pretty common among first pregnancies. It’s hard to wrap your brain around the immediacy of actually having a child in your life because you have nothing else to compare it to. You actually have to be selfish because everything revolves around you and your body because of the baby who’s inside. You are hot; you are hungry; you are tired; you are cranky; you are having a baby shower. But in a way, that focus of attention on yourself prepares you for the absolute focus you’re going to have on the baby once it comes. From labor day onward, it’s not about pregnant you anymore. It’s about the thing that made you pregnant in the first place.

Just a point to ponder.

So yeah, last year it was about the pregnancy. But what now? Miss C is my highest priority, so what can I be doing for myself to make me better for her? Ah, good question.

This blog is very important to me. I think that’s pretty obvious, considering that more and more these days I am actually blogging about blogging. How very meta. I’ve always enjoyed writing and I finally have some people who want to read what I have to say, and that’s a huge boost to my self esteem and it encourages me to keep going.

Thus enters the B word.

No, not that B word. The other one.

I am going to write a book.

I have about 1,000 ideas that I need to get out of the ephemera of my brain and I am finally going to do it. What I don’t have is an outline, a schedule, a timetable, or a lot of practical knowledge of the proper course that I should take in fleshing out my plan. But what I do have is the will to do it and the knowledge that going through the exercise of writing a book will be 100% worth it. The longest thing I’ve ever written up to now was my senior thesis in college. At 35 pages, it was the product of an incredible amount of studying and thinking, but I was extremely proud of it when I finished it. Still am.

So that’s the long project. One of my shorter term goals is to start freelance writing. Lately, B and I have been talking a lot about Miss C’s education and what we want to provide for her as far as that goes, and the thing that we keep going back to is homeschooling. We don’t know where we’ll be living once she reaches school age, but we feel strongly about our abilities to educate her. However, if this plan is to transpire, one of us (likely me) will be home with her full-time, which limits our earning capacity. And what would I do if I could do anything, professionally? Write from home. I started looking into doing this last year, but my resolve diminished the bigger my uterus grew. Yeah, it was a teensy bit distracting. But now it’s time to get moving with that.

So these are tall orders. However, I look at my daughter in amazement with the thought that I made her. Even saying those words – my daughter – still leaves me dumbstruck. I have a daughter. B and I end our days talking about our baby, and the very fact that these conversations occur leaves me with with disbelief that this beauty is my life. I have come so far already, so I know that I can meet my resolve to just say some things in a written document. Words are small, but when you put them together properly, they get close to reproducing the joy of life.

I’m gonna try.

Super Awesome One Year Extravaganza!

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Last August, I published my first post to The Waiting. Want to be the first person to read it? You still have time. At that time, only two people other than me knew of the impending Miss C so I needed a room to tell my secrets to, Brian Wilson-style.

A lot has happened in that year. Three themes, 400+ followers, lots of new friends, some good posts, some crappy posts. Most importantly, this,

has become this,

and I learned that the waiting really never ends. This week I am celebrating, and by “celebrating” I mean that I am going to attempt to post every single day. I couldn’t even manage to do this before Miss C was born, so my blogoversary spectacular could very well be just a form of self-flagellation. But you know, you say “tomato” and all that.

However, I have a plan. Oh yes indeed. I was never a hardcore planner before, but Miss C has forced me to think in advance for the highly-orchestrated tasks of showering and eating lunch. She has just started teething and today she rolled over all by herself for the very first time (I KNOW, right?) so it’s only by her grace that these posts will get written. Here’s what you have to look forward to, should all go as planned:

Tuesday: When both your parents are bloggers, AKA When is it too early to get your kid their own URL?

Wednesday: TBA, AKA I have several half-written posts for this day and you’ll get to read the one of them that turns out best, AKA some humiliating anecdote from my past

Thursday: Love Fest, AKA the Closest I’ll Ever Get to a Blogroll

Friday: What I’m currently waiting on, AKA What’s Next for This Blog

Stay tuned for the fun, or to see me lose my shiznit blogging everyday! We aim to please.

Here’s to Babies

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A year ago today, this happened:

I will celebrate by eating Cherry Garcia. Granted, eating Cherry Garcia is a regular activity for me, but if you’re celebrating with a Miss C perched upon your knee, it is all the more delicious.

Happy Thursday!

The Weighting

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See there in the title? I made a funny. This is the post about losing baby weight. And the blog is called The Waiting. Get it?

I kill myself sometimes.

A rough depiction of cute me prior to giving birth

So, yeah, having just had a baby, I gained some weight. Some. A lot. Whatever. By the end of my pregnancy with Miss C I had gained 45 pounds. Not too shabby, eh? I really packed it on during the third trimester and I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it. I’ll admit that they are kind of gross and road mappish, but since I’ve never been a bikini-wearer in the first place, I’m not concerned about them. They’ll fade away eventually. I actually kind of like the idea of them serving as a souvenir of my pregnancy. Is that weird?

At my postpartum visit to the OB last Thursday, I was weighed and I’ve lost 15 pounds since right before Miss C came, which I think sounds dead-on. I also got the go ahead to start intense cardio and strength training again, so right after I left the doctor’s office, I made a b-line to the local YMCA and joined up. I went three times last week and burned about 500 calories during each visit.

…..and a rough depiction of me now

I am not someone who enjoys and relishes working out. Just not. I like the way I feel afterwards with the rise of happy endorphins and all, but the act of exercising itself is not pleasurable for me in-and-of-itself. I wish I could be one of those people who goes out running and just loses herself in it; B is, and I’m jealous of him for it. But right now the main incentive for me to go to the gym has nothing to do with sweating it out. I’m going because I don’t want to have to replace all my pre-preggo clothes and because I need to have an activity that I do without Miss C. There’s a nursery/daycare there but the idea of leaving her on all the germ-covered equipment among nasty germy kids makes me cringe, especially when her squeaky-clean dad is more than willing to hang out with her at home while I go. So she’ll stay with him.

I want to lose 40 pounds in addition to what I’ve already lost (and I don’t count those 15 pounds because they were all Miss C, placenta, and water weight.) Forty sounds good because it will bring me to ten pounds below what I weighed before I was pregnant, which I could have stood to lose back then anyway. I figure that as long as I’m losing weight, I may as well bite the bullet and lose those extra ten pounds as well.

I’m giving myself ten months to lose it because it took me ten months to put it on. I’m kind of dreading this whole process because it requires a level of commitment that I don’t really know if I have as of yet, but I’m hoping that working out and my continued commitment to breastfeeding Miss C will make me less of a saggy baggy elephant. And I’m sagging, boy oh boy.

This month also marks the one-year anniversary of my last haircut. Yeah, I know. I have gone without even a trim since May of 2011, and I’m kind of embarrassed about that. I have had super short hair since I cut it off in 2000, and I guess by others’ standards my hair is still short (it’s now a little past my shoulders), but to me it’s long and I HATE it. I feel like Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite because I’m hot all the time and I just want to shave my head.

But don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going to.

She reads my blog and likes my hair long and is not afraid to tell me. Come to think of it, so does B. However, he chooses his battles with me well so he doesn’t put forth energy into convincing me to keep it the length that it is. Such is the fostering of a happy spouse.

But I need a new look, but not because I’m a mom now. OK, so maybe it’s a little bit because I am a mom now. So sue me. I’m thinking something like this:

NOT mom hair. But even if it were, this makes it worth it:

I’d stay an elephant forever, get a heinous haircut, and even don mom jeans for this gal.

Wherein I stare down the enemy of sleep

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You may remember that back when I was preggo, I was kind of obsessed with the creation of our baby registry, mostly because I had no idea what we actually needed and I didn’t want to look like a fool to my friends and family when they saw the ridiculously unnecessary things I had registered for. More importantly, I didn’t want to get stuck with a bunch of contraptions that we wouldn’t need or the baby would end up hating.

Not breaking with any trends in my life in general, I ended up looking like a fool anyway. Yeah, uh, turns out one does not need a high-priced baby food maker right away if one already possesses a food processor. And boobs. Who knew? When I mentioned that I really had no idea what I was doing when I went bananas on the Target website, my friend Meagan looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yeah, I could tell.”

So, when Miss C arrived, we of course didn’t have nearly enough diapers to cover us for a five-hour period, but we did have a proliferation of sleeping devices, which is ironic because at first it seemed like sleeping was the last thing on her mind.

Look, here’s one:

And another:

One more:

And again:

Not to forget:

And occasionally:

But possibly the best:

Luckily, a couple of them have not been totally snubbed by Miss C. Most notably is her father, and for this I’m grateful because she’s really stuck with him for life. She likes the bunny swing, and that’s where she spends most of her down time. She rests/chills in the pink portable playtime bassinet when I’m showering or cooking. As for the crib, we’re not quite there yet. We have had nothing but trouble with the bassinet in our bedroom, which bums me out because it’s so darn cute*. But each time we try to put her down in it, she is up and annoyed within 20 minutes. So now it’s just a prop in our lives.

*Cuteness is now an actual credible factor in my life now. This would have made me throw up in my mouth a little prior to and during my pregnancy, but now it’s just another instance of me eating my words. Yum, yum. Chowing down.

As for the Pack N’ Play, we’ve only been utilizing it for its “play” function as of yet, but once we hit the road for Florida and elsewhere this summer, we will get more mileage out of it. Geez, I’m sorry. The puns are multiplying. I blame my lactation tea.

Then there’s the whole grown-up bed thing. Occasionally I will nurse her in bed. Lately co-sleeping is something I’ve been thinking about (yet not really doing) because it’s a fact of early babyhood that at times they simply don’t want to be put down. They will be all snuggled up in your arms or on your stomach, resting completely soundly*, and then when they are put down in any one of their sleeping contraptions, they know immediately and start to wail. So you start over and get them in a happy, sleepy place and attempt to put them down again. Wailing commences. This little dance repeats several times and can last for several hours until you’re like, “SERIOUSLY?”

*And yes, you’re sure of it because their breathing is rhythmic, their arms are limp, their diaper is clean as a whistle, and their little stomachs are fully sated. They’re out, beyond a doubt.

Co-sleeping – the kind where she’s not just in the same room with you but in actual contact with you - is one of those things that you are warned against about a trillion and a half times when you’re preggo and when you have an infant nowadays, and I get why. If it’s not done properly it can be extremely dangerous. That’s why I think the Back to Bed campaign is an entirely wonderful thing. It encourages parents and caregivers to take extremely seriously the sleep habits of their babies, and it’s helped to reduce the occurrences of SIDS.

Sleep deprivation is used as a torture device for a reason. It’s not fun. It sucks. A few weeks back when we were in the thick of it, I was sleeping and B was up with the baby. I had pumped and he was trying to get the milk in a bottle to feed her. He was having trouble getting the gasket and the nipple to fit the bottle while she screamed at the top of her little baby lungs for it. He called me in to help, and when I couldn’t get the gasket to fit either I took it and hurtled it across the room. That’s the product of sleep deprivation.

When it’s 4AM and the baby won’t sleep unless she is literally touching you and you are operating on a cumulative eight hours of sleep for the past three days, co-sleeping begins to sound like a not-so-bad idea. Even if you have acquired a good amount of rest, there is also the intimacy factor of having your baby snuggled against you. Admittedly, the idea of having your baby with you at all times is definitely not for everyone, but I would argue with people who say that it’s insane and unbalanced to want to have that much physical contact with your baby. Sure, some people want/need their grown-up time, but some others just don’t. If everybody looked the same we’d get tired of looking at each other and whatnot.

Recently, some other bloggers who I highly admire, trust, and am 100% sure are not coo-coo have left comments and emailed me with their stories in full-contact co-sleeping and how they have navigated it. Their stories have made me a lot more understanding (and I mean, A LOT because I was a total hater prior to them) of the practice of co-sleeping and under what conditions they did/ are doing it safely. I’m still not sure if it’s right for me and my family, but I am certainly much more understanding of it.

This post is troll bait if I ever saw it, and I’m sure there will be someone out there that reads it and decides to notify me of how dangerous sleeping with your baby can be. To them I say, “I KNOW.” I am no expert on the subject and I’m not making any claims or suggestions about what I or others should do. I suppose the main reason for me writing this is to illustrate how parenthood opens you up to a lot of things that you never thought you would consider, and that just like anything used wisely, co-sleeping may be something that when practiced safely and properly can be a good thing that makes life more enjoyable.

I will, however, stand by my statements to proceed with caution when compiling a baby registry.

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I am refraining from posting a pic of Kendra and me when we were thirteen because I value our relationship and I know she'd kill me if I publicized our prior awkwardness.

On an entirely different note, I would like to welcome my real-life friend Kendra to the WordPress blogging community! Kendra and I have been pals since we met in computer club in the third grade, so now that we’re both blogging here I guess you could say the high-tech aspect of our relationship has finally reached its pentacle. Her blog is called Over the Spoon and she will be chronicling her love affair with food. Having tried many of her delicious concoctions and eaten at fantastic restaurants she recommended, I would say food loves her back.

Check it out!