Mindful Meanderings

Which leads me to my final installment in this saga...

The first two weeks after child birth suck. I just have to remember that and not get my expectations up. But even this third time around, I feel like I should have it all together a few days after getting home from the hospital. Hasn't happened yet. And that makes me depressed.

Add on the fact that nursing is a nightmare and I loathe my child every time she wants to eat and that equals no bonding with adorable new baby and tons of guilt. Reading everyone's blogs about how great General Conference was and how much having children has made them realize God's love for them doesn't help either.

Why am I such a bad mother who can't wait for her kids to go to sleep at night and give me some peace? Why can't I enjoy little moments? Why has raising kids erased the humor from my life instead of multiplying it? What happened to spontaneity and fun? Are my children going to look back on childhood with fondness or dread?

Just when I think I can't take it any more, I find these pictures on the computer:

Superheroes to the rescue
(And yes, those are Home Depot aprons)

And then, as I was walking by Addison's bedroom (he listens to books on CD or Primary songs before he goes to sleep) I heard this line from the song, "He Sent His Son."

How could the Father tell the world of sacrifice, of death?
He sent his Son to die for us and rise with living breath.

And I remembered that trials are part of the reason we are here on earth. And no matter what sacrifices I have to make for my children, no matter what pain I bear for their sakes, Jesus Christ has borne much worse and loved us much more. And knowing that, I think perhaps motherhood can be a bit more manageable.

Birth Story

Oh yeah...and so I had the baby. It happened like this...

I went to the doctor on a Monday. Things were progressing slowly (ie: another centimeter dilated and a little bit more effaced each week) ever so slowly. I had told the doctor I would rather go into labor naturally and thought she wouldn't intervene until I was good and overdue. But suddenly she says, "I could induce you on Wednesday." I wasn't sure if this is what I wanted, so she told me to think it over and call on Tuesday if I wanted to set up an appointment. If I didn't go ahead with it, she would be out of town for a week and I would have to deliver with one of the other doctors in the practice, whom I have never met.

Now, maybe I am stupid (my mother and husband assured me that I am) but I feel a little weird about choosing the moment of my child's arrival. Like I am playing with fate and might screw up the whole eternal scheme God has already set up. What if I am supposed to be in the hospital on a certain day so that I have a specific interaction with a specific person? How can I choose when to deliver and risk messing things up? If it had been a medical emergency and the doctor had ordered me to be induced, that would be one thing, but me choosing to have the baby just to put myself out of pregnancy misery, that's another.

In the end, after a lot of confused tears (I told you I was stupid) I suppressed my guilt, gave into my selfish desire to not be pregnant any more, and was given an induction appointment for Wednesday at 6 am. My in-laws came and got my other kids the night before so we could show up at the hospital bright and early. Only they thought we were supposed to be there at 5 am and had scheduled the doctor for a surgery at 7 am. It took us about 45 minutes to "check-in"/fill out all of the paper work and knowing that my last labor and delivery had been all of 20 minutes after having my water broken, the doctor didn't dare start my induction until after surgery was over. So my husband and I sat there (IV intact) for 3 hours, doing a whole lot of nothing. Why do they make you have an IV? That is seriously one of the worst parts of having a baby for me. The other is getting the epidural - I am totally scared of that needle and the pain it inflicts. I almost, almost thought about having a natural birth just so I wouldn't have to face that needle.

Anyhow...after putting off the anesthesiologist until 10 am, I finally agreed to get the epidural. It wasn't nearly as bad as I remember it being the first time around, thank goodness. The doctor broke my water and everyone waited in great anticipation for the baby to come. Only 30 minutes later, nothing had happened. Again, knowing that my last one had come in 20 minutes, the doctor decided a little Pitocin was needed to kick start this birth. "Perhaps your uterus is too stretched out from having so many kids that the contractions just aren't effective." Thanks for that, Doc...

Finally at 11:48 am, "Baby Girl," made her entrance. She weighed 8 lbs. 2 oz and was 19 inches long. My kids have progressively gotten shorter and fatter. Hmmm....

The proud parents

It wasn't until much later in the afternoon that we finally agreed on a name - Jocelyn. And since it was flu season, no kids were allowed at the hospital, so it wasn't until the next day that she got to meet her older siblings. And they've been begging to hold her ever since.

Too Much Twilight

First, my take on the series:


Book #1 - C-H-E-E-S-Y! If I had read another sentence about how "glorious" Edward was, I think I would have puked.



Book #2 - My favorite of the bunch. Besides the fact that Bella is an idiot (did she really believe Edward was gone forever after all that had happened? And that killing herself was going to make it better?) it was great. I really liked Jacob and the sarcastic bantering between him and Bella. There wasn't any of the lame romance, and just a smidgen of suspense. Perfect.

Book #3 - This one was a little more graphic/violent than I would have liked. I was reading in the doctor's office during the fight scene and I'm sure a few people got a laugh at my face when I got to the whole head rolling part. Let's just say it was surprisingly disturbing.

Book #4 - Just plain bizarre. It got better after the baby was born and the meeting with the Volturi was approaching. I would have to agree with my sister though, that this book was targeted at a very different audience than the first three. Not many high school girls (let alone "tweeners") can relate to marriage, unplanned pregnancy, and motherhood. So maybe it should have been left as a trilogy.

Anyhow, I guess it turned out to be a pretty good read. Not so gripping that I couldn't put it down when I wanted to go to sleep, but engaging enough to make the wee sleepless morning hours pass away quickly when Bravo TV reruns got boring. And given the circumstances, it was almost better that it wasn't a very difficult or deep read either. I liked that any questions that came up were answered in the very next chapter. No mind boggling questions to keep me up in suspense.

So now, my life seems to be mirroring my choice in literature. My newborn babe has been channeling her inner Renesmee and developed an appetite for blood. Nursing hasn't been so easy for me this time around, sometimes becoming quite painful, but I didn't think any of it, until the baby spit-up and it was black with a touch of red. Not a stomach issue like I worried, just dear old mom's nipples severely cracked and bleeding. (Sorry, is that too graphic?) I called the Breast Feeding Clinic at TMC and got some pointers, did a whole lot of pumping and then attended the Breast Feeding Support Group a few days later because it was still bad. (That is an experience in itself that will perhaps have to be addressed another day.) Anyhow, just when I started to think things might be getting better, I was hit with mastitis. It's been a fun few weeks and just reinforces all of the hatred I have for nursing. Too bad I am so broke I can't afford formula. We'll just have to work through it.

Six Going on Eternity

Six years ago today Keith and I got married. As you can tell by the fact that I am blogging, we're really into celebrating. Anyhow, things I remember about that day are:

1- Getting made fun of by the sealer for being so nervous. Hey, this is eternity we are talking about. Can't I be a little bit anxious about making the right decision? Especially when close friends had recently witnessed a couple fall apart at the altar, in the temple?

2- Keith being extremely ticked off about the car getting decorated. Apparently that is super disrespectful where he comes from. My dad told me later he had never seen Keith so peeved and wondered if we had any kind of wedding night at all.

3- Going out to dinner at Black Angus in our pajamas. Luckily they weren't that busy and nobody gave us any grief. (We had our reception the night before the wedding, so as soon as we were done with the family lunch, we were out of there!)

And now on to the photo history...(sorry I am totally stealing this from you Camille, but I thought your pictures were so fun to look at that I just had to do it!)

Our First Date - Winter Formal 2000

Engaged! - Summer 2003

Wedded Bliss - September 2003

Our Soon to be Outdated Family Picture - Jan 2009

I'd Rather Be...

You know those bumper stickers you see every once in a while? The ones that say something like, "I'd rather be flying," or "I'd rather be scuba diving?" I had a seminary teacher once that claimed they were a bunch of bull.

"If you would really rather be out fishing," he'd rant, "you would be. You have your agency; you can do what you want to do, whenever you want to do it."

Perhaps....But perhaps you are actually a responsible human being and even though you would rather be skiing, or whatever, you are in fact earning a living to put food on the table for your family, or running out to see that friend who is having a bad day, or whatnot. Perhaps you would rather be surfing but instead you have your priorities in order and are doing what is really important and not whatever you want to do.

So I guess when I say that, "I'd rather be at Fall Frenzy 2009" this weekend, you'll have to take that with a grain of salt. Would I really rather be hanging out at a water park listening to dozens of my favorite bands, getting a killer tan and cooling off in the pool, all the while trying not to go deaf or kill my unborn child by breathing in a ton of secondhand smoke or getting crushed myself by the mob of crazy drunkards who are sure to be there? Or would I rather be lying around at home with zero energy, sweating to death, and pretending I might go into labor any minute while my husband is off on a scout camp out? You be the judge.

Welcome to the 21st Century

That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen, Amanda has become a thoroughly modern woman. She now owns a cell phone! Yippee!

Here she is in all her beauty

My in-laws offered to stick me on their family plan, again; my husband has been begging me to get a cell phone for months, if not years; and I've had a few fun nights of driving around lost in the rain; so the timing was finally right and I gave in. I'm not looking forward to being available 24/7 but when I cancel my land line at home I'll be saving a good $15-$20 a month so that's exciting. We're trying to port our number over too so it shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience. After I get over the inconvenience of trying to figure out how to use the thing, I mean. Don't worry, Keith is test driving it for me, and once he has all of the gadgets figured out I may get a chance to look at it. The guy at the store sold me this one because it has the least features and holds up the best to liquid damage (aka saliva). Seriously, that was the sales pitch. I guess he could see I needed a simple, sturdy phone, what with the crazy kids running around and the pregnant belly sticking out a mile. We'll see how it goes.

It's Official

I think hell must have frozen over. Not that you would notice by the weather. Near record breaking high today...Come on! I'm eight months pregnant, could I please have a break from the heat? (Not likely, this is AZ, remember?)


But something must be going on. Why you ask? Because...I don't have a single book to read! Alright, alright...I suppose I could finish The Taming of the Shrew (last month's book club pick) or even start on this month's (Mansfield Park) since we do meet on Wednesday. But seriously, who really wants to read Shakespeare or Jane Austen when they don't have to? Okay, probably a lot of you. But not me. I have a strong aversion to Austen that I just can't get over. And even though I finished a great literary mystery all about the fascinating life of Shakespeare (or should I say Edward de Vere?) last night, I still don't want to read one of his plays.

So what do I do? I make a plea for book recommendations for one. (Please send me something good, please!) And then I bite the bullet and start reading Twilight. When I promised my teenage sister I would read the series someday, when there was nothing else to read, I honestly never thought that day would come. How could you not have anything to read?

For future reference, this is how-

1- Have two rambunctious kids who don't allow you to casually browse the library shelves for a good read, thus requiring you to grab the first two novels within reach, and herd everybody out of the door before you get one more shush from the librarian or dirty look from the old man on the computer.

2- Become eight months pregnant and enjoy the wee hours of the morning all to yourself, because it is absolutely impossible to sleep, thus causing you to polish off every library book, cheesy paperback, and magazine in the house within a matter of hours.

Really quite easy, when it comes down to it. So here I am. In a place I never thought I would be. I'm trying really hard not to be skeptical about how fantastic these books are. I'm only on the second chapter. And every hater I know has had to come crawling back on her hands and knees, sheepishly admitting she loved them. But I have my doubts. I know "it's not just about vampires, it's more of a romance," but truthfully that statement doesn't excite me either. So wish me luck and I'll keep you posted.