Category Archives: pregnancy

It’s only Tuesday? We’re all going to die!

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Here’s a view of our backyard; the kids are in their pajamas because someone who is not me took the kids out in only their pajamas to take a picture of the giant snowball that they made. 

What a weird day.  It’s only 2:15 and it has just been a strange day.  I keep reminding myself, alarmingly, that it is only Tuesday.  It’s Tuesday and it’s the first day of soccer, and the kids are actually meeting for a practice on the snow-and-ice-covered fields.  When I heard that, my first reaction was something along the lines of We’re All Going To Die, but I’ve since been assured that the practice is going to be more of a “meet and greet” than an actual practice.  I’ve also been told that Mark needs cleats, which he does not have, and for some reason it had not occurred to me, despite weeks of working on the soccer schedules.
While on a normal day it would be easy for me to run out and purchase a pair of cleats that is not the case today as I’m home with a sick, feverish Jake.  It seems that Mark’s mystery illness was of the contagious variety.  I was up for most of the night with Jake, who was burning up with fever and then instantly vomited when I gave him Tylenol to bring the fever down.  Don’t you hate that?  Here, take this medicine.  This medicine which will make you barf. 
So I am exhausted and I have weird hair and I’m wearing “at home with sick kid” clothes and I was interviewed by CBC with regards to education budget cuts.  I can barely string three words together, I’m so tired, but I agreed to the interview because it was supposed to be on the radio.  The chance of someone I know listening to this interview seemed slim to me; but they brought a TV crew.  So me and my weird hair and my eye bags and my non-functioning brain will be on the news tonight.  Whee.  I just hope I don’t look like a ranting Charlie Sheen,  with speech therapy and class sizes rather than porn stars and tiger blood.
I’m so tired.  I can’t believe I lived six years of my life with extreme sleep deprivation/ constantly interrupted sleep.  Two pregnancies in 18 months, newborns, toddlers, and the fact that my youngest did not “sleep through the night” until he was four and a half years old adds up to six years of exhaustion.  How did I live this way?  I guess I didn’t realize how poorly I was functioning until I actually started sleeping like a normal person.  You know when you have a newborn and you think “Wow, I’m really doing well on two hours sleep!” but really, you’re insane?  You think you’re functioning well but really you burst into tears when you run out of peanut butter and you think that everyone is out to get you and anyone who so much as sneezes in public is plotting against you and your precious baby.  I recall sobbing in the grocery store because I was there with my infant and one-year-old and the baby was crying and the carryout person reached over and put his soother in his mouth.  A stranger!  Put her hands in my baby’s face!  Her filthy carryout grocery hands!  We’re all going to diiieeeee!
I’m sure I’ll get some sleep tonight.  In the meantime, I am going to go dig out my giant winter coat and Sorel boots and get ready for soccer! 

Stroller-free

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We sold our stroller this week and although we haven’t used it for many months – I can’t even recall when, exactly, we used it last – it feels strange that it is gone. For the first time in six years, I am stroller-less. At one point I actually had four strollers of varying child carrying capacities, weights, and wheel sizes in my garage. And now the fact that I have none feels like an era has officially ended.

I read this post about knowing when your family has maxed out on members, about knowing that there are no more babies coming down the pipe, so to speak. I knew I wanted two children, no more, no less, and I after I had my second healthy baby boy, I knew I wanted to stop. I recall clearly that when Mark was a baby, a small baby, maybe only a few months old, that I was already thinking ahead to the next baby. When Jake was a small baby, I knew, without a doubt, that he was the last.

I am starting to see that this viewpoint may not be typical.

More and more I speak with women who have pangs to have another baby, who perhaps wish to have another one and can’t for varying heart-breaking reasons, or who continue to add to their families with joy and happiness. Sometimes, and this is a confession, I wonder if there is something missing in my maternal being that I never, ever have pangs for another baby. I don’t even really enjoy holding other babies, and that is a difficult confession to make.

My grandmother, among others, would frequently advise me that I had better get pregnant, soon, with the infuriating advice that I should really try to have a girl. “Girls are different”, she would say, “Wouldn’t you like to have a girl?” And, my distaste at the thought of trying for a specific gender notwithstanding, I would reply mildly that girl or boy, I do not want any more babies.

A few years ago, when the boys were still very small, my period stopped for a few months. This was after we had taken permanent birth control steps, so pregnancy in this case, while not unheard-of, would be pretty much a medical curiosity. Still, I worried. I took test after test and they were all, of course, negative. But one day I was in the car with the two of them, driving and listening to them complain about dropped sippy cups and snacks, and I thought, what if the tests are wrong? What if I actually am pregnant? And the panic and anxiety that filled my being was such that I had to pull over so I could collapse in a sobbing puddle of tears.

Soon after that incident my period returned, and it was clear that our decision to have only two children was the correct one.

Meanwhile, each time Jake passed through a trying stage as a baby – a tiring one like teething, or a gross one like potty training – I would think well, I don’t have to go through that again. And now we are past, long past, the stroller stage and although that certainly wasn’t trying or difficult, it was a stage and now we are in a new one. I think about the hundreds of times I would tuck them into the stroller, with blankets and toys and snacks, and I think about those days with affection and also sadness, that the time has gone so quickly, so quickly I didn’t even notice.

PSA – What NOT to say to pregnant women

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I was talking with a friend who is currently eight months pregnant about the strangely insensitive things that people say to gestating women. Then I read this post and thought that today’s post would be a public service announcement: things not to say to pregnant women.

When I was pregnant with Mark, I was working on a natural gas trade floor, and the majority of my coworkers were male. It was the kind of workplace in which your colleagues would, on a daily basis, scream “What the f**k is the number? This f**king thing isn’t updating. Nicole! Your f**king model isn’t working! Can you just f**king fix it? F**K!” One colleague, in a fit of rage, smashed his phone receiver against his desk until it broke. It was that kind of environment.

In other words, if you wanted to work there with minimal emotional damage, you had better toughen up, buttercup, and do your crying in the ladies’ room.

But after I announced my pregnancy many of my coworkers reacted with extreme sensitivity and thoughtfulness. One colleague who became a father a few months before I was due – and his lovely wife has since become a friend of mine – was particularly solicitous, giving information and moral support, and bringing me snacks. Many snacks.

Those snacks undoubtedly contributed to my double-the-recommended weight gain, and that weight gain prompted another, younger, and single coworker to joke, “What happened to Nicole? Did you eat her?”

And so, dear reader, that brings me to the number one thing not to say to a pregnant woman. Never, never suggest that her weight gain is such that you suspect her of consuming an adult human. I laughed humourlessly at his joke, and then immediately considered whether poisoning or strangulation would be the better route to take.

Of course, I did look like this:


And I still had a full seven weeks to go before my due date, when that photo was taken. Can you tell I developed pre-eclampsia?

Upon consultation with other women, I have garnered a number of gems to avoid:

1) “Wow! You’re HUGE.” No woman wants to hear that, especially one whose hormones are running rampant.
2) “The pregnancy really has helped your complexion!” Actually, forget pregnant women. Don’t say that to anyone.
3) “Do you have twins in there?” And as an addendum, after a woman has assured you that no, there is only one fetus in the womb, do not follow up with “Are you SURE? You know, those ultrasounds can be mistaken.”
4) Do not assume you know the due date. Wait for the woman to tell you when she is due. Don’t say things like “It must be any day now!” This happened to me. When I was pregnant with Jake, a perfect stranger said, “I bet you’ll be happy to have that baby before the summer begins, with the heat and all.” It was early June. Jake was due at the end of September. AND, I was a mere shadow of the woman I was when I was pregnant with Mark; here I am with three months of growth to go.


Did I miss anything? Feel free to comment on what NOT to say to pregnant women, or to anyone for that matter.

Labour Stories – Part Three, Jake’s Birthday

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As I vaguely remember from my days as one gainfully employed, getting called into work is no fun, in fact, it is enough to ruin your day. At the very least, it doesn’t bring out the best in you. That sums up the scenario with my delivery nurse, Cheryl. You see, when I was in labour with Jake, the hospital was packed with labouring women and women waiting for scheduled c-sections. This is what you get for getting pregnant at Christmas. All these women getting a little present from Santa, and nine months later hospitals are experiencing a mini baby boom. So what I’m saying is that the morning I arrived at the hospital, there was a shortage of rooms and nurses. So Cheryl was called in early, and not all that happy about it. To be fair, my delivery nurse with my first baby was Shannon, a youthful and eager nurse who held my hands during each contraction, and who set the expectation bar pretty high. All I clearly remember about Cheryl, really, is that she had a fabulous manicure. Her nails were gorgeous, and after each contraction she would look up from them and say “Was that a bad one?”

My labour was going quickly, so that it was not long after arriving in my delivery room that Cheryl looked up from her nails to say that the contractions were too close together for me to even get checked out, and she called the doctor. Now, I don’t blame Cheryl for her lethargy. Probably she was overworked and tired. Also I was just there, less than 18 months before, having a baby, so the whole process was still quite fresh in my mind: it wasn’t like I was a first-timer. The person I blame is my husband. He actually had the audacity to complain of being tired. Tired! I leave my response to the reader’s imagination.

On September 15, at 10:45 a.m., Jake was born. Our Jake. He is four years old today and a joy in my life: funny, smart, and loving. When he was born I said, with my usual grace and composure, “Thank God I’m not doing that again!” But what I meant was, Jake completed our family, and brings happiness to our lives every day. Thanks Cheryl, for helping him into this world, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Labour Stories – Part Two, The Hospital

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I fully support women who choose to give birth in places other than a hospital – their own homes, a birthing centre, or, in the case of an amazing You Tube video I saw, the Mediterranean Sea. A Russian woman traveled to Israel to give birth in the Mediterranean and it was astonishingly beautiful, the woman the picture of grace and strength. I fully agree that pregnancy is not an illness, and childbirth not – in most cases – an emergency, however, a woman like myself, who makes fifty to-do lists a week and panics over the unlikely scenario of twenty people being simultaneously unavailable to babysit, well, a hospital is my birthing place of choice. I find immediately available medical attention and equipment to be as soothing as the sound of ocean waves. But that’s just me.

Also, I secretly love hospital food. I love getting food on little trays, everything in its own little compartment. I love that the hospital staff brings you a bedtime snack, even if it is a bizarre combination of bran muffin, cheddar cheese, and orange juice with Metamucil. After I had Mark, they brought me a tuna salad sandwich and let me tell you, dear readers, this was the tuna salad sandwich to end all tuna salad sandwiches. This was the greatest tuna salad sandwich of all time. When I was pregnant with Jake, I dreamed about one day getting another such tuna salad sandwich. Nine months, I thought about that sandwich. Then when I had Jake, it was egg salad day. Wretched egg salad. However, they did bring me a Salisbury steak (I still ate meat at that time). It was a tremendous Salisbury steak experience. Angels sang around that Salisbury steak.

Later, as I was recounting this incredible meal, my husband said “You know it’s just a hamburger patty with gravy, right?” Oh, but what a hamburger patty with gravy.

The downside of giving birth in a hospital is, of course, the possibility that you can spend hours in triage, which is precisely what happened to me. Triage was packed, packed with women with scheduled c-sections, women in the early stages of labour, and women in the “MOTHEROFGOD, MAKE IT STOP!” stage of labour. Those in the latter group were quickly wheeled into delivery rooms, prompting my husband to suggest that perhaps I should add a little, shall we say volume to my contractions and although I am capable of dramatic screaming, I felt unable to rise to the occasion at the time.

My doctor came by to check in with regards to what is euphemistically termed “pain management”. Since I had no drugs with Mark, I felt that I should do the same with this baby, not just to quell arguments and sibling rivalry down the road (“Ha ha, you made Mom get an epidural!”) but also because I had the well-authenticated concern that having an epidural would slow down my labour and I wanted to finish and have the baby quickly so that Mark could come and visit in the hospital after his afternoon nap. Yes, you read that correctly. That was my actual concern. Yet another reason to make up a birth plan: when you are in labour, you are simply incapable of rational thought.

Speaking of rational thought, here’s another tidbit: if they offer you a wheelchair, take the wheelchair. I speak from wretched experience. When I was assigned a delivery room at about 7 centimeters, I refused the wheelchair. It’s just down the hall, right? Twenty minutes, several very loud contractions, and 8.5 centimeters dilated later, I finally made it to my delivery room. Why, you may ask, didn’t someone bring me a wheelchair? After all, I was crawling down the hallway, shrieking with a contraction every couple of minutes. I do not know the answer to that. Maybe they thought I would rip the wainscoting off the wall and begin beating people with it? Or maybe the staff is just used to hormonally crazy pregnant women and didn’t notice. All I know is that I was about to meet Cheryl, my delivery nurse, and that is a story for another day.

Labour Day and Labour Stories – Part One

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Jake’s fourth birthday is less than two weeks away, which has had me reminiscing about, appropriately enough, his birth. I LOVE birth stories, labour stories, pregnancy stories. I love hearing about them. If you want to share, I promise to be a rapt audience. I love the ordinary run-of-the-mill birth stories, the grisly birth stories, the weird labour experiences, the pregnancy-related aches and pains. The only thing I do not like about labour stories is the term that is frequently employed, “birth experience”. I don’t know, that term conjures up the same feelings that “synergy” and “optionality” did in my long-ago working days.

You know when you see an enormously pregnant woman, and her behaviour is incredibly irrational and insane, and you know with the benefit of experience that any minute now, that woman will be going into labour, but when you are that enormously pregnant woman, you believe your behaviour is perfectly normal and reasonable, and everyone else around you is crazy? That was exactly my situation prior to going into labour with Jake.

The day before I went into labour I was at the hair salon, which was incredibly fortunate as I did not want to be an exhausted mother to a newborn and a toddler who was not yet one and a half with three inches of grey roots. I really needed those roots covered to rise to the situation. Thank you Dad for those genes. Anyway. In retrospect I should have guessed I was about to go into labour. I hated everyone in that salon. Every single thing bothered me but I had to hold everything inside because really, who wants to annoy the woman with the scissors? So I seethed on the inside. What is with the insipid chatter, I thought. Why is the smell so bad in here? This is an OLD issue of People! If they hadn’t been so behind, I wouldn’t be driving at this time of the day, I fumed in the traffic on the way home. I was so irritable and uncomfortable I decided to try to sleep on the couch. My husband checked on me when he heard my uncontrollable sobbing. He probably thought something was horribly wrong.

“WHAT IF NO ONE IS AROUND TO TAKE CARE OF MARK WHEN I’M IN LABOUR?” I sobbed. This was my fear: that I would go into labour and no one would be around to take care of the toddler. Side note: my parents live twelve minutes away, less if my lead-footed father is driving. My husband pointed out this fact, and also the fact that my elderly neighbour had specifically said she didn’t want to see me on the news as someone who had given birth in a taxi, so if my mom couldn’t come right away to call her. Also, I had been so paranoid that I had made up a list of people who could possibly look after Mark, starting with my best friend and my brothers and ending with almost every neighbour on my block and a couple of his co-workers. Still, I would not be dissuaded. I was convinced that everyone on that list would be unavailable all at the same time. Either I was going to go to the hospital by myself while Rob looked after Mark due to NO ONE else being available, or we would have to take Mark with us and he would be scarred for life watching his brother exit his mother’s vagina. There could be no other options. I cried until I fell asleep.

Then I woke up, at 4:30, to let Rob know we should call my mom to come over and take care of Mark.

March 23

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I remember my pregnancy with Mark so well. I walked around in a constant state of ecstasy mixed with anxiety – I was so happy to be pregnant, but also so worried that something was going to go wrong or that I would do something wrong. That feeling was not helped out by the many scary pregnancy books on the market, all of which I read. If I could have had one of those Doppler heartbeat monitors hooked up to me all the time, I probably would have. I was so happy to feel his first movements, and I was happy he was such an active little fetus. I remember he was especially active when a heavy metal or hard rock song came on the radio, and funnily enough, those are the musical genres he prefers to this day. “I love Welcome to the Jungle!” he informed the kindly and startled children’s minister at our church when asked about his favourite song.

Mostly, though, I just felt joyful, and expectant, and thrilled. And hungry. I ate enormous amounts of food, and constantly craved hamburgers. After an astounding weight gain, a pre-eclampsia diagnosis, and a subsequent three-week bedrest (after I had already finished work and started my official maternity leave) I waddled into my doctor’s office on March 23. She poked me in the puffy cheek in an illustrative way, and informed me and her young intern that I was going to be induced, TODAY. And that is how I ended up spending my second wedding anniversary in the delivery room.

I was only in labour for four hours, screaming such hilariously obvious things like “THIS REALLY HURTS!”. “I THINK I NEED THE DRUGS” I shrieked to Shannon, my young and sweet delivery nurse, who replied that I was nine and a half centimeters, and there was no way they were going to administer drugs at that point. Oh.

At 11:55, Mark was born, trumping our anniversary and forever changing my life, starting me on the long road that is motherhood. That was five years ago, and I can’t imagine life without him, my brave, sensitive, vehicle-obsessed, stubborn, happy, and funny little man.