Cuddles from the Inside

As time grow near, the sensations grow more pronounced, and the connection grows rich and deep. It’s a strange, never before felt feeling. Typically we cuddle others, to enrich that sensation inside us, share it with others, but it’s a new feeling, when you’re being cuddled from the inside. Each time he rolls around, or when his fingers and toes tickle your core, it’s like a small jolt; a hormonal cocktail high. Pregnant mommies to be don’t need to utilize other means to get high ’cause they’re getting high on life with their new baby, excited and ready to explore. Actually, despite some experience taking alternative measures, it’s the most intense high I’ve ever felt. And being cuddled from the inside, while creating that sensation of nurturing and protection for another, is unexplainable. They say the hormones pretty much cut off for the mom very shortly after birth, so I suppose maintaining that connection is the thing that keeps those feelings flowing, between a mother and a child, throughout their lives, and beyond.

Stop Telling Me It’s Wonderful

Sure, the miracle of birth is…a miracle! And for every person alive ultimately the most important moment in their life. For mothers though, it’s a whole different story than for the other participants. So I’m curious, what’s up with all the comments -wanted/warranted or not- on pregnancy and motherhood that other moms proffer. It’s not that I don’t want to hear stories that will help me through this process. It’s just that these words-o-wisdom start out positive, but ultimately they all seem to end up a horrific saga that you never asked about or wanted to hear. Look, I’m scared enough as it as, and am slowly easing my way into this. Frankly, each tale of woe brings about a borderline panic as it suffocates and increases my anxiety levels.

Usually they begin with how wonderful pregnancy is, how wonderful it is to have a baby, how I’m just going to love it…. That’s fine – totally acceptable. But then, before I can smile, respond or walk away, these sweet tales morph into some twisted or tragic drama. Fact is, you can’t walk away from someone talking babies. It’s as if you’re dissing the whole mom thing – like you’re dissing the mom, the baby, and motherhood in one gesture. So you’re stuck there, listening.

Yesterday, for example, I was talking to a surfer girl who’d had a child about seven months ago. Again with the wonderful talk – and again I’m sucked into it. We were in the beach parking area, and I was trying to fit into my bikini top which was getting too small, too quickly, and mentioned it. She starting talking about losing the baby weight -or not losing it yet- and I responded in a query, “well, you’re still breastfeeding, right?”… though I wasn’t really sure how much of an excuse that was to not having lost the weight. Unfortunately, that lead to her asking me if I was going to breastfeed (of course, yes) and she innocently began to explain how her baby daughter was great – that she just latched on. I responded with a smile, “Oh, that’s good,” while thinking to myself, what, sometimes they don’t know how to latch on. That thought alone was enough to ponder (being that I’m still very baby naïve), but she continues, and all of a sudden it turns into the baby’s mouth as a vice grip, mom’s nipples looking more like bloody knuckles, and the pain being worse than labor. Huh?!?!?! It happened so quickly from wonderful to absolutely awful I was ill-prepared. Did I ask to hear this? Does it look like I want to hear this? Is it helping matters? At this present moment, I’d simply like to go surf (while I still can) without the looming threat of bloody nipples on my mind.

It’s not that I don’t want to hear some of the negatives, so I can aptly prepare – but for god-sakes conclude with a solution, don’t just leave me worrying about the future more than I already am! The other day my friend had a solution for my labor woes. She emailed me, asking whether or not I was going to use hypno-birthing. Hypno-what?

OK, so what are the details? How far along are you? Do you know what flavor? Can I push hypnobirth on you? It’s the best – Bella shot out like a bullet.

She explained it’s a form of self-hypnosis that is designed to reduce pain and shorten labor time. As well it’s supposed to help you avoid the epidural and other drugs and go the “natural” route. Let’s just get back to the “shot out like a bullet” part. That’s all I needed to hear – sign me up! But then, with my hopes up (I’m thinking shot out like a bullet translates into the labor lasting, what, 10, 15 minutes maybe…), she left me crushed. Suffice to say, “shot out like a bullet”, in baby labor terms at least, is not quite as fast as a real gun. Her labor, she would later explain to me over the phone, took hours and hours, going overnight, and they ended up giving her drugs anyway. So, what is a long labor?

Do I need to make my own personalized t-shirts that exclaim, “don’t talk to me about this” with an arrow pointing down at my belly? Or is that too harsh? How about, “my baby and I only speak sign language.” At this point, I don’t know whom to trust when it comes to matters of sharing motherly information…so I tried my mother.

Actually, my mom was kinda comforting, in the sense that the miraculous occasion of her giving birth to me registered barely a blip in her memory. Now, we can look at that as a bad thing, but I tried to keep it positive. My conclusion – she doesn’t recall the event because it was not traumatic.

My mom told me I should ask my father. Ask my father? But she was the one having the baby! Turns out though, for many aspects of my and my sister’s birth and childhood, my dad seems to maintain better recall. In the end, I think my mom ended up speaking to my dad about it, refreshing her memory perhaps, because suddenly one day she shattered my dreams of her remembering such a beautiful moment in her life, and of my birth being easy, pain-free, and perfect. In actuality, she didn’t recall it because she likely purposefully blocked it out.

It starts with the fact that her labor lasted forever. They eventually had to induced it, until I was coming out so quickly they had to knock her out. My mom was (is) a very petite woman, so there were also some issues of getting me to fit out the hole, though I was just 6+ pounds. I guess she was awake enough when I came out to see the results of her efforts. “I had never seen anything like it,” she explained. Like it? You mean me? She goes on, with a giggle that conveys the ability to laugh at something once it’s only a memory, “you were long, skinny, no hair, and green (with jaundice). It was scary.”

Great mom. Thanks. Wonderful.

Aloha, Welcome to Preggerz!

I’m just four months pregnant. It was not expected and I’m not prepared – but I am a knowledge whore. So mixed with the emotional and physical is a mental crash course. This is not the oblivious positive pregnancy site, but more about the realistic experiences that have taken (and are taking) place along the way. So hope you can relate, learn, and share your own expectant mother fun!