What it’s like to get an IUD with a toddler sitting on your chest…

he wasn’t wearing fatigues and no choking was invovled, but this is what my exam experience looked like…

Potamus walked proudly into the doctor office with me, but as soon as we started heading back to the room he began having a meltdown. He completely lost it, sobbing uncontrollably, when the nurse put the blood pressure cuff on my arm. No amount of cajoling him (‘hey, it’s like your doctor kit at grammy’s house!’) got him to calm down. So he sat facing me all snuggled in on my chest. The nurse asked, (naively in my opinion) if I thought he’d go with one of the nurses while I got my procedure done. Hardly, my friend, hardly. But never worry, I, the ever resourceful mother, had planned to either let him sit on my chest, or was prepared for him to sob on the floor while the procedure happened.

Thank God the latter didn’t happen, because it turned out to be a 30 minute ordeal.

Perhaps I should have gotten a ‘babysitter’ (aka asked MIL to do it), but she’s watching him tomorrow for a few hours, and watched him on Tuesday. Plus, I’m a little bit masochistic or martyrish in that way. Like I get special brownie points for making a doctor visit even harder, more painful, then just having a copper T shoved into my cervix. But also, Potamus wasn’t feeling well today, and he’s coming off his first four full days at daycare this week, and I thought it’d be good for him to just spend some more time with me.

And also, it’s a good reminder of why I’m in the office. To prevent having to go to the doctor toting two tots together (say that twelve times fast).

The doctor seemed apprehensive of my plan, but Handy Manny on my smartphone is a pretty sure bet. And he doesn’t weigh more than 30 lbs, so I dropped trou, scooted my bum to the end of the table and hoisted Potamus up onto the top of my belly, lower part of my chest. With my feet in the stirrups, and my kids feet in my face, straddling me, and my smartphone nestled under my chin, I realized that yoga is possibly the best preparation for such an awkward experience.

I barely even felt the procedure, though the doctor managed to horrify me with some crime scene cleanup since she had “hit a blood vessel.” Nothing like gushing all over your doctor’s shiny clean floor. And the whole while she kept asking if I was doing okay and if I felt any cramping. I didn’t. Probably because a 30 lb toddler had me in a body slam choke-hold on the exam table. Also, I have a high pain tolerance. And a good grasp of breathing and relaxation techniques. Also, it wasn’t quite like labor, ya know?

 

Any awkward experiences that have been made even MORE awkward with your kid present?

Friday Funnies

The Halloween section of Value Village was calling my name. And Potamus wanted to try on all the wigs and hats. I couldn’t stop laughing when we put them on. So funny…and I remembered how much I love having Fridays off.

Crazy clown

Sad anime baby

If i had a brunette

Bed head?

Thoughtful purple head

He couldn't stop laughing

How Fallopian Tubes are like Holocaust Cattle Cars

Trying to conceive is a strange experience. The more I learn about my body, the more I realize that junior high and high school health/biology class are severely lacking in the information department. Or maybe I was too busy doodling the name of my dreamy crush on my pee chee. Or both.

But seriously, it was only this week that I learned how…um…dumb (for lack of a better description) the whole getting pregnant thing really is. I mean, you have unprotected baby making sex, hopefully at the right time for the stars to align, and when you’re finished you go and get a drink of water, or take a shower or eat a sandwich. And meanwhile, if you’re the lady, there are are these microscopic swimming things just…oh you know….hanging out inside you. I mean, that’s like something from a B level Science Fiction movie…from the late 80’s.

So there they are, microscopic swimming things, who we’ve all thought of as swimming as fast as their little metaphorical hearts can go to get to the PRIZE of that glorious golden snitch bursting from the ovary. But in fact, it’s a lot less Olympics or Hunger games, and seems more like a really slow, drunken frat party. Because, according to one website’s description, the sperm (which can hang out for a few days inside, waiting…um…creepy…) just ‘bump into’ the egg and thus fertilize it.

Wait. You mean to tell me that my son was born because some sperm just randomly bumped into the egg? It wasn’t even like “oh hey baby, you’re so fine, come over here and let me fertilize you.” It was more like the egg stumbling on the way to the bathroom and being forced to marry the first dumb jock frat boy who bumps into her. Talk about fate. And kind of a dumb design if you ask me. Couldn’t they (being God, or Supreme Being, or hell, evolution) come up with a better idea than THAT?

Then again, it does seem to be working, as our Earth is teeming with human bodies.

But, all of this enlightenment about how the sperm that actually fertilizes an egg, got me thinking about the rest of the experience. Like, how sucky would it be to be trapped in the fallopian tubes for up to 3 days. It seems dark, and crowded if you ask me. And you’re surrounded by a bunch of millions of other like-minded microbes, who really just want to survive and meet that egg, but are most likely going to end up on the wrong side of Fate’s hand. And I’m not one to throw out Holocaust metaphors, but that dark, cramped fallopian tube, with millions of sperm that will eventually die, seems like those cattle cars the Nazi’s used in WWII. And I wonder, do the sperm know the chances that they will end up alive at the end of the whole ordeal? Are they blindly optimistic to the chance that they will somehow live on? So every time we have sex millions of sperm die…in my body….gross. It’s basically the Nazi regime all up in my lady parts.

Have you ever been surprised to learn something that you were supposed to have been taught in high school?

Silent Saturday…or Silly Saturday…

potential Christmas card photo, eh?

Death of the the Easter Bunny

our juniper bush murdered the Easter bunny

“Hey! After much research on the internet, I think we’ve figured out that the skull from the juniper bush was a rabbit! I think it was the Easter bunny!” I said loudly to my in-laws on Sunday.
“Well, better than Santa Claus,” my mother-in-law retorted.

She’s referencing my childhood that was void of all things Santa, but seriously, yes, a human skeleton of any type, let alone the jolly old elf himself, showing up in my backyard would be creepy as hell. Especially since we know that one of the owners DIED in our house. She was old, though, and not related to Santa in any way. So, short of having some human burial ground in our backyard, coming across an animal skeleton was a step better.

Though, typically, dead animals freak me out.

I mean, really freak me out.

Like I have a 6th sense for taxideried mounts and have yet to be disproven by my proclamation “there’s dead animals here.” Usually Boof looks at me like I’m crazy, but then sure enough the person’s house or the antique shop or the random restuarant will, in fact, have some type of taxidermied animal on display (or chucked in a bin with antique dolls and old shoes), and I will proudly exclaim “told you so,” to my scoffers. I’m pretty sure I was the only child who listed “dead buffalo” as a fear. Not live buffalo. Dead buffalo (who, coincidentally I believed haunted our hallways, though taxidermied animals had never ‘set foot’ in our house).

So, coming across a skull, in my backyard would normally leave me screaming or crying or feeling a sort of panicky-can’t-get-my-breath moment. For some reason, maybe wanting to be strong for my toddling son, I became fascinated. And I pulled the skull out of the pile of decaying juniper needles, dug around and found a few more bones, and placed it on our deck to research later. Because, it makes a difference, right, if it was a large rat (Boof’s first guess) or a gopher (my guess) or…The Easter Bunny.

I wasn’t allowed to believe in Santa Claus as a kid because my mom’s parents had let her believe until she was about 12. And then she thought they were liars and then she had a crisis of faith wondering if GOD existed because she couldn’t see Him and maybe he was just like Santa and the whole thing was a sham. Boof, on the other hand, has fond memories of the Santa presents and the whol rigamarole that surrounded it as a kid. It might cause us to get a divorce because I am staunchly anti-Santa and he is marginally pro-Santa, but my in-laws feel judged and sad that I am so anti-the-whole-thing. They also say I’m a hypocrite (in not such nasty words) because I’m fine with believing in mermaids and fairies and the Easter Bunny. And they don’t understand why my parents encouraged Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy beliefs but were so staunchly anti-Santa.

At any rate, after much googling, it appears the skull is more on par with a rabbit than a rat (phew) or gopher (meh). My mind begins to wonder, though, if the rabbit lived in our backyard and died of old age? Or did he get scared and find shelter under the junipe bush and then it MURDERED him with its insidious juniperyness? Or maybe it was injured and suffered because of a dog-bite and died a mere few feet from where help could have potentially saved it. Or maybe it was so outraged by the Cadbur Egg prices this year that it had a heart attack.

I’ll never know the true story, but…what if? What if it was the death of the Easter Bunny? What if my backyard is a burial ground for other things, too? Eek!

Blurts, Flirts and Desserts

Blurts: I have two types of “disruptive” students. The blurters tend to be well-meaning. They have something that comes to mind and they say it, without much thinking about the context of whether their comment is appropriate (during lecture) or inappropriate (during a shy person’s oral report). And blurting doesn’t just happen with their mouth…I have several students who also blurt with their bodies. They get up, mill around, pick up their guitar and begin strumming a little tune. For the most part, I recognize that learning styles come in all types, and that students, especially teenage boys, can’t be cooped up in their seat for too long. Though, this Tourettes like activity is often distracting for my more introverted students, and still needs to be appropriate. I appreciate that my students feel free to express themselves, but yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater is dangerous AND annoying. So, how can I help my word-vomit and body-blurters have a little more…self-control?

Flirts: Mah baby likes to flirt, that is, when he’s not feeling stranger danger. He definitely doesn’t discriminate based on gender, either. He equally gives doe eyes to the men AND the ladies. Though he doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of Trader Joe’s or Costco cashiers talking to him while he sits in his seat in the cart. But he saves his special flirts for his mama. And I’ve been enjoying those open mouth laughing kisses he gives on my cheeks!

Desserts: After almost 1.5 years in our house, we officially met our next door neighbor. She was helping her sister move, and brought a few leftover treats by. Yay for lemon bars and raspberry/oatmeal bars! It was nice to have an actual name to the “hi howareya?” that I’ve thrown across the fence or in passing to her husband while we have tried to round up our escaped pooch. I’m thinking of reciprocating the desserts with a sweet bottle of wine and thank-you card, but have yet to muster the energy to walk across our tiny lawn to give it to them. Because this is Seattle, I do not feel weird that my neighbor waited 1.5 years to meet me…I’m just glad she stopped by at all. Because, while we are known to be surfacely friendly (saying ‘hi’ and nodding on the street), to actually go out of our way is a pretty huge deal!

Speaking of desserts, since beginning again in the world of offices, I have noticed a strange fascination with chocolate. While I have somehow eaten my own packed lunch for the past 6 weeks, I have also begun drinking more coffee (an excuse to get out of the office) and eating more chocolate during lunchtime. Gah!

Sweet dreams ya’ll!

8 months of personality

Seriously, this kid cracks me up.

Calvin & Hobbes

I grew up loving Calvin & Hobbes. There is nothing funnier than that kiddo’s expressions…until of course I look at my own “Calvin.”

Seriously, Potamus makes the most ridiculous expressions.

My circus baby

Faces

Lovin’ all the faces he makes!