Motherhood: Re-learning to be Passionate

I am passionate about being a mother.  I always have been, and it has always been something I wanted to do.  Despite this, in my few months of motherhood I was having a seriously difficult time.  The reason for this is that I felt like despite how much I wanted to be a mother when the opportunity finally came I felt inadequate, and that, all in all, I was not cut out for motherhood.  I hid my insecurity as best I could and moved on with life, but it was constantly gnawing at me.  Then I attended a seminar called: The Power of Choice in which I learned how to replace those feelings of inadequacy with the feelings of being powerful.  I also learned how to reignite the fiery passion I have for being a stay at home mom!  It has been wonderful!  The dishes often aren't done, the floor often isn't clean, and James does cry on occasion.  However, I no longer feel that these things are a reflection of my inadequacy, rather that they are a manifestation of my choice to take care of and play with my son, as well as taking care of myself instead of having the picture perfect house.  It is truly liberating.  I love being a passionate mother!

As I was re-reading this post I realized there were some serious grammatical errors (which I have since corrected).  That's what comes of being a passionate mother.  It is really easy to loose your train of thought, and your well constructed sentence, when peeking around your computer every other word to play peek-a-boo with your baby...

Baby James is Alive and Kicking (literally)!

As is obvious, by the fact that I haven't posted in a little while I've been a bit busy, with my new little baby boy: James Edward Pyper, who we called kicker post delivery and now call buddy more than anything else.  However, I am trying to make a point of addressing him by his name so he will know what his name is.  But that is all besides the point.  I am sure that you all want to know about delivery and then, if I had a guess I'd say you wanted to see some pictures.  Well, I'll see what I can do.  I am partly documenting this for my lovely followers and partly so that years down the road when I have ten children (heaven forbid) I will still remember the story of having my first.  So, without any further ado the story of the birth of the cutest little boy to grace this earth (I'm not biased at all).

I premise this tale with the fact that doctors should not tell you you're likely to have a baby any day.  A month before I was due I went into my doctor and they said I was 80% effaced and dilated to a 2+, which, in their words, meant "this baby is probably going to come early."  I freaked out.  I was not finished with my last class yet, and there was no way to finish it up within the next week or two due to a class project that required other group members.  I emailed my professor and got permission to do an individual project.  Two days later I was finished with my last class and for all intents and purposes graduated with a bachelors and teaching license in Special Education: Emphasis in Severe disabilities.  Voila, I thought I am ready to have a baby...well as ready as I was going to get.  The next week I was dilated to a 3, the week after that a 3+, the week after that my doctor greeted me with "I can't believe you haven't had a baby yet."  Bah, where is the baby.  The next week I have still not delivered and was not really having any contractions worthy of note.  This is one week before my baby is due, my doctor was very surprised, and I very perturbed.  I hate waiting, but even more so when professionals keep telling me I should have to wait no more.   This week I was dilated to a 4 and my doctor was looking for any sort of reason to induce, but I'm as healthy as a pregnant horse could be and was sent home with again the assurance that I should have a baby very soon.  My blood pressure had been a tad high, thus, I was told to check it a couple times a day and come in to labor and delivery if it reached a certain level.  I checked it on the morning of December 13th, one day before my due date, it was high.  I call Spencer to tell him I was going in to get it checked out, but that he didn't need to come to the hospital since they probably would just monitor me and send me home.  Kimberly, Spencer's sister, picked me up and went with me to the hospital.  They hooked me up to the stork monitor and low and behold my blood pressure was beautiful, beyond beautiful 90/50 kind of beautiful (my body just loves behaving for the pros and misbehaving for me).  My doctor had them check my amniotic fluid, while I was there.  It was low, not dangerously low, but low enough for them to induce me.  I was asked if I wanted to be induced then, or if I wanted to wait for tomorrow when my doctor could do the delivery (as it was getting close to time for her to go home and she was not on call that night).  Well I wanted a baby, so I said "Please, induce me."  I had just told Spencer that I was going to go home 15 minutes previous, so I called him again and said come to the hospital we're having a baby.

They moved me to another room where they hooked me up with an IV to give me Pettosin--which I have no idea how to spell--and broke my water, and finally I was having contractions.  Kimberly stayed with me until Spencer got there and a for a little while after he arrived.  I wasn't sure if I wanted an epidural, because I figured if it isn't too painful why have to deal with numbing.  The contractions continued to build, and they were painful though not unbearably so, the pain was just not where I expected, it was centered in my lower back and spread from there up and down my spinal column.  Now I thought to myself, "Self, you can probably deal with this and be just fine, but do you really want to feel this if it's possible not to."  I asked the nurse if I could have an epidural, and in no time it all I was chilling, unable to feel my legs at all and feeling no pain whatsoever.  I hung out for the next few hours.  At one point (when they poked him in the head as they inserted an internal monitor) the baby's heart rate dipped and a whole bunch of doctors and nurses converged on our room, but everything leveled out again quickly.  Spencer's mom came in and sat with us for a little while, but went back into the waiting room for the actual delivery. I pushed for an hour (which is really hard work even if you can't feel the pain and my whole body was shaking like crazy).  Thus it was that six hours after checking in at 10:22 p.m or 22:22 military time James was born.  He was bright purple for a minute or so (he had the cord loosely wrapped around his neck), and he had a bit of a cone head, but even then he was beautiful.  He weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and was 19" long.  He had his eyes open and was looking around a few minutes after he was born and he is still a curious little fellow.  Spencer's parents came in shortly after he was born to see their new grandbaby and take pictures.  We went to sleep very late and woke often while in the hospital, where we saw many of our wonderful friends come to congratulate us and see the new edition to our family.

We came home from the hospital on the 15th and I started a new chapter in my life: Motherhood (about which I'm sure to say more in later posts).

All of the above pictures were taken about 15 minutes after James was born...wasn't he cute at 15 minutes old.

Craziness

I have to remind myself on a nearly basis that I am not insane.  This may sound a little foreboding, and or like I'm losing my mind (which I may be).  I just didn't realize how much I was getting in for when I decided to work full time, take classes, move into a new house (and try to organize/arrange said house) and be pregnant.  I come home exhausted, start on my homework, pay the bills, attempt to clean (which takes a lot longer when you can only bend certain ways due to an ever expanding stomach), and think to myself that I am crazy.  I then remind myself that I had good reasons for deciding to do each of the things I am doing and that I am thus not insane, just potentially a little too ambitious.  Spencer and I are finally not living out of a suitcase anymore, as we unpacked our clothes and put them in the dresser last week, this is in part due to my grandmothers appalled expression when we told her we had been living out of a suitcase for two months...familial pressure, even more effective than peer pressure.  All in all, in all its craziness life is pretty great.  A bit fast paced, and if the last sentence is any indication a little to full of all's, but wonderful.

Behind the Times

I am going to be a quarter of a century on June 3, which is next Friday.  This makes me wish to pause and reflect on my life.  In my lengthy reflection (all of 30 seconds or so) I decided that I take a little longer to do important life things...graduate...marry...have kids.  I am a bit behind most of my friends and loved ones in these and other areas.  However, I always catch up eventually.  I got married at 23 not a world record, but I certainly wasn't early in the game.  Spencer and I are in the process of looking for a home (as we've been pre-qualified for a mortgage).  I am, finally, going to graduate in December.  And not long after that (or before graduation as fate may have it) I am going to have a baby.  I have been going crazy wanting to tell everyone about my life changes, especially about my little one who is moving around rather vigorously, but haven't.  I told myself that I wouldn't tell anyone until 14 weeks, but at week 11 my resolve is crumbling.  Thus, I have now documented the fact that this is happening without officially breaking my word to myself as all my faithful friends--followers of this blog-- may not even read this before week 14.  Life is wonderful.  Thanks for sharing my news, or not, as the case may be.

Senioritis

I have a very severe case of senioritis.  I can't even begin to describe how much I want to be done with school already.  I am currently waging an inner war with myself, as part of me just wants to drift through the rest of school, do a little less than the minimal amount of work, and be happy in my laziness.  But the infernal good student that seems to have lodged itself in my existence just isn't satisfied with that.  This goody goody two shoes self insists that I must do all my homework and attend all my classes, and not only must I do all this work, I must do it well.  So in essence my life consists of trying to not do my homework, not wanting to do my homework and then doing it anyway and being upset that I used up so much time to do it.  Its a fairly conflicted and stressful way to live.  I wish I could just decide to be a lazy or good student and just do it, but I have a feeling that I will continue to do both at the same time.  In one of my time wasting (not working) fits however I managed to watch Around the World in 80 Days with Peirce Brosnan, which I did not even know existed.  Apparently it was a BBC miniseries some years back.  There are a couple of risqué scenes, but it was all in all quite delightful...skip France and the trip around the world was perfectly worth watching...even though I should have been doing homework...

Fall Pictures

Now, there are several reasons for posting these now instead of when they were taken in the fall.  Reason one, in the dead of a nasty, smog infested, Utah winter it is nice to remember that there are warmer and more colorful seasons at some point in the year.  Two, they are the pictures I used on our Christmas card, thus they have integrated themselves into the Winter season.  And lastly, I like them, and it's better to post them now rather than never.  And with that lengthy introduction here they actually are:

It's very important to have a kissing picture (otherwise people would wonder if you still like each other).

I love this picture for several reasons.  One my hair looks awesome, and two Spencer looks awesome.  The last reason is it's just a good picture.

I'm peaking at you from behind Spencer, and he's trying to figure out what I am doing.

This was the fastest photo shoot I've ever had.  We took pictures for a grand total of fifteen minutes, and we got some really good ones.  

Happy Fall/Winter!

New Followers

I began this blog as a means to personally motivate myself to document my life... From the overwhelming amount of posts, you can see how effective this motivation has been.  Now, however, some of my dear friends may be following my family blog...perhaps documenting for them will be more successful than just doing it for me.