Tales from La La Land

Well, here goes.

How to explain the long lapse in between blog posts?

There’s no simple way to explain it, because I can’t even explain it to myself. I have conversations with myself quite often these days, and always on the agenda is, “Are you going to write on your blog ever again?” For the last month, my immediate answer was, “I don’t want to, and I’m not making myself do anything else that I don’t want to.”

I figured when Harper came along, the blog posts would just write themselves. Just as they always have. Babies provide endless material, I figured.

It’s true. She does provide material, but I will be honest: Most of the time I am barely keeping my head above water. Part of me was disappointed in myself for a while because it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I thought I’d be able to do everything, and do it seamlessly. I thought I’d be able to be a mom, a wife, have a career, continue to be an avid runner, cooker, writer and friend.

Sometimes it felt like all I was doing was being a mom. And forgive me for not wanting to just be a mom. I know that doesn’t sit well with some people, but I want more. I want to be ME and be Harper’s mommy. I want to have friendships and spend time with other people. I want to have a night out with just Laef. I want to head out for a 6 mile run by myself.

My life is not defined by her, nor should my every waking hour be about her.

But before I knew it, my life was all about her. And I didn’t mind. Something just kind of takes over where you feel this overwhelming need to be there for your child every second of every day. Then months went by and I hadn’t gone running. I hadn’t written. I hadn’t gone for drinks with friends. I hadn’t had a night out with just Laef. We were scrapping by eating Taquitos for dinner. We weren’t sleeping much.

And it broke me down.

Being a parent is a combination of so many things. It truly is the greatest thing on good days. And it is abysmal on bad days. When she smiles at me or reaches for me for comfort, I melt. When she cries all night because she has a fever and her teeth are coming in, I have to dig to the deepest part of my being to comfort her without getting any sleep.

When you have to dig deep and find inner strength just to make it through some days, you don’t have a lot left over. That is what I wasn’t prepared for. I didn’t realize that it would be so hard to maintain all these other aspects of my life.

I started reading things about moms who do it all, and realized that I was going to have to start making time for myself. If I want to run, the only hour in the day to do that is 5:30 a.m.-6:30 a.m. Not my first choice, but my life is different now, and I’m going to have to adjust accordingly.

If I want to have dinner with friends, or get my hair done, or have a date night, I’m going to have to let go of my anxiety and let Harper stay home with a babysitter.

If I am going to start writing blogs again, I had to write this post. I had to put it out there that I’ve been struggling, and I’m not perfect. I always try to write funny blogs, and keep things light, but in order to get back to that, I had to put this out there.

It’s a big weekend for change: Dinner with friends tonight, hair appointment tomorrow and a movie with Laef on Sunday (yes, we are going to spend $1,000 in babysitter fees, but we’re getting some balance back into our lives, and it will be worth every penny).

“No it won’t” – Laef.

Sometimes I think about how much money I would spend for free time.

When we were in Maui, Laef had Thanksgiving Day completely off. Just knowing that I’d have an extra set of hands to help made me beyond excited. And then Laef agreed to watch Harper for 1 hour so I could go to the pool. ALL BY MYSELF.

Then of course something happened with work, and he got called away seconds before I was to escape. I’m not kidding, I almost went Harper on his ass. I had to fight back a serious meltdown. I could taste that one hour, and it tasted like a Pina Coloda spiked with Banana Boat SPF 4.

In the end, he didn’t have to be gone very long, and when he came back I went to the pool.

And let’s be honest, I totally missed them both after 30 minutes. But since finding an hour seems impossible in real life, I forced myself to order another Corona and tough it out. It was so hard. Times were tough.

So, anyway, we came home from Hawaii on Friday. Laef had to work all day Saturday and Sunday. When he got home Sunday evening I handed Harper to him so that I could do a few things.

Laef: “OK, well, I need to poop first.”

Me: Side eye. “OK. I guess you can poop.”

10 minutes later I realize I am still on Harper duty.

Me: “Um, this is NOT one of those poops. This is not a “read the entire Week cover to cover poops.”

Laef: “What?”

Me” “NOW. If I can’t take a shower longer that 4 minutes, you certainly can NOT poop and enjoy a magazine for 10 minutes areyoufuckingkiddingme? Do you want me to cut you?”

I think it was at that very minute that Laef finally realized how valuable time is.

He was about as excited to sit on the toilet as I was to sit by the pool.

The other day I was rushing around to find a new purse for work because the one I normally use had an entire cup of coffee spilled inside of it. These are the kinds of things that happen when you have to carry 512 things to the car in the morning now that you have a baby. I swear, the amount of shit I am constantly lugging around is ridiculous.

Half of the time, I forget what I have, and as I’m walking to the car, I quickly hope that I have the most important things: milk, phone, keys, baby. OK, I guess not in that order, but those are the things that I would have to go back for. I usually drink my coffee while getting ready, but on this particular day shit was haywire for some reason or another and I put my travel mug inside my purse (save your comments, I am aware of how stupid that is, but the plan was to have my purse upright. That was until I forgot I brought coffee with me and proceeded to just throw my purse into the car).

When I got home, I immediately threw away my purse. It was a little devastating, but made me realize that I’m actually glad I never got that Coach purse I always wanted. That would have been on the list of “shit my kids ruined” because this definitely linked back to Harper in some way.

Later that night, Laef pulled the purse out of the trash and said that it was salvageable. Um, OK, whatever. I’m too fucking tired to salvage a $50 purse so I will just watch how you do it. He hung it in the shower to dry out.

Me: “Ummm…is that your plan?”

Laef: “It still works.”

Me: “It fucking reaks and I’m not carrying around a coffee purse.”

Laef: “That might be just what you need.”

ANYWAY, back to the main point of looking for a back up purse. I found one. And when I went to transfer all my stuff in it, I noticed two diapers. And I got really excited. WHEN THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN? Why aren’t there lost MAC lip glosses and crinkled $5 bills? Why am I excited about diapers?

Oh yeah. Because diapers = $$$.

I don’t even know why we’re bothering with diapers at this point. The other day we went to a bbq and Harper was passed around all day acting like a little angel. Smiling and cooing and being everyone’s best friend. But the minute we put her in her carseat, she apparently took a giant shit. Only we didn’t know that, and so when Laef took her out of the car, he was holding her, talking to her, and making her laugh. Then he felt something wet all over his brand new Banana Republic shirt.

I am not going to lie. I was laughing my ass off. Her legs were covered in poop and Laef was just trying to keep it together, but the look on his face said, “WHAT THE FUCK, I NEVER SPEND $40 ON T-SHIRTS AND NOW THAT I HAVE, THERE IS POOP ON IT. FORGET ABOUT THE BABY, WHERE IS THE STAIN REMOVER? WAAAAAAAAAAA.”

I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning the car seat and hoping that my car won’t spell like an outhouse.

The very next day we decided to have a nice leisurely Sunday morning in bed with our sweet baby. Laef brought his coffee in bed. Yes, you already know where this is going. Except, washing sheets and doing general chores require an insane amount of energy these days. I was so happy and proud that we had clean sheets on the bed. Then Harper threw up and Laef spilled his coffee trying to avoid puke.

I spent the rest of the day ignoring the sheets thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad. Then I laid down for a nap. Needless to say, the sheets were washed 10 minutes later. I mean, the coffee was on Laef’s side, and I contemplated telling him that if I needed a coffee purse, then he needed coffee sheets. But, the puke was on my side, so I didn’t think this was the time for jokes.

This baby shit is testing my endurance in a way I did not think was possible.

Back to the “why do we even bother with diapers” issue.

After dealing with the sheets, Harper decided that she would play ANOTHER funny joke on mommy. While she was sitting on my lap, she let out a few farts. I mean, I thought they were farts. So I sat with her for a while longer, and then I felt something. I picked her up and there on my lap was a puddle of poop. I mean a puddle. All over me and her and her freshly clean blanket.

My first thought was not to barf.

My second thought was: FINE. I SURRENDER. THE BABY WINS AND WE WILL HAVE STAINS EVERYWHERE.

But, I’m not buying a mini van. Ever.

P.S. It’s a good thing she is cute.

Not only have I not found much time to blog about this whole parenting experience, but I didn’t exactly find most of the shit we were going through during the first six weeks all that funny or blog-inspiring. We did have our moments where we’d have to laugh in order to stay sane, but I wasn’t exactly chuckling when she would wake up 25 minutes after laying down for a nap. Actually, there were times when I would actually start crying when she would wake up.

Sleep deprivation is no fucking joke.

The joke is actually that people are expected to raise a baby on barely any sleep. Have you seen those people who do meth and don’t sleep for days? They pick their face off and think people are coming to get them. It felt like we were doing meth for a while, and yet needed to make sure Harper was safe.

It made no sense.

But in the last week, things have started to change. It feels like we’re coming out of a fog. She sleeps most of the night now. She actually smiles at us. She coos. She’s still a pain in the ass when things aren’t exactly the way she needs them to be, but that will probably be the case for 18 more years.

When I think back to the early days, I can now laugh at the following:

I thought it was always going to be like the first four days. Harper slept all the time. I actually wanted her to wake up in the middle of the night because I was excited to see her. I remember thinking that everything was so easy. No problem. This baby stuff was a piece of cake.

Bullshit.

It’s called adrenaline.

And it wears off.

Just when the adrenaline wears off, the tears start coming. They will tell you that it’s normal, but you will still wonder what the fuck is going on when your mother in law walks through the door and you start crying (I don’t recommend this). You might also wonder why you’re crying every time you look at the baby. Or when it’s morning. Or evening.

I wasn’t sad. But I have never cried more than I did during the second week.

That phase passed, also. Not without Laef asking me if I thought I could invent a baby mascara. Like something double waterproof. Because everyday I insisted on washing my face and putting on some make up. And everyday I would cry until my face looked beat. Laef would be super sweet and give me hugs until one day he couldn’t take the fact that he had changed his shirt 62 times in three days.

Which is almost as many times as I changed my underwear in the first three days.

A lot of things change with your body. A lot. So many that you’re not sure which part to be most depressed about. I mean, is it the fact that even though you’re super proud of yourself for being able to walk 3 miles a week after giving birth, you have to come home because you pissed your pants? Or is it the fact that your stomach feels like jello?

The hardest part about dealing with everything is that I didn’t have a lot of extra time to see or talk to friends. Sometimes it felt like we were in the Harper vortex where we couldn’t even break free for a simple text message. We would also go days without leaving the house. In the middle of a gorgeous summer. It felt like life was passing us by and we were stuck inside contemplating where Harper would take the best nap. Or if she had taken a shit. Or if she was upset because the AC was at 75 instead of 74.

These were the topics that were super, uber, majorly important.

And sometimes that made me sad.

But the truth is, the real friends are there when you’re ready. Real friends will understand, and be the first to meet you for a drink when you have time.

And no matter how shitty you think your body looks, or how sore your boobs are, your husband will absolutely start inquiring about sex prior to the 6-week mark. While you might want to kick him in the balls to explain that the last thing you are ready for is anything having to do with anything down there, you will take a little pleasure in the fact that he still wants to after what he witnessed in the delivery room and beyond.

Here’s the thing about babies: they read minds.

And they’re selfish.

They get to poop, eat and sleep at will while we frantically try to do all three within the 15 minute span that they sometimes give us during the day.

But, seriously, Harper has been sleeping soundly in her swing for the past 20 minutes. The list of things I wanted to do during today’s morning nap included:

1. Eat

2. Pump

3. Pee

4. Wash my face

5. Put on real clothes

6. Watch Alexander Skarsgard on Regis and Kelly

7. Write a blog

8. Sweep the floor

9. Unload the dishwasher

10. Read my gossip sites

The good news is that we are making progress as she approaches her 7-week birthday. It used to be that she had to be held or rocked in order to fall asleep. However, per Posh Jrs. request, rocking and holding must be done while standing up and doing laps around the house. If you so much as think about sitting on the couch PJ will cry. If you even consider stopping to look at your phone mid-lap, PJ will cry. If you make a pit-stop in front of the TV to watch SportCenter’s Top 10, PJ will immediately open her eyes and no longer be sleeping.

So when she finally does fall asleep, we can put her in the swing or her crib.

And then the clock starts ticking.

Sadly, I always start with cleaning. While I’m cleaning I will run down the list, and determine what I want to do next. And, inevitably, just as I’m finishing picking up the house and loading the dishwasher, thinking about the amazing nap I am about to take, I hear little whimpers.

She is waking up. Because I am pretty sure she’s inside my head, and because taking a nap does not involve her, it must be sabotaged.

In fact, I ran a huge risk googling how to spell Skarsgard for this post. You can’t waste precious moments. You have to move from one task to the next, and hope she doesn’t notice that you are DOING ALL SORTS OF THINGS FOR YOURSELF!

Laef and I share the “carrying her around” duties when he is home. We both have sore backs. She’s getting heavier. So we finally just started setting her down in the swing or her vibrating chair to hope that she’d allow us a break. Thankfully, it has started to work. She has even started to lull herself to sleep in the swing.

Since I have resumed running last week, Laef is usually with her for a while later in the evening. She doesn’t really like being put down later in the evening. That is her designated fussy time. It is also when the Cardinals are usually playing.

The other day I came home from a run to find Laef sitting in a dining room chair watching the Cardinals from across the room.

Laef: “I faked her out! Because our chairs are so high, she thinks we are standing.”

Me: …

I mean, it’s like a fucking treat that we get to sit down. Or watch a baseball game.

Or write this blog!

I’m going to quit while I’m ahead!

P.S. It’s easy to do everything for someone who looks like this:

Today is our two-year anniversary.

Two years ago I married what I thought was a great guy.

Today, I realize great would be an understatement.

Laef and I have been together since 2005. I asked Laef today if he remembered the one time we went to Mill Street in Tempe and got drunk.

“No…I only remember what happened after we went to the bars.”

That is my husband.

Funny (although, I never let him see me laugh at his jokes).

In 2007 we got more serious and moved in together.

In 2008 we got engaged.

In 2009 we were married.

In 2010 I got pregnant.

In 2011 this happened:

It’s all about spit up and sleepless nights (and not the kind of sleepless nights that were happening in 2005).

Not only has Harper changed everything about our lives, she completely changed the way I look at Laef. The way he talks to her, sings to her, dotes on her. The way he’s always asking if he can take her for a while so I can shower or eat. The way he wants to be such a big part of her life no matter how tired he is.

Laef and I have been through a lot of things during our time together, but raising Harper is something completely different, and you really don’t know how it will change your marriage.

Right now I know that it has changed it one million times for the better.

And now we have something to show for all our hard work.

We took Harper to her 2 week doctor appointment last week and the highlight of the visit was that she gained 9 ounces! And, I must say, if this little trick hadn’t gained anything I might have thrown myself on the floor right there and screamed until someone swaddled me and gave me a paci dipped in Patron. I swear I have been breastfeeding (or pumping) nearly 24 hours a day for the past 19 days. Breastfeeding has been far harder than I ever imagined, although I will say that my nipples have finally thrown in the towel and succumbed to the beast that is Harper’s mouth. I did not know that babies could suck cracks the size of the Grand Canyon in one tiny nipple. Nor did I know exactly how painful it was going to be.

Having said that, we are extremely lucky that she’s a good eater. She latched on from the first day, and has not looked back. She eats constantly, night and day. She is now able to drink breastmilk from a bottle, and it doesn’t affect her ability to breast feed. This means that Laef can do one of the nightly feedings. I can’t even tell you how nice it is to have that one little break. Of course, sometimes she will finish the bottle, and after trying to rock her into a coma, Laef will bring her back to me 45 minutes later and say, “Chris Farley is hungry again.”

She eats constantly.

At first this meant that I was confined to the couch or the rocking chair for most of the day and night. I will say that I do cherish those moments when she is making the “this tastes soooo yummy” sighs and her whole body is completely relaxed. I could stare at her for hours.

But sometimes I need other things to keep me occupied. So when Laef had to go to work and I was by myself for the day, I had to make sure that my command station was set up before I started feeding her. (I am just now getting to the point where I can be mobile or move around without having piercing pain).

Once I have my command station set up, Harper and I conquer the world. I’m so thankful that she eats well despite the fact that she usually shits herself halfway through, which means she grunts and kicks her legs violently while working it out, all done with my nipple in her mouth because God forbid I politely pull her off to help her burp or work out her giant shit. She does not like to be interrupted for anything while eating.

Fine by me, little Diva. Eat with your pants full of shit.

Anyway, Laef and I are approaching week 3 and I can’t really say that we’ve got it all figured out. Some nights she sleeps a max of 2 hours per stretch, other nights she will go 5 hours. But we can never count on anything because things change daily. And that is the hardest part. Just when we think we figure something out and think we’ve mastered the 3 week old who runs the household, she switches it up on us and we’re back to square one.

The good news is that Laef and I have both been in this together everyday since day one. I don’t think anyone truly knows how hard it is mentally until you’ve been through it. So I don’t have to explain to him why I’m crying after having been up all night. He already knows. Having someone in you’re corner who knows exactly what you’re feeling makes it a lot easier.

Because we all know that when I was crying because of PMS he didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, nor did he understand why it was such a big deal that he missed the hamper for the 6ooth time.

Some days we look at each other and roll our eyes. Other days we stare at her and smile and say, “We did this.” We feel so happy and and so lucky. Even if I never have any idea what day of the week it is, and 3 p.m. is no different than 3 a.m.

At the end of the day, whatever day it might be, she has changed us both in a myriad of ways. I didn’t know I could give so much of myself and expect nothing in return. I didn’t know that Laef and I could talk about her epic shits and how many grunts it takes for her to finally be done.

Or how F’n cute she could be.

I think I got kind of cocky during the first week of this whole baby thing. For the first four days Laef and I were running on pure adrenaline. Harper was eating on the regular with no problems, and that meant that she was sleeping really well for 3 hour stretches. So, at night we’d be getting enough sleep to get us through the next day.

Then the wheels fell off and she was having a growth spurt? Or was she sleeping too long towards the end of the day? Or was she gassy?

The number of questions you ask yourself every time she does – or doesn’t do – something, or changes what she was doing, is insane.

Whatever it was, she had a couple of nights where she’d only sleep for 1.5-2 hours per session, and that is when things started getting harder. Raising a newborn is hard enough, but with only a few hours of sleep and nipples so sore you dream of the 20 hour labor because at least with that there’s pain medicine, it becomes a different ball game.

The thing about the nipples is that the boobs are the key to the whole operation. I honestly feel like the past 5 days have been all about milk. Producing it, correcting the latch, timing her sessions, making sure I am keeping a good enough supply, pumping for a few extra minutes at the end of feedings if she didn’t nurse for as long as she normally does. Pumping so that we have a few bottles on hand so that Laef can do a feeding here or there.

Breast milk is liquid gold. Laef tried to dump out an ounce the other day and I almost tackled him. Every ounce has been made with excruciating pain and love. She will drink every drop.

So, anyway, right now we are in the stage of feeding her, changing her, rocking her, and waiting for her to wake up so that we can do it all over again.

Other highlights have included her taking a giant shit in the middle of a 3 a.m. feeding that stunk so bad I had to change her with my boob hanging out, which then proceeded to leak all over her face. (I was secretly excited because it was confirmation that there was, in fact, a healthy supply of milk in there). I don’t know if it was that or she was mad at me for interrupting her, but 20 seconds after I put the new diaper on she took another giant shit. At which point Laef woke up and looked over the bed at me. There I was, one boob out, with a look of bewilderment on my face that led to both of us laughing.

Of course, then I started peeing.

I’m a disaster.

But all of it has been more than worth it. I did not know I would ever feel this way. I have never cried so much out of happiness (and over exhaustion. And, wondering why the fuck I can not swaddle as good as Laef, which means she goes to sleep easier when he rocks her, which makes me question my skills as a mother. I also cry if she cries. Or smiles.).

So, I’m a crying, peeing cow these days.

The good news is that there’s absolutely no better wingman than Laef, and therefore I have been able to shower regularly and take Harper on long walks around the neighborhood.

Eating is another story as we try to scarf down what we can, when we can. Half eaten bowls of cereal are the new symbol in our house.

Everything is like a NASCAR pit crew around here. We do things – changing her diaper, dressing her, bathing her, swaddling her, take showers, go to the bathroom – as quickly as possible so as to not upset the princess.

By the way, is there anything harder than putting clothes on a newborn baby?

For as long as I can remember, my mom and two sisters have been avid readers. My mother will read endlessly without talking to a human for days. There were points in my life where I shared a room with my sister and we would fight because she’d have the light on until all hours of the night reading a book.

I didn’t really get the reading bug. It was hard for me to sit quietly and do something solitary. I preferred cruising around the neighborhood on my big wheel with all my friends. I also preferred doorbell ditching all of our elderly neighbors, TPing houses on the block and lighting fire crackers in September, so looking back maybe I should have gotten my ass inside with a good book.

Things only got worse when I got into high school. I was smart (if I do say so myself), but I wasn’t interested in excelling in school. I was interested in drinking wine coolers on New York Ranch Road. I didn’t have to work extra hard to get decent grades, but if I had put forth even a smidge of extra effort, I could have gotten all As (I think).

And then one day during my sophomore year, my English teacher, Ms. Urbani, assigned the book, To Kill A Mockingbird. Needless to say, once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to be Scout. I thought I was Scout. It was the first time ever in my life that I understood why people get so wrapped up in books. I read the book way ahead of schedule and wished it would have been longer.

I will never forget that we had a 50-question true/false quiz about the book. I got 50 out of 50. There was nothing about this book that I did not know. But, sadly, my reputation as a smart, yet unfocused, student was too much for Ms. Urbani to ignore. She called me into her office and wanted to know where I got a copy of the exam. She didn’t believe that I got 50 out 50.

I was devastated.

She had previously written on one of my papers that I “was a diamond in the rough”. I never forgot this because I didn’t exactly know what she meant. My mom had to explain it to me, and she also explained that while it was a compliment, it also meant that I needed to work harder.

Anyway, I told her the truth – that I didn’t have a copy of the test, that I loved the book and that I knew the answers simply because I really enjoyed the story and the characters.

To this day, I will never know if she believed me or not.

So here I am, many years later, with my first daughter. I named her Harper because I couldn’t get Scout past the bossman, and I also didn’t really want to name my daughter Scout. But I have thought for a long, long time that if I had a daughter I would like to name her Harper after Harper Lee. Who, as it turns out, is actually named Nell Harper Lee.

I tossed out the idea of  Nell  to Laef one day (even though I wasn’t really sold on it) because Nell was also the name of John Wooden’s wife.

Laef’s response: “No. Nell is the retarded girl from that movie Jodie Foster was in.”

In the beginning Laef said no to Harper. I didn’t push him on it because when you are trying to find a name for your child, you really need to be in agreement. He did agree that her middle name could be Harper so for a long time that was how it was going to be. And then I brought it up again one day, mainly because I had had that name in my mind for years. It was what I always figured I’d name my daughter. And, I just asked him to think about it and see if he could live with it.

And, one day he just said yes to Harper. I guess he didn’t totally hate it, but it’s not a name you hear everyday so he needed to marinate on it for a while and see if he could live with it.

Once we agreed on Harper, I bought the book, “I am Scout”, which is a biography of Harper Lee. I won’t bore you with her life story, but needless to say she was a smart tomboy who ran around the neighborhood causing a ruckus.

And she loved to write.

Who knows what our baby girl Harper will be like, but someday I will be able to tell her that there’s a story behind how she got her name. (She probably won’t give a shit that mommy was a dumb ass who did good on a quiz and liked a book, but I will tell her anyway).

They say people get uber-tired in their first trimester of pregnancy. I didn’t really experience that. I felt great all through, and for the most part had my normal energy to go to the gym, continue to run, do housework, cook and meet up with friends for dinner.

However, someone must be trying to prepare me for what it’s going to be like once the baby comes and I am sleep-deprived. I just entered the ninth month and have just 4 weeks to go. And I’m a walking fucking zombie. I am so tired I can’t even see straight. I have zero energy to do anything. On the weekends I wake up around 8 and go down for my first nap of the day around 11 a.m. I usually sleep for 2 more hours and then wake up and hope that I can do something useful and productive with my day.

The funny thing is, I sleep fairly well during the night – except for the several times I have this conversation with myself:

Me: “I think I need to pee.”

Me: “No, I think it will be OK.”

Me: “No, I really think I do.”

Me: “Just see if you can fall back asleep.”

Me: “Fuck. I might as well just get up and go so that I can be done with it and potentially fall back asleep until morning.”

Me: “FINE THIS FUCKING SUCKS.”

Yet I am still so tired. I could nap all day and still feel like I’m in a daze.

Speaking of peeing in the middle of the night. I drink a ton of water during the day. I sit at my desk at work and drink water all day. So, I figure I’m plenty hydrated, and that like a toddler I should cut off all drinking of liquids after 7 p.m. This way I can hopefully only get up 122 times per night instead of 150. Last Friday I stopped drinking water and made a frozen pizza for dinner (this tells you how tired I am). I knew this was going to be an issue because, well, have you seen the amount of sodium in a frozen pizza?? It should be illegal. Sodium = horribly swollen feet.

So, not only did I not drink water that night, I also ate 4 billion mg of sodium. Needless to say at 5:30 a.m. I got a cramp in my calf that was so painful I thought maybe the baby was being born, only it was coming out of my calf and not my vagina. All I know is that I stuck my leg straight up in the air, screamed bloody murder, punched Laef in the chest and said, “cramp, cramp, cramp!!!!!!!!!”

Never, ever, ever scream at a man in the middle of the night when you are 9 months pregnant. EVER. Once he gathered himself and realized this situation was not baby-related, he worked the giant knot out of my leg and we both sat their with our hearts racing still trying to figure out what just happened. And for some reason we both started busting up laughing. Like uncontrollable laughter.

Me: “I was all, cramp!! And your face, omg…”

Laef: “YOU SOUNDED LIKE A HURT DONKEY.”

Me: “It hurt.”

Laef: “You really need to work on your pain screams. You don’t want to do what you just did in the hospital. WHAT was that? It was a donkey scream, I swear.”

So, I guess along with putting the final touches on the nursery, installing the car seat and putting the Pack-N-Play together, I will be working on my labor screams over the next couple of weeks.