Men Vs. Women… So unfair

So here is what I want to know…  Why are the baby books that are written for men so much better laid out, and written for that matter, than the ones that are for women?  What makes these people think that I care to read about heroin usage during pregnancy, or eating well for the whole 9 months when I am only 3 months pregnant?…  GRRR…

Meanwhile Jayson’s books?  Laid out in chapters by MONTH for the changes he should expect to see in me, and what’s going on with the baby.  Well that’s freaking helpful.  A lot more helpful than the pages I skipped over in my book about acupuncture.  Really?

This is where it starts to get a bit gross.  Light stomached readers (and men) should probably turn back now…  okay, I warned you.

Are there any baby books out there that talk about how effing scary this is?  Seriously?  Because I have to tell you, this pregnancy has not been sunshine and rainbows.  It would have been nice if someone had said “hey, the heartburn, indigestion, and gas are going to start before the morning sickness ever subsides” or better yet “at the end of your first trimester there’s going to be scary white crap coming out of your nipples!”…

Thank God for baby center…  I don’t know what I would do without those women.  Cause I am one cranky, mean, sick, miserable woman right now and it’s nice to know that I’m in good company.  However sometimes I want to smack the hell out of women that aren’t sick like I am…  Perfect example.  Today at Target, the man in line in front of me left his cart instead of moving it to the end to put his bags in, and then left his keys on the counter.  As I handed them to him I jokingly said “I’m the pregnant one, I should be the one leaving things everywhere".  To which the lady at the counter asked me how far along I was and proceeded to tell me that if it were not for the ultrasound, that she wouldn’t even believe there was a baby growing inside of her…  Well what the crap little blueberry?!  Why are you being so damned mean to me?  I’m your mommy, and I love you.  You’re supposed to love me back!

Speaking of which – my OB is freaking hilarious.  We went in for our second prenatal visit last week and I brought my prenatal vitamins to make sure that there were enough nutrients for both me and the baby – because my hair and nails have taken a turn for the WORSE and my skin is SUPER DRY.  He was like “yeah, those are fine” to which I responded “I was just curious because this baby seems to be sucking the life out of me” and without missing a beat he goes “and it will continue to do so for the next 20 years or so”.

Anyway, I’m not a big fan of Eve ruining it for the rest of us at this point in time…  Can’t wait to meet our little gift!

Expecting the Unexpected ~ Baby #1

As most of you know (because I assume you’re my Facebook friend if you are reading this) my husband and I are finally expecting Pratt baby #1! :D We are currently 13 weeks and 1 day and our estimated due date (or EDD) is August 26^th. That’s right; this impatient, cranky lady is going to be pregnant all Carolina summer long… ugh.  I can’t wait for that part to be over, but we are super excited and anxiously awaiting this whole pregnancy thing to be over so that we can get on with the good stuffs…  You know, spoiling it rotten!!!

Oh, and also for those of you who don’t know, this was completely unplanned and unexpected!  We had tried for almost two years before things went south with us for a while so we were NOT expecting our miracle at all.  In fact since the in home pregnancy tests kept reading negative, I had an appointment with my regular doctor the day after my OB appointment in case there was something horribly wrong with me.  Morning sickness is a myth, they should really call it ALL DAY sickness.  :P

So let’s see… What do you want to know? EDD, check. Sex? Well TOO BAD, ‘cause we don’t find out until March 27^th. I am so anxious! I just want to know already! Healthy, check. Genetic testing? No idea. We aren’t doing it…

Baby showers:

NY – May 27, yes… it is early but my husband is the pregnancy nazi so I will not be travelling any later than Memorial Day weekend.

NC – July 7, yes, it’s co-ed, yes there will be food, and yes – it’s in Gastonia… Don’t give me any lip!

Appointments thus far:

On January 25^th we had our first prenatal appointment which included our first Ultrasound (u/s) at 9 weeks and 3 days. We could make out the feet and barely the arms but the heartbeat was a strong 175 BPM.

On February 15^th we had our second prenatal appointment. Dr. Wicker was able to find the heartbeat without too much effort using a regular monitor (no picture) and the heartbeat had slowed to 160 BPM. Then he told us that finding it without the u/s machine meant that we were at less than 1% risk for a miscarriage.

Here’s a cute cartoon picture of approximately what the baby should look like right now. And no, I will not be posting pictures of my belly on a weekly basis… So don’t ask! :P

2011 and the year of losing myself…

So it has been four months since my last blog entry… and they have been a long four months.  For those of you who are unaware, they have involved me losing several friends who I would have considered pretty damn good ones, getting out of a great gone toxic in a heartbeat relationship, and starting the process of reconciling with my ridiculously patient husband.

Even though things are going very well with Jayson, I have a small group of amazing friends, and have finally been blessed with my shot at being a mom – I am more confused, and lost than when I first started writing to you all one year ago…

Can somebody help me understand this part, please? We are three months pregnant and making new preparations for our little bundle of joy every day, but I am too sick to enjoy what is coming. I have great friends who would do anything for me and yet there are days where I’d like to tell them all to stuff it and hide in a hole. And honestly sometimes it feels like Jayson and I have changed so much over the past year that I am living with a stranger, even though some days it feels like we are closer than we ever have been before. It’s all maddening.

I literally spend a good 60% of the time that I’m awake screaming inside. Any patience that I had is completely gone. With coworkers, friends, random people who don’t know how to drive, you name it. My fuse was short to begin with, and blame it on the hormones if you will, but now it is gone.

Just me letting it out, but am going to follow up with a bit more sunshine and rainbows about the baby because despite what I have stated above, I am freaking ecstatic and tearing up just thinking about playing with my new baby! I’ll let you know when I’ve finished.

Someone Like You

With a house full of company Saturday night Adele’s Someone Like You came on several times. Of course all of us women sang it at the top of our lungs while playing board games with our friends. A point was brought up. Almost every woman can in some way relate to these lyrics…

I hosted a Meetup for a group that I am a part of a couple of weeks ago completely based around Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. Including myself, only three women showed up, so there we were a group of women one in the mid 20’s, one in the mid 30’s, and one in the mid 50’s with one thing in common. Or so we thought. We were all separated and learning how to cope with our failed marriages.

But by the end of the night we had realized that we had so much more in common. Not only were we learning how to cope with our failed marriages, but our stories were all so very similar. I was able to relate to a woman in her mid 50’s who was at a completely different stage in life in ways that I never thought possible. Why: Because we both felt exactly the same. We are both going through exactly the same thing. Learning how to move on with our lives, how to date again, what’s normal, how we should feel, all sorts of crazy struggles. We are learning how to be us again.

With every relationship, breakup, experience, friendship, loss, celebration that comes our way, we are all learning from it. We are beautifully ever changing beings that are all going through the same exact thing disguised as different situations.

What have I gathered from it? That I’m glad I’m so open with people. It allows me the opportunity to be there for people who may not think that it’s okay to talk to someone. They may be in the same exact spot I was a few months ago, holding everything in and hiding behind a social calendar that could wear out Martha Stewart.

When people see that I’m not perfect, and that I hurt to? It allows people to open up in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t have. And with that I realize that is the true reason that I am so easy to talk to. Because I am open and honest about where I am in life, and it makes others feel that they can be open and honest about where they are in life as well.

The decisions that change your life

Let’s be honest. We make hundreds of decisions every day.

Do I want to get out of bed when the alarm goes off?

Do I need to wash my hair today?

What do I want for breakfast?

What socks do I want to wear?

How should I do my hair today?

Do I need a jacket?

Do I give Gracie some wet food with her breakfast?

I’m just rambling off meaningless decisions that I face every day before I even walk out the door. At this point I have maybe been up an hour.

So we make hundreds of these tiny decisions every day. Decisions are a part of life. These are the easy decisions. My definition of an easy decision: minimal choices resulting in minimal consequences.

So what about the hard decisions? What tactics do you use to make those gut wrenching, life changing decisions that nobody ever actually wants to make? Do you stick with those decisions once they are made? Do you falter in your decision? Do you always go with your gut reaction? Do you create a list of positives and negatives and go with whichever list is more favorable? How often do you regret those decisions?

I have shared a lot with a few lately and I’m going to be completely honest… I think it’s hilarious how people take my decision making. I am very much a gut feeling decision maker. I’m not the brain-storming list maker. Yes… I do know that this is against my OCD tendencies but you know what? I only have a short amount of time on this earth and I’m not going to spend it agonizing over decisions (no matter how crazy they seem) or regretting ones that I have made.

I find a path and I start to head down it. If I get half way down and can’t work my way through it with a machete, then it’s time to create a new path for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that my way is the only way. Hell, I’m not saying that my way is the right way. I am saying however that they are my decisions to be made. I very much love the people with whom I have gained their concerned. Don’t think that I’m not. I just wanted to rant a little bit about the musings of people completely non-understanding of the “erratic” or “fast” decisions I have made with my life.

I am happy, and I love my life. Can you honestly say the same?

Who are you when you’re happy?

I have noticed in my flux of consciousness lately that I am a completely different person when I am happy. When I have the weight of the world on my shoulders I am a very serious person. When I am ignorantly, blissfully happy? I use horrible childish English, drink lots of wine, and laugh, all the time, about absolutely nothing.

Can you tell the minor differences in when you are truly happy and when you are just normal and when you are just barely surviving?

What about the big differences? I find it so much easier to be nice to someone that I may not be able to stand when I am not happy.

I love listening to the Playlist for this blog. It’s so funny to see the different phases that I go through. Y’all get it at a random mix but if you actually look at the playlist, you can almost see moods based on when the songs were added. Happy ones added together, miserable ones added at a completely different time surrounded by completely miserable songs.

Thank you for making me happy.

I know it’s short, but I just needed to write for a bit.

Hope that y’all are having a fantastic week.

What is your self worth?

What is your self worth?  What are you doing to figure it out?  I am sitting here with my headphones plugged into my iPhone so that I can drown out the noise around my while I should be working to reflect on a lot of choices and decisions made recently.  Not just by me, but those around me that affect how I see myself as a person.

 

Let’s start with the menial crap.  This diet that most of you know I am on.  Somewhere when I was little between the batons, the modeling, the cheerleading, the girl scouts, the basketball team, drama, chorus, and band: it was clearly programmed into my head that I need to maintain the skinny image to find myself attractive.  Great.  The funny part about this?  Is that y’all don’t even seem to think that I have a weight issue.  Regardless of that, for some notion that someone clearly put in my head at some point, I am chewing down the last of a green apple (my breakfast) with a 1.5 liter bottle of water open in front of me.  The one that I am destined to finish before ending my day.

 

What are you self conscious about?  What made you that way?  What are you doing to rid yourself of the issue?

 

For the first time in my life I can honestly say that my self esteem is not dependent on one other person.  The problem is that it has mutated to being in the arms of a good group of oooh… 400+.  That’s right.  The life of an organizer being under the microscope is the issue causing the tension in my shoulders and the questioning of my every move.

 

The funny part about that is when people do actually question me?  They are not worth it, and most the time I want to punch them in the face.

 

Which brings me to another point I suppose.  Who the hell do some of you people think you are?  Are you really that unhappy with yourself that you take no time to dissect the correct way to talk to people?  Why are you not taking the time to make sure that your words do not cause new issues for people who; like you; are struggling to figure out who they are every day without your negativity?

 

I have said it before, and I am sure that I will say it again.  I am the queen of run on sentences.  I apologize about that.  Lately I also find myself to be this tip toeing woman so afraid to hurt or offend others that I end up living a lie to avoid the inevitable.  I am sorry about that.  I am resolving not to do so anymore.  Which will lead me to some pretty tough conversations this week.  Fun stuff.

 

But my challenge to every single one of you is two fold.  If you aren’t already completely aware, figure out what it is that makes you self conscious about yourself, and get on a plan to change it.  I know that this is not as simple for everyone as it is for me to lose 20 pounds.  But won’t it be worth it?  My second one is to not let the opinions of others affect your opinions of yourself, or your decisions in living life.  Do what makes you happy.  We’re only here for so many earth rotations.  Make each one count.

 

Have a great week.