Project Sibling

The Universe has conspired to make me sit down and write. It is O’s nap time. The hinges I bought off of Amazon for the bathroom cabinets don’t fit properly….so there will be no replacing them instead of writing. I was going to start to paint the walls of the master bath, but I now have to clean and paint the baseboard heating covers and don’t have the right high heat paint to tackle the task. I can’t just leave my sleeping angel in the house while I run to Lowes….so I’ll have to go later. Perfect window of time to write. The fact is that I am faced with a blog that is due tomorrow, but I’d rather eat potato chips. Or bacon cheese flavored popcorn. Any yummy tasty savory item from the Trader Joes snack aisle will do. I want to mindlessly crunch away like a teenager. I find it a satisfying way to avoid the task at hand. Maybe one more handful before I decide whether to spill or zip it.

Alas, I am writing the piece. After two bowls of crunchy goodness (boy, that’s an oxymoron), I am hitting the keys. I am tentative about sharing this week’s tidbit. Part of me feels like if I share it that I am somehow accountable if things don’t work out. But a bigger part of me knows that there are women just like me who are contemplating the same thing. Ok, ok, enough with the lead in…I’m talking about having another baby. Everyone has there own opinion on the subject. A lot of women my age are done after having one. Why push it, right? I see their point.

It takes me back to when I was 39 weeks pregnant with O and I had an exam with an older male doctor I had never been seen by before. This practice in Florida was odd. You could request a specific Doctor for appointments, but when you actually went into labor, you got whoever was on call. So they urged you to familiarize yourself with as many physicians in the practice as possible. And there were a lot. Oye! I digress. Anyway, on this particular day I opted to see Dr. Collins a.k.a. Crabby Pants. I remember him telling me while discussing the labor,”Well, at your age, you don’t want to mess this up….I mean, it’s one and done for you.” I remember feeling like I was slapped in the face. I told another physician what he had said and she just shook her head. Tossed it up to him being ready to retire. But it does make you think. At least he made me think.

Well, after a bit of a touch and go medical issue, my doctor up here in New England told me there is no reason we shouldn’t try. I’m fit and I’ve got the blood pressure of a teenager, hence the teenager snack attacks. By all snack accounts I should be over weight, but as my luck would have it, I’m as slim as I was when I was a vegetarian and really watched everything I ate. (Completely unfair, I know). So according to my lovely Dr., we have the all clear to jump to it. I would prefer to say like rabbits…but apparently it’s more of an every other day thing. You don’t want to exhaust the sperm. Who knew? I assumed the more sex the better. There will be no hormones or fertility drugs involved. It’s Au Naturale for us.

So, here’s to trying. Really trying. And if it doesn’t happen, then Frieda, my friend and psychic, was right. It won’t be meant to be. And in the mean time, me and my young husband can have a lot of fun. Either way it will all turn out the way it is supposed to. I have been so blessed already, it seems greedy of me to want another. If you asked me a year ago if I would want another, my answer would not have been the same. I have evolved into a really good mom. I’m so happy to be right where I am. So happy to share raising or child with my husband. It’s more happiness than I ever knew was possible. So I am making a promise to myself right here and now, in front of all of you. I will not be upset if we don’t get pregnant. I won’t let it shade the abundant sunshine we live in. I truly believe in things happening the way they are supposed to. My entire life is a testament to just that. So we will give it a go. Here’s to Project Sibling! Lol!

Until next time, keep fighting the good fight. I know what I’ll be doing. And remember, behind every great kid is a mom who is pretty sure she is messing it up. Xo

Recipe For A Baby At 43!

If this is your first time reading my blog, welcome! I thought I would take a week to reintroduce myself to some people who started to read my blog only recently. The archives only go back so far, so I wanted to give you my back story. I try to be very truthful, very real…and FUNNY. Hope you enjoy! Here is my very first post….throwin it back!

So many friends ask me straight out “So HOW did you get pregnant?” Followed by, “You give me hope!” LOL. Oh my gosh, it was embarrassingly easy, which I KNOW is NOT the case for many women over the age of 35, let alone over 40! This I know from having many friends, who like me, because of their career or other personal things, decided to wait to have children. Many found themselves unable to conceive. I suppose I had made peace with the fact that I might not have a child. My life, I thought, was so great already, that it was truly okay if I was unable to conceive. Even choosing to marry my husband, who was 11 years my junior, came with the possibility that we might remain childless. And he married me anyway. Good guy 🙂 But once we decided to actually “try” to get pregnant, it was crazy quick. Here is my recipe for a baby. Lots of sex….like everyday (seriously)…with a younger husband. The first month we tried, we were pregnant. Now, I was very healthy. I had no reproductive issues. I do not want anyone to think I am being flip about how easy it was. My heart breaks for anyone who can’t conceive who really wants to. Especially now, as I know what I would be missing. I always kept it in my head, that if was meant to be, then it would be. So I guess I was really relaxed about it happening or not happening.

“lots of sex….like everyday (seriously)”

The first three months were fine, except I had really bad “morning” sickness ALL DAY LONG. I carried oyster crackers around with me like it was my job. And then the four month mark came around and I was miraculously better. To say the next three months were the best of the pregnancy, is an understatement. Even with the severe carpal tunnel I had in my left hand, and the placenta previa, which was stressful (but wound up being fine), the second trimester was a vacation compared to the last one. I even did a show up until I was 5 months.

6 months prego

7 months

The last trimester was lots of fun. Just ask my husband. (insert sarcasm) Lots of ice cream and foot rubs. My hands started swelling and the carpal was now in my right hand as well. My skin on my legs got severely dry and I started having Braxton Hicks contractions every few nights. When I asked my doctor (who was almost 20 years my Junior with a valley girl accent…I’m rolling my eyes) about the carpal, she said, “Huh??? I never really heard of that.” I did want to slap her, but refrained. I mean I just had to go online to find the eons of women who had dealt with it in their pregnancies. The joy of being an advanced maternal aged mom….even the doctors are younger than you. Oye! Perhaps the thing that struck me most was how tired I was. Tired like I had never known. Now I don’t know for sure, but seeing how hard the delivery was on my body, I think it had everything to do with my age…oh pardon, my advanced maternal age. 🙂

8 months

The beginning of 9 months! With the handsome hubby!

You don’t realize it….at least I didn’t…but you hit the 9 month mark…and you still have 4 more weeks to go!! It’s like a slap in the face! You go along thinking…I’m almost done!! But you’re not…its a cruel mathematical joke. You go quickly from walking to waddling. The swelling increases (and mine wasn’t as bad as some women can get. ) And the GAS!!! Holy Moly! My husband was never supposed to hear those sounds coming from me. NEVER!! Well that ship has sailed. Did I tell you we met on the Love Boat? No really, we did. Princess Cruises. I was a guest entertainer singing and he was my audio engineer….I am digressing. Anything to avoid the GAS.

A day or two before delivery.

To make me really savor the experience, Oliver decided to wait an extra week to arrive. So I was officially overdue…like a turkey who’s timer has popped (see photo). Because of my advanced maternal age, the doctor in the practice who I really liked (obviously NOT the gyno-girl), scheduled us for an induction. See, when you are young, they like to make you wait for the baby to be good and ready, but when your parts are older, they don’t want to take any chances. So one week overdue was plenty. Whew!

So…..The Baby Equation for us was this…..

43 year old female + 32 year old male + LOTS of sex (literally everyday)!!!! = Beautiful Baby Boy!

Don’t Hate Me

So after two weeks of sob story blogs, I decided it was time to lighten it up. Now, don’t hate me, but I completely escaped stretch marks. And don’t hate me even more, but I pretty much lost my baby weight within the first few weeks. I actually weighed less at my 6 month postpartum dr. appointment, than I did when I first found out I was pregnant. (I think the scale was light). I swear though, I lost muscle and we all know that muscle weighs more than fat. But nevertheless….I’ll take it for now. The first few months were tough on me…at least let me be a skinny bitch. 🙂 I have a few things I swore by throughout the pregnancy and some things that made clean eating really yummy.

So I gained 32 pounds during my pregnancy. I didn’t really gain anything until month 5 came around and then I started noticing a difference quickly. I didn’t diet. I ate well. I ate with a purpose. And that purpose was Oliver. No junky junk. Now that isn’t to say I didn’t have ice cream or treats…OH HELL YEAH. But when I had ice cream, it was all natural. No chemicals. No preservatives, additives, etc. I was clean eating. I pretty much have been a clean eater my whole adult life, so there was no struggle to eat well for little O. NO soda or as I like to call it, The Devil’s Nectar… I drank water like it was my job. I had a week or so when my Blood Pressure was oddly low and we linked it to being dehydrated. Also when I was dehydrated, I would get more of the Toni Braxtons (a.k.a Braxton Hicks Contractions) I didn’t need another sad love song racking my brain like crazy (see what I did there?? Lol.) ..So hydrating was key!!

This was a normal mid day snack for me..

I also found an amazing recipe on Pinterest (of course) for banana peanut butter energy balls. OMG! If you have not tried these, YOU MUST!! It’s literally 2 ripe bananas mashed. Add a cup of raw oats, 1/2 cup of peanut butter, and either 1/2 cup of raisins or, my favorite, 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips. Mix it all together. Stick the bowl in the fridge for an hour. Roll teaspoons of the mix into balls and put on a foiled cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Viola! I would keep them in my fridge and eat at least two-three late at night with some almond milk. They saved my ass. Literally. I pinned the recipe on my Pinterest board “Mommy Help,” but I am sure you could easily find it. LOVE LOVE LOVE them!!!

When I would fall off the wagon it was for a Sonic Vanilla Shake. I started by getting a mini….but that was just a tease. I stuck with the small and I would be very satisfied. Now they are by no means “good” for you, but at least they are made with real ice cream and real milk. So THAT was my guilty pleasure and I savored them each and every time. I am very grateful there is no Sonic near us where we live now. I don’t need that kind of temptation in my life. lol.

Oh Sweet Joy in a Cup. The Small Sonic Vanilla Shake!

Another thing I did pretty much everyday of my pregnancy, was walk. I kept up my usual 3 miles a day until I found out that I had placenta previa. I was a bit freaked, so I completely stopped for about a week or so, and then resumed with caution for the next month while I waited to get the placenta’s position checked. After the previa had corrected itself and after double and triple checking with my doctors, I resumed my regular walks…but took them a little easier, to be honest. Once I hit the last few weeks of pregnancy, I was waddling. But my husband and I would still go for a stroll after dinner pretty much every night. Told you he was a good guy. 🙂

I mentioned avoiding stretch marks. Now I do believe that some of that has to do with genetics. I don’t know if my mom got stretch marks from pregnancy (She can’t remember). But after four (yes, FOUR) children, I have to say, I don’t recall her having them. But…I wasn’t taking any chances. I used two things. One, I used in the mornings after I showered. It is Alba Botanica Hawaiian Body Oil /Kukui Nut. It was recommended to me by my sister-in-law who said she swore by it. I LOVE it!!!

I now swear by this!!!

And, every evening, my darling husband used to put Burt’s Bees Belly Butter on my stomach. It became our “before bed ritual.” For that alone, I love this product. And again, I didn’t get stretch marks, so I am sure it helped! It is a Burt’s Bees Product. Their Baby Bee Line is wonderful for babies, as well.

Mama Butter for your Belly!

Another thing I used every single day, was coconut oil. In my cooking and on my skin. Particularly my legs, which I mentioned got extremely dry. The doctors just told me to suffer through and lather with Eucerin. But nothing but coconut oil helped. I still use it everyday.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, after I had O, I was swollen beyond recognition. It was really bad the first week and got progressively better as the water left my body. Much of what I gained was baby and what accompanies the baby in the womb. Within a couple weeks my body had lost 25 pounds. Because I put the weight on slowly, it came off faster. Now you can stop your hating right now, because you know there is a fly in the ointment. Even though, I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight….my body has changed. And not in the way one strives for. My scar from my c-section is quite low, but the little pooch that sits right above said scar remains. Maybe if I tried harder, it would go away? My body has somehow shifted. I fit into my old jeans, but they just don’t feel quite the same. I’m softer now. In every way. You see, I also just don’t care quite as much as I used to about the appearance my body. That isn’t to say I don’t want to be healthy, of course I do. And I enjoy clothes too much to not fit into the crazy closet I acquired before baby O. But I don’t need to strut around in a string bikini anymore. In fact, the notion is not just laughable, but completely impractical. I enjoyed many more years of that than I probably should have pre-baby. I just don’t want to be one of those moms with her baby at the beach, falling out of her bathing suit while she picks up her little one. There is a lot of bending, stretching and heaving a heavy child involved in my day. I don’t need to be wearing a string bikini whilst doing so. But, hey, that’s just me.

Point being, my priorities are just different now. Does that mean I am just going to “let myself go?” No. I enjoy making an effort and I hope my husband appreciates it, as well. But it isn’t a top priority right now. Nor, dare I say, will it ever be again. Let’s do the math. By the time Oliver is at the age where I can actually relax at the beach, I’ll be in my mid 50’s or older. The bikini boat will have sailed by then, don’t you think? …Don’t you hope?

This is my new bikini replacement. Cute, eh? Made by bond-eye Australia.

Going into the pregnancy at the age of 43, there were so many things that could have gone wrong that I would have no control over. How I took care of myself was actually something that I could take an active part in. My doctor told me that a huge part of why my pregnancy went well was because of the good shape I was in before I got pregnant. It is no guarantee, obviously, but it helps. My advice, unwarranted as it is, is to keep active during pregnancy. WALK! The greatest exercise there is! And feed your body the way you would feed your child. Would you give your infant a Big Mac and fries? I hope not. So why give it to him in the womb? Anyway, that’s my story and I’m stickin to it. Until next time, keep fighting the good fight! And remember, behind every great kid, is a mother who is pretty sure she is messing it up. 🙂 xo

I Had A Baby

I delivered (or should I say Dr. Singer delivered) a beautiful healthy 8.1 lb baby boy. 10 toes. 10 fingers. Healthy!! Now I stress this because when a woman is over the age of 35 and pregnant, all she hears for 9 months are the RISKS. If you are pregnant now and are of advanced maternal age (over 35) then you have heard the statistics. I don’t need to reiterate and freak anyone out. I’m not here to discourage anyone from trying to have a baby. That clock ticks loud enough for most everyone. But for me, delivering at 44, my risk for having a baby with any chromosomal abnormality was 1 in 26. Eek. So, having a healthy baby was a pretty big deal. I have to say, after the amniocentesis, I hardly thought about the negative possibilities.

The hospital we delivered in was brand new. I actually went through labor in the room I would be in for the duration of my stay. Had I not had the c-section, I would have delivered the baby right in my room. It was pretty nice. The new thing now is “rooming in” with your baby. There was no nursery. From the moment I had him, he was with me. Right from the start, all through the night, he was with us. I had thought that was a wonderful idea, until I had a c-section. There I was, unable to even sit up, completely drugged out of my head, and the baby has his first poop. Poor Ian, had never changed a diaper (that little morsel wasn’t covered in all the freakin classes we went to…Really?) We had to call a nurse (who was all annoyed that we did) to come help him. I have to say, hospitals should really let a woman rest at least one night after a major surgery or if they had a particularly tough labor. I truly have not had a full uninterrupted nights sleep since before the baby was born. That is not an exaggeration. And I have a husband who takes “Ollie duty” at least a couple nights a week or more!

Now this is something really important that no one told me before I went into the hospital. When you have a c-section, you are going to need pain medication. This is no joke! My amazing Dr. Singer told me, “Stay on top of your pain medication. Don’t let it wear off. It is most important that you don’t feel the pain so you can start to get up and around.” Sounds good. Except, the nurses don’t stay on top of the pain medication for you…you MUST ask for it. They CAN NOT offer it to you. ???????? Well, I didn’t know that. I’d fall asleep and wake up in such pain, cause I was two hours over the time I should have taken it. My husband kept up on it as best he could, but he was sleep deprived as well. It wasn’t until the last night I was there, I had a really nice night shift nurse who told me the score.

Another thing to watch out for in the hospital, is who comes in and out of your room to check on you or your baby. Because the hospital was brand new, the pediatrician we chose didn’t have privileges at that facility yet, so we used the pediatric neonatal group the hospital provided. The hospital was in our insurance network. But the pediatric group was not….?? What? It’s not like anyone asked us…or we had a choice. Well, we didn’t find this out until bills started coming to us in the range of $12,000….just for this group. There were exorbitant charges for the baby’s subsequent hospital care, but the only people in to see him that we remember were the nurses that took care of us both, who were employed by the hospital. Anyway, we wound up having to get hospital records, etc., blah blah blah. Point being: If I had it to do over, I would have had a visitors log for every single person that came into our room to sign. Name – Time- Purpose of visit. I’m so not kidding. It seems almost silly…but it would have saved so many headaches.

I remember looking down at my legs the day after I gave birth. I was numb still…but I was NOT prepared for what I saw. My legs were swollen beyond recognition. I told the nurse, “Excuse me, these aren’t my legs.” She just looked at me, and said ” Yes, they are.” I said, ” No, you don’t understand, these aren’t my legs!” I swear, they all thought I was crazy. But, again!, no one told me, I would swell up like an elephant after I had my baby!! The anesthesia makes it horrible! Why did no one tell me!? At least I would have been slightly prepared. Do they think you are going to turn around and decided to not have the baby? I mean, really. By month 9 you are begging for someone to get the baby out of you. Geez, it would have been nice to know. And I am not the only woman I know (NOW) that had this issue and was completely freaked out by it! For the love of God, women, we need to share this information! It took a couple weeks at least for the swelling to go down. My friend Joey said to me after the fact…”Holy $%!#….you looked 7 months pregnant when you came home!” It’s true. The swelling went down and I lost about 25 lbs in the first couple of weeks. My mind took a little longer to recover. 🙂

2 weeks after the birth! Can you imagine what it was like before?? OMG!

A week after the birth! Can you imagine what it was like before?? OMG!

In my next post I will share the blur of my first couple weeks at home with the baby. It’s actually hard to remember, as I feel like someone else had taken over my body. Like an alien. A freaked out, terrified, exhausted alien. 🙂 xo Until then, chin up!

Recipe For A Baby At 43