{I hope you noted the deep sarcasm in those words}

What. A. Day.

Just another one of those long, exhausting, mentally draining, overwhelming days in the Mommyhood.

Sigh.

Nico has been TERRIBLE! He's has me all over the place emotionally. From sweet and loving, to outrageously pissed of, so f-ing mad I ....almost started crying of overwhelming f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n.

I blame it on this STUPID cold, wintery, wet weather. He probably feels like a jailed little man on house arrest. I don't blame him. I do too, but worse. I'm like a barely sane inmate confined to a mad house some days. This IS a mad house. I am this close to losing. My. Freakin. MIND! When the hell is Spring going to arrive? I was through with Winter the day it started back in December. When you have little ones (two under the age of 3 in my case) when winter comes you do nothing but hibernate.

Repeat: Hibernate.

That's right. Any planning you want to do gets squeezed into the Spring part of the calendar. And that feels like light years away!

Most Moms I know feel the same way. Unless there is pretty much absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g, and I mean NOTHING in the house to eat. Ok, ok, at least nothing you would want to eat, which in that case probably should be thrown out or donated, depending on its edible status which can be questionable sometimes. There are few plausible reasons to even think of leaving the house with two kids. Most reasons are simply not important enough to leave our warm cave. We're like bears. If you don't believe me ask my thighs, and belly... they're piling up some extra goody stuff that aren't going to sit well with my bathing suit {or the public} come summer. Ha!

{Note to self: Diet and exercise ASAP!}

Sigh.

Today alone, Nico has...

Among a very long list of things, had 3 potty accidents.

There was the one, first thing in the morning. How could I forget it? It was 6:53 am! He woke me up, half undressed with his arm trapped half way over his head, and all winy told me he was stuck and wet. It was pitch black. {What's he a freakin rooster? GO BACK TO SLEEP! I thought to myself...} After changing his diaper and clothes and a failed attempt to put him back in his bed, of course it was wet too, I brought him back to our bed in what turned out to be yet another failed attempt to catch more zzzs. It was not even 7 am yet. Sigh.

He never fell asleep again. Neither did I. His incessant squirming around, poking my back with his feet and knees, and little voice {as cute as it is, I don't care for it at the crack of dawn} repeatedly sounding like a broken record saying, "I can't sleep Mommy, I can't" was as torturous as knowing the hour # was still on 6 when my beautiful precious sleep came to an end.

I could have cried. But I was too busy trying desperately to fall back asleep.

Then there were the two others. Intentional ones, I say. Potty accidents. Remember we're still really talking about that. The fact he decided not to tell me he had peed and pooped in the potty at some point led me to not wiping him... which led to noticing after it was way too late that he left me a big gift in the potty, and a soiled underwear on the floor (and later a repeat story but that time it was a pull up), all while he ran around naked. I was only too late each time I realized he was sitting all over our family room leather sofas with it all hanging out, spreading the poop love all over. It was a poop fest!

At least the leather sofas were easier to clean than if they would have been cloth. 

I should mention a tiny detail, which really adds to the seriousness of these events. Nico's stools have been very runny and deadly stinky (smelling like worst than something dead) the past couple weeks. Yeah, that made the entire ordeal just that much more fun.

Besides all the poop... Nico also spent the entire day throwing stuff at me, hitting me, and screaming at me. Also defying me. Talking back. You name it, he done it.

Then there was little Victoria. You'd think she's just so darn cute nothing bad could ever come from her... Then came the moment she woke up from her nap with the biggest, runniest, STINKIEST poop EVER! It was greenish. And it was SO disgusting I gagged and literally almost threw up. Her's too smelled like something far beyond dead.

What have my kids been ingesting???!!

I don't understand how something so horrendous could come from something so adorably cute. I guess it is what it is. Sh*t happens.

Yes, there’s more. Victoria wouldn't stop squirming around while I tried changing her diaper, so of course she got poop all over my hands, arms, pants, and all of herself as well.  I swear she needs to be restrained and heavily sedated to accomplish a simple task like changing her diaper. This would have been a wonderful time to do just so. ARGHH!

The carpet and floor got poop on it as well. {No, I didn't use a changing table or changing pad.} Squirmy little monster princess. Dear God!

I guess I should be thankful she took a nice long nap at least.

But then she threw up on me after I took her clothes off. A thank you, perhaps? Uhg. Good thing it was all over my dirty pooped pants.

I thoroughly washed myself, and her, and changed both of us. My scrubbing was beyond what doctors do before entering the OR. That's how disgusting the whole thing was. And we STILL reek of poop! I bet Julio will love that when he gets home. His girls' lovely smell... of... eu de merde. {Welcome to the Mommyhood!}

Oh.

Another forgotten thought just came back to me. Because this day only kept getting better and better. {Note the sarcasm, please.}

The toilet got clogged when I tried flushing down one of Nico's nasty stools. Just fabulous! Luckily it didn't over-flood. But, I am not attempting to deal with that disgusting mess. That'll be another little surprise to welcome Julio home from work. ENOUGH POOP, I'M SO THROUGH WITH IT ALL!!!!! ARGHHHHHH!!! 

Nico has also spent the entire day hitting Victoria. You name it he's done it to her. Poor princess. I've caught him in the act so many times, I've ran out of measures of punishment. I'm unsure if it's due to jealousy, or maybe he's got too much energy built up due to winter hibernation and isn't able to burn it off in a safe and productive way.

.

.

...Ah!!...

...my savior arrived!! Julio, brought home cheese slices for sandwiches. That may after all be what's for dinner tonight.

He also kissed me hello. Makes my world a better place instantly. :)

He unclogged the toiled immediately. Poop be gone... the toilet Master is home! LOL

He also took care of feeding and putting Victoria to sleep.

And played with Nico.

And gave me some much needed time to hear my own thoughts and write this out.

My ears are sore from all the crying that happened in this house today. That includes all of my mental cries.  I also have a terrible headache.

I managed to not go completely insane, again. I don't know how though. Another notch on my belt.  

And as the cherry on top...

The house is an entire mess. Again. Thanks to Hurricane Nico! :/

.

.

Ok… Off to have me a drink! Red Wine... here I come! 

Cheers to this paradise called Mommyhood, and to us brave women who find the strength, the will and the mind to get up everyday to do it. All. Over. Again.

Salud!

So, it has begun.

I don’t know if this is the right time. Could it ever be the right time? Who are we kidding? Little things can be more annoying than the broken record of a little 2 yr 9 mth old boy {my son} repeating over… and over… and over again:

 

“Why Mommy? Why?”

 

The subject is never relevant. Sometimes, it’s an out of the blue question. “Mommy, why is this?” Other times, it doesn’t even make sense, and it’s oddly hilarious. Like when I  jammed my toe into the foot of the sofa, and while I screamed hurting he asked, “Why Mommy?”  Ok, so in the middle of my pain, I cracked up laughing. That must have been the silliest most stupid question, ever.

There are moments where this sassy Mama loses it, due to over-heated “why, why , why?” malfunction… it is those moments when I wish someone would just put me out of my misery. And then something cute happens; Nico will do something so adorable I completely forget the insanity, and just realize how adorable he is and how crazy I’m about him.

Craziness! I know. Us Moms can be so weak.

Nico is asleep as we speak, and somehow I still hear his voice saying, “Why Mommy?” {Haha.} Yep, losing it probably. It was cute the first time he asked why. Ok, the first two times. After all, Nico is so darn cute it’s hard not eating him. But in reality after that… dear God! I could really go insane, any day now. Whatever dismal bit of sanity might be left in me, may have just gone out the window a few minutes ago.

SOS! Anyone?

So, how long does this stage last, exactly? Of course, I’m sure that like everything else, once Nico grows out of this phase, Victoria will fall right into it. It’s like the whole diaper thing and cleaning poop everywhere. I could pull my hair out! But that’s a whole different story.

So, in keeping positive thoughts about this crazy and silly situation, I see the good in the, err, crazy.  My son is a learning machine, always wanting to understand everything.

Wow! He’s SO smart.

Yeah… SO smart he’s figured out another way of driving me insane, and then bringing me back from coo-coo-cachou land instantly by hugging and kissing me spontaneously, out of the blue, all while he tells me “Mommy, I loooooove you!”

I mean, could you resist this face? 

{oh, I just melt away…}

Ok, so maybe I shouldn’t brag. Or, maybe I should. I mean this is up there in the ‘greatest news ever’ department when you’re a parent.

 

Nico finally used the potty all on his own. Multiple times, all day long. Did I mention he peed AND pooped? FLAWLESSLY! OMG!! I’m so thrilled I could cry. But I won’t. Save that for the chaotic days when I wish I was on an island, by myself, finally able to hear myself thinking. Ok, so that’s another whole different issue we’ll get into in another post, someday. LOL 

 

Ok, so the potty process isn’t super perfected yet since I still have to wipe him when he poops, AND I also have to go to the bathroom every time he goes after he emphatically shouts “Mommy, I peed/pooped”. {oh, for heaven’s sake… I can’t complain!}

 

He did it all on his own, when he decided it was time, and has never looked back. I mean, seriously, the transition has been for three days FLAWLESS. Not a single time has he had an accident. That’s my boy! I think he takes after me. Actually, yes, I’m sure of it. He’s got determination and is independent in all his ways. Well, darn it, finally something he got from me! LOL  Oh, he’s so darn cute, I could just eat him. Often, he suddenly stops whatever he’s doing and says to himself (or sometimes to me) “oh! do peepee/poop”…sometimes with an added “go, hurry!” to himself. Hahaha. Ahh, good times!

 

Here’s the gist of how it all went down.

 

1/14/11 - Day 1: 

Julio and I explained to Nico that he was going to start wearing underwear while in the house (sans bottoms, until he learned to deal solely with the underwear), and that he was to pee/poop in the potty when he needed to; NEVER in the underwear.

 

Nico claimed he understood the situation and agreed to do as told. Yeah right. Four wet underwear later (caught by checking him – not that he ever told us - and after finding a huge wet spot on the carpet - beh!), day 1 came to a close with no success. Luckily he’d done a major poop early in the morning before we started our training process, and didn’t feel the need for a second #2 all day long. Phew! With each oopsies we never reprimanded/punished him and always talked nicely explaining each time he’d made a mistake, and repeated that the potty was the place to do everything. Though in all honesty, I thought at some point, eventually, I’d lose what little mind and patience I had left. Who are we kidding? I mean, after all, I was the one who’d have to clean every mess, and wash every wet or filthy pooped underwear. Beh!

 

1/15/11 – Day 2: (…and beyond)

First thing in the morning, off with Nico’s overnight diaper (no poop, just pee), and on came the underwear. Again, we explained how he had to go about it all. I was preparing myself mentally for that impending #2 that would sooner or later come, expecting a big horrible mess sometime, somewhere, just hopefully not on the carpet or fabric sofa. Sigh. {to my delight it would never come in that horrific way}

 

Not too long into the morning I noticed Nico running towards the bathroom. He seemed in a hurry, opened the door, turned on the light and after a few brief seconds of silence he shouted “Mommy, I peed!” 

 

I was ecstatic! Could it really be true?  I found him sitting on the potty, and though he assured me he peed, it was clean. I then noticed he’d made the attempt to get to the potty but had peed in his underwear and then sat on the potty. The same thing happened twice in a row and  both times I told him he did a good job trying but he still didn’t have it quite right.  Clearly he was making progress with his training since he’d made the attempts to use the potty. 

 

Like they say, third time’s a charm! He peed in the potty for the first time and has never looked back. I admit I’d never been so happy to see pee in my life until that moment. I shouted what a great job he did, what a big boy he was, did a little dance, a woohoo!, and high fived him. At his 2 yrs 9 mths old, I’m his biggest fan. And I’ll always be. Definitely.

 

He got a special reward every successful time, a cracker at first, until we noticed he kept running to the bathroom way too often and not doing anything but still requested a cracker. That’s when I switched the reward to dinosaur stamps, which was not only better but proved to be way too cool. In fact SO cool, he pooped successfully! …In retrospect, rewarding him with food was probably not the best idea, so I’m glad I switched to a non-edible reward. Besides, what kid doesn’t love dino stamps all over their hands and arms? Too cool! I feel like a super cool Mama for offering such a super cool reward. ;P

 

I’m such a proud Mama! I must have the smartest kid in the world. Right?! Of course! {giggle}

 

Oh the joys of the Mommyhood!

So as you know I’m banned from milk and all milk products. Yes, it’s torture! Victoria seems to be allergic in some way to the milk protein. Or at least that’s the conclusion I’ve reached. You don’t even want to know what a devil child she becomes if I have any. The poor thing. Not only that, but she poops waaayyy too much and has horrible colic if I have any.

Victoria’s now 5.5 mths old, and I’ve been trying to introduce formula at her last meal of the day in hopes it’ll hold her better through the night. She’s been waking up every night famished at 4:30 am for the last week and frankly I can’t take it anymore – I need my sleep!

But… she HATES the bottle!  

I’m unsure if it’s the fake nipple or the taste of the stinky soy milk (oh my God it’s SO stinky!), or a combination of both. For sure she seems to HATE the taste of the soy milk formula from her facial expressions, gagging, and spitting it out.

I don’t blame her.

If it tastes anything like it smells I must be pretty dreadful.  Personally, I hate the taste of soy milk and I have an idea the soy based baby formula isn’t any better.

With the failed attempts at feeding her soy formula, I’ve tried introducing rice cereal (made with a few tsp of the prepared soy formula milk). Again, I was thinking it might help filling her belly for longer. But, the following sequence of pictures pretty much sums up her verdict on that as well:

All attempts have failed. I’ve struck out at every single at bat. Sigh.

What am I going to do? What is my baby going to eat when I no longer breastfeed?

Does this mean I’ll HAVE to breastfeed her until she’s 1???!!!

NO WAYYYYY!!!!

I have set the cut-off date for 6 mths! (and it’s a magical 2 weeks away… if I actually follow through with it)

Sigh… oh the worries…

Julio was gone for a few days last week, so for those few days I didn’t drink my usual half espresso.  Can you believe I actually coach myself to throw away the other half? Daily. And I suffer having to do it. Every time. 

 

Anyway. During that same time, I noticed Victoria behaved pretty well.  She didn’t seem as needy or clingy as she’s usually been, even to the point where she enjoyed being for long periods of time in her different stations: the jumparoo, the swing, the bouncer, the highchair, the floor. I found myself having more time for other things. And who knew, I had arms!? She also didn’t have as many poopie diapers as usual. I’ve got to wonder…

 

Coincidence? Perhaps, not.

 

Today I drank some espresso again, but only a quarter of it. I had been thinking about these coincidences. Could the caffeine be doing the damage? Hmmm… So, later in the afternoon, after the caffeine had surely made its way into my milk I started noticing my little velcro baby gone bad was back. Wining, crying, clingy, super needy and oh so poopie! I must have changed 6 diapers in like 4 hours.

 

Could just a little bit of caffeine have been the root of all evil all this time?

 

So, starting tomorrow I’m totally off caffeine, once again. I’m talking not even Diet Coke. We’ll see what happens in the next few days. If Victoria doesn’t become the velcro baby gone bad again, I’ll know we found the cure to all hell.  O:)

I came across a wonderful article today about Recycled Cardboard Playhouses at Green Your Decor. 


It reminded me of an idea I’ve had for many months to build exactly that. I thought about that one day when Nico was playing with an empty cardboard box. He had undone both ends and was using it as a tunnel, having the time of his life. That’s when it dawned on me. I’d build a house out of cardboard boxes for him (I have a ton in storage in our basement from when we moved). I never got to making it happen though. Shame on me. :/

Anyway, I LOVE finding inspiration like this, unexpectedly. Must be my creative designer alter ego. ;) Lets see when I actually have some time to follow through with this project. I know it’ll be super fun making it, I’ve always loved arts and crafts projects, and I know Nico will really LOVE it. Like. A lot. In time, Victoria will too. 

I’ve officially added this project to the million others on my Projects list.
Have I ever told you I LOVE projects!? Well, I do. Always have. Ever since I can remember back to the 4th grade. The problem, now that I’m older, is that I find myself starting a bunch of them but never finishing them. The excuse: lack of time. You know, with 2 kids and such, I’m lucky I have gotten a shower daily. So far.  Also… I’ve realized I’m SO scattered in my thoughts, in recent times. I’m just all over the place in my head. Juggling a million things, doing one thing now and thinking about a million others I have to (or want to) do at the same time.

Just last night, for example, I was folding laundry that was in the dryer. Suddenly I stopped to go hang something, only to remember I needed to sort the mail and throw the junk in the recycling bin before I had to put out the recycle and garbage bins on the curb for morning pick up. Oh, that’s about the time I remembered I needed to go to the post office to check the Association’s PO Box. At 11:30 pm. Yeah weird, I know. But it was the only time I could go without having to drag two kids under 3.

Somewhere in that crazy timeframe, I realized I was all scattered in my thoughts. I found that neither of the things I had started doing had been completed. I had to finish folding the laundry, so I could put the wet stuff in the washer to dry (I forgot to mention that earlier), and then finish sorting the mail, throw the junk in the recycle bin, and place the recycle and garbage bins on the curb. Oof! I was tired just thinking about all that.

So… a special thanks to the Mommyhood, and Momnesia, for making this Mama a little crazier everyday. :) Now, where that glass of wine I need? Sigh.

Poor Victoria. A day shy of her 5th birth-month, she’s quite the little package. SO demanding. SO needy. She’s a totally different baby than Nico was. I should have listened to what all those moms were always telling me during my second round as an incubator. My little precious princess, I LOVE her to pieces! Oh, but she wants to be held 90% of the time she’s awake. And a lot of times she will be at peace ONLY when held by me. Sorry Daddy. (And sorry to myself as well.) Add to that the times I hold her while breastfeeding and while putting her to sleep, and voila… there goes pretty much my entire day. I hope I’m not neglecting my son; he’s such a trooper!

 

Mommy needs a break at times. Make that several breaks, please. And her arms. And back. And silence. And sanity. And less of the added stress. I can’t even hear myself think at times. Oh, did I mention all the hair pulling? Add to that the loads of shedding I’m experiencing thanks to the post-preg hormone changes and we’re talking about being at the verge of baldness. Fabulous. :S

 

It gets worse. Victoria is also in the teething process. That’s right. Itchy gummies; chewing on her fingers, my fingers, everything she can; slobber all over everything and everyone; crankiness; and just general Mommy-overly-neediness. I guess that’s an excuse to be held all that more. I wish she would take a pacifier. She won’t. She thinks I’m the real thing, pacifiers are so fake (well, duh!). Sure, chew me up, why not. Ouuuuuch! Isn’t that why those things were invented?! God. Give. Me. A. Break. Please. :/ Sigh.

 

I guess it’s hard being 5 months old… Hmmm, wait till your name becomes ‘Mommy’, hehe. ;)

Yesterday Nico was being his usual self and had taken the seat cushions off one of our family room sofas to jump directly on the sofa springs. I guess he’s figured out his ‘trampoline’ can be quite fun. Of course, it was an accident waiting to happen… like so much of boys’ rough play is.  So yesterday was the day. He jumped off the couch, I’m not sure if intentionally, and hit his face on the table right on his left cheekbone. Luckily he missed his eye. It was a loud thump, followed by crying and screaming that amazingly only lasted 2 min. After some hugs and kisses, and some applied ice, he was off and running, back to his usual self. I’m amazed how resilient children can be! As for me, the visual reminder on his face reminds me of the seconds of agony I suffered seeing him in pain and with a bruised and slightly cut cheek (never mind him, he was clearly fine). He tells everybody about his “ouchie”, pointing at it, and didn’t even mind it when I showed him what it looked like in the mirror. Well, it’s like the Dr. said, “boys will be boys.” But poor Mommy.

Ok, so this will be a short post. Just wanted to shout to the world in good ol’ OMG fashion that for the first time ever Victoria slept 7 hrs straight last night, and thanks to that so did I. I didn’t realize it until Nico woke me up at 7 am, I told him to go back to sleep a bit (which he did) and then looked at the clock and at myself in the mirror and realized the two ‘hard rocks’ I had on my chest were there because there was no middle of the night feeding. So, what to do? I woke a still heavily sleeping Victoria at 7:15 am and fed her, and she went right back to sleep for a half hour, then fed again. Nice… though I fear that if I go for more than 4-5 hrs without getting the milk out my supply will start to diminish and I may have to supplement like I had to with Nico. He would sleep 8 hrs straight at night, and I wouldn’t pump either, so my supply ran lower than his demand.

 

Well, at least for one night it’s refreshing to have slept 7 hrs straight… cheers!

Ok, so blogging is actually not as easy as I thought. Finding the time to sit and write blog entries is nearly impossible these days. :( With a 2 yr old and a newborn, who has time for anything? I’m lucky I’ve still been able to eat (though at strange times of the day, and with probably too much time btwn each meal), and shower (most days).  OK, so maybe I shouldn’t admit that yesterday I was forced to skip it because Julio was out of town on a biz trip and things were too crazy all day with both kids. It was 1 am when I finally had a chance to actually shower, but at that point I decided sleep was wayyy more important than soap and water. Screw my oily hair. I vowed to shower this am, and miraculously I was able to. Of course, it was a 7 min shower, all while Victoria dozed off after her 3rd feeding and Nico watched Elmo videos on youtube. I crossed my fingers he wouldn’t move from there.

My back hurts, probably from my long gone ab muscles which never looked like they were there anyway but whatever, and extra wobbly post preg belly which no longer support my back. I’m sure my bad sitting and breastfeeding positions don’t help either, and don’t even get me started on all the bending over I have to do daily to change diapers AND pick up toys and crap. SIGH. I’m taking Tylenol, but it still hasn’t kicked in.

Then there’s my stupid TMJ, which is again flaring up. It could be worst, but so far I have daily headaches and some clicking in my jaw. I hope it doesn’t get worst, otherwise, I’m screwed for sure. I won’t be able to take the Valium (as a substitute for muscle relaxant) and Prednisone (anti-inflamatory w/ steroids) needed to cure the pain of a severe episode of TMJ. Oh boy, so much for breastfeeding. So many limitations. I could use some Valium right now, even if it wasn’t for the TMJ. LOL

I have no clothes. Nada. It’s so depressing. I can’t wear maternity clothes because they’re too big, and my sz 6/8 normal clothes are WAY too small. And I mean WAY. I am at size 12 thanks to the belly flubber (blah! talk about a self esteem downer), and I have one pair of jeans, 2 shorts, and 6 shirts I’ve worn a gazillion times. What’s left of my ‘cool self’ can’t deal with the lack of options and unfashionable-ness. :/ I can barely deal with this. I can’t lose weight fast enough. Of course, all the sweets and carbs I’ve been eating are not helping much either. And my scale doesn’t work, batteries ran out. Who knows, I could actually be gaining… sigh sigh sigh… oh screw it, let me run to the fridge and eat that Tiramisu Mom left, hehe.

Still not sleeping through the night. Will I ever, again? Victoria is so different from Nico. She feeds once or twice at night and is still grunting and complaining about gas and pains, and pooping wayyyy too much, keeping me up for quite a while at night. At least Nico has somewhat gone back to a normal sleep schedule, sleeping through the night and when he wakes up in the morning we can easily get him to sleep more, especially if we bring him into our bed. Thank God.

Victoria is sleeping much less through the day but has not established a schedule per say. She feeds on demand and I’m enslaved to her demands, yes Ma’am. I think I’d rather be deaf at many points throughout the day, especially when both kids are crying their heads off and making their individual demands, whatever they may by. God help me. Patience, please… I need to learn patience, patience, more patience, and build it up. Well, enough complaining, I’ve acted deaf for this while amongst the two crying bosses here. Gotta run. 

Ever since his 2nd Birthday, Nico’s been sleeping in his big boy room, on a twin size mattress we’ve placed on the ground until we get proper rails for the full size bed in his room and he’s a bit bigger.  Coincidently his Tata (my Mom) came to visit us for a couple mths at the same time, and since then Nico’s sleeping schedule has been completely wacked up.

Ever since he was 2 wks old Nico’s slept through the entire night, and right up to his 2nd birthday he was going to sleep btwn 9 – 10 pm and waking up btwn 8 – 9 am, without any night disruptions. You could say we were blessed and lucky. Then came birthday #2. Since then, he’s been waking up at 6 am crying, and we manage to get him to fall back asleep most night at least for another hour, but not without laying in bed with him and quietly slipping out once he’s finally crashed again. Of course it always comes at the exact time when I’m breastfeeding Victoria, and though he cries out for Mommy, 98% of the time it’s Daddy or Tata who run to the rescue. Then once he gets up after 7 am, it’s the same drill, and most times Mommy is still not available. I’ve been getting little sleep at night since Victoria’s been  colicky, and I’ve been lucky and blessed Mom and Julio have been holding up the fort and letting me catch an hour or two of sleep in the morning.

The situation’s gotten worst in recent days. In addition to what has already been going on, he’s now been getting up crying (like he’s freaked out) btwn 4 – 5 am. Lucky us, huh. It’s been crazy. But then came last night… woke up crying for Mommy at 5:30 am, I ran to his room and it was pitch black and I found him only by follwing his cry UNDER the full size bed. How did he get down there, beats me. I had to pull him out and he would not let go of me, clearly he was freaked out. Tucked him back into bed but he wouldn’t go back to sleep or let me leave without me cuddling with him. I slipped out when he fell back asleep, and he didn’t wake up again until 7 am. At that time, he called for me again and I went and told him it was too early, everyone was sleeping and Mommy needed to sleep more, told him to go back to bed and stay quiet. I didn’t think it would last more than 5 min, but I went back to bed nevertheless waiting for him to call for me again. To our surprise he didn’t make any noise or call for me again until 8:50 am. Halleluya! Hope is the last thing one loses… let’s hope his sleeping habits resume to being more normal and less erratic. For the sake of all of us. Especially mine. 

We welcomed our daughter Victoria Sofia on April 26th, 2010. She was born at 3:39 am, after only one push (and not even a very hard one).

I started real labor contractions around 9 pm Sunday April 25, progressed to back to back contractions 4-5 min apart in less than an hour, and we were at St. Elizabeth’s East hospital sometime between 11:20 pm and midnight. By the time I was admitted and taken to my private bedroom my contractions felt horrendous, so painful I cried through several of them. It was nothing like with my first, I can’t begin to describe the pain. Where the heck was that epidural?? It couldn’t come fast enough!

So there I was, 4 cm dilated, 75 % effaced, in real LABOR… pain pain pain! Talk about bad timing when they asked me, yeah the woman in labor and in tons of pain, to fill out stupid health forms about my medical history etc. WTF?!! Are you kidding me!?? I pretty bluntly told the nurses that was so stupid to be asking that kind of info at that particular time. I had to fill the damn things out between contractions, umm, giving me about 1 min between each. How come they didn’t send a pkg of forms to me weeks ago when I was happily pregnant and in no pain. Psstt! I swear I could have killed someone at that time.

Anyway, I progressed so quickly they had to bump me up from 5th in line to 1st for the epidural. Thank God they did, otherwise I would not have been able to have an epidural at all or one with absolutely no time to take effect. Unfortunately, even that didn’t prove to be fast enough because I got the epidural, felt some relief but progressed SO quickly that it couldn’t keep up with my labor. I felt PAIN all the way until the end! It was horrible, but I kept telling myself it could be a lot worst if I had no epidural at all. I went from 4 cm at midnight to a full 10 cm by around 3:20 am. I pushed a bit to test my ‘pushing skills’, and the nurse had to stop me before the baby came out. lol The Dr. was called in immediately. After a couple mins of prepping, and 2 extra doses of epidural meds I finally felt some numbing relief. After one single push, Victoria Sofia was born at 3:39 am. My first impression was “she’s tiny!…OMG look at that full head of dark hair!”  She weighed 6 lbs 7 oz and was 19.25” long. Nico was 7 lbs 5 oz at birth. She cried and cried, amazing such a little thing could have such strong lungs and vocal cords, haha. She had 10 fingers and 10 toes. Yes, I counted them. She was beautiful and perfect! :) It was an almost surreal moment. I have a daughter. I have 2 beautiful & healthy kids, a beautiful family. How blessed we are! God is great!

Here’s a few pics of our new princess (while still at the hospital):

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