Birth Stories - Will

So, it's my babies birthday today.  11 years ago today, at some unholy hour in the morning, the most perfect 9lbs and 6ozs of baby boy popped out of my body and joined the world.  But, let us go back a while if we can, because as every single woman, who has ever birthed a baby will tell you, the actual delivery is just the tip of the birthing story iceberg.

June 23, 2006.  I am 9 months preggo and as big as a freakin' whale.  I'm retaining water like the Hoover Dam and every part of me is swollen.  Screw all you women who don't blimp up when you're pregnant.  My feet were so swollen I couldn't get my flip flops off!

Not my actual feet, but you get the point!

I was scheduled for a c-section in 3 days time, however, as is typical with childbirth, nothing goes according to plan.  Around 6:30 in the morning I started getting cramps.  They were happening about every 45 minutes and after a few I thought, hmmmmmmm, maybe these are contractions.

Just to be on the safe side my hubby and I went in to the hospital.  I was sent up to the maternity ward so they could check me out.  A lovely intern was assigned to me and she proceeded to do a cursory exam.  They strapped me up to some monitors and checked Will's heartbeat.  He was fine.  She checked my cervix and, even though I was 1 cm dilated, she pronounced that I was most likely in false labor.  I should go home and keep and eye on myself.  Okaaaaaay, you're the professional.

Jake and I left the hospital and did what every pregnant woman does, went to McDonald's.

I think I made the staff very nervous.  No minimum wage employee wants to see a woman come in, nine months pregnant, leaning against the order counter with her face all squished into a grimace as she waits for a contraction to pass.  They don't get paid to be delivering no babies!

McDonald's in hand we headed home to let Alex know that he didn't have a baby brother yet.  The rest of the day passed like any other.  I ran around doing housework while Dad and Alex played Wii.  Every 40 minutes or so, I'd have a contraction and breath through it Lamaze style.  Hee, hee, hee, hoo, hoo, hoo.  By 9pm I was bushed.  I figured, if no baby was imminent, I may as well get some sleep.  Will had other plans.

Not 10 minutes after I lay down my contractions started to get really strong and closer together.  Every time I was about to drift off I'd get hit with another one.  I was thinking, "gee, false labor sure does feel real"!  At midnight we called Grandma.  She flew across the city and arrived just after I got off the phone with the hospital telling us to come back in. She promptly fell asleep on the couch so she could get enough rest to be up with Alex in the morning.

The drive to the hospital was somewhat akin to the running of a Formula One race.  Jake could not go fast enough for my liking.

          

          How fast I thought Jake was driving                                            Jake's actual speed

On a side note, hospitals really need to have valet parking.  Jake had to pull up in front of Emerg, pop me into a wheel chair and then leave me there, in the throws of labor, while he went to park the car! Seriously.  Valet parking.

15 minutes later we were back in the maternity ward in the same little exam room as before.  The same intern walked in.  The same woman who'd told me I was in false labor 17 hours earlier.  How long were their shifts!!?  I wasn't sure I wanted someone 17 hours into a shift to be delivering my baby!  She checked and, low and behold, 7 cm dilated. False labor my ass.

They hopped to it now.   I was wheeled into an area where they had me under supervision and told me the epidural guy would be along shortly.  In the mean time, here was some nitrous oxide.  Now, I hadn't used laughing gas with my first son so I really wasn't sure how this would make me feel any better, but, when the next contraction hit I gave it the old college try.

My head was spinning and I felt incredibly loopy, but I wasn't laughing.  It did make the contraction a lot less intense which was good.  I took about two more hits and I still wasn't laughing which I thought was odd.  It was called laughing gas wasn't it?  I expressed my disappointment to my husband and the nurse and they just looked at me and shrugged.  And then it happened.

I don't know what Jake said, but whatever it was it struck me funny.  And I laughed.  And Laughed.  And.  Laughed.  I was just about to stop when another contraction hit and I sucked more gas in.  I just could not stop laughing.  I was like the Joker on speed, cackling and howling as I floated through a haze of hilarity.  I was so looped I was having visions of rainbows and VW buses done up hippy style while The Beatles played in the background. This shit was great!  I was sucking on the gas like Snoop Dog on a massive dube!  

Fo' Shizzle!

The nurse cautioned me to only use the gas during a contraction, which was fine, they were coming every couple of minutes.  I told Jake that we needed to get a canister of nitrous for parties!  Sadly, the epidural guy came and gave me the epidural and they took my giggle gas away.

Before I knew it we were in the OR and they were getting me all prepped for my c-section.  Turns out it was the same doctor doing the procedure who had delivered my first child.  I remembered him cause he was young and kinda cute.  Amazing the things one notices when the pain of labor is under control. Apparently I wasn't so memorable.

So there I am, laying on the table, numb from my chin down, all draped in cloth when the doctor, scalpel in hand, looks down at me and says,

"This is a repeat C- section, right"?

"Yes", I replied

"You've had a C-section before"?

"Yeah".  I wanted to say, "You did it duh", but I figured I shouldn't piss off the guys about to cut me open.

He looked at me a little bewildered.

"So you have a scar"?

Well, I didn't know what to think.  Of course I have a scar!  It's not huge or anything, but it's a very visible thin white line that runs from one side of me to the other.  What was he playing at?

"Um, yeah", I said.

He looked at me again, cocked his head to one side and asked,

"Is it hidden in your pubic hair"?

Well!  Excuuuuusse me for not being up on my grooming!  I didn't feel like stopping in at the Stick n'Rip for a waxing when I was in the throes of labor!  Jackass!

I guess he managed to find it because 10 minuets we had a baby.  And what a baby!  He was so big, and chubby, and beautiful and sweet and cuddly!  A crying, pooping, drooling, hungry gift from God.

He's 11 today and I just cannot believe it.  How did he grow up so fast?  Where does the time go?  If I only look at myself, I don't feel as though any time has passed at all.  I look and feel pretty much the same.  But when I look at my children I realize just how much time has passed.

I'm not ready for them to grow up yet.  Will they still love me the way they did when they were little.  I can definitely tell you, I am no longer the center of their universe.  My job it to raise them to go out into the world on their own.  If they don't do that, I guess I haven't done a good job.  I guess raising independent children is a bittersweet task, nevertheless it's the job I've chosen.  They will grow up, move out and have their own families and live in their own houses.  As long as those houses are on either side on mine, I should be ok.

Peace out.

Michy

Sugar Detox Update #2!

I am well into my sugar purge and things are going well. Don't get too excited though.  Usually I'm good until the 2 or 3 week mark, before the train runs full speed off the tracks.  I have been steering clear of all sugary condiments, switching instead to herbs and spices.  I make my own blends because there is, oddly, a lot of sugar in seasoning blends you purchase from the store.  I don't get all fancy and complicated, I just sprinkle a little of this and a little of that on whatever I'm cooking.

After last weeks juicing disaster I have decided to stick to water, tea and homemade iced tea.  I make great homemade iced tea!

Sadly, I have had to abandon my favorite protein shake mix.  Not sure when it happened, but at some point the company changed the recipe from sweetening with a little bit of stevia to sweetening with a whole lot of cane juice, ie sugar.  It is the second ingredient on the list!  Very disappointing.   This has meant missing my morning breakfast smoothie, my favorite alternative to eggs.  If I ate eggs every day for breakfast I think I'd start laying them myself!

I bought a new protein powder at Costco the other day to try out.  The thing with trying protein powders, is that you can't just buy a small amount.  You can either get large, jumbo or Arnold Schwarzenegger sizes.  This sucks because if the powder tastes like the bottom of a box, which many do, you're stuck with it, or you're throwing away at least 50 bucks.

I picked out a vegan protein powder called Vega Protein + Greens, in vanilla flavor.  Now I just had to figure out what to do with it.  I called my emergency recipe assistance line, aka my sister.  I needed a liquid that wasn't juice because juice is just liquid sugar, and I really wasn't in the mood to squeeze my own.  Aha!  Coconut milk to the rescue!  I also had some plain Greek yogurt.  I threw that in too, not for any particular reason, I just see people put yogurt in smoothies a lot.  Same with the ground flax seed.  Really, these are just good sourced of omega fats and protein, so in they went.  Then I added a mix of frozen tropical fruit.  I prefer using frozen fruit to adding ice because I think melting icy water in my smoothie would be gross.  I tossed in a scoop of my new protein powder and hit blend.  And . . .

Voila!!

Here's the good news.   It doesn't taste like crap and it isn't green.  When I saw, "Protein + Greens"  I was worried it would turn everything green.  I've seen this many times before. When you add other fruits or liquids everything becomes a disgusting brown colour.  The finished smoothie looks like it's already been eaten and digested, (if ya know what I mean).  Gross!

It tastes good too.  The only thing I would change is that I would leave out the yogurt I think.  This smoothie is so thick and creamy it's difficult to suck up the straw!  It is so, so creamy, which some people may love, but I feel like I'm drinking pudding.

So all in all, not a bad first effort.  It's gonna be fun to play around with different blends of fruit and add ins like flax and hemp and such.  I will definitely give the full recipe when I get a winner.

Peace Out!

Michy

Confessions of a Sugar Addict in a Sugar-Laden World | Laura Marquis | T...

This woman describes sugar addiction perfectly.

Hey There Sugar - Update

Well, it's almost noon on day 2 of my sugar detox and I haven't killed anyone yet, so I'd say it's going well!  I had enlisted the help of my eldest son to join me in this journey.  He agreed to go sugar free for one week with me, even though, he said, he doesn't have a sugar problem.  This from the boy that ate butter tarts for breakfast the other day.  Well, he lasted until breakfast of the first day.  I woke up to find a white dusting of cereal sugar on the kitchen counter.  I should have warned him that breakfast time sugar cravings are brutal.  He'd tucked into a huge bowl of Multigrain Cheerios before the sun was even fully up.  Last night I came in from running his brother around town only to discover he'd baked chocolate chip cookies.  They were all still sitting there, right on the counter!!!!  So much for his support!

Oh well, not unexpected.  He did make an effort to pack a sugar free lunch this morning, so maybe there's hope for him yet.

Physically, I've got a twinge of a headache.  Not too bad though.  I'm sure my brain is gonna clue into the fact that the Diet Coke river has stopped flowing and is gonna start to rebel in a big way.  I'm a bit tired, but that is not unusual.  I've been riding a blood sugar roller coaster for a long time, so being tired feels normal.

What have I been eating?  Well, yummy stuff!  Scrambled eggs for brekkie, a burrito bowl for lunch, with rice, beans, veg, beef, homemade guac and salsa, and  dinner was roasted chicken with baked sweet potato, an apple and a clementine for desert.  The most exciting thing I had was my evening snack.  A slice of rye bread (watch for sugar in bread), toasted, with all natural peanut butter and sliced strawberries.  Holy yum!  It was so good I had for breakfast again this morning!

I had planned on adding some green juice to my diet this week.  That plan went horribly off the rails when I actually made the green juice.  Yeah, it kinda tastes like a cross between nuclear waste and poison.  I'm kidding!  It tasted like celery, which if you know me, you know I think tastes like nuclear waste and poison.  Every since a grade school pot luck when some sick, twisted parent brought Ants of a Log, a revolting combination of celery, peanut butter and raisins, I have been unable to tolerate celery.  It was, no joke, 20 years before I could eat peanut butter again.

Barf!

Here's the thing about juicing.  It's expensive.  Super expensive.  To make my putrid concoction I needed 2 cucumbers, (.99 ea), 8 celery stalks, (I just paid $3.39 for the scrawniest bunch of celery you will ever see.  It didn't even have 8 full stalks), 1 bag of kale ($3.99), 1 lemon, (.99),  4 apples, ($2.30) and ginger (.45).  That's $13.10 for 2 glasses of juice, one of which went down the drain 5 seconds after my first sip.  My lucky hubby got the other one.  That makes Starbucks look like a bargain!

So, no more juice.  I am going to make some homemade iced tea.  That should see me through.  Headache is getting slightly worse, but that could just be because my husband is working from home today.

Peace out!

Michy

Hey There Sugar!

Hello everyone.  My name is Michelle and I am an addict.  A sugar addict.  I have a major problem and I need serious help.

By now, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably think I'm goofing around.  I'm not.  It's serious time.  I have struggled with my weight for years. I am currently carrying around 80 extra pounds.  I'm only five foot one.  I wear a size 16.  I think I carry it pretty well.  Most people are stunned when I tell them my actual weight.  And while my brain thinks I carry the extra weight well, my body is saying, "Damn gurl!  Put that chewy bar down!!  My back is killing!  My feet are sore! There's trouble in the stomach and colon!!!".

I have tried to kick sugar about fifty times.  My record is three weeks, ending in an all out bender of ice cream (my greatest weakness), cookies and honey garlic chicken wings.  Like any addict, I have some pretty bizarre logic.  Many times I have solved the problem of tempting ice cream in the house, by eating the whole carton. Once it's gone and I can't be tempted by it any more.  Every time I do this it seems to makes perfect sense.  If there are no sweets in the house I will bake cookies from scratch just to satisfy the craving.  Living out in the country doesn't remove temptation.  I got me a car!  I'll drive miles for an ice cream cone!

I'd love to know if there is a psychological reason, for me personally, for why I do this.  Is there some mental reason why I just can't quit?  Some trauma in my childhood?  Nope.  Am I terrified of being slim and attracting too much male attention?  Hell no!  

Seriously, I got nothing.  I know that I tend to go on a bit of a bender when I fight with my spouse, but honestly, that is very rare.  Certainly not enough to account for a habit of my magnitude.

I have often just claimed that I am weak.  That I have no self control and that secretly I just didn't care about myself enough to use some restraint.  

Not true.  I happen to love myself.  I like my face. I like my hair.  I like what my body can do for me, if not its current shape.  I'm strong!  I can do some serious heavy lifting!  I make gorgeous babies.  I can swim, run, (if I have to), row, walk, bike.  My body is pretty cool.  I don't even mind my big butt, because it makes my waist look smaller!

I've learned that my problem with sugar isn't in my head, it's in my brain.  Studies have shown that the brain reacts to sugar in the same way it reacts to cocaine and heroin.

Sugar lighting up the pleasure center of the brain, the same as cocaine.

COCAINE AND HEROIN!!!!!  No wonder it's so hard to stop.  And here's another problem.  Cocaine and other hard drugs are kinda hard to come by for a middle aged suburban mom.  Sugar in the other hand is everywhere!!  It's in my breakfast cereal, my juice, the ketchup I put on my eggs, the jam for my toast, waffles and pancakes. Even my bacon is coated in sugar!  And this is just breakfast!!!! 

Sugar crash an hour later and I'm sucking back the Diet Coke.  But get this, the aspartame in Diet Coke only makes me crave real sugar even more, so I follow it with 4 cookies.  A friend is stopping by for coffee.  Oh look!  She brought doughnuts!  Busy running around at lunch?  Better hit the Timmies drive thru and grab a combo, with a doughnut and another Diet Coke.  Afternoon snack?  A chewy bar outta do.  Dinner sounds healthy.  Spaghetti with tomato sauce and salad.  I never buy pre-made tomato sauce because it's loaded with sugar and, ya know, we don't want that.  So I make my own.  Wait a second! Those stewed tomatoes?  They contain sugar.  The Italian seasoning blend?  Yep, sugar in there too.  And the salad dressing?  Well, they might as well call it "Sugar Sauce for Salads".  Don't forget desert!  Three scoops of vanilla ice cream with Skor bits and mini chocolate chips on it. And I'll wash it all down with another Diet Coke.  Mmmmmmmmmm.  I am salivating just writing about it!  This is an average day.

My cravings for sugar first thing in the morning are unreal.  I will have not one, not two, but three huge bowls of cereal in the morning if it's in the house.  I'm not talking Golden Grahams or Fruit Loops either.  I don't buy that stuff.  I'm a Mini Wheats, Honey Nut Cheerios, Fiber One Honey Clusters kinda girl.  These are all marketed as being healthy for you.  Hilarious.

Even when I choose savory foods, I get the sugary ones.  Chicken wings and other meats are always sweetened with some kind of sauce.  Honey Garlic, BBQ, Steak Sauce, Ketchup.  All just sugar sauce.

Here's the other problem sugar addicts face.  Everyone is your drug dealer.  No one would ever say to a heroin addict, except maybe another heroin addict, "Come on!  It's your birthday!  You can have a little on your birthday.  It's all about moderation you know".  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this from family, friends, strangers, even my own husband, who knows all about my struggle, and still dangles the sugar coated gummie carrot in my face.

Yes, they exist!

A sugar addiction is no more about moderation than any other addiction.  I have never heard of a recovering alcoholic or drug addict who said, "Yeah, I still dabble a bit.  You know, like on my birthday, or on like Saturday, because that's my cheat day".  Gad!  I wish you could see the look on my face as I write this, because this is the exact methodology that is used when someone is addicted to sugar.  It's a real thing people!  Withdrawal SUCKS!  Trust me, I've done it about a dozen times.

I think that part of the problem with understanding the severity of this problem is that the symptoms of sugar addiction are not the same as those of other hard drug users.  I don't look strung out and skeletal.  I'm not dirty and red eyed.

Here are some signs of a sugar addiction you may not have noticed:

I'm very overweight.  I'm 5'1" and a 190 pounds.  That ain't good, and it isn't genetics either.  I am perfectly capable of losing weight.  I have weighed as low as 126 pounds in my adult life and been super healthy.  Genetics means I will never be 105 pounds and scrawny like some other women in my family and that's just fine.  I'm built different.  However, carrying around significant extra weight is a good sign that something is amiss.

I drink a lot of soda.  Now, I drink diet soda, which is no better than regular soda, it simply has the sugar replaced with artificial chemicals, Yum!  But a lot of people with a sugar addiction drink a ton of soda.  Pop isn't the only culprit in the glass.  Sports drinks, juices, iced teas, energy drinks, yogurt beverages, chocolate milk, hot chocolate and flavored waters, including ones marketed as healthy, (I'm looking at you Vitamin Water), are full of sugar.  None of us would take 12 teaspoons of sugar and pour it into a glass of water and drink it, but if your drinking a Coke that's exactly what you're doing.  They may dress it up with bright colours, pretty labels and absurd health claims, but that's all it is.  Sugar water.

Replacing sugary drinks with sugar free drinks, as I have done, is not the answer either.  Studies have shown that people who drink diet soda gain more weight that then our regular soda drinking counterparts because when the body craves sugar and you give it aspartame instead, your brain does a, "wtf??  That wasn't sugar!  GIVE ME SUGAR"!!!!  And so you chase that diet coke with a pie.  A whole frickin' pie.

Watch what people eat at a party.  I always head for the taco dip first.  Sounds safe you say?  Wrong!  Commercially made salsa has buckets of sugar in it.  After that it's on to the sweets.  Cookies, cake, little bite sized mini desserts.  Mmmmmmmm.  The one place you won't find me?  The veggie and dip tray.  I like veggies, I'm just trying to avoid the commercially made dip which, you guessed it, contains sugar.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I get extremely cranky when I don't have sugar.  Occasionally I'll get the shakes.  Generally a full blown sugar withdrawal is an awful experience.  Mind blowing headaches, unbelievable cravings and complete lethargy are a few of the worst things to overcome.  Temptation is around every corner.  For me it's best if I purge my house of all sugar before I start detoxing and then lock myself in the house for a week until it's over.

These are just a few things that you might notice in yourself or others that may indicate a problem with sugar.

Now, a lot of people will say that sugar isn't bad for you, just too much sugar is bad for you.  Yes, thank you spokesman for the National Sugar Council.  Chances are, if you can eat a bit of sugar every day and be just fine, then you are probably not a sugar addict.  That being said, I would challenge you to eliminate all sugar, all of it, from your diet for only one week.  See how hard that is, and how you feel physically.  It will be eyeopening I guarantee it.  You just may discover that you actually do have a problem, or at the very least, your eyes will be open to all the products you eat every day that contain added sugar.

A lot of people will also say, "you look fine" or, "love the skin you're in", or "big is beautiful".  Well, in fact, the effects of sugar on my body mean that my skin is actually sallow and dry, and what's going on inside that skin is a bunch of aches and pains from carrying so much extra weight, a fatty liver, rising cholesterol and very likely pre-diabetes.  There's nothing beautiful about that.

Here's the good news though.  I am a stubborn person.  Very stubborn.  Just because I have tried and failed 50 times, does not mean that I won't try 50 more.  As soon as I finish this post I am going to make out sugar detox plan and head to the grocery store.  Tomorrow will be day 1 of that  detox which will end 7 days later.  I will let you know how it's going.  I'm sure it will be great fun, for all of you.  I, on the other hand, will probably be wanting to drive a spike through my head halfway through the week.

So wish me luck and remember, when you offer a person something sweet to eat and they say no thank you, don't harass them into eating it.  Just say ok and move on.  Don't be somebody's dealer!

Peace out

Michy

Why Don't They Like Me??

Writing prompt number 2 from my Writing Prompts Journal:

                "You have been abducted by aliens.  Give 3 reasons why they would send you back."

An interesting question.  My initial thought was, why wouldn't aliens want me?  I'm awesome! I have tons of great attributes that any alien might find useful.  I'm ok looking if they want a median example of the human population.  I have extra body fat, you know, in case they want to float me.  My brain is a storehouse of useless trivia!  And I can cook, if they have a fully equipped kitchen on their spaceship. All this however, is not the point of the exercise.  Why, despite all my awesomeness, would they maybe, think about wanting to, possibly send me back to earth.

1.  I burp and fart too much.  I know, too much information, but seriously, they may find me a bit overwhelming.  My husbands nickname for me is Barney, after Barney from The Simpsons.

I don't know why I am this way, but I am, and I'm not shy about letting it rip either, at least at home.  There has been one or two occasions when I forgot that I wasn't at home, and may have let 'er go in front of a friend.  They usually look at me like the creature from Aliens has just exploded out of my mouth.  My best friend breaks out in  Tom Jones, "She's A Lady", whenever I burp in front of her.  Yep, when the ol' tummy is a rumbly I don't hold back.  

I fart too.  That's right.  Don't act like you never pop out a left cheek squeak once in a while.  We all do.  I just happen to enjoy the process more than others.  Honestly, I you can't fart in the privacy of your own home, where can you!?  It's not like I walk around in public slicing the fromage all over the place.  I do have some self control!  But, I do think that I tend to be more "productive" than the average human.  Aliens just might not be able to handle it.

On the other hand, the aliens may discover that they can harvest my gas as fuel.  They may appreciate that I can produce enough of it to keep an entire fleet of spaceships in orbit indefinitely.  They may even value my gas producing capacity so much that they make me their Queen!  Or at least Minster for Energy.

2.  I talk to much.  

Have you ever met a person who just will not shut up?  Yeah, that's me.  I talk  a lot.  I have a lot to say!  Whenever I meet a person who won't shut up I think, "Oh my God.  Is that me?  Is that what I sound like?  Am I this annoying????  

Sometimes people just aren't good conversationalists and I feel the need to fill in the uncomfortable silence.  Every once in a while I will catch myself blabbing away, dominating the conversation and think, "does this person really want to hear the story about that time I stepped on dog poop in my bare feet?  Does it really relate to the conversation we were just having about economic underdevelopment and race relations in eastern Uganda"?

I think one of the first things aliens would want to discover about me, is how to shut me up.  Seriously.  They'd have me strapped to a table and I'd be all,

"What's that"?

"What does that do"?

"So, where ya from"?

"Any invasion plans"?

"Ooooo!  That's squishy!, Hey, you know one time, I was walking my dog in my bare feet . . . "

Yeah, I think they'd have enough of me in about ten minutes.

3.  Gee, this is hard!  Ok, how about this.  I can, in a general way, be a pain in the ass.  I like to think of it as "mothering", but my family may call it something else.  

Imagine me running around a UFO yelling, "Gorelax!  Pick up your damn tentacle covers off the stasis chamber floor!  What is wrong with you"!?  Or, "Zurgog!  Put your phaser away in the organic matter consumption pod!  You're gonna blast off your brothers antenna again!  They only grow back so many times you know"! Or, "Captain Klackton, you didn't flush after you used the Zorgon bodily waste elimination pod and there is fluids all over the seat!  What is wrong with you people?    You are disgusting"!  They wouldn't be able to beam me down fast enough! 

So, I think, when all is said and done, that although I may be a shining example of humanities average-ness, I may not be the best fit for alien first contact.  I guess it really depends on the species involved.  Maybe there is a gaseous, blabbermouth species out there in need of a mother.  I might be just what they need.  I guess we will never know!

Peace out!

Michy