This is who my first labour brought me: my beautiful Tessa. And this is the picture I took to the birth of my second child, Graydon, so I could concentrate on why I was labouring again.

On Mom-to-be Tuesday, guest blogger and web editor Helen said buh-bye with her last post before she delivers her first little bundle of love and spit-up. She asked if readers remembered their first birth, and for any advice. Remember Helen, you asked.

I remember it all. My husband and I attended birthing classes together. I hired the instructor to be my birthing coach because we didn’t know how long my husband could hang in, and we wanted an experienced person on “our” side if we both lost our minds during labour. I read all the bad parts of “What to Expect when You’re Expecting” and asked every mother I knew or met about the worst parts, so I would be prepared. At the tour of the hospital I asked to sign the paper requesting an epidural. Can you believe I had to wait until I was actually in labour?

The baby I was carrying didn’t want to leave the warm and squishy place she lived in, and had to be induced several ways before labour started. Then I did that for 20-odd hours, then pushed with no epidural (how barbaric that seems now that the art of the epidural is so refined) for three hours, much of that off a monkey-bar-type apparatus. Then I said, “That’s it. I’m done. Cut it out, I don’t care. I’m finished.” And I just laid there, no pushing, no panting. My husband and the birthing coach told the nurses I meant it, so they woke up the doctor (who was quite snarly at 5:45 a.m.) and it was off to the OR, where Tessa was delivered by forceps and strapped to my body because I was shaking so hard no one would let me hold her on my own.

Are you scared yet?

The thing of it is, once you have that baby on you instead of in you, all the pain, no matter how little or not, is worth it because of what it brings you.

And I had two more babies, so obviously it wasn’t that bad. And epidurals are SO GOOD NOW. When I had Luka seven years ago, both kids were in the room with us (at the shoulder end, of course, I am no Discovery Channel subject) and I was laughing and joking throughout the actual delivery. It was so cool. I should have had a fourth.

My best advice? Nature takes over, let it. If you think you might want medication, tell the atttending doc and nurses that you want that option, and that you want them to tell you when it the option of using medication is ending. Don’t forget to breathe (it is so easy to forget). Let other people do stuff for you as long as you can. Bring the baby to the office, and let me know when that is! Best of luck and best wishes to the three of you.

XOXOX

Last night was the Light the Night walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), a five kilometre family-type event where all walkers carry illuminated helium-filled balloons to honour people affected by these cancers. Supporters carry red balloons, survivors carry white and gold balloons represent those who have died and whose family and friends honour them by participating. Last year, my Graydon was the event’s Honoured Hero. This year, he walked as a four-year survivor of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

This is a photo from last year, mainly because there aren’t any from last night yet. I’ve been told that there will be though, since Graydon and his buds wore “large green hats” and had a lot of pictures snapped of them.

Another major difference is that he walked with friends—new friends. Life for Graydon has been all about struggle on one front or another since diagnosis on December 17, 2001. And I have been at his side, or leading him or pushing him all the way. This year has been %!$!#&$%-filled, and as The Mum, I am finally getting tired. If you’ve experienced caregiver fatigue, you know what I’m talking about. A special-needs child, a family member with addiction or mental health problems, an aging relative who looks only to you—it’s a burnout that makes job-place burnout look like heaven.

I knew that I was too emotional to do that walk. The sight of a floating gold balloon and the photo of a child would have been too much, and I would not have been able to hold it together. Add to that the fact that the walk route goes along Sick Kids Hospital and the kids and parents and nurses inside on the eighth floor line the floor-to-ceiling windows, waving and looking out, and I would have been a puddle on the sidewalk. I know my limits.

So, Graydon walked with new friends. He took a huge step from being at his mother’s side, and I took an equally large step from always being at his side. Like I said at the top of the post, I’d like to reflect on this big happening in our history together but I’m too tired, and it has nothing to do with sleep.

Graydon’s goal for fundraising this year was $600, and he has raised $680. Should you have any spare $$$ lying about that you would like to donate, check out his LLS donation page. Even if you don’t, click over and see how bright and shiny fundraising is thanks to these nifty computers. (I remember going door-to-door with a tattered pledge sheet for an Oxfam walk for starving children in Biafra, thinking 10¢ a mile was huge money, and then trudging along the route listening to “I Heard It on the Grapevine” on my transistor radio. Good times!)

QUESTIONS FOR YOU: have you experienced caregiver fatigue? What was the best thing you did for yourself to help cope? Have you cut back on your charitable giving lately? Do you think it is obnoxious for fundraising sites to want to display the names of sponsors? How could I have walked for Oxfam and Biafran children when I am only 39 years old?!?!?

Welcome to Shannon’s Works for Me Wednesday’s blog carnival! The topic today is Kitchen Organization. I am in dire need of this information and in no position to offer any, so I am posting a rogue Works for Me Wednesday. I’ll try to keep up next themed day…

As I reported in a previous entry, Luka, my seven AND A HALF year old (the caps are his, as he is wont to stress every single time someone asks how old he is), still doesn’t like reading. Not only does he not like to, he doesn’t want to. It is pretty difficult today to replace the thrill of a DS or a PSP in the hand with a book.

This weekend, there was lots of reading to do, and I told him we had to think of a way to make it interesting. He disappeared for a while and returned like this:

Here he is explaining to our neighbour who he is and why he is here:

And then Darth set to the work he was meant to do:

The sound of his voice coming through the “voice changer” made a story about a garden of dead snails sound even more macabre than it already was. He read six books. Score!

It Works for Me!

Please leave a comment, and then click over to Shannon’s blog for a ton of tips on organizing your kitchen!

Hello all,

This will be my last mom-to-be post, seeing as I’m 37 weeks along (that means only three weeks to go!) It’s been a great experience so far, though the last few weeks of hugeness and swelling of all and every variety haven’t exactly been thrilling. I feel like the Michelin Tire man…or a walrus.

Yesterday, Kathryn Dorrell, the section editor of family life at Canadian Living and the writer of our Life & Family e-Newsletter (if you’re not signed up to get it, you really should, as it’s full of great info), dropped a review copy of a new book on my desk, with a yellow sticky on it: “Helen, You may — or may not — want to read this!”

The book is called Great Expectations (Anansi, 2008) and it’s out on October 10th. In it are 24 true stories about Canadian childbirths.

Naturally, I read about half of the book yesterday night. On the whole, it’s truthful (I think, but what do I know?), interesting and a little scary. Should I be terrified? Nervous? Optimistic? All of the above?  As this is my first child, I have no idea what to expect…

So my parting question to you is…do you remember being pregnant for the first time? And, what did you expect when you were expecting? What should I expect? Any words of encouragement or kindness are thoroughly appreciated!

Wish me luck!

Helen

P.S. Don’t forget to check out some of our pregnancy and newborn stories:

Who to invite to the birth

Getting help with your new baby

And my fave:

First baby bliss

Warning: Don’t Run with Pencils!!

This is a cautionary tale, completely true and punctuated by REAL photos. This was in the CaringBridge blog of a fellow cancer mum friend of mine. CaringBridge sites are blogs for loved ones of sick folk to keep everyone update on their condition, battle, setbacks and great days. Holly wrote this, so here it is:

I just wanted to send a friendly reminder to all the Moms out there to revisit with your children the importance of not running with sharp objects.

In this case… don’t HOP on one foot with a pencil in your hand!!!

Yes. That’s a pencil stuck completely THROUGH Tommy’s foot!

I have no idea HOW he actually did it, but his little brother came running to me, screaming that it was serious! I dropped what I was doing and ran up the stairs and couldn’t believe my eyes! All I could think was “OMG!! What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?! …Crap! I didn’t read that section of the baby and childcare book!!! ”

I was trying not to panic while my 9 year old was screaming in pain. My first instinct was to pull it out. I ran back downstairs, got my husband to call 911, and grabbed a towel because I knew there would be blood… and as I ran back upstairs flashbacks of episodes of ER and Grey’s Anatomy were playing in my head… I could hear Merideth Grey, “when we pull this (whatever it was) out, this person is going to ‘bleed out’…”

I sat there holding his foot in my hand, and noticed there was NO BLOOD… not even a drop coming out of either of the holes…and I wasn’t prepared to open up an artery on the playroom floor. So I realized I would just have to calm him (and myself) down and wait for the EMTs to arrive. I could hear Dave on the phone downstairs with 911 yelling up to me “Don’t pull it out! Don’t pull it out!” I said, “I’m not going to… get the camera”.

The EMTs arrived, splinted the pencil in place, and carried Tommy out to the mini-van and laid him on his stomach in the middle row of seats with his foot in the air. Then we drove him to the ER. The ER doctor gave him a shot of morphine and then pulled it out with a PAIR OF PLIERS!! Unbelievably, it still didn’t bleed! They cleaned it, irrigated it, and put a couple bandaids on it and sent us on our way….

All I can say is OUCH!! And thank God it wasn’t worse!! He’s on crutches today, but doesn’t seem to be in any pain unless he tries to step on it…

Thanks for checking in!!

Last evening, as I was sipping a caffe latte and perusing the international magazine titles (translation: waiting interminably in a lineup at WalMart, chugging an extra-large Tim’s with four milk and flipping through American gossip rags), I happened upon the latest in Brangelina land—Brad and Angelina’s $70 million chateau is a pigsty! They order in pizza, and leave the boxes on the kitchen counter! Brad and Maddox will happen by, grab a piece, take a few bites, and throw it back in the box! There is toothpaste smeared on the walls of the kids’ bathroom! Kids colour on the bedroom walls! Muddy footprints in the hall! Flies in the kitchen!

OMG.

√ My chateau looks like the winning entry in TLC’s Clean Sweep.

√ We leave pizza boxes on the counter.

√ There are bite marks on some slices.

√ We too have toothpaste in places other than the tube.

√ I colour on the kitchen cupboards (THE best place for memos, important dates and notes to offspring, in Crayola Washables Crayons).

√ Muddy footprints.

√ Fruit flies in the kitchen—I blame the peaches.

I have to tell you, I stood a little straighter after I read that article. It isn’t just me with a house that looks like a frat dorm. Brad and Angelina are fighting the same fight that I do. Kids make messes. They leave things around. If there’s time to clean, there’s time to play instead.

I didn’t buy the magazine. Brad and Angie probably won’t buy it either. Score! We have more in common.

Two days ago they moved to Berlin to another chateau (they don’t have mansions in Europe) where there is already a staff of 12 or 14 people. The rent is $35,000 per week. Brad bought Angie a $55,000 bed after she had the twins. Brad shot the fam for the cover of the soon-to-be-out November W magazine. Hmmmm. The similarities are slipping.

BUT, no one is writing about my messy house but me. No one is salivating over what I had for dinner last night (Wednesday evening, after seeing a doctor and having a meeting with Quentin Tarantino, Brad had portobello mushroom ravioli with a truffle sauce, followed by giant prawns, according to my source at Star Magazine). That suits me just fine. Now if only my kitchen drain wasn’t plugged….

For more excellent things that my peeps love, check out The DiaperDiaries.net.

Welcome to Shannon’s Works for Me Wednesday’s blog carnival!

The September crop of raspberries is a plentiful one (I am not a fruit farmer, I just pretend I am when I’m in the backyard in front of my berry bushes) and this is a fabulous way to use them, save them and have chic drinks well into the winter:

Clean the raspberries, drop two or three in each of the ice cube sections, freeze, remove, bag, repeat. Far better than flash freezing and bagging and ending up with a soggy mass of sad, thawed berries. These make kids’ and adults’ drink sparkle (pictured is club soda and Fruitopia frozen concentrate) and remind us of summer when it gets cold outside. Works for Me!

Click over to Shannon’s blog for more tips!

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I loved this blog carnival last week, hosted by Marcy at The Glamorous Life Association, and since the title of her blog does capture the true essence of my life, I am here again! She has asked bloggers to “show us all what YOUR GLAMOROUS LIFE looks like.” Remember when Queen Elizabeth called 1992 her “annus horribilis”? Well, I’ve had an almost two-week-longus horribilis, and I am just about fried. From the little details (left wallet at home, left kid backpack at babysitters, left value pack of chicken in shopping bag in basement for two days, left garbage in garage on pick-up day) to the medium ones (drains plugging up in kitchen, clothes washer busted, front door broken) to the large (ex wants divorce paperwork started, haven’t filed 2006 and 2007 taxes, Graydon having “struggles” of a non-medical nature—I’m not telling here, email me for details at jacquelyn.momblog@yahoo.ca—Luka still hating reading, Tessa having many ups and downs at her new high school) it has been totally overwhelming, and I can take a lot.

I even said at family therapy last Friday, I finally feel like the wheels are starting to fall off.

So, after eating a bag of Bridge Mixture (curse those stupid orange ones), filling the house with new curative aromas, getting my latest beading project out and turning on the TV to settle in for a family evening, I broke a molar Saturday night. I went to a walk-in clinic for pain meds Sunday, saw a new dentist Monday a.m. and had the whole thing pulled this morning.

The two-week-longus horribilis continues!

I am at work, biting down on gauze, taking my lunch half-hour to say:

THANK YOU to the good samaritans out there. If it wasn’t for people doing little things, and big things too, unselfishly, this would have been a far worse time. Some people are just extra-nice all the time, others are fastidious about their work, so what is standard for them comes as a welcome surprise to the rest of us. Still others don’t think about others a lot, so their gestures seem to mean even more.

Here’s my list of people to thank, incomplete to be sure, but a good start:

Sara, a mum-friend, for seeing Luka hanging out on the schoolyard a little longer than usual and taking him home.
Spenser’s mum, I’m so sorry that like many of us, I know her only as Spenser’s mum, for having Luka over for a snack after school.
Unnamed woman, who left her car at the pumps to come over and show me how those tire-filling air hoses actually work—she had no idea until another woman, a stranger too, showed her how they worked.
Liza, a new friend of Tessa’s, who has gone beyond the call as a new classmate in helping Tessa to feel part of her new school.
A KFC customer, who upon seeing Graydon counting out his change, said, “Hey you need more food than that, a growing boy!” and bought him two more pieces.
My little sister (I love calling her that), Juli the illustrator, sent me the coolest notebook with a cover from a kids’ book that our Dad used to read us at bedtime: the Thorton W. Burgess classics. She made the notebook. Photos to follow.
My hair and makeup team, because without them I’d look just like I do. It’s a Glamorous Life, I tell ya!

That’s it. My mouth is screaming, I’ve run out of clean gauze (that is not pretty) and my half hour is up.

QUESTION FOR YOU: I’m thinking of a pitching a story to the has-no-equal Canadian Living magazine about just this—when the wheels started falling off in your family, and what you did about it, or didn’t do. Everything absolutely, guaranteed, 100 per cent confidential, just leave your address or url here in the comment box, or email me at jacquelyn.momblog@yahoo.ca, and let’s compare notes!

Until tomorrow…

This blog carnival is called Things I Love Thursday. The rules are simple: “pick an actual thing that you love. Feel free to do a product review, but make sure to let your readers know that you have been supplied with the product to review so we are keepin’ it honest.” Yes, this post is an endorsement to be sure, but again, it is a product I have always paid for, and have not been supplied with for the purpose of a review. For more excellent things that bloggers love, check out The DiaperDiaries.net.

The biggest problem with chocolate is it doesn’t fill one up (HA! like that’s the only problem with chocolate, along with calories and fat and caffeine and stains and melted M&Ms in the dryer!). Chocolate fires the desire to continue eating it. Self-control is a heavy responsibility. When Tessa made this find in the bakery section of the grocery store, we had no idea of the greatness of the discovery.

President’s Choice Chocolate Chip Miche bread is the answer to many prayers (no offense to those who pray for real). It is heavy with chocolate chips, and the bread isn’t a raisin-bread kind of eggy thing, but a solid sourdough that anchors the unsweetened chocolate taste. It’s crusty, but that peels off quite easily for people who value the roof of their mouth. It toasts up like a dream, or is rippable in the front seat of the car (thank you Tessa). And best of all, the kids can eat a slice or two and feel as though they’ve made out like bandits—tastebuds satiated AND tummies full.

QUESTION FOR YOU, AND THIS IS SO SPECIFIC I’LL BE SHOCKED TO GET EVEN ONE REPLY: do any of you fabulous readers have a recipe for a bread like this? I haven’t baked bread for years, but my sister is a master bread baker, and if I furnish her with the recipe, I know she’ll give it a whirl (if you are reading this, sister dear, I’ll let you know!). Thank you friends, in advance!

See you tomorrow!

Welcome to Shannon’s Works for Me Wednesday’s blog carnival!

Yesterday a good friend at work happened onto a killer sale on leather hair bands, bought two, and gave me one. Not for my birthday, or because I was promoted or fired, or even because I was feeling down—just because she loves a sale and wanted to celebrate by giving a fellow frugal shopper a gift. Works for ME!!

But that’s not the Works for Me Wednesdays tip. I have a big head under these need-some-highlights-desperately locks, and after half an hour of wearing the hair band I had a splitting headache, which carried on through the afternoon. So when I got home—here is the tip—I headed for the garage, went through the bin of sports balls (basketballs, soccer balls, baseballs, footballs, beach balls of all sizes, golf balls, tennis balls, ping pong balls, ball hockey balls and lacrosse balls—many of them totally useless here, but they were in the bin). I chose out a beach ball, took it inside, put it in a clean bag and stretched the hair band over it. After anywhere from 6 hours to a day or two (depending on what the band is made of), this trick works every time. It’s especially good for hair bands from the dollar store—so often they look so pretty, but won’t fit even a child’s head! Using balls is great, because they come in all sizes. It Works for Me!

QUESTIONS FOR YOU: who do you think wore/wears a hair band best?

Ms. Hepburn?

Hillary (historical hair-wear, apparently)?

The ever-fashionable-because-Victoria-says-so David Beckham?

Paris?

Madge?

Ashley Olsen (don’t ask—they’re Chanel, so they are gorgeous, and yes, if any of our sisters or girlfriends let us walk into a Fendi show with our hair looking like that we’d slap them smartly).

Register your vote, then click over to Shannon’s blog for more tips!