Everything is Unfinished

You may have noticed up above that not only did the ticker change recently, it now links to a gallery of pictures of Jack. I have basically uploaded every picture we’ve taken of him since he’s been born. Looking back through them all, I can’t believe how much he’s changed even in just 7 1/2 weeks! I just uploaded some new ones tonight, beginning with this one from May 7:

Don’t let that expression fool you, he was not at all happy about being naked and wet. I wonder when the switch will flip and he’ll love taking baths? I’m also interested to see if he likes being in the pool this summer.

I’ve actually been making a whole lot of progress with the garage sale sorting. I just can’t believe how much stuff there is. Every time I pulled a box out of the basement, I found another one. Tonight I finally went down there for a few hours and looked through everything and found it all. Sadly, there were entire boxes of crap that have never even been unpacked since we moved in 2 1/2 years ago. But the good thing about that is I figure if I haven’t needed it in all that time, it can all go. Someone else will get more use out of it than I will! This is also having a pretty sobering impact on how I buy things now. I realize we’re always going to outgrow things, or not need things that we once did, but I hope this will help me stop buying so much. We’ll see how that goes!

For my Very First Mother’s Day(tm) Johnny and Jack got me a 90-minute massage at the local hoity-toidy spa. I went yesterday to have it and it was heavenly! I’ve had massages before, but I really needed this one. I was so knotted up in my shoulders and upper back, and the therapist worked those areas very hard. As a result, I’m so sore today, but it was totally worth it. I’m trying to get in the habit of consciously relaxing my shoulders, as I tend to hunch them up when I’m holding Jack. I’m also trying to remember that daily tasks like dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc. can wait but my baby won’t be a baby forever and I should spend as much time with him as possible. That’s not a hard thing to remember. Especially when he gains 12 ounces in a week! At the doctor this morning he weighed in at 8lbs. 13oz., up from 8lbs. 1oz. last Thursday. We were just commenting on how chubby his cheeks were getting - it’s no wonder!

Here’s another fun dancing movie, and this one involves your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman! Be careful though, it’s rumored that he will make you gay.

I can’t believe how productive I was today. I think it’s because I was out of the house for 8 hours. It seems that, when I’m at home all day, I’m caught in some sort of time warp or temporal shift and all of a sudden, it’s 1am and I’ve done nothing of value. Well, other than feed Jack, change Jack, do the dishes, and repeat. Ok so those things aren’t really of no value, but I’m certainly not using my “down time” very well. For instance, my mom and I are having a garage sale in 2 weeks and I’ve got SO much stuff to get rid of but it’s not going to organize itself. And there are all sorts of scrapping projects that I’d like to do, but all I seem to know how to do is sit in front of the TV or the computer. Maybe because the TV and computer are upstairs, and the other stuff is in the basement. Hmm, I may be onto something here. No time to think about it further though, time to start the cycle again!

You Tube is an awesome site, and it’s proved its worth once again. This video is great - it’s a guy dancing to songs from the ’50’s to today. About halfway through, it got reeeeeeeally funny for me.

I suppose since I just sent everyone here from the Baby Blog I should actually have something here for you to read, right? Well as you may or may not know, Jack was born by cesarean section. It wasn’t necessarily an emergency situation, but it was scheduled last minute because my placenta decided to stop working so he needed to come out. Because of this, I didn’t really do any research about c-sections in advance since I wasn’t planning on having one, so I learned a lot of things after they happened. Couple that with the fact that I had never had surgery at all before, and there were some surprises. So here are some things that I didn’t know before going to the hospital:

• Lidocaine stings like a bitch. Which is ironic, since it is a local anasthetic. I got a shot of it in my arm before my IV was put in, and after the sting subsided I didn’t feel the IV at all which was nice. But then I got another shot of it in my back before the spinal, and I almost cried. However, once again it did work and I didn’t even feel the spinal.

• According to Johnny, there’s a whole lot more blood than you would think. I guess TV has ruined us about things like that.
• When you leave recovery and get to the post-partum room, you have to move yourself from the gurney to the bed. This is not really a problem, as you have feeling back in your legs by that time. It can, however, cause you to throw up all over yourself. This can cause your father to feel the need to take pictures of you throwing up all over yourself. Trust me on this.
• After a c-section, you still bleed “down there”. I guess it makes sense: your uterus still bleeds after the placenta is removed, and the blood still has to go somewhere. It just took me by surprise because I was thinking well, the baby isn’t coming out that way, so nothing’s going to happen there.
• Catheters don’t hurt while they’re in. However, they don’t feel too good coming out. And then it hurts to pee for about a week afterward.
• IVs don’t really hurt while they’re in either. However, after they come out your arm will swell a bit at the IV site and you may have to put ice on it.
• Surgical incisions don’t hurt the way you might expect. I figured that I would have a sharp pain right around the incision, but it was really more achy than anything.
• Getting out of bed without using your abdominal muscles is very hard. Even with a hospital bed that sits you up, it’s still difficult at best.
• Since they cut through nerves when making an incision, there will be parts of you that are numb after surgery. Some of these parts could be numb for months. This is a very odd sensation - you can feel pressure, but that’s it. And when the feeling starts to come back, it’s like when your foot falls asleep and is just starting to wake back up, for about a day.
• It’s all worth it. (OK, I actually did know that going in.)

First picture of Mommy and Jack: