Where did the time go?

Wow, so it's been 1 year and 2 months since my last update. Although I've heard it many times before, and had a decent appreciation for it's meaning, the old saying, "time goes by so fast when you have children" is an understatement! It seems like only yesterday my little guy was so tiny, I carefully held him supporting his head while we moved about the house throughout the day, giving him new sounds, textures, shapes and colors to experience. And well now, I've been back to work for 6 months, my son is 8 months and two weeks old, my cat Amelia had to be put down last month, Dingo barely gets any attention anymore (thank god for doggie daycare) and frankly, my life has never been more full of the greatest ups and downs I've ever experienced.

Allow me to try to recap briefly the rest of my pregnancy just so there are no monster gaps in the streaming consciousness that is this blog.

I physically felt great throughout my entire pregnancy. Sure, we had some extremely hot days in the summer which made my afternoon walks a sweaty escapade. We seriously lucked out on getting the very last AC unit in Vermont during one of the first of many heat waves last summer. But all in all, I enjoyed being pregnant, and in fact I can't wait to do it again! (sshhh, don't tell my husband!) I did spend quite a bit of time in my last trimester walking to and from bathrooms/restrooms and there were a few activities I had to decline participation in simply because bathrooms were not readily available, but again, not that big of a deal.

Emotionally speaking, the pregnancy was a little turbulent, ok A LOT turbulent. To be sure this isn't misunderstood, I love my husband dearly, but for some reason, I felt quite alone during this time. I get that men and woman are wired completely differently and for this reason alone my writing about it now should make perfect sense to those who are reading and understand these differences. Yes, pregnant women as a result of the new hormones, can tend to become a bit crazy, however I feel as though I was very aware of this tendency and was probably very mild in comparison to the average pregnant woman. I, of course can't be sure without asking others, but no one has disagreed with me so far when I make this claim, not even my husband.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had already read one book on pregnancy before I even got pregnant. How many did my husband read? None; or rather, none from cover to cover. He did receive a couple of books from his friends and family with titles along the lines of, "What it means to be a dad", or "So you're going to be a father" which he paged through randomly while in the bathroom. Again these aren't the real book titles, however the point is, even though the one of the books was written by a man for men with a minor goal of being supportive to their pregnant wife (yes, I read this one too!), my husband really wasn't getting informed about the pregnancy in the way I wanted him to be informed. I wanted him to know what I might be feeling emotionally and physically as the pregnancy progressed and do something with that information. For example, if he knew pregnant women get very emotional over little things as silly as commercials for life insurance or are very sensitive to comments that otherwise would have rolled off one's back, perhaps he would have used that information to better filter those knee jerk reactions and impulsive responses that occasionally sent me off to work crying in car.

I guess I also underestimated what changes my husband would be experiencing as well. In typical male fashion, he never wanted to talk about how he was feeling about having a baby or the pressure he might be feeling, he just chose to act on those feelings which unfortunately really clashed with my emotions. It's only now in retrospect, I can apply this logic and feel better about how the whole thing went. One of my biggest lessons in looking back is to realize my husbands emotional needs were bigger than mine. It's sort of a hard pill to swallow, especially when you want to feel special during your pregnancy, given I was cultivating life and all. I'm obviously still trying to deal with it and hopefully I'll soon be able to let it go.

Anyway, times were rough, especially when we finally got started on a complete kitchen renovation 45 days before my due date. It wasn't always graceful, but somehow, we got through it. Even when I had to stay an extra day in recovery waiting for the kitchen counters to be installed before my husband would pick us up... yes we got through it. Even when on the way home from the hospital we had to stop at Home Depot to get a hose for the kitchen sink drain... yes we got through it.

Emu ride

Here's a dream that seemed to be a two parter. It all started out with myself and another person trying to get to a school building that was part of a college campus, however it was mixed in with the city, so businesses, school buildings and streets were all mixed together.

I remember feeling anxiety as I had only just a moment to glance at a physical map to identify where I was currently located and also pinpoint where was the building I was trying to reach. I knew roughly in what direction and the street name where a "star" labeled my destination and that was it. Also given this was a school building, the sense of being late for class was also a prominent feeling. So off I was along with one of those non-descript friends you sometimes have with you in dreams. We were running through streets, up and down escalators and in and out of cars before we stumbled upon an emu farm in an open field portion of the city. Only in my dreams, right?


Of course these emu's were for renting as transportation, and only for $10.00 - what a deal! I rode my emu away thinking I would surely make it to class on time now. This is where the 2nd part of the dream kicks in. I no longer was on my way to this building, but somehow I was now inside a small apartment with two females near my age who were, for the most part, strangers. My sense was I had picked them up along my travels with my emu, which by the way did I mention was pregnant in my dream as well as myself too.


While inside the apartment, girl #1 was in the kitchen preparing something and I was sitting on a bed or a sofa (something super comfortable and loungy) with Girl #2 and my emu. This is where things got scary. Girl #2 was loading up a syringe with what I assumed to be heroin (not sure why a hard drug is in this dream) and for whatever reason she was going to inject my emu with it. As shocked as I was, I yelled that the emu was pregnant and she shouldn't do that, but it fell on psycho drug addict ears and of course a struggle between myself and Girl #2 ensued where I'm desperately trying to keep her from drugging my emu.

I awoke in mid struggle with sweat soaked pajamas and an elevated heart rate. It felt so real!

New Job/New Office dream

This dream was also quite unsettling. I was in a brand new office building with many of my former co-workers of past jobs. Most prominently were people from a company where I worked for about 6 years. We were all very excited to be in this new building with so many high tech work stations and gadgets around.

If was sort of like a free for all where people just choose any spot they wanted, sat down and begin to work. I recall sitting down in one work station, ready to get started when I realized I didn't have anything necessarily to do! I would then get up and walk around to try to find out from someone what I should be doing. This search for instruction was unsuccessful so I decided to return to my desk and just try to look busy. Upon returning to my desk, I found somebody else had moved into my spot and I had to go find a new one.

This probably happened two or three times during my dream before I woke up.

Vocal Performance dream

This dream was set in a theater or in an auditorium of sorts. I was apparently either auditioning for a vocal part or was involved in some sort of vocal competition. I was sitting in the audience among many others getting ready for our names to be called, walk up on stage and perform. Sitting with me on my left was my "vocal coach" and on my right was my good friend growing up, Tonia. First, let me mention I don't have nor will I ever have a vocal coach since I am not a singer. I did, however, get introduced to playing the piano from Tonia and eventually went to college where I was music major, but my instrument was percussion. I'm wondering if that's how those pieces somehow fit together.

So just as things are about to begin, my coach hands me sheet music for what he wants me to perform that day. As I am looking at the paper, in my dream I take notice the composer's name and some weird bubble chart looking stuff on a subsequent page. I began to panic telling my coach I've never heard of this song before, how on earth am I going to perform this, and what the hell are these bubbles for? While I'm panicing, somehow I manage to loose track of this music in the mix of all sorts of other pieces of sheet music I am apparently carrying around with me. It's at this point I ask my friend Tonia to help me find it. Unfortunately, the only thing I can sort of remember to help her help me is a vague idea of what the composers name is in the upper left corner of the sheet music.

I eventually awoke, pulse racing and breathing a little heavy, but thank goodness I woke up before my name was called to perform!

Expecting

From the moment my husband and I decided we wanted to try to get pregnant, I began my quest for pregnancy knowledge. For anyone who knows me, it wont surprise you to hear I had already read through the entire "What to Expect when you are Expecting" book before I was expecting. I'm all about planning ahead and having no surprises, but it's amazing how no matter how much or what you read, you can't possibly plan for it all.
Not to mention, information found on the internet is a blessing and a curse all at the same time. Never before have we had the ability to have some much information at our fingertips, however the quandary now is how valid/accurate is that information? What you read on the internet does not come with a sensitivity filter either, so things a practitioner or expert may communicate as things to monitor or be aware of, translate in internet language as the sky is falling!
As such, there are a handful of pregnancy sites I am currently using for my main sources of information that I've found to be a little less dramatic for me.

My more serious information gathering sources are:
March of Dimes
American Pregnancy Association

My fun sites are:
BabyZone
BabyCenter

Now that I'm almost 10 weeks in to this journey, a lot of the information I have read has been helpful and entertaining. One item that I found a little hard to believe at first was how pregnant women tend to have very vivid dreams. After having some crazy, feels so real, sweating and screaming type dreams, I'm more of a believer. These dreams, as I have read, seem to be accounted for by the change hormones however other experts say these dreams help us sort through potential mixed emotions during our pregnancy and commonly they too have phases that coincide with our trimesters.

Please check out this link for more details. I couldn't possibly say it any better.
http://www.babycenter.com/303_pregnancy-dreams_1513153.bc

Assuming I can remember enough of them, I would like to share them as I progress through my trimesters and see what the internet tells me is going on in my head!