My Wife Has Guts...I've Seen 'Em

I have to type very quickly. I have a baby now. Here's a list of stuff that people need to know:

1. He is happy and healthy and beautiful.
2. He weighed 8lbs., 7oz. and was 20 1/2 inches long.
3. His name is Grey Matthew.
4. I did NOT get to have my beautiful home birth because I had "back labor" for 30 hours. It was excruciatingly painful. Grey was also in the wrong position, so we had to go to the hospital. It sucked.
5. On the night that I was released from the hospital, I turned over in bed to reach for my son, and my C-section incision burst open. Blood spilled out. I ran to the bathroom and got a mirror. I saw my own intestines coming out. I freaked out. My husband called 911. My baby started screaming to be fed. Now, what's a new mother to do? Try to breastfeed the baby while trying to hold her intestines inside of her? Yes. That's what a new mother does. At least, that's what I did. The ambulance came and raced me to the hospital. I got to have yet another major surgery within a span of 3 days. Fun times were had by all. There was a woman in the ER right next to me that sounded like a drowning cat. Her name was Beatrice. Beatrice Carter.
6. I hate not being able to describe this story in all its glory.
7. I am home now and dealing with a lot of very mixed emotions. Here are some of them:

I feel cheated, mutilated, happy, quite sad, grateful, beautiful, strong, lumpy, weepy, confused, down, loved, caring and exhausted.

This is going to be a long process of healing, I am sure. But, I have a new baby. And, he is beautiful. No, really...he's really, REALLY pretty. Everyone says so.

I love him. I also get really frustrated and scared. He screams bloody murder sometimes, and there's absolutely nothing I can do to make him feel better. I am coming to terms with the fact that babies do this. This "motherhood" thing is not for sissies.

Good thing I have the absolute best partner in the entire world. I don't know what I would've done without Beau through all of this. I thought about him a lot while I was in the ambulance. I just stared up at the little timer that tells you how long you've been in the ambulance and thought of Beau who was scared shitless at home with Grey all by himself. I thought about how bumpy the Tulsa roads were as I clutched my incision. I thought about how I always say, "Think good thoughts for that person," when I see an ambulance whizzing by. I thought about how I was that person this time. I thought about how two people came together to make this other little person and how scary and sad this birth experience had been. I thought about how we would have to mourn the birth plan that we had lost. I thought about how this man stood by me through everything. I thought about how I'd never felt more close to anyone in my whole life.

Right now he is fixing the shower while holding our baby in a sling. He has waited on me hand and foot, spent 5 days with me in the hospital...never leaving my side. He is amazing, and he deserves an award. I love him.

He said that he's going to make a t-shirt that says, "My Wife Has Guts...I've Seen 'Em."

I love you, Beau-y. I never knew your strength until this week. I never knew the strength of our relationship until this week. I never knew my own strength until this week.

No matter what...it's you and me.

The Purge Continues...

Every night...some weird/needed/sometimes disturbing/sometimes disheartening/sometimes healing/most of the time confusing dream about men from my past...I'm tired of it. I don't need to have questions raised about my past every, single morning when I wake up. I don't need confusion, and I don't want to wonder how people are. When I wake up, I instantly think, "Really? I'm STILL dealing with this issue on some level? He still has that effect on my subconscious? That's really dumb." Then, I just sort of let it go, scrunch closer to my sleeping husband and thank the Lord that I chose him and he chose me.

The dreams are really starting to get on my last nerve. Of course, everything is getting on my nerves these days. (I'll expand on that, shortly.)

The only really good dream I've had, lately, was one involving Ewan McGregor and a llama. He told me that he wanted me to go to the Oscars with him. I agreed. The "catch" was that I had to make sure his llama stayed in the basement bedroom of my childhood home while he did his press junkets. You'd think you could just close the door to my childhood bedroom, and the damn llama would stay in there, right? No. This was a smart llama. It kept escaping, and I had to keep reminding myself that it would all be worth it when I was walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards with Ewan McGregor. I won, though. I actually convinced the llama to stay in there using some sort of telepathic awareness between the two of us. When I awoke, I analyzed my dream with the help of a dream dictionary website. I believe everything it says without question. I have no idea why.

Llamas apparently represent strength, endurance and trust. So, seeing that I'm about to go through something (birth) that needs all of those things, I realized that if I could just keep "corralling in" those three attributes, the frustration would all be worth it, and I would get to parade around with a special boy...my son...not Ewan McGregor. :)

Anyhoo...back to being annoyed with things that aren't usually annoying:

The other day I made a trip to Stillwater to eat lunch with my mom. I was feeling a bit "stir crazy" in my home. Even though Grey could come at any moment, I made the drive because I was dying of boredom. At lunch, I filled up my cup with ice and water and started to look for a lid. A woman came up next to me to get some ice.

"Oh, I loooove this ice!" she said with enthusiasm.
(I ignored her.)
"This is that pellet ice. It's my absolute favorite ice!"
(Continuing to ignore her.)
"It's so good," she repeated.

You would think after 3 comments about the ice, I would say something, anything, like, "Yeah. Good ice," or even, "Uh-huh," wouldn't you? I did not do this. I stared straight ahead while I put the lid on my cup and quietly thought to myself, "Good for you and your f**king ice." She walked away. Maybe she thought I was deaf. I really don't care.

At any other moment in my life, this would be a completely irrational response to someone's love of pellet ice. I love pellet ice, too, and I'm always happy when it's available. But, no...it was too much to deal with at this point.

My focus is solely on getting though the process of pushing something out of me that is probably around 7-8 pounds and has wide parts that are going to make it feel like my body is being ripped into two with no drugs, whatsoever. Have you seen my husband's shoulders? This is going to require my utmost concentration.

So, you can see why I don't care about your ice preference. At all.

In other news, Beau dreamt that we were friends with Toby Keith, and that we convinced him that our liberal views did not make us horrible people. Toby Keith then decided that we were good people, even though we believe that everyone should be able to get married, wars are dumb, and he's a shitface.

As he relayed the dream to me while I made coffee this morning, I felt as if Beau had awoken with a sense that Toby Keith "wasn't such a bad guy," much like when, in 7th grade, I had a dream that Axl Rose and Slash from Guns N' Roses were my long, lost cousins that lived in the back yard in a caboose. They were really nice to me. I never looked at them the same after that dream. I really hope that Beau doesn't start listening to Toby Keith now. I mean...he has a golf course that's called "I Love This Golf Course" much like "I Love This Bar and Grill." They serve Freedom Fries there. Beau might have even called him "TK" while describing the dream.

I started to get a really anxious feeling about the whole thing, so I looked it up on the same dream dictionary site. When you look up "Toby Keith," a big picture of an ass shows up, and the words "Nightmare! Nightmare!" start flashing on your screen. Then the "How Do You Like Me Now?" song comes on, and an American flag starts climbing out of your computer to strangle you. Lastly, you're seared with an OU brand on your forehead, your IQ drops 78 points, and your ability to use proper English is replaced by phrases such as "Git me some" and "Git 'er done.

And, that's all I have to say about that...