A Few Good Men

I overheard a conversation a while back (I do that a lot because I seem to be inherently nosy) in which a couple of women were discussing a friend's husband in not-so-glowing terminology.  A third woman piped in, "Well, what do ya want?  He doesn't beat on Lisa or the kids, he holds down a job and as far as we know, he's never cheated on her."  It started my brain down one of those mental paths I go on every now and then that takes a while to get back.  What is a good man?  Has the idea of "a good man" really deteriorated to the point that the best we can expect for a husband is a job-holding no-beating probably-non-cheater?

I refuse to believe it.  Surely there is more to a good man than that. 

So, again, what is a good man?  Obviously he wouldn't beat on his wife and kids and he'd provide for his family and the no-cheating component is a no-brainer.  However, I can't help but think those things are really the bare minimum.  Non-beating no-cheating job-holders get skinned in divorce settlements every day.  Why?  What more are we really expecting?

Good Man Requirements

1.  Integrity  I don't know about every woman out there but I've got to be able to respect my man and a man with no integrity is pretty darned hard to respect.  If he's a man who is siphoning money from his employer or cheating on the taxes and buying things for free at Target with stacked coupons only to immediately return them for cash he's a man without integrity in my book.

2.  Speak Life  Back me up here ladies:  We will do just about anything for a man who makes us feel treasured.  Love is spoken in many different ways so figure out how your wife, kids or friends need love and give it to them. It can be in the form of compliments, a simple touch, a look, a smile, a gift, you name it.  Some ways to subtract from this bank account of love is to make your wife, friends or children feel diminished, unimportant or unappreciated.  This might be in the form of words, a touch, a look or just plain lack of attention.

3.  Listen  I know we harp on this a lot but that's because it's important and we have to keep harping on it because so many men don't do it.  There are few things that will make a woman feel more minimized than a husband who tunes out his wife when she speaks.  Granted, sometimes we could find better timing but that's a whole other blog.

4.  Don't give us a reason NOT to trust you Last year, I was at a block party wherein our neighbor, Bob (name changed to protect the guilty,) had a few too many beers and made an inappropriate suggestion to me right in front of my husband and his wife.  My husband responded, in that way that men have of sounding like they are joking when they really aren't, that if Bob followed up on that suggestion, the next sound he'd hear would be a shotgun cocking.  Everyone laughed, Bob backed down and the party went on.  I couldn't help but think about how incredibly insulting this was to his wife.  What kind of man propositions another woman right in front of his wife?! An about to be divorced one, apparently.  Bob's wife has now left him and taken their son with her.

I don't know for sure whether Bob ever cheated on his wife.  Maybe he started propositioning women who weren't right in front of their husbands and eventually got lucky.  Maybe he never went past the flirtation.  I don't know.  I do know that what Bob did was the epitome of disrespect not only to me and my husband but especially to his wife.  If I were in her position and my husband were flirting with another woman, I'd have to wonder if this ever went anywhere when he was out of my presence.  A husband who flirts with other women, even if he thinks it's all in fun, isn't laying a foundation of trust for his wife.

5.  Apologize  We don't expect men to be perfect.  We'd like it if they were but we know better.  It sounds so simple but it's important.  Don't just come downstairs the next day and pretend that everything's fine and try to just move on with life.  When you screw up (and you will, it's a given) apologize.  It won't kill you, I promise.

6.  Engage  No I'm not quoting Captain Picard.  When you are home, be truly with your family.  Your mere presence in the house is not enough.  Not that you shouldn't have some time to yourself.  Everyone needs a little alone time and we understand this but it shouldn't be ALL your time.  If you find yourself spending most of your time at home watching TV or trolling eBay your family is being shortchanged.  Make an effort to find something you can do together.  Go for a walk, play soccer in the backyard, ride bikes, play baseball, play Chutes and Ladders or Candyland.  It doesn't matter what you do so much as doing it with your family.  Don't underestimate for a second how much that time means to your wife and kids.


7.  Helpful  Overwhelmingly, women love that their husband helps out both around the house and with the kids.  It doesn't matter how your dad did it, you won't earn brownie points by shaking your tea glass at your wife in this day and age.  Get up and fill it yourself and fill hers up while you're at it.  Help get the kids put to bed.  Pick up the living room for her while she puts the kids to bed so she can relax in a clean room when she's done.

Just a side note here: For those of you men for whom sex is important, we women find it a lot easier to be "in the mood" when you do these things.  It's kind of tough to get worked up about a guy who sits on the recliner all night and ignores his wife while she cleans up supper, cleans up the kids and puts everybody to bed by herself.  Just something to think about.

8.  Honesty  Most of my friends agree that one of the things that drew them to their husband in the first place was his honesty.  This kind of goes hand in hand with integrity but it's an important distinction.  I'm not saying that you should say yes when your wife asks if her butt looks big in that dress.  That's just asking for a lesson in number five.  What we mean when we say honesty goes beyond the obvious sort of things like lying about where you've been, who you've been with and what you've been doing.  Honestly communicate with your wife. I have a friend who said, "Say what you mean and mean what you say."  We have to be able to count on your honesty. Be willing to talk things through when there are problems (and we all know there will be.)  I know this isn't always your first instincts. Some of you would rather just ignore it and hope it'll eventually go away.  Some guys get the communication gene naturally and some don't. If you didn't inherit that gene, it isn't an automatic "out" for you. Your marriage (and all relationships) will be much happier if you are willing to work on this.

9.  Generosity  This doesn't necessarily mean money.  If someone needs help, a good man is one of the first to step up.  He's always the guy helping people move and helping the neighbors replace the fence.  He's the guy that mows the grass at church and empties the trash can without being asked.


This is what I've come up with so far based on my own observations as well as the opinions of some of my friends.  What's your opinion?

Long Time No Write

It's been a really long time since I've carved a few minutes out of my day to write something.  I could say I've had a lot going on but how would that be different from any other time?  Who really doesn't have a lot going on, for Pete's sake?  The truth is, it just hasn't been a priority and that's sad because I really enjoy the process of writing.  I love words and how the right ones when put in just the right order work together to paint a picture in the mind.  It just makes my brain feel good to write a well-crafted sentence.  I think I might be a little OCD or something but I'm okay with it.

I've been dealing with a lot of junk that is rising to the surface in my life and I've been experiencing growth pains.  Just when I thought I was over my childhood need to please others in order to get approval, I find out that's not the case at all.  I might be better but I am in no way cured.  I've always admired my friends who just seemed to know who they were and didn't care what anybody else thought about them.  People called them rebels and troublemakers but I saw them as free.  They didn't bother to think about how other people were going to view them before they made a decision.  Granted, they had other problems but not that one.  As I've grown and worked at it, I'm better about just being me and even though I'm not always okay with the hurtful things that others might say and think about me, it doesn't drive my decisions like it used to.

The root of that drive was in the fear of rejection that I've struggled with my whole life.  My father deserted us before I was even born and even as a little kid it bothered me that before he even knew me, my father decided I wasn't worth it.  I was already displeasing before I even had a chance to try.  My step-father is a good man but I still always felt like I had to work harder for approval because I wasn't really his.  Not necessarily his fault but it was still there.  I always felt that I never really fit in to my family and wasn't really accepted because I was different.  I always like to read and write and play my piano.  I didn't see it as the epitome of a good time to fix fence and drive the tractor.

I didn't fit in in high school because I was weird.  I like to read and I enjoyed science and school just came easy to me.  I didn't enjoy drinking parties (and let's face it, what else is there to do in P-burg?) so I wasn't part of the in-crowd and they made fun of me for my weirdness.  I pretended not to care but it hurt a lot to be rejected day after day.  From my grown-up perspective, I know how threatened children are by someone who is different and many of them were probably just glad it wasn't them who was being teased on a daily basis.  Still it was just another layer that I added to the armor around my heart to avoid that rejection.  I stopped trying to make friends (outside of a very precious few that made life bearable) and just cocooned myself until I could leave.  I lived for the future and it never even occurred to me to live in the moment because the moment was hell.

Finally, I got to college and found a core of friends who liked me despite (and for a lot of them probably because) of my weirdness.  I guess we were all weird together and found value in each other that was outside of the clothes we wore and how much make-up I wore (or didn't wear.)  It was in that safe haven of accepting friends that I was able to begin that growth process of accepting myself for who I was and not on the basis of how many people liked me.

I can never be ________ enough to earn the right to be loved.  The bar will always increase and I will consistently fall short on somebody else's scale.  I might as well fall short just being me as trying and scrambling to be someone I'm not to earn approval.  Only on God's scale do I always measure up.  His scale is based on who He says I am and not on how skinny I am or pretty I am or how long or blond my hair is or how good I am or how smart I am.  It's not based on my bust-size or my butt-size or my dress size.  I am accepted and loved solely because when He sees me he doesn't see everything that's wrong with me.  He sees a beloved child, a beautiful bride. I am gradually working to accept that and live like I  believe it.

It's been a long road just to even get this far and it's always disappointing when I feel like I've gotten there only to have something happen that stirs up all those old hurts and fears again. I am reminded that life and growth are constant journeys with no actual destination in this world.  I will try to remember that when I'm tired of growth pains.

Me, Myself and I

I had to leave my son at Kindergarten for the first time yesterday.  It was difficult because he's my first-born and I feel like I just haven't had enough time with him.  I wasn't the only one.  I happened to know another mom who was dropping off her son for the first day as well.  This is her only child so she was experiencing everything I was times three.  She was trying valiantly not to cry because she didn't want to upset her son.  Her red eyes were a little more watery that they probably should have been but she was doing pretty well, I thought.  Her husband was being VERY insensitive to how emotional this was for her making comments like, "Oh Audrey, honestly!" in a tone that pretty much said "Just suck it up and get over it."  I'm working on having grace for others so I was able to restrain myself from clocking him in the face but I still felt bad for her.

I retold this story to a friend of mine this morning and she shared that she's working on overcoming fears that have followed her throughout her life.  She said that she would have felt sorry for that lady but her fears would have kept her from knowing what to do to help.  It came to me right then and there that I was unable to help, not because I was afraid, but because I'm selfish.  There.  I said it.  I'm selfish.  Self-centered, ego-centric, thoughtless, insensitive, you name it; that's me.  

I never saw it that way before.  Maybe I never wanted to.  Here's the thing: I'm not being what I always considered selfish.  I saw that grieving mom's plight and thought, "Oh.  Poor lady."  (In Texan that would be, "Awwwwweeee.  Bless her heart."  The word "heart" would be two syllables.)  In hindsight I should have asked her out for coffee or something just to give her a chance to talk to someone who would understand where she's coming from but I didn't.  Not because I thought about it and purposefully decided to go do my own thing, but because it never even occurred to me .  Lots of things never occur to me because I'm too busy dealing with my own crap. 

You see, I always thought that selfishness was choosing to think of yourself when others needed you more.  In my case, it's not a choice.  It's a habit.  My selfishness has become something that I just fall into without even trying or making a conscious decision.  I know for a fact that mom dropping her only child off at Kindergarten yesterday needed me a lot more than I needed to go spend money at IKEA.  If I had invited her for coffee she probably would have said no but she would have at least known that someone saw her in her pain and cared.

I have become obsessed with personal growth and becoming a better person that my kids can look up to and I have completely forgotten to love the people around me.  That's not true.  I haven't forgotten.  I just don't do it as much as I would like. How many times has someone needed me and I simply breezed on past them without even giving them a thought because I was so caught up in what I was doing at the moment?

The hard part is that I knew she was suffering and it never occurred to me to do anything about it.  Even when Jesus was mourning the horrific and senseless death of John the Baptist he had compassion for the crowds around him and fed them.  I think that maybe the issue here is not so much a lack of seeing as a lack of compulsion to do anything.   I think that's my problem more than anything else.  Most of the time I see others' pain and my heart is moved but not usually enough to do anything about it.  I think I often don't believe that anything I can do would be effectual anyway.

I guess that's my next project.  Realizing that I do have the power to do something to help; even if it's just inviting someone out for coffee and making a conscious effort to actually follow through.

Bye Mommy, I Gotta Go

I'm having a much harder time dealing with my son starting school tomorrow than I thought I would.  He's been especially troublesome lately so I thought I might actually be somewhat relieved to see him go (not that I would have actually admitted it.)  I'm not.

He excited and raring to go.  I'm glad that he is because it would be much harder for me if I were dealing with his fears AND my heartache.  I keep telling myself that he's going to have a great time and make lots of new friends and that this is just one more step into his eventual adulthood and independence.  That's my major job as a parent, right?  I'm supposed to make sure that he has the tools to be an independent, functional and Godly man when he's an adult.

This should be exciting for me that he's so ready to begin this next step.  Still, change has never been my strong suit.  This will be a big change that can never be taken back.  This isn't like a move to Montana or something that we can just move back if we find out it's a mistake.  This is a change that is permanent.  I can't help but feel that he will never fully be my little boy again.  From now on, he'll belong, just a little bit, to someone else.

That might not be such a bad thing.  I've been that someone else for lots of other parents.  It was a responsibility that I didn't take lightly.  I knew that I was, in some ways, the other adult that their children looked up to.  While I couldn't fully appreciate how hard that was for some of them, I did understand that it was a difficult transition for a lot of parents to let go.  However, I also understood that I could teach those kids in ways that their parents never could so I was not a replacement but an addition.

I guess that's how I have to see this.  This isn't someone else replacing me in my son's life but an addition to that whole "independence" education thing.  I'm working on seeing it that way, anyway.

10 Totally Useless Parent Factoids

A few things I've leared since becoming a parent that really don't help me in everyday life but are kind of important mommy things to know:

1.  There is no such thing as a leak-proof sippy-cup.  I don't care if it DOES come with a guarantee.  That sucker is gonna leak and there's nothing you can do about it.  It's chances of leaking increase exponentially if you put something red in there.

2.  If you cannot find pacifiers anywhere, they are all hiding under the crib.  That's where pacies go to hide from their horrible masters.  After everyone's asleep they have paci parties under there but don't bother trying to attend one.  I hear the punch sucks.

3.  Babies wait to poop in a fresh diaper.  If you've just changed them, they will poop in it.  Even if you think they've just pooped so it's safe to change them, they are always saving a little bit for the next diaper.  I'm convinced that this is some sort of conspiracy just to remind us who's really in charge.

4.  Legos are lethal weapons.  I'm not kidding.  The CIA should really look into this.  Need to assassinate Qaddafi and make it look like an accident?  Give his kid some Legos.  When Q gets up for a drink of water in the middle of the night, WHAMO!  He'll never know what hit him.  This also works with toy cars and jacks.

5.  Kids never ask stupid questions during commercials.  They always wait until NCIS has come back on to start asking if I'm going to buy an Eggie because they make perfect hard-boiled eggs quickly and easily.  Did you know the Eggie Slicer (free with purchase if you pay extra shipping and handling) makes perfect slices every time? No?  Well, watch TV with my 5-year old son and you'll soon be introduced to all manner of useless bits of information that can be gleaned from infomercials.

6.  They are neither hungry nor thirsty until bed-time.  It doesn't matter if it's 2 am.  If you say it's bed-time, they will suddenly be hit with a raging thirst that is only rivaled in the Sahara Desert.  No amount of water will assuage this thirst.

7.  Kids can be bought.  If I have to take my 5-year-old to the store, I promise him a trip to Bahama Bucks for shaved ice afterward if he's good.  I've decided this is rewarding rather than bribery.  I'm good at the store because I would be embarrassed by the comments and stares of other shoppers if I weren't.  Therefore, tricking the other shoppers into thinking that I'm somewhat normal is its own reward.  Kids don't embarrass that easily so Bahama Bucks it is.

8.  "Eating you out of house and home" doesn't just happen to parents of teens.  My son can plow through three turkey sandwiches and still claim hunger.  I shudder to think what our grocery bill is going to look like when he's 16.  My father-in-law jokes that we'll just have it delivered by 18-wheelers.

9.  Children must be deprogrammed every time they go to grandparents' houses.  This is not something you can escape.  I think my parents take great joy in spoiling my kids and then snicker to themselves when they send the little monst... children back to me all hyped up on sugar (that my mom wouldn't even let in our house when I was a kid) and useless toys.  The baby thinks she needs to be held 24/7 and the boy thinks he gets a toy every time we go to the store.  It takes a week at least to get all of that conditioning programmed out of them.  Then it's just time for them to go to the grandparents' house again.  It's never-ending.

10.  You don't get to take vacations with kids.  Any parent will tell you this.  A journey with a child is not a vacation.  It's a trip.  You will not get home and feel refreshed.  You will get home and beg to go back to your job because travelling with children is ten times harder.  God help you if you forget to take Blankie or Moose or Pink Kitty.  Even if you do, your kids won't sleep in a hotel and strapping kids into a car for 8 hours is really just the height of stupidity but we do it anyway.

I think God designed kids to remind us that we really are NOT in control as much as we'd like to think.

A Balancing Act

I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to grow up and be a good housekeeper and a good wife and a great mother that keeps all the balls in the air without dropping any of them.  I will have really clever dinner parties in my spotlessly clean house and make it all look effortless.  I will always have shaved legs and armpits and my hair will always be faultlessly coiffed. I will not spend most of the day in my pajamas and I will have nice clothes that don't have salsa stains on them or torn hems and my shoes will always match whatever outfit I have chosen for the day.  I will get my eyebrows waxed every two weeks without fail and my face will always be clear and expertly made-up with this season's latest colors.  I will not be an ounce over my ideal body weight and I will always eat what I know is good for me because junk food and pop do not have a place in the diet of a grown-up such as me.

I step back and inspect this grown-up version of me and can't help but think, "Sheesh!  How boring is she?!"  If I'm really honest with myself, that's not a grown-up version of me, that is someone else entirely.  Why is it that somehow I have this idea that to be "grown up" I have to completely change who I am?

I am the woman who spontaneously invites friends over and they hang out in her messy house while she throws some burgers on the grill.  I often play with my kids for most of the day in my pajamas and we have an absolute blast while dishes wait patiently in the sink and laundry sits in the drier for a couple of days (or weeks but who's counting?) if it even makes it to the drier.  I very rarely wear make-up because, well, I'm kind of lazy.  I just don't think about it that much.  If you don't like how I look without it, you can look somewhere else.  I'm overweight because I like junk food and ice cream and just plain food in general and I lack self control to tell myself no.


Here's where we run into the problem.  My eating habits are not healthy and my house really does need to be cleaner.  There shouldn't be so much clutter laying around on our kitchen table and the toys need to get put away in the living room.  I need to eat less Cheetos and popcorn and start eating more vegetables and balanced reasonable meals. I'm struggling right now to find that balance between being me but just being better.  I do want to be a good mom and a good wife and a good housekeeper so my family has a clean pleasant house to live in (because I like it better that way, too.)  I don't, however, want to turn into some June Cleaver wanna-be that my family doesn't even recognize or like anymore.

Sure I'll play with you honey...as soon as I'm done polishing the cutlery.

I guess, along with working to simplify our household, my goal will be to find that fine balance between being the overweight bad housekeeper and the "ideal" of a Stepford wife. 

Somewhere in the middle is who I am supposed to be and I guess once I get there that's when I'll be all grown up.  In the mean time, my family has managed to survive and be okay people even when I'm not perfect.

Kalen's Story

We'd been talking for a little while about having another baby.  By talking I mean I kept saying, "Let's have another one." and Lee kept saying, "Why?  We're finally at the point where he goes to the bathroom by himself and he dresses himself ... I don't want to change diapers again."  He finally agreed and we decided we'd start trying in August and see what happened.

This was probably not the best time to get pregnant from a work standpoint.  The stress of starting a new school year can be intense and this was my first year to teach science rather than special education so there was a lot of new stuff.  I don't handle new stuff well even when I'm at my best. Plus, everybody knows it's harder to get pregnant when you're stressed, right?  Well, not for us apparently.  Just like with Conner, the first month we tried to get pregnant we got pregnant.  As Lee's dad likes to say, "Lee's boys can swim on command."  I shudder to think how many kids we'd have by now if we hadn't used birth control all these years.

I found out I was pregnant by peeing on the stick on Labor Day.  I didn't quite catch the slight irony there until later.  It would have been even funnier if I had gone into labor that day but what are you gonna do?  I knew that I wanted to go with a midwife again for this birth and I was kicking around the idea of having this baby at home.  After giving birth at the birth center last time, I realized that it was just having the baby in someone else's home.  Better than a hospital for me but still not quite what I wanted.

Of course, I did my research.  The statistics are good for low-risk pregnancies and midwife assisted home-births.  I wasn't crazy enough to try one of those planned solo births.  I timed how long it took to get to the nearest emergency room if the need arose (less than 10 minutes) and decided to start interviewing midwives.

I didn't really feel comfortable with the midwife I had used with Conner because of the whole not listening to my wishes during Conner's birth thing.  Plus she was a pretty fur piece away from our house and the traffic on 75 is brutal.  The final straw for me was when I went in for my 6-week postpartum followup appointment and she thought my name was Jo-Anne.  Not really the kind of personal experience you expect from a midwife.

I prayed about it and decided to try a birth center in Garland that was much closer to my house.  I checked out their website first, of course, and found that they offered the option of  home birth.  They stated that they brought all of the equipment  to your house that you'd have access to at the birthcenter.  I emailed them and made the appointment to go meet them and get a feel for the place and the people.  I instantly felt comfortable and at home.  I had found my new midwives.  Robin and Joyce were a gift from God.

I couldn't have been happier with the level of care and personal attention that I got from our new birth center.  We went ahead with plans for a home birth (incidentally two of my friends from church were pregnant at the same time and all three of us were able to have home births.)  Strangely enough, Robin and Joyce didn't seem to have a hard time remembering that my name was not Jo-Anne.

As my due date got closer, I was getting more and more miserable.  The baby was carrying all out front.  When I was 9 months pregnant you couldn't tell I was even preggo from the back. Needless to say, my lower back was yelling at me a lot.  Other than some low iron that I was able to bring up with more supplements and some extra spinach salads, everything was medically going well.  We found out we were having a little girl and decided to name her Kalen Elizabeth. Then the midwife started getting concerned about my blood pressure by early April and it was slowly getting higher with each appointment.  By the time we were two weeks away from my due date, she put my on modified bed-rest.

I had to stop working and be in bed for an hour in the morning and two hours every afternoon.  I followed the rules for about a week and my blood pressure was back down to safe levels.  Joyce said something like "I think you just needed to stay home."  I wanted to make some smart-alek crack about how she'd have high blood pressure, too, if she had to deal with my fourth period class but I think I refrained.  I don't remember for sure.  My filters were not working so well by then.

My parents flew into town about a week before I was due. I was a little paranoid about going out to eat with them after what happened when I went into labor with Conner but this time it didn't seem to matter.  I walked  as much as my poor aching feet could stand.  I massaged my ankles.  I ate spicy food.  Still no dice.  Four days before my due date my midwife stripped my membranes a little bit just to get things going if the baby was ready.  It seemed like had more energy that day but I was afraid to hope.  I walked as much as I could even when it was pouring down rain.  By walked I actually mean waddled but you get the drift.

At four o'clock the next morning a contraction woke me up and, of course, I immediately had to pee.  At this point in the pregnancy it took an act of congress and a battalion of the Army Corps of Engineers just to turn over in bed so the idea of actually getting up was a huge undertaking.  I levered myself off the mattress and onto my only slightly swollen feet only to feel that same tearing/breaking feel and the trickle of warm water I had felt with Conner's birth.  I waddled my way to the bathroom as quickly as my enormous stomach and complaining bladder would allow. Once the bladder was silenced, I grabbed my cell phone and called my midwife from the bathroom.

"I don't know what you did to me in your office yesterday but it worked.  My water just broke."

"Your kidding."  she replied.  "I'm here in the birth center with a first-time mom who just went into labor, too."

I told her not to worry about it for a while.  I was doing okay and my contractions weren't bad yet.  She said to call back when they got strong and closer together.  I walked around the bathroom a bit and then hobbled out to the garage to turn up the hot water heater for the birthing tub.  (I was planning to try a water birth.)  Nobody else was awake yet because I just didn't see the point in waking them up when there wasn't really anything they could do anyway.  I wandered back to do some more walking back and forth in our bathroom with easy to clean floors.

About 5 o'clock the contractions got bad enough that I had to stop walking and breathe through them.  I called the midwife back and told her they were starting to get stronger and I was going to need her soon.  I woke up Lee and he got up and got dressed.  It was all so very calm.  Nothing like the racing around and backing the family car over garbage cans to race to the hospital that you see on commercials.

At about 5:45 Joyce arrived with all of the "stuff."  She checked my progress and I was about 5 cm.  My contractions got bad enough that I had to really concentrate.    Fifteen minutes later they got bad enough that I couldn't concentrate.  I remember some part of my brain thinking how fast this was going.  I barely had time to catch my breath between contractions before another one would start.  When I was in labor with Conner I was able to go to my place where pain was the calm ocean and I was floating on top.  When I was in labor with Kalen the pain was a tsunami that pounded me into a coral reef and stole my breath and I didn't know which way was up.  Then my poor unsuspecting husband walked up to me and touched my back right in the middle of the pain-tsunami.  I kept my voice as level as I could and ground out, "Don't touch me please."  He took the hint and walked away.

While I was being pounded into the bottom of the pain ocean, my mom and Lee were trying to get the birthing tub blown up and lined and filled up with warm water while Joyce got out all of her midwife stuff.  Mom and Lee kept arguing about the best way to get the tub blown up and I was about to let loose with a whole string of cuss words about how I didn't care how it was done as long as it was done NOW.  Luckily for them the tsunami still had all my breath so I couldn't really yell at anybody right then.

They finally got it blown up and I climbed right in while they were still filling it with water.  I was still wearing the tee shirt I had worn to bed and I didn't even care.  I remembered the instant relief I felt in the warm water when I was in labor with Conner and I had been really looking forward to it.  Kalen had taken after her brother and was sunny-side-up as well and I wasn't looking forward to that pushing experience again.  One top of all that, the back labor was not much fun.  I did feel better pretty quickly and the tub got filled up quicker with me in it.  That's displacement at work, folks.

I got about 10 minutes of relief before the contractions started coming faster until they were right on top of each other.  With one contraction I felt Kalen turn a little bit and with the next she turn all the way so she was faceing the correct way (anterior?  posterior?  I can never remember which one it's supposed to be.)  I don't know how I knew that but I just did.

With the next contraction I felt instantly like I MUST push.  There was no pushing "urge" or thinking I might need to push.  My body just did it.  It was completely involuntary - like a sneeze.  Joyce tried to tell me to slow down so I didn't tear and all I could do was scream, "I CAN'T."  I tried really hard to pant and blow and all that junk and my body just refused.  I'm not sure how long I pushed but it seemed like only 5 or 10 minutes before I had her in my arms.  My 9-pound 8-ounce baby girl came in a grand total of two and a half hours.

Having her at home was the best thing ever.  It didn't feel like a medical event.  It was a family event and she was welcomed into her family and her home at the same time.  I realize this wouldn't be the best thing for everybody and some people probably should not do it this way if there are problems with the pregnancy and what-not but I'm so happy that we were blessed with this experience.  (The fact that it only took 2 and half hours doesn't suck, either.)