Prenatal Appointment Update! And Musings on Toddlers.

With all the preceeding week's goings-on, particularly cooking and baking all day Friday and galavanting all Saturday, my ankles vanished completely. Ah my first real cankle-attack, how thrilling... :-/ Not. My dear husband spoiled me though and had me laying down resting or napping all day Sunday! I have to say that was such a vacation for my poor sore tired body, it was just amazing! Isn't he sweet to have babied me all day like that? I was worried about going to my prenatal appointment (rescheduled from the week before if you'll recall) with my feet looking like they were wearing their own inner tubes ready for a float down the river. But thanks to hubby spoiling me rotten, they were almost normal looking by my appointment. Sure I was still only seeing vague bumps where my ankle bones once dominated, and the tops of my feet looked kind of fake what with how smooth and veignless they were due to light swelling, but my toes actually looked like toes rather than a row of vienna sausages and the "inner tube" effect around my ankles was gone.

My appointment was Monday the 2nd and going anywhere in this heat just sucks the life out of me so that's all I did. :p It's nearly an hour away in good traffic so I like to go somewhere else when I go in to the city so I can feel like I got something accomplished, but I just couldn't summon the energy after my appointment to do anything so I just hit the road for home. Upon getting back into my home town I was getting backseat requests to go to Dollar Tree which I'd just been to (for hubby's birthday balloons the previous Wednesday), so I opted for another local store. I thought I'm tired and sore but I'll run in for a minute and they'll feel like we did something fun and then they will nap and I will nap and life will be good. Well we were in the store about 5 minutes when my Buggie got his arm stuck in the shopping cart! This poor boy just cannot catch a break lately, can he? :( The carts are tiny, nearly minature ones, and he had put his arm in the slot between the cart where he was sitting and the push handle of the cart which I was holding, and then couldn't bring it back up again because his elbow joint was bigger than the slot. He must have had it turned in some strange way to get it to go in there in the first place. I had lotion in my purse, because I'm a mom, and I know that one must have a tool for everything in either the purse, the diaper bag, or the car glove compartment! Lol! Meanwhile the lone cashier heard me tell Chicklet to please step aside so I could park the cart and get her brother unstuck, and Buggie pitifully moaning, "I skuuuck! I skuuuck!" The cashier asked me what was wrong and I said, "His arm's stuck but I'm sure I have some lotion in here somewhere..." as I'm digging around in my purse. She didn't wait to see and ran off down one aisle in a panic, hollering for the manager that a baby was stuck in a cart, and the manager came running and then both of them were hovering and clucking and panicking and the rest of the employees were peeking around trying to see what the commotion was about. I was like, "Okay everyone, it's okay, calm down now, I have lotion!" The manager kept saying over and over how many years she's worked there and this has never happened! Never happened! Never happened! How oh how to get him out! She kept saying she didn't know how to get him out. Even after I said I had lotion. Yeah she was really freaked. Then she was jerking on his arm trying to free him and the jerking hurt him and he started crying and then I was biting my lip to keep from snapping at her to BACK AWAY FROM MY KID NOW! I however have had 2 kids who have had a talent for getting their appendages stuck in things, especially between the rails of the crib. *sigh* I do not know how they do it but they can get a finger or leg or arm stuck where it should not have fit IN in the first place. So I'm very well aquainted with the virtues of lotion, and after holding up the bottle by way of an excuse-me since I didn't trust my tongue at the moment, and stepping between my son and the panicking manager and then slathering some on Buggie's arm, it slipped right out with no trouble as I knew it would. The crowd of panicked onlookers waiting to see if I was going to sue over this or not was frazzling my already overbaked for the day brain cells so I assured them that we're all just fine, he's fine, why yes he does have a red mark but trust me he's fine (thinking to self that he wouldn't HAVE a red mark if *someone* hadn't tried to YANK his poor little baby arm free!), and then we escaped the infamy to the car and went home for a blessed nap.

But allow me to backtrack to the actual prenatal appointment! ;) I FINALLY got to meet the head midwife at my new birthing center. I know, right? somehow I've been going there for the last 6 or so months and managed to never have an appointment with the head midwife! I had never even seen her. So when I walked in and a completely unfamiliar woman greeted me, I had a good idea who I was meeting and I was pretty nervous. I had made up my mind to tell whoever I had my appointment with that considering I had never even seen the head midwife and I have a real problem with strangers being at the birth due to my own personality, personal history, anxiety, and just being a shy person all around, I was wondering about the likelihood that the head midwife would be attending this baby's birth. Wondering as in, 'since I don't know her at all, have never seen her, and don't think I have enough prenatal appointments left in my cue to get used to a total stranger to the point of comfort it takes to not mind them seeing me stark nekkid and giving birth, I certainly hope she will not be the one on call, please, oh please, tell me she will not be the one on call so I can quell this panic attack about having to give birth with a stranger!' So of course I go in ready to plead shy and there it's her doing my appointment. And wouldn't you know it but God knows exactly what He's doing- I totally liked her. Seriously. Strangely enough after my one leisurely and comfortable appointment with her I really like her and am totally okay with it if she's the one delivering babygirl! I had to laugh at my human foolishness and thank God for knowing what He was doing even as I had my human worries over something He'd already taken care of. I should have just given it to Him but you know I forget to do that sometimes... more than I'd care to admit. Life would be so much less stressful if that were not one of the many things I'm prone to forgetting.
We discussed PPD and GBS and how to get babygirl off the nerve she gets on sometimes when I can't even walk for the pain. I asked about the painful grinding and popping in my pelvis with every move I make and she thought I could either see a physical therapist or wait it out since it would likely resolve itself postpartum. I think I'll wait it out. I'd rather not throw money at a therapist for something that I had a gut feeling would resolve after the birth even before the midwife expressed that same sentiment. She asked me about my previous breastfeeding experiences. I told her about the difficulties with my kids (well really mostly just Chicklet's tongue-tie and the sub-problems resulting) but that we'd made it to 13 months for both of them before they self-weaned. I told her I was sad not to be able to continue a little longer with them but she told me how great it was to have nursed them for over a year and that it was wonderful that I was able to stick with it with Chicklet with having so very many problems. She was very encouraging. She didn't belittle any of my concerns, or my decisions. And she didn't seem to mind my affectionate kids either. *smile* My tots are very lovey and think that everyone wants a hugging kissing toddler in their lap. Of course everyone wants toys shared with them, right? ;) And everyone wants a little person standing beside their chair petting their arm of course. I try to remind them not to overdo it with strangers but they are so used to being that way it's against their nature not to be. It's a little more difficult for a toddler to comprehend that some things that may be encouraged at home may not be encouraged in the company of strangers. So because at home they are hugged and kissed and loved on and when they are affectionate it's met with enthusiasm all around, they of course would assume that the whole world works that way and everyone must love to be loved on. And I confess I don't try too hard to reign them in... love isn't something that the world gives freely and oftentimes after they get over the initial surprise, people absolutely melt and nearly come to tears after being loved on by my kids. The world could use a little more of the pure love of toddlers- maybe then more people would be able to understand the pure love of God! And I know that all too soon my little lovey babies will grow into more reserved children all on their own. It's just how things seem to work. I hope they will always feel free to be affectionate at home, even when their natural tendency to hold back with strangers starts to kick in. It sure brightens my day when one of my littles climbs into my lap and lays their head on my heart and just soaks in being held. Or stops playing to run up to me and kiss me on the arm and then runs off to resume playing. Or comes up to me, arms outstretched, and asks, "Hugs?" How could I not just melt! :)