This blog could also have a drinking game to go along with it. For all of those interested, please drink every time you read the word vagina or nipple. Have fun.

Pre-Baby

I have been having weird ass dreams. I went to bed the other night and my lady parts were on fire (TMI) likely because the baby was using my vagina as a hammock. In my dream, I was asked to go to a potluck and if I could make my famous vagina casserole. I gladly agreed and went to work with a vagina casserole. It was literally a casserole dish with many vaginas in it. Wow, what a culinary treat.

After watching The Departed, I dreamt about Leonardo DiCaprio and woke up absolutely livid he had not reproduced. Just really worked up about it. I calmed myself down knowing he could Clooney it one day. Have twins at an early Grandpa age. I relaxed. 

After I watched Goodfellas I woke up from my sleep stirring the “gravy” for a baked ziti. Like what the fuck. 

You know when I was concerned about having a boy because boys can be serial killers? Well I realized I have done an amazing job of in utero grooming for this. What did I watch when pregnant? Sons of Anarchy, Sopranos, Dexter and every Scorsese movie. The sounds from my television watching experience has been gruesome.

Baby 

Wow. Labour. Is there some secret lady code where people don’t openly talk about absolutely horrendous it is? To all those ladies who stay at home and slide a baby out in a pool in your living room, I salute you. I always thought I would be one of those people…I am definitely not. I won’t go into the gory details but I made it through about 33 hours of labour before deciding I was dying and an epidural was required. I thought I was done. I kept saying, knock me out and cut it out. Which almost happened. I was so exhausted when I got the epidural that I got a bit loopy. The first one didn’t take which was the most rude buzzkill in the world. I was just so looking forward to being out of pain and I just sat there while they looked confused that I could still feel everything. Lameee. When my epidural did kick in and they asked if I could feel my legs, I kept yelling – DUDE! I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS, quoting some nineties teen movie. No one got it but I persisted. Alex has pictures of me throwing gang signs at this point. I have zero recollection of this or why I would be making gang signs during labour. He thought it was hysterical. The midwives tried to break my water with what looked like a crochet hook and I asked if she was down there knitting my vagina a scarf. God bless them all for dealing with me. Even when my baby was handed to me, I was not emotional but instead cracked a joke about something. I don’t remember what it was but I remember thinking I nailed the timing of it. In my defence I had been in labour for 40 hours and I was going kooky. When this little (big) pickle did decide to come out, he came crashing out quickly. The same way I picture how I have lived most of my life, fast and hard. When they announced he was 9lbs 4oz I asked them if my lady parts were in shambles. My midwife responded that there was really minimal tearing. I was so insulted. Sorry, what? Minor tearing? Is my vagina giant? Do I have a cavernous clam that no one has ever mentioned? I truly was upset my lady bits faired so well with a giant baby basically sliding through at a million miles per hour. RUDE. 

I am really hoping my functioning brain comes back at some point. I don’t have high hopes as it is it’s still really out to lunch. I was cleaning out the pantry and I was throwing out old food when my partner comes over to ask what I was doing. I am throwing out old food. We still have have food from 2022! He look confused and gently reminded me it is 2022. It is? Oh I thought we just ended 2022. Yikes.

Mix lack of sleep in there and it is like living in a serious fog. I was trying to make a doctor’s appointment for the baby and she asked me his name and I started to say Jason. Jason is not his name. His name doesn’t even start with a J. I didn’t feel so bad because when the receptionist who answered the phone, she could not remember the name of the doctor’s office she worked at. So I wondered if she had just had a baby too.

I went to test drive a couple different cars at a Subaru dealership. I met my friend there who also wanted to test drive. I showed up looking exhausted in a shleppy leopard print sherpa sweater and she showed up in a lovely zebra print tunic. I was so pleased we had both shown up in animal prints to car dealership. When we came back in from trying two different cars, the car salesman asked which car I liked. “Oh I really liked the Subaru” I told him. There was silence. He said “which one?” Omg right. We are at a Subaru dealership. They are all Subarus. I did this 3 more times when we were there. “So, which one do you want the pricing on?” The Subaru please. Jesus! He must have thought I was on drugs.

I was singing you are my sunshine to the little pickle and my partner yelled down the stairs that the baby was not my only sunshine. I yelled back up that “only” isn’t even in the fucking words! Only to continue on with the song… you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. He ran down to see if I had had a stroke. 

My partner brought me some toast with peanut butter on it and when he handed it to me, I mentioned to him that his peanut butter to ratio was off. He informed me that, that was not a sentence. 

I had a lactation consultant come to the house at some point because breastfeeding is not as easy peasy as everyone seems to make it out to be. Especially when one or more of your boobs are on strike. Anyways, I remember very little because I was on negative hours of sleep but she was a kooky lady that kept having weird indigestion she blamed on diet coke. This struck me as odd because it was 8:30am in the morning. At a certain point she wanted to assess the hardware and asked me to take off my top.* As she poked and prodded, she announced that I had AMAZING nipples. I was pleased. This almost made up for my vagina that was apparently the size of a Volvo. I told her it was not the first time I had heard that I had amazing nipples, wink. And then continued to tell her I would put that tidbit on my resume. Additional skills, nipples you can hang a jacket on. 

*It is amazing how special, hidden and sensual (too much?) our breasts have been to this point in our life and then the second you have a baby they are purely functional. I recall the first time I was publicly breastfeeding. I was in the CHEO waiting room (long story) and I was like, wow, my tit is out on display. My prized lady parts are in the mouth of little human, IN PUBLIC. Weeee.  

It is partly the pandemic and lack of meeting new people, and partly the fact that I have very few boundaries to begin with, but I met my neighbours and their kids the other day and immediately started talking about my placenta. My PLACENTA. If there is a Mom group in Centrepointe I am sure I have already been flagged. One of the Mom’s was walking towards me the other day and casually turned down a random street before getting to me…I get it. Was I going to start singing a song about my large vagina? Who knows! It was possible! I would have turned the corner too.

The other neighbour that my back yard area faces onto also had a baby, with the same name as mine. One day I could see movement in her place so I casually inched toward the window and saw that she was doing some serious exercising. I realized I was watching this woman get fit while shoveling a doughnut in my mouth and letting the cinnamon sugar fall everywhere. I was like wow, good for her as I took another bite and wiped away the crumbs from my mouth. Opposite over here. Opposite. 

My friend was telling me all the activities she was doing with her baby. I wrote back, oh – does staring at your baby and repeating how handsome they are count as an activity? Because that is mainly what we do here.

We had to take the baby to a dentist to get his tongue tie looked at. Long story short, it was decided we did not need to do anything about it. As I left the dentist, my partner was waiting in the car for us. I start yelling how our baby was SO GOOD. He didn’t even cry! He basically slept the entire time the dentist had his tongue in his mouth! I got into the car and my partner was like…wait, what? Good lord. His hand in his mouth…hand.   

All in all it was a wild experience.

I was sick for 90% of my pregnancy.

We were in the CHEO emergency overnight 3 out of the first 5 days of his life.

I bled enough in labour that if I had been doing this in a less medically fortunate country, I would have been in trouble. 

I spent the first 2 weeks crying either from stress or exhaustion or happiness. 

Would I do it a hundred more times? Totally.