HHEIRSP v a v IGYFHHTBWHCYM

Lately I've been consumed with thoughts of How to Handle Everyone's Incredulous Reaction to a Second Pregnancy vis a vis I Guess You Forgot How Horrible That Birth Was and Have Changed Your Mind (which I would like to call HHEIRSP v a v IGYFHHTBWHCYM). 

I think I would like to scream from the rooftops that no, dammit, I haven't forgotten that horrible birth, not one cervix-checking, trainee-IV placing, hospital bed rail-clutching, fake-pushing so the nurse will leave me alone moment of it. I just know I can tolerate it again, one last time for realz this time, in order to bring another soul into this family. And I'm just naive/hopeful enough to think maybe, just maybe, it'll be slightly less horrible this time. 

It's funny when I think how many things I won't have to do this time. I won't have to take the somewhat useless birth classes. I won't have to stress out about the registry. I won't have to google every ffing thing unless something new crops up. I won't have to worry about upcoming travel. I won't have to do a hospital tour. I will also know better how to slant the glucose test in my favor (walk around the block!) and how to eat better (protein protein protein). 

New things will be interviewing and hiring a doula, figuring out sleeping arrangements for the three of us, and worrying about what happens to B during the birth and if I have to go on bed rest or if there's an emergency. Overall, though, it honestly sounds SO much easier a second time around just because you know what carrying, birthing, and raising a baby is like already. There's little to no fear of the unknown which haunts every first pregnancy. Which is great.

B was fussy much of today. You know what that means? It doesn't mean he was fussy. It means I wasn't meeting his needs somehow. He must have been hot/tired/hungry/thirsty/antsy and I just wasn't reading him correctly. Some days I hit it out of the park, some days I strike out. So I let him ransack the house before dinner because he seemed to need it and it made him happy. I once heard a comedian talk about how if dogs ran the world all they would do all day is run and pee. I do believe if Bumpus ran the world and mom wasn't always one step behind him, he would spend the day doing the following:

Break all the on and off switches of all the electronics

Pull everything out of the refrigerator and then abandon it on the kitchen floor, leaving the refrigerator door open

Empty all trash cans onto the floor and play with contents

Tear all books apart and eat them

Splash hands in toilet

Push various objects across the floor pulling up the edges of all the area rugs

Tear down all curtains, including shower curtain

Take orthotic insoles out of all shoes

Tip over any and all glasses of water left lying around

Make doorknob-sized holes in walls by repeatedly slamming doors into them

Pull over all chairs and make a climbing obstacle course out of them

Fall and crack his head open

Earlier today I made an ill-conceived attempt at being social by joining the less active of my meetup groups, the one for single (read: divorced or abandoned) mothers. Only the organizer initially showed, so we went on ahead to the botanical gardens. And, well, Bumpus was fed up after being strapped into either his car seat or stroller all day, so I left the organizer and her daughter to their own devices while I let B run around the one grassy area. Which meant following B as he repeatedly left the grassy area to mess around on the concrete tramway or crawl between rose bushes and scratch the hell out of himself or find patches of dirt and bark to go sit in and eat. Later a woman with two older children joined us. My heart ached for her when the daughter handed her mother a flower and said she wanted to give it to daddy, and the mother said she didn't want to carry the flower all day, and then she asked the boy if he wanted to check our one of the other areas and he very rudely snapped at her, "no. I want to go home." I would have been mortified! Are all kids like this? I'm beginning to wonder if I have unrealistic expectations of children's capacity to be polite. 

So for me the day was a total bust. B didn't even really sleep on the long drive which was a lot of the reason I went. I'm finding we're both much happier when he has a proper nap at home in his crib with the curtains drawn and his pants off. I'll try to schedule accordingly from now on. 

I'm not sure how to handle my future involvement with both of these meetup groups. They're just so poorly attended and end up being kind of depressing. Yet at the moment they're kind of my only way to see people during the day on weekdays. I joined a couple of other groups tonight but honestly they don't seem very active. So I guess I'm going to have to once again find a way to meet other parents and kids. Sigh.