Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Reasons Why I Hate Everyone

One of my least favorite parts about pregnancy, other than sobriety and only pooping once every third week, is all the ridiculous bullshit that I read online from other mothers or expecting mothers who are too stupid to understand the difference between fact and opinion.  (These are the same people who misuse the word literally. "I literally ran 100 miles an hour to save my son from drowning." Oh really? Literally? 100 miles per hour?  You broke the human land speed record? Grow a brain.)

Because insomnia has set in something fierce, between midnight and 1am I typically troll the What to Expect blog for mothers expecting in August 2016.  The shit I find on these blogs is pure, delightful stupidity from morons all across the lands.

For example, one woman asked the group something along the lines of, "My chest hurts from my sternum to my belly button.  It feels like stabbing pains.  Is this heartburn or could I be having a heart attack?"  In my head, my thoughts go long these lines: "jesus effing christ you goddamn moron.  shall we just wait and see?  CALL YOUR DOCTOR OR GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM!" Of course, like I said above, I only like to troll the blogs and I don't like to actually participate in any of the discussion, so if this lady died there is definitely some blood on my hands. For whatever reason I just didn't care to make her aware of her below average IQ and decision making capabilities.  I hope she's okay.

Confession:  I did participate on the blog once, and it was to tell some ignorant asshole below the Mason Dixon line that no, she did not need to move her registry from Target to Walmart because she didn't want her grandma to possibly run into a transgender person in the restroom. (She probably calls her maw maw or something else totally fucking ridiculous.) Society blows my little mind.

And while we are on this topic, do any of the phobics out there boycotting Target think that they have an increased chance of sharing a restroom with someone who is transgender simply because Target now has a policy about it?  No.  Don't be fucking stupid, although I fear it is too late for that.  Having a policy about transgender rights DOES NOT 1. make more people transgender, 2. make transgender individuals pedophiles or 3. really change anything that was already previously happening.  It's just an articulated policy, whereas before it was not.  Let me tell you a little story about how Attorney Suzie actually had the gross misfortune of being assigned to litigate a case against a transgender woman.  The whole week of trial, guess what happened?  Yup.  I peed next to her in the bathroom at the courthouse.  Penis and all.  Guess what didn't happen? Rape. Or talking to her in general because it is super fucking awkward peeing next to somebody you are suing.  Also, I lost that case.

Another favorite topic is whether preggos are "allowed" to have a glass of wine every now and again.  Here are my thoughts on the matter.  Very few physicians are going to take a bright line position that indulging in the occasional glass of wine is okay because it is unclear exactly how much booze it takes to make your kid sick.  But to the C You Next Tuesday on this blog that said something along the lines of "Wine is poison.  Literally poison.  Why would you give your baby poison?"  I say to you: learn the meaning of the word literally, asshole.  Wine is not "literally" poison.  It is LITERALLY wine.  If it was poison, every country in the history of the fucking world would not allow its citizens to consume it.  Wine is wine.  Poison is poison. Wine is sold as "fit for human consumption" and poison is not. Is this starting to make sense to anyone?

You would call me a dipshit if I suggested to you that McDonald's is not food.  It certainly is food.  Arguably poisonous food, but food nonetheless.  See what I did there?  I just paralleled poisonous food that pregnant women eat all.the.time. to an (arguably) poisonous beverage that Western society has shunned and makes women feel guilty for the occasional indulgence.  Don't get me wrong, if you get drunk during your pregnancy, you're a piece of shit.  Similarly, if you ate exclusively fast food during your pregnancy, I would also believe you are unfit to raise a child.

Not that I think vegans have anything real going for them, but should we ask the pickiest / choosiest eaters on the planet if they'd rather have a McDouble with fries and a milkshake or a glass of wine on any given day, I bet the wine wins 10 times out of 10.

My point is, if you don't want to have a glass of wine during your pregnancy, don't.  If you want to have a glass or two every now and again, have at it.  It's not like we are all going to raise our kids the same way.  This shit doesn't come with a handbook.  This is also not communism.  So have a Big Mac or a glass of wine if you want one.  It's the same freaking thing.  What my opinion is here (note, not factually based at all) is that you probably shouldn't have McDonald's every day, nor should you have wine all the time.  But practicing moderation never killed anyone, so get off my nuts about it.

Why I'll Probably Be A Shitty Mom, According to Some Twat on Facebook

This morning I read some dumb ass article about when women should not become mothers. Not to my surprise, four out of the five "don't have a baby ifs…" applied to me.  Awesome - off to a great start.  This is why I should not savor my pointless decaf coffee in bed on the weekends and actually either a) join my husband at the gym or b) help my husband clean the house or c) do something else to be a productive, non-piece of shit member of society.  Whatever.

Anyway, the article said not to become a mother if these thoughts had crossed your mind:

1. You think you'd regret not doing it;
2. You are doing it to appease your partner;
3. Your biological clock is ticking;
4. You are sick of people asking when you will have kids, and
5. You want somebody to take care of you in your old age.

Can anyone guess which one DOES NOT apply to me?  If you guessed Stupid Reason Number 5, you would be right.  I am certainly not carrying this shit baby around in my belly for the better part of a year on the hope that she is not a total fuck up and has the capability to earn a large enough livable wage to eventually set me up in the Ritz Carlton Senior Living Center.  No ma'am.

As for Stupid Reasons Numbers 1-4, the author of this brilliant piece of writing totally called me out.  Somehow she got into my brain, unlocked my secrets and had the audacity to publish them on Facebook.  Clearly she missed the part where my husband and I busted ass at work for the last 6 years and are fortunate enough to be financially secure (until he buys a boat, or a motorcycle, or a second home, or hopefully some shiny bauble for my right hand middle finger…. Jeff, get the hint….) Anyway, the point is, I'm not stupid enough to create a human being so she can slave away during some of the best years of her life only to be stuck cleaning my adult diapers.  Like I said before, myself and Benjamin Franklin plan to take care of that on our own.

However, Stupid Reasons Numbers 1-4 totally apply to me.  I have to admit that it is somewhat scary because here I am halfway through this pregnancy with no real sense of urgency to raise my little bundle of "joy" and a much greater sense of urgency about finding someone I can trust to come watch her on Taco Tuesday so I can still go out.  Sure, I want to meet her, but the overwhelming sense of her permanence is something that freaks me out.  I seriously am such a selfish piece of shit.  As I write this, we are vacationing with my twin sister, her husband and their kid in Miami.  We just stuck the baby in the pool for the first time in her 7.5 months on Earth which was promptly met with screams and left the adults wondering what the fuck we are supposed to do with her all day.  (Well, I thought that.  Kellie and James probably didn't.)  I mean, jesus Charlie, I have a nap to take and all the rest of the adults have been drinking beer since 9am.  She is cute and all but... STFU.

I may or may not have written about this in another post, and since I am too lazy to go back and check I am just going to re-tell the story and if you don't want to read it, then go away.  The first time we got pregnant we were sitting around watching golf, day drinking, discussing my biological clock, the fact that we probably should have a kid to appease society and what the hell else did we plan on doing with our lives that we couldn't spare the time to make a human and then spend the rest of our lives hoping it doesn't spend its whole life murdering cats.  Was that sentence long enough for you?  I am exhausted just after typing it.

So anyway we had the sex, and voila, baby in the belly.  Seriously, our first shot at conception was grounded in Stupid Reasons Numbers 1-4.  But after a lot of reflection (because I have little else exciting going on right now) I have a very big and special message for the author of the Facebook article I can no longer find which is… challenge accepted.  We might have started out doing this for all the wrong reasons but they are sort of starting to feel like the right ones at this point.  We'll see.

We Can't Call her Dumbo….

I am now in my eighteenth week of pregnancy, which mentally means eighteen going on 6,000.  We have been able to peek in on the nugget two more times, and thanks to another not-scary-at-all, really fun experience of having blood leak out of my vagina for no apparent reason whatsoever, an unplanned trip to the doctor where we got to hear her heartbeat for the first time!

For you loyal readers (Hi Momma Bear, Hi Kel) I can just hear you exclaiming "HER? Whoa whoa whoa, it's a girl?!" Sorry to keep you in the dark for so long, but we found out during an elective ultrasound that Nugget has a vagina and is now going by the name Marlowe.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't actually keep my family in the dark about her sex longer than 3 minutes after we knew.)

It's a pretty interesting experience picking a name for your child.  Jeff and I have been set on a boy name for at least 5 years, which obviously meant that we were going to have a girl.  We tossed around a lot of names during the years when we were never actually considering conceiving a baby and we liked a couple (Maggie, Mattie) but never really honed in on one.  I came across the name Marlowe on another blog on the interwebs and instantly fell in love.  Jeff?  Not so much.  We have had lots of conversations along these lines:

Me:  Can we please name her Marlowe?
Him:  Sure.
Me: But I want you to like it.  I mean like, really like it.  I don't want to bully you into it.
Him:  OK.  I don't like it.
Me:  Fuck you.


Me: What other names do you like?
Him:  Madison.
Me: Over my dead body.
Him:  Well that's the name I like.
Me:  Fuck you.


Me:  I think I can feel Marlowe kicking!
Him:  You can feel the baby?
Me:  Yes, Marlowe is kicking!
Him:  I wish I could feel the baby moving!
Me:  Her name is Marlowe.
Him:  That's a boy name.
Me:  Fuck you.

Then, because I married an amazing man and because he is 1,000% a better person than I'll ever be, he agreed to the name Marlowe.  I only had to remind him 10 or 12 times that my vote counts twice.  But, he said he had a dream about it and woke up seemingly on board, and I'm so selfish that I am just running with it.  I absolutely love her name and I hope she actually materializes into a real live human baby that the hospital allows us to take home and raise so I can call her that every day of my life.  We are still waiting for the myriad of nicknames to start rolling in.  Kel already calls her Lowie, which I also love, and my mom, Kel and I call her Shit Baby 2 (Charlie being Shit Baby 1) so I don't think we will have a shortage of excellent names to torture her with when she's older.

Another interesting little bit of news to share is that between weeks 15 - 18 Jeff was convinced that she only had one hand.  I would take down the ultrasound pictures on our fridge and show him both hands, but nevertheless, he stuck to his belief that she'd one day need a hook for a hand.  When we went in for the 18 week ultrasound I immediately threw Jeff right under the bus. With a smile on my face I explained to the lady that Jeff is scared she's only got one mitt, and she graciously took the time to point out BOTH hands.  Phew.

Here are two 15 week shots (sorry to expose your lady bits Marlowe) and one from 18 weeks.