Wow… Too Long…

So yes, it’s been a ridiculously long time. Like, ri-DONK-u-lous as my supervisor is apt to say.

And I am composing a “Where the eff have I been” post currently, but today, I first want to say…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS PUNK!

16 years ago today I became a mom for the first time. I was 20. I was clueless. I was terrified. And here I was with this tiny little angry potato (seriously, that’s what she looked like… newborn babies are not generally cute) that I didn’t know what to do with and yet loved with every ounce of my being. She was red. And angry. And just as clueless as I was.

Princess Punk has had a lot of obstacles in her life. I never should have gotten pregnant in the first place. Wait… That came out weird. What I meant… I’ve had poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) since puberty. I got my period 4 times a year, if that. It’s why we went through fertility treatments to get The Peach. So for me to have an “oops” pregnancy at 19 was actually kind of a miracle. When The Zen Master and I went in for our consultation for the fertility study, the nurse who interviewed us was genuinely surprised that I already had a child. She said that the chances of me conceiving without help would have been ridiculously low. But she got here.

Then, she ended up in the hospital on day 5 with severe dehydration, failure to thrive and an enlarged heart because I listened to the Nazi lactation nurse and refused to give her a bottle. What neither of us knew is that, due to wicked hormonal imbalances (i.e. PCOS), my milk would never come in, despite every effort to the contrary. So my little Princess nearly starved to death (quite literally) before she’d ever really had a chance at life. She rebounded quickly on formula and I got to wear this ridiculous contraption taped to my chest so she could still nurse while actually getting formula. But she made it.

I was unmedicated, undermedicated or poorly medicated throughout the first 5 years of Princess Punk’s life. As a result I had 2 suicide attempts and ended up hospitalized 3 times. Princess Punk was placed in my parents’ custody for some time and we shared custody for several years. When they moved here to VT, I stayed in FL to finish college and she came here to live with them. The Sperm Donor rarely saw her and when he did, he denied she was his and was downright mean to her. I recall once, when she was an infant, sitting in her car seat, he put his face about 6″ away from hers and yelled, just to make her cry. Asshole. And I myself was not a great mother to her in the beginning. I’d drop her off with various people and go out and smoke pot and drink with “my boys” while I left her at her paternal grandmother’s house (Sperm Donor’s mom) or some other really inappropriate place. Or just leave her with my parents while I did my own thing.  She has had to deal with a lot of issues surrounding those formative years where I was kinda just a sucky mom. But she did it.

And then The D-Monster reared it’s massively ugly head. And since then she’s struggled with ignorance and illness and high blood sugar and low blood sugar and medical releases and being turned away from the local summer camp because “they didn’t have the capacity to care for a child with uncontrolled diabetes.” That one still pisses me off. She’s 100 times better with compliance since her surgery got canceled and she decided she finally is ready to stop letting the D-Monster control her life. She still struggles. But she gets it.

Princess Punk blew my mind from day one. She continues to do so every day, in both good ways and bad. She has grown to become an amazing young woman. She is intelligent, kind, talented, beautiful, strong and brave. Even a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes has not stopped her from doing well in school, playing on Varsity Soccer (yes, starting on varsity as a sophomore), being a caring friend, a loving big sister and an amazing daughter and granddaughter. She is a force of nature, unwavering and unstoppable in her achieving her dreams. I am SO proud of you babygirl, Happy Birthday!

Oh, and BTW Princess Punk…

I Love you Forever,

I Like you For Always,

Even When You’re All Grown Up,

My Baby You’ll Be.

Just a reminder

I wrote this on my phone on Tuesday night because I’ve been home sick for the past few days and my laptop is basically fried so the only place I can actually post from is at work.

Last night was pretty bad. I spent most of it on the bathroom floor clutching my stomach and praying for some kind of relief from the incredible pain I was in. My digestive system has been fundamentally changed as a result of my weight loss surgery 3 years ago and thing like a simple stomach bug will knock me flat on my ass (or the bathroom floor apparently).  Add to this a compromised immune system from being pregnant and Tah-Dah!

Sexy, right? And I looked worse the next day.

Evil stomach pain accompanied by vomiting so violent I broke all the blood vessels surrounding my eyes. Joy. I even attempted work this morning because… Well basically because I’ve become incredibly stingy with my sick time. They. Sent. Me. Home. I looked that bad.

So here I am, laying in bed feeling sorry for myself. I’m tired, nauseous and I think I may have pulled some abdominal muscles with my epic retching last night. I hate being sick and so far being pregnant the second time around has kinda sucked. Then suddenly, the Moose decides that I need to be reminded how amazingly lucky I really am and starts doing some kind of complicated acrobatics that make me wonder if she’s going to be like her big sister who was always the one kid at the playground that was upside-down, climbing the swing set or at the veeeeeery tippy top of the monkey bars at the tender age of 3. (*Editor’s note… run-on much?) I digress.

Let me explain what a farking miracle the Moose is. As I have met plenty of couples who have struggled with infertility, I will NOT say we struggled a lot to get pregnant. I have PCOS which means I ovulate about 4 times a year and I never really know when it’s going to happen. We were lucky enough to be able to participate in a fertility study and after a minor surgery, a lot of doctors appointments and some truly sucktastic medication, I got knocked up in less than a year. I know people who have tried for years and have done much more invasive and expensive procedures with no luck so I refuse to complain about the time it took to get pregnant. It wasn’t easy, but it happened. And apparently, it happened twice because initially, the Moose was a twin. You see, I had what is called a heterotrophic (I actually am not positive I got that right)(*Editor’s note- I did NOT get that right, it’s hetrotropic) pregnancy. When I went in for an ultrasound at 5 weeks, standard for fertility patients with my doctor, the tech found one beautiful, strong, healthy heartbeat in my uterus… and one beautiful, strong, healthy heartbeat in my left fallopian tube. There is no saving an ectopic pregnancy and they account for 10% of maternal deaths during pregnancy. I had emergency surgery that night and they completely removed the left tube. If I had waited a few days longer, it would have ruptured and I could have lost both babies, any chance of having children in the future or even my own life. The fact that I am now 21 weeks pregnant with an active, healthy baby girl is truly an amazing thing that sadly I sometimes forget. (*Editor’s note- forget was a poor word choice, I think “take for granted” is a better choice here) The chance of having an ectopic pregnancy are not small, it’s likely some woman you know has had one. The chance of having a heterotrophic (*heterotropic) pregnancy with one in the womb and one in the tube? About 1 in 25,000. So yeah. She’s a damn miracle and I’m happy to feel like schmidt every day for the rest of this pregnancy if she continues to remind me just how amazingly lucky I am to have her and the one I’ve already got.