Since the moment I peed on the stick and discovered I was pregnant, I have been nervous about delivery. Sweet Boy was very large -- 10 and a half pounds with a 14-inch-circumference head -- and he was born a week past his due date by scheduled c-section. I did not like the c-section delivery. It was not what I'd planned or imagined, it was not like those episodes of "A Baby Story" that I watched on TLC for years. I did not get to hold my baby right away -- not for 5 hours, actually -- and I will always feel sad about that. Oh, and there was the pain...weeks and weeks of pain as that incision healed. In my first pre-natal appointment this time, I told my doctor that I want to try a VBAC delivery. She smiled and said ok, but there was a hint of "this lady is crazy" in the smile. And as the pregnancy rolled along, I had to come to grips with another c-section looming in my near future. Then Sweet Boy and I stumbled across a live c-section birth on the Today Show (amazing what you find on the morning shows), and he sat on my lap to watch. He was mesmerized, not by the surgery or the drama, but by the simple fact that a baby was born, screaming and red and new and wonderful. Wow. He asked questions, but he wasn't frightened. After the TV birth, Sweet and I looked at all the photos from his c-section birth-day, and we marveled at his giant, chubby-cheeked head together. At once the whole process was simplified for me, the fear erased: When it's all over, I will hold my child in my arms. The pain is temporary, the scar will fade, the love will grow and grow. And with my big boy sitting on my lap, smiling at the thought of his little sibling joining us soon, I finally felt like, yeah, ok, I can do this again.
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl Brené Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...
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