Category: Uncategorized

Remember a while back I posted about how I couldn’t breastfeed? Well, I still wanted to try- it’s been 15 years since my reduction and maybe things have changed. I discussed it with my doctor, she referred me to the breastfeeding clinic, and I was able to get an appointment for yesterday morning.

Unfortunately yesterday morning was pretty crummy. I slept poorly, I had to deal with a stressful bank situation at like, 8am, I couldn’t find a cab and had to take the train and speedwalk five blocks to make it to my appointment in time. Plus, I’m super pregnant and emotional and everything is hard right now. What I’m saying is I wasn’t in a good place when I got there, but I was determined to have a good appointment and hopefully come away with useful information. I saw the doctor and got examined and talked about options and basically what it came down to was this:

Yeah. My boobs are a mess and my nipples are a mess and although she agreed with my personal assessment that it wouldn’t be an issue of supply (idk why people always think that’s the case) she said it wasn’t very likely that enough milk would actually make it out of my body to nourish a baby, even if the baby could latch properly, which is even more doubtful. OH WELL. To be honest it was kind of refreshing to hear, because everyone else always tells me that they know BILLIONS of women who’ve been able to successfully breastfeed after a reduction with no difficulty or problems at all. LIARS, I say.

I wasn’t surprised or disappointed to hear any of this, but that was the part of the day when my body decided it really hated me, and I burst into tears in the examination room! It was really frustrating- the doctor thought I was crying because she’d just told me I probably wouldn’t be able to breastfeed and therefore I felt like I was a failure as a parent or a woman, and spent the rest of the appointment trying to reassure me that that wasn’t the case but like… I KNOW THAT ALREADY. I wasn’t crying about breastfeeding, I was crying because I’d had a bad morning and was at my limit or something? idk, I started crying again in Toys R Us half an hour later and I don’t have that many strong feelings about Lalaloopsy dolls either.

Anyway. Even if it was an awkward weepy disaster, I’m glad I went. She gave me a plan for pumping & bottlefeeding that I can put up on the “Breastfeeding Plan” whiteboard in my hospital room (that’s a real thing) so the nurses don’t get on my case about breastfeeding this time, and idk, after all these years it’s nice to have a real actual professional say “no no, you were right about this all along.” Plus now I don’t need to stress about trying to find nursing bras in size giganto, because APPARENTLY there are less options for that than with regular bras. WTH.

Just a photobooth picture this week, I’m tired and in a terrible mood and I have one hundred billion things to do today to get ready for Sym’s birthday party, which is tomorrow. Please enjoy my new pajamas and my one stretchmark (I have four or five smaller ones on my left side, but the right side just has the one big one. WEIRD).

One thing I’ve noticed this pregnancy is that it kind of seems like people want you to feel crummy. Especially now here at the end when I’m super pregnant: people ask me how I’m doing with that faux-sympathetic head tilt and when I answer that I feel great it’s like they are almost disappointed? It’s weird and gross and I wish people would just stop doing it. Like what do that want me to say? That I feel so shitty I wish I never decided to have this baby? THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

HOWEVER. I’m going to be real here and say NO. NO I DON’T ACTUALLY FEEL GREAT. Of course I don’t; I’m 37 weeks pregnant for crap’s sake. I’m tired and my body aches and I have to go pee every time I stand up and all the bones of my pelvis feel like they are made of shards of broken glass. I’m also drained and exhausted emotionally and yesterday I burst into tears for no reason, several times. But when people ask me how I’m feeling I’m not going to tell them all that. I’m going to tell them I feel great, and I’m so happy to be having this baby. Because I am!

Other stuff I’m tired of:

• People commenting on my body (this seems weird to complain about with a picture of my belly at the top of this post, but I’m full of contradictions). Stop, just stop. Stop saying “OH WOW YOU ARE SO HUGE” because tbh I’m really not? I still haven’t even gained 20 pounds this pregnancy, so go find someone who’s gained like, 80 pounds and comment at them. No wait, don’t do that either. How about you just keep all your opinions and observations about women’s bodies to yourself because as unbelievable as this may sound, pregnant or not, our bodies aren’t public property.

• People speculating about the apparent freakish size of my baby. Again, JUST STOP. Why do people always do this? “WOW SURE LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE CARRYING AN ELEPHANT-SIZED INFANT WHO’S GOING TO TEAR YOUR VAGINA TO SHREDS!” followed by gleeful chortling. Why. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy. And even if I try to correct them and say “Well actually according to my sonograms and my doctor, the baby is on the small side of average” people still gotta say something about how the baby might come out really big. Um. How???? I only have a few weeks of pregnancy left, maybe you should spend less time trying to make me freak out and more time brushing up on your human biology, because an infant doesn’t double in size that fast.

• People I see every day saying “YOU’RE STILL PREGNANT???” What am I even supposed to say to this? “Actually I gave birth in the 16 hours since I last saw you, I just enjoy your inane comments so much I’ve decided to wear a fake pregnant belly all the time.” This pregnancy has actually felt like it’s gone by very quickly, but nothing makes time drag more than having the same boring conversation with the same person every day.

• When I’m out in public and there’s someone else with a baby and it starts crying and people say “Oh that’s what you’ll have to deal with soon!” (more gleeful chortling). OMG REALLY??? BABIES CRY????

Anyway. That’s all I have time to crab about today. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood the next time I post. MAYBE NOT.

I have kind of a love-hate-fear relationship with raccoons. I love them because they have such cute little faces and hands, I hate them because they make a mess of the yard, and I fear them because they are scary and vicious and freakishly strong and have huge fangs to tear and rend flesh. Their canine teeth are bigger than Dougal’s, and that is NOT RIGHT.

Luckily when they come around I’m able to observe them from behind the windows of my basement apartment: all the cute silly raccoon action without the terror!

Taylor Laramie: Wildlife Photographer. He was trying to take a picture with his phone and it was not working- the flash kept firing omg you can’t take a picture through a window with flash!!! Luckily I have a supremely steady hand so I was able to get some only slightly terrible pictures of our visitors.

I just realized the reflection of my camera hand in the glass makes it look like I’m holding the raccoon’s head O___o FREAKY!

In other news from around the internet…

Today is the last day to vote for my friend Jessica’s daughter Kyra in the Vans Natural Foods Bedhead Contest. You can read all about their reasons for wanting to win here, and please please please go vote!

Some of my talented & beautiful lady friends started a new site a few weeks ago, Least Likely, and it is AWESOME. And as of today, I’m their official mommy blogger! I KNOW SO COOL RIGHT? So check out my post, check out the whole site, check out everything!

Summer is over for really-reals now, and it’s cold and grey outside so we took this week’s pictures in the baby’s room. It only took about five seconds before it turned into a DOG PARTY!!!

Please take a minute to check out all my beautiful advertisers in the righthand sidebar —->

First of all, happy Thanksgiving to all of Canada out there! I never really do anything fancy for this holiday (like “celebrate” or “cook”) because Sym spends it with her dad every year and Taylor has to go to bed early, although I guess that’ll be changing once Baby Laramie is on the scene.

Since Sym has been away I’ve spent most of this weekend working on projects around the house: sorting things, cleaning things, putting things away, drilling holes in things. Here are some pictures of stuff I’ve been up to recently…

We didn’t take proper pictures last week because I was too busy (ie my roots are really grown out and terrible) but here’s a photobooth shot from Wednesday, when I was 34 weeks 6 days. I’m 35 weeks 4 days today, WOW THAT’S CLOSE. I should probably pack my hospital bag soon…

Some baby stuff:

My wonderful friend Angela sent me this AMAZING handmade alphabet blanket all the way from Chicago.

Stuffies & rattles. I need a basket or something to keep these in!

Now that the nursery furniture is all set up, my big project this weekend (well, one of them) was washing & putting away all the baby’s clothes and blankets. I wish I had been doing this all along because doing it all at once SUCKED. It’s finished now though, with linens folded and put away and all the teeniest-tiniest clothes in the dresser. On the shelf are three bins of larger sizes of clothing: up to 6 months, 6 to 12 months, and 12 months +. I’m very impressed with myself for being so organized!

There are a few things I still need to get for the room- the aforementioned basket for toys, a small side table to put next to the chair (I want a round white one and I’m having the worst time finding one), a space heater since it can get cold in there, a wall- or floor lamp to put by the chair, and some of these Ikea Ribba picture ledges to use as bookshelves (pretty mad at myself that I had this idea three days AFTER I went to Ikea…).

On Saturday night I rescued a lost Fjallraven Kanken backpack from that park. It had been there for a few days and FULL DISCLOSURE I was gonna keep it for myself but it turned out to belong to a little boy whose mother had written her phone number inside. I called her yesterday morning to let her know I had it (her nanny had told her the kid left it at school so they didn’t even know it was lost!) and as a thank you she brought me cupcakes (better than a used backpack tbh)! I may have had one for breakfast this morning…

In really exciting (to me) news, I got eight new colours of glitter for making banners! Sym’s grandma found them at a store by her house and I can’t wait to start using them.

Other than that I’ve been doing fun stuff like test-inflating Taylor’s air mattress to make sure it’s in good condition for when my mom comes to stay and buying new sheets for it, switching out the legs on the couch for wheels so it’s easier to move (for Dance Central, if I ever stop being pregnant and can play again!), reorganizing a few closets and slowly finishing putting stuff away that’s still cluttering the dining room from when the carpets were replaced. One day I will get this all done, I swear! I also made big crazy (tentative) plans to paint some furniture but WE’LL SEE.

Also please don’t forget to vote for my friend’s daughter Kyra in the Van’s Foods Bedhead contest! It’s running for four more days and you can vote every day! For more info on Kyra and her parents’ plan for the prize money should they win, check out my post from last week.

If you are friends with me on facebook, or if you follow me on twitter or tumblr, then you might have noticed me posting a link to a “Breakfast Bedheads” contest being run by Vans Natural Foods.

The reason I’ve been sharing this contest so much is because I really really really want my friend Jessica & her daughter Kyra to win! Kyra has Autism and Seizure Disorder, and were they to win they’d use the prize money to get her a service/therapy dog.

All you have to do is “like” the Vans Natural Food page and vote for Kyra’s Bedhead picture. Voting is open until October 12th and you can vote every day (PLEASE VOTE EVERY DAY).

Jessica is also running a Chipin to try to raise money for the dog, and has lots of information about Kyra and the issues a dog would help her with. You can find it here, and if you want you can even donate a little to help make the world a doggier place for this wonderful little girl.

Sometimes you just wake up in the middle of the night and find that you are done with sleep. Maybe you start thinking about The Secret of NIMH for some reason and positively, absolutely need to refresh your memory of its finer plot points and end up in a wikipedia spiral. Maybe you went to bed at a reasonable (okay, midnight-ish) time instead of staying up to eat and now you’re STARVING. Maybe you just realized that hey, it’s October third. It’s cold at night. You can’t just sleep with a light blanket anymore, it’s duvet season now.

All of that happened to me this morning when I found myself wide awake at 3:30. Seeing as how I went to bed at that midnight-ish time I’m guessing today is going to be pretty filled with napping, but that’s alright with me because guess what?

IT’S ALL DONE. Well I mean, obviously the decorating part isn’t done, and we still need to buy a few small things (side table, floor lamp, space heater because that room can be chilly & I don’t want a frozen baby), but all the furniture building I thought was going to take me weeks and weeks? With Sym’s help I got it finished in about four hours! I did need Taylor to move some things around at the end, but I still contend I can build Ikea furniture better than any man, and I’m passing on that legacy to my daughter.

So now I’m for really and truly real starting to feel more prepared for this baby to be born, and maybe now time will start dragging? idk though, tomorrow I’ll be 35 weeks and it feels like just yesterday I was 34 weeks. Heck, it feels like just yesterday I was making this post!

*I found these crammed in the back of the freezer and eating them gave me weird flashbacks to being pregnant with Sym, when I was super poor and basically lived on Eggos :/

Did you know that when you are pregnant it takes you fifty billion years to do anything? It’s true (well, in my case, at least). Now that the apartment is all repaired and repainted and recarpetted and our new furniture has been delivered, I thought I’d just dive right in to putting things right around here. I thought it’d be super easy. TURNS OUT THAT IS NOT THE CASE. I can only do a little of this and a little of that before I need a serious break, and now my apartment looks like this:

Taylor and I decided to moved Sym’s little dresser into the baby’s room and buy Sym a new, bigger dresser, so we’ve been working on that first. Last night we started building it and got as far as building the frame before we quit for the evening. This morning I attached it to the wall and built two of the six drawers, with long, healthy breaks* between each one. After I finish it I still have the baby’s crib, changing table and a chair to put together, and right now I feel like it’s going to take me until my due date to finish it. In my non-pregnant furniture-building heyday I could have gotten all this done in one day!

Some people have suggested I leave all this up to Taylor, and I have been getting him to help with some things (heavy lifting things, mostly) but I have my own reasons for wanting to do it myself:
1. he’s working crazy long hours right now and is almost more tired than I am, so I feel bad about pestering him to do more around the house than he’s already doing, because he has been doing a lot.
2. even though I’m working on other things during the day, knowing that all those boxes are sitting there not being opened drives me crazy!
3. I CAN BUILD IKEA FURNITURE BETTER THAN ANY MAN.

Anyway. I’m going to keep plugging away at it and hopefully, somehow it’ll all get done before this baby arrives in the next five or six weeks O____o

*On my breaks I’ve been doing the dishes and the laundry and working on three of the eight banners I’m making this week, so they were more working breaks than lazing breaks.

This might look like your every day, typical feminist killjoy banner, but REALLY, it’s a teeny-weeny baby-sized one with letters just over 1″ tall. I’ve only ever made one mini glitter banner before, they are very fiddly and tedious to do, but so cute! I made this one as a special order for my friend Shya, but plan to put up an etsy listing for them soon. In the meantime you can email me to order your own for only $9 + shipping.

I’ve included this pomeranian for scale.

Wow I’m super late with this post this month! tbh I’ve been feeling conflicted about having advertisers or sponsors or whatever, like I just don’t think I’m comfortable hustling to try and get paid sponsors for the blog. I’d rather focus on making my etsy my profitable internet venture (ps order now if you want any banners for Halloween because I’m already getting swamped) and keep the blog just for funsies.

So anyway, I’ve decided to take advertising on my blog in a different direction this month, and the direction is more like… free. THAT’S RIGHT FREE ADVERTISING WOW WHO WOULD PASS THAT UP??? Fools, that’s who.

You can find all the new info here, although it’s basically the same info. Just for free. FREE YOU GUYS!