Urban Drool

Today and tomorrow and the weekend that follows will be nothing but joy and wonder and giggles and tears of happiness and poop.

And cake.

Seriously, I ordered a whole lot of cake.

I know that some of these pictures have been posted before, but some have not. I wanted to post a slew of pictures from Lucy's first year. Today is picture day and hopefully tomorrow we shall have an "Oh my god my baby is one year old and here is a weepy funny post about all that she has done and is and ever will be isn't she the bestest thing EVER" post.

Maybe.

But in the meantime...pictures! Of my BABY!!!!!!!!!

Happy One Year Birthday, my little Pickle.

It has not escaped my attention that we are hours away (well, about 36 hours away) from my first child’s first birthday.

I fully plan on enjoying her “birthday weekend” (which I stubbornly call the next 4 days, because her actual birthday will fall on an actual day when I have to actually work – SUCK) with every ounce of my being. There will be kisses.

And cake.

And 45 people coming to love on her.

And balloon animals.

And magic shows.

And face painters.

And cake.

And a piñata.

And homemade pizza.

And endless squees of children and babies and tons of fun.

And have I mentioned the cake?


Anyway. From tomorrow morning onward it will be laa laa lee doo doo and happy birthday and loveangelbabyjoy and all that. I promise. I truly am looking forward to it and cannot wait to celebrate with everybody.

But for right now, this evening, please forgive an emotional, angst-filled Lumi and indulge her. Allow her a few hours and more than a few (hidden) tears as she pens a letter to herself, one year ago exactly right now:

Dear Lumi of One Year Ago Exactly Right Now,

Go home. PLEASE go home.

You just spent 24 hours tied to a hospital bed, with cervadil up your hoo-hoo and pitocin racing through your veins.

All for naught.

Your cervix is still 3 cm. You haven’t effaced for shit in the past day. And, just so you know, all that poking and proding from dozens of different fingers? And all those harsh and out of nowhere contractions which are slamming that 9 pound baby’s head onto your cervical tissue? Is making your cervix start to swell.

Please note: your cervix will be so swollen in 30 more hours that a drop of extra virgin olive oil would struggle to find it’s way through.

Your water hasn’t broken yet. You still have time. Time to unplug your wires and tubes, put on your clothes and go home. Rest and eat yummy food for a couple days. Please stop trying to force this child to come before she is ready to. You are only 10 days past your due date – you have a couple more days you can wait through.

Please note also: what waits for you in the next 36 hours is the most mind-boggling painful labor you could imagine, and endless frustration as you dialate to an 8 ½, see the nurses get all excited and bring out the baby bassinet and break down the bed and get everything ready for you…only to have your cervix puff up and seal shut like a blow fish and then…slowly…slowly…dialate back down to 5. An epidural will be administered, which will shatter all the pride you feel for laboring through a FULL DAY of horrendous labor without pain medication. An emergency C-Section will be performed. You will barely recall meeting your child for the first time. You will not get to be the first person (or even in the top 5) that gets to hold her.

And four hours after that, you will nearly die. Your uterus, frankly pissed off and exhausted after all this abuse, will decide to flush 1/3 of the blood in your body OUT of your body in an attempt to destroy itself. 5 IVs, a Hep Lock, 3 blood transfusions and a week in the hospital will be the result.

So seriously, please go home.

Just stop it with the weeping and the “I just can’t be this pregnant anymore!” and the impatience and the calling of the midwives and vainglorious determination to make this all about YOU.

I can’t be sure, of course, but there is a small possibility that if you leave now and go home and give it a few days time, this baby just might decide to come of her own accord. And perhaps you could avoid all this. And perhaps you could have the natural, intervention-free birth you have been dreaming about for months. And perhaps your uterus won’t be so compromised that any future pregnancies and deliveries won’t be in such jeopardy.

I wish you could hear me. Oh, how I wish. I wish my hindsight and experience could trump your naïveté and make you see how much better it would be if you stopped right now and give nature a chance to take it’s course.

But you can’t. Of course, I know you can’t.

So, all I can say is, good luck. Don’t die. And you will fall to pieces with love when you see her, you really will.

Two more things, that nurse in recovery is going to be a royal cunt and won’t want to give you a cup of water. Tell her to go fuck herself and have the Boy go get you some water.

And? For the love of all that is Joe Pesci, take the Percoset THE VERY FIRST TIME IT IS OFFERED. You will NOT win some kind of prize for pretending to be all brave and snotty and “Oh, my incision doesn’t hurt! Just a few Tylenol will be fine.”

You idiot.

Love,
yourself

Now I know.

Now I understand.

Never before did I really comprehend why women would spend hundreds of dollars and hours and hours of precious time going to high-end salons and getting high-end treatments for their hair, skin and nails.

Um, wow. Why did nobody tell me of this sooner? Was this some great secret of womanhood that, for some reason, was kept from me? (answer=very possibly. After all Lumi, are you or are you NOT a woman who will slap a little scented body lotion from WalMart on her face as a “moisturizer” when no face cream is about?)

My mother recently got me a gift certificate to a salon in a nearby town. This is a salon that specializes in the care of very long hair. In other words, right up my alley. I went there, a little unsure of what to expect or how to comport myself. Would they mind if (when) I yelled “Ah, fuck” when I stumbled over the artfully placed antique wooden sidetable with the zen healing water fountain spraying merry droplets of lavender-infused water everywhere?

But I arrived. Immediately upon my entering, Lance, the loveliest of lovely long-hair-care specialists, took my coat and purse and led me to my chair. And we had a long talk, he and I, about what to do with this unless horse’s mane on top of my head.

Tilting his head to the side and squinting with one eye he declared me in need of a 2 hour hot-cap treatment, followed 3-4 weeks later by a trim and shape up. I mutely nodded my assent. After all, you don’t argue with Lance.

He led me to the shampoo chair and told me to close my eyes. I entered a weird state of kinda-sleep-kinda-meditation, coming to only occasionally when Lance would quietly mutter in my ear what he was doing exactly.

“..I am first washing your hair with a clarifying eucalyptus cleanser…I am now using an orange and mango wash to prepare the hair shafts to receive the protein mud pack…

{heading back to my chair}

…now we are going to put on the mud pack…I’m wrapping your hair around itself on top of your head like a crown so I can fit the heated cap on top to ensure that the blah blah blah effectively blah blah dee dooo…”

What the hell did I care what he was doing? It felt amazing and I felt amazing and there was NO husband to entertain and NO baby to nurse or wipe sluge off of and I hadn’t felt this relaxed and pampered in almost 2 years. Lance could stuff my belly buttons with pimentos for all I cared, if it meant this lovely warm feeling spreading through me would continue.

I had to sit in a leather backed, uber-comfy chair for an hour (oh darn!) while the whatevers melted into my hair and did their whatevers. Lance brought me an assortment of Reader’s Digest, People, and Us. Did you know that Britney Spears went to a shop in LA called “Trashy Lingerie” and brought a little outfit for the benefit of her new boy toy? And, ironically enough, it’s considered “not at all trashy!!” ??

I did.

Lance asked me what I wished to drink. Bottled water? Hot tea? Coffee? Cocoa? He brought me a selection of different flavors of cocoa so that I could choose.

People, Lance brought me my cell phone when I heard it ringing and couldn’t reach it, for trapped in my leather chair was I.

Wow.

Sadly, my hour with the plant enzymes was over all too soon and Lance washed me, conditioned me, and used a “lovely avocado-based shine-booster rinse.” He blew my hair dry, one small piece at a time, sprayed my long tresses all over with something that smelled like a Caribbean vacation and then guided me over to the full length mirror and handed me a small mirror so I could see the length of the back of my hair and what he had accomplished.

Dayyy-um.

I walked out of there with instructions to not wash my hair for 72 hours to “allow the cuticles to seal” and to make an appointment in 3-4 weeks for a trim and shape up.

He recommends this 2 hour treatment to be done 3-4 times a year and you can bet that I’m counting down the days until I can have it done again.

Why did no one tell me? My hair looks incredible today. I have NEVER been able to get my hair to look the way it looks today. Now, I know in a few days, it will not look nearly as magnificent as it does right now, but I SO DON’T CARE!!

I am forever changed. I apologize profusely to all those women whom I ridiculed, either out loud or under my breath, for “buying stupid crap” and “going to snobby salons” just so they could “look like a million bucks.”

Know what folks? If I do indeed get a refund on my Federal Taxes this year, I am SO heading back to Lance and buying absolutely anything and everything that he tells me I need to buy.

…after I pay the electric bill and buy more diapers for the baby.

Sigh.

The End.