Hey, guess what! I survived labor and it only took me a week of recovery to have the energy to make a blog post announcing that Truman Oliver Parks has arrived.

He was born on August 14th at 10:59pm, weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces and was 20 inches long. My labor was 19 painful hours, jparks’ arm was almost broken once, along with a finger, I totally confused an anesthesiologist, and had a breakdown 15 hours in when I decided that I was done and was walking out the hospital. Ah, good times.

Greetings from Good Sam Hospital! We checked in this evening for an induction because this kid doesn’t seem to want to take leave on his own. I mean, come on kid, we couldn’t find a brighter flashlight, why would you not move towards it?

So we’re here, we’ve been here for four and a half hours, jparks has almost broken some probably very expensive medical equipment, and I’ve been given a drug to start labor but we won’t have any changes for at least a few more hours. In fact, I don’t suspect there will be anything interesting going on in my uterus until midmorning on Friday.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. Thank you to everyone that sent well wishes my way over on twitter but really you might all want to pray for jparks since I’m not sure how well he’ll fare once the contractions start. I might not be at my pre-pregnancy strength but I’m fairly certain I can deal some serious damage to him. Thank goodness I found where they keep the smelling salts in my delivery room. Actually they’re in a drawer with some medical tape, so maybe I’ll grab both and tape the salts to his face. That way when I punch, not only will I take him out, but I’ll open the salts at the same time and he’ll be back on his feet almost instantly. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but crap, this plan is brilliant.

Friday, the day my OB suggested inducing, has come and gone and I’m still knocked up. Sunday, my due date, has come and gone and I am still knocked up. Folks, this is getting old really quickly.

I honestly don’t want to chat your ear off about still being pregnant but every thought I have lately goes something like this “Dammit kid, OOOOUUUUTTTT” or “I’m going to be pregnant forever. It could happen, I read about it on the internet.” And speaking of the internet, one of my new hobbies is to research ways to induce labor online. I’ve found plenty of the old wives’ tales; spicy foods, sex, and walking, but so far my favorite suggestion is to take a small flashlight, turn it on, and shove it into your vagina. Why? Because babies like to move towards light. Yes, according to the internet you can lure a baby out of your womb by making him think God is calling him towards a holy white light. How pissed would that kid be when he realizes instead of heaven, he’s ended up in a hospital room with an idiot mother that shoved a flashlight into her vagina?

Of course, I’ve asked jparks to run to Sears and get one of those multi million candlepower spotlights. It’s a bit big to shove up there, but when we’re back at the OB’s in a few hours and we’re in the room waiting for him I’ll have jparks grab a speculum and give the kid a good shining. It might be a stupid idea, but I read it on the internet so it must work. Now if only jparks still had long hair we could dress him up like Jesus so the kid wouldn’t be too disappointed upon being born.

The end is nigh! My due date is Sunday! Start boiling some water and ripping sheets because I plan on birthing a baby soon! Someone bring me a leather strap to bite down on! (For the record I am going to attempt a natural birth. It’s okay to laugh at me, I know it’s insane. But I also know that the drugs! They will be right there! Stick them in my spine now! Either way, natural or drugged out of my freaking mind, as long as the kid takes his leave of me I’ll be happy.)

Jparks and I went to the OB yesterday and it seems there are lots of things going on with this pregnancy and none of them have anything to do with my body being ready to shoot this kid out. My cervix is still shut up tight yet my blood pressure just keeps right on rising. I had some blood work run and while we wait for the results I’m on bed rest. Doesn’t bed rest sound like the best thing ever? In theory I suppose it is, in real life, not so much. Now that I’m stuck on the couch I see that there is so much to do, like the dishes. Who knew you could actually want to do the dishes? Or the ironing. The wrinkled clothes are calling my name.

The bed rest is to help keep my blood pressure low and ward off preeclampsia. Should my blood work come back positive for signs of preeclampsia then I’ll be facing an induction on Friday. If it comes back normal and the bed rest does its job, then I can probably escape the induction. Don’t get me wrong, I really want this kid out but I would ideally like to avoid an induction since that raises my risk of having a c-section. I’ve watched a midget get a c-section on the Discovery Channel and it was not pretty. I would like to avoid having my intestines removed from my torso and then shoved back in if possible.

So that’s the latest news on the condition of me and my uterus. I wish there was more to tell but my stubborn cervix hasn’t received the memo from the rest of my body that this kid needs to get out. OUTOUTOUT. I swear if I have to unhook a foot from a rib one more time I might just lose my shit. And it won’t be the kid that suffers my wrath, it’ll be jparks because this is all his fault.

jparks: “You’re going to make a great mother!”

me: “Thanks! You’re going to make a great motherfucker!”

You know, I have no excuse for posting so sporadically and then when I do post it’s all baby crap and no one really cares about that expect for jparks and I’s moms. So I started a post tonight and then was instantly sidetracked when some friends started twittering about 16 and Pregnant, specifically the adoption episode. Have you seen it? No? Dear god, you should. But be warned: have kleenex ready.

Anyway, so my other post got derailed and I forgot what I was talking about and have decided to resort to a picture:

Those booties are killing me with their cuteness. KIIIIILLLLLIIINNNG.

Also, in about 2.5 weeks I’ll have someone to wear them. Well, someone besides Lily. She’s getting pretty tired of trying out all the baby stuff.

Yeah, I am that person. Whatever.

This Saturday was my baby shower and before you go thinking that it was just another typical baby shower, let me say that it was not. It was a totally awesome BBQ baby shower, also known as the BaByQ. There were burgers, jalapenos filled with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, oreo truffles, and booze. Also otter pops, but I think I was the only person that ate those since it was actually cool out and no one was suffering from heat stroke except for me.

It was truly the ideal shower for me because I get nervous and make bad jokes when I’m the center of attention. And really does anyone, mother-to-be included, enjoy sitting and opening all the gifts in front of the guests? Is it just me or is that a weird custom? Also baby games make my skin crawl. “Hey, I’m feeling really fat and cow like! Let’s all guess how big I am! That totally won’t kill the last bits of self esteem that I have!” Wow, am I ever a bitter person.

Lots of our friends at the BBQ asked if I felt ready for the baby and I had to admit that sometimes I do feel ready but those times tend to get beaten into submission by the times when I realize that oh holy hell, a baby will be living with me soon. A baby that needs to be fed, changed, and bathed. Since I have the best friends ever, they were quick to tell me that jparks and I will be great parents, which makes my hormone filled brain go fuzzy and possibly makes tears fill my eyes. It’s one thing to hear jparks repeatedly tell me that we’ll be good parents, but it’s another to have people that aren’t legally required to tell me that say it.

One friend likes to remind me that 16 year olds in high school bathrooms are giving birth and raising babies and if they can do it, then I’ll be fine. Since I like to take things as far as I can, I’ve started tivo’ing MTV’s new show “16 and Pregnant” because it eases some of my fears. My other favorite show is “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” which causes me to hate myself for not being able to remove it from my tivo’s to do list. Both of these shows make me feel like I’m bound to be a good mother because A) I’m not 16 and fighting with my baby daddy about if we should spend money on formula or getting the kid’s name tattooed across our chests and B) because I’m well aware that I have a baby inside of me, am getting prenatal care, and won’t go to the bathroom one day only to look down and find a baby in the toilet.

And speaking of being a good mother, I may not know how to bath or swaddle the kid when he gets here, but he will have the freaking cutest socks ever. Also jparks is now the proud (extremely proud) owner of a diaper dude bag so really we’re 100% set for parenthood.

Last Thursday jparks picked up and built the latest addition to the nursery, the crib. And then on Friday I went to an OB appointment and was told that I’ve reached the point in the pregnancy where I have to go in for check ups every two weeks. Because apparently we are having a baby soon. Both of those events sent my mind reeling because a baby needs things and I don’t have things! Also, what do I know about babies? I’m afraid to even hold a newborn because they are breakable. Ask our friends that have kids, I won’t touch the baby for a couple of weeks because I didn’t want to be the person that is responsible for giving the kid a soft spot noogie on accident. And yet it appears I’m going to be bringing one home in about eight weeks.

This realization led to me scouring Baby Bargains for product reviews and then heading over to my registries to add and delete items obsessively. After searching for my Babies R Us registry I noticed this:

Whoa, jparks gets around! He’s a man whore with babies all over the country!

And then on Amazon he has a few more baby mommas:

I feel so cheap and used. And a bit scared because here I thought I was just unleashing one mini-jparks onto the world, but I was so wrong. There will be many and, my god, the world is not ready for that.

Apparently something happened this week and I have shifted from “Is she pregnant or fat? I better just stare at her wild eyed and not comment since I can’t really tell” to “Whoa she’s pregnant. I better ask when she’s due so if she goes into labor while I’m ringing her up I’ll know what’s going on.” I don’t know if it’s because I finally caved and bought real maternity shirts or because holy crap I’m huge, but every day strangers have approached me to ask when I’m due.

I will admit that it’s nice to finally know that people aren’t looking and wondering if I’ve ever heard of the 30 Day Shred but at the same time it is very unsettling to have random people approach me to talk when I’m shopping at Target. Thankfully no one has gone for the stomach touch yet because seriously, friends only! And even letting friends do that took awhile for me to become comfortable with.

I think part of the reason that these questions and comments have caught me so off guard is because I am having a hard time seeing how big I’m getting. I mean, I know I’m big and I routinely walk around the house mooing at jparks, but knowing just how much I’ve grown week to week is a challenge. Thank god I don’t wear pants with stretchy waistbands when I’m not pregnant because I would probably weigh 400 pounds and not even realize it.

Anyway, I’m tired since I skipped my nap today (woe is me) so let’s just give the people want they want: evidence of my fatness

Holy shit, I’m 27 weeks pregnant. The other night I turned to jparks and said “I’ve been pregnant forever and I still have to be pregnant forever. Fuck this.” I just keep waiting for the magical part of pregnancy to start, but instead of it I seem to get the heartburn, crazy hormones, oh my god why am I so damn hot all the time part of pregnancy. Over and over and over again. Seriously body, enough with this crap, when will I start pooping rainbows and seeing unicorns? When will I glow? Do I need to sacrifice an animal to get some magic to happen over here? Because it could be arranged, just give the word.

The newest pregnancy related developments are that jparks was finally able to feel some movement and I’ve hit what I call the hibernation stage. As far as jparks feeling his first kicks, he was super excited of course. I’ve been offering to poke him anytime his kid kicks me, but apparently that’s not the same as actually feeling movement. The funny part about jparks getting to feel kicks is that normally the kid stops moving whenever he puts a hand on me. This is great for when I’m trying to fall asleep and the kid is playing dance, dance revolution on my organs. Jparks puts a hand on my stomach and it’s game over and I can sleep. So finally feeling kicks is great for him and mildly annoying for me. Now how am I supposed to calm the kid down? Maybe whiskey would help him relax.

Throughout this pregnancy I’ve been nap resistant. It’s not that I feel the need to go go go all the time, but it’s more that I’m unemployed and really want to be able to tell people that I did something other than sleep the day away. But in the past few days something has changed and the naps will not be stopped. I’m sleeping in much later in the mornings and afternoons are now for naps whether I like it or not. Yesterday I sat down to pet the cat for a minute and woke up an hour later feeling confused and holding the cat in a death grip. Lesson learned, the nap is not to be avoided.

And really that’s about all the new with the whole pregnancy thing. I’m finally showing although I still think I just look fat. We haven’t done anything else to the nursery since buying the dresser. I should probably get around to ordering a crib and maybe buying some diapers or something, but like I said before I still have forever left in this pregnancy. Plenty of time to shop and enjoy the miracle of life disguised as heartburn and gas.