On birthing a 10 pound baby, and other reasons I am done having kids.

             
                 No more kids for me!!

That was the first text I sent after having Boo.

Don't get me wrong. I adore him. The moment I saw him, I fell instantly in love. I kept saying "He's perfect, he's so perfect!"

But.

Between having a nearly-10 pound baby, and receiving a jacked up epidural that only worked on HALF of my body? I can easily say that giving birth to him was the single most painful experience of my life. I told Husband it's a good thing that our first son's birth wasn't that painful or we would have stopped at one kid. 

Obviously Boo was worth all of the pain, but I cringe whenever I think about the experience of having him. And the idea of doing it again is enough to terrify me right into a hysterectomy appointment.

My mom and grandma told me that I am going to jinx myself if I say "no more kids", but from where I stand right now, it would take a miracle for me to change my mind. Plus, as much as I love our new house, I don't know where we would put a fourth kid. I don't even know if I could mentally keep track of four kids.

So, for the time being I am going to love and enjoy the three healthy babies I've got. Whether or not we ever have another child, I will consider myself to be incredibly blessed. Life is so good. These three sweet faces remind me of that every day.

Introducing...

Baby Boo.

 

Born October 30th, at 9:43pm.

 

9 pounds, 13 ounces. 

21 inches long.

Perfect in every way.

Overdue

Due dates suck. 

It's like waiting all year for Christmas, only for the day to arrive and Santa is all, "Raincheck?"

We're still waiting.

The Waiting Game

A week ago I was certain I was just moments away from going into labor.

Yet here I sit. Another week bigger. More uncomfortable than ever. Sleep? What's that? 

Five days ago I was 3cm dilated and 80% effaced, (if you don't know what any of that means I will just let you Google it). Since then, I have walked every day, sometimes twice a day, and cleaned my house obsessively, expecting my water to break or contractions to come on with every passing hour. I just don't even understand how I am still pregnant with as much as I have been on my feet. Apparently baby is really comfortable I guess, so I have resigned myself to the fact that he will come when he is good and ready, and until then, we will all just have to wait.

If one more person asks me when I am going to have this baby though, I might lose it.

Husband is the worst offender of all. When he is at work, he calls every hour, asking if my water has broken yet. As if I wouldn't let him know. Like I'm gonna call him up a few hours later and be all, "Surprise! I had a baby! Didn't want to bother you at work though, so I just thought I'd keep it to myself."

I know that baby will eventually arrive though, even though these last few days (weeks?) may feel like an eternity. I am just so excited to meet him, and hold him, and see his sweet little face for the first time. I can only hope that my next post will include a photo of our newest family member.

Multipurpose.

 

Yes. I can actually use my belly as a table of sorts these days. 35 weeks as of today. I have officially passed the point when Bug was born, (cue huge sigh of relief). 

And, just hours after expressing my relief on Facebook, I began having contractions. Last night they were coming every four minutes over a span of about two hours. I finally decided that if I was able to sleep through them, then it probably meant they weren't a big deal, and, I was able to fall asleep. I have felt them on and off all day, but, no longer close enough together to time.

So, what does this mean?

Well, we're headed in the right direction. But whether it will be five more weeks, or just days until we meet our newest son, I can't tell you for sure. 

In the meantime though, I will continue making use of my built-in shelf while I can.

So much to do, so little time.

With all that we have going on in our lives these days, I've been feeling the pressure to get us prepared for what lies ahead - mainly having a baby, and then moving. I have started packing up items we won't need over the next four months, as well as clothing that we won't miss. I am trying to downsize where possible, selling furniture and other large things that just simply can't make the move with us (i.e. our treadmill which has been sitting in our garage, sadly neglected for far too long). On a related note, anyone interested in a treadmill?

In the midst of the downsizing though, I have also been bringing in more furniture to our bedroom: baby furniture. We only have two bedrooms in the house we're renting now. Binker and Bug currently share a room, and while there is actually plenty of space for a crib in it, I just don't feel comfortable having a brand new baby sleep in there with them. I know they wouldn't intentionally hurt him, but I worry about them climbing into the crib to get a closer look, or jumping in the crib while baby is trying to nap. So, even though I've never really been a fan of having my kids sleep in our room, we decided the best decision (and safest one), is to have baby stay with us until we move into our new house, where he will have his own room.

So earlier this week I brought Bug's old crib into our room, and today my mom helped me bring the baby changer in as well. I just spent over an hour putting away size newborn to 6 month clothes in the drawers of the changer, putting blankets and stuffed animals on the crib, and organizing diapers that I have stocked up on under the crib. Man, it feels so good to be so on top of things! (For once in my life, ha). 

The thing is, now that it is all set for baby, I feel like he should be here anytime. In reality though, I've got just under 8 weeks to go in this pregnancy. I think that because Bug was born 5 and a half weeks early, I just feel this fire under me, making me jump to action, afraid that we won't be prepared if this baby comes early too. Having a preemie will do that to you. But, I have no reason to think that I won't go to term this time. Everything is moving along on schedule, I haven't suffered any trauma, or fallen down the stairs (like I did with my last pregnancy), which, we kind of assume led to the early birth. So, for all intents and purposes, I may have just busted my butt this week getting ready for baby, only to have his things sit in our room collecting dust for almost two more months. Sigh.

As they say though, better to be prepared than not, right? And now I don't feel myself freaking out so much, thinking we won't be ready for his arrival. And it also frees me up to focus on doing more packing and move-prep while I can, before I've got three kids to think about. I'd like to hope that after the baby comes, I will still be productive, but I'm a realistic person. After having Bug I lived in my pajamas for literally a month. And it was probably two weeks after he was born, that I got around to taking a shower and washing my hair. Husband was gone, and while my mom helped out, it was just a shock to my system going from one kid to two kids, the older baby being only 10 months old at the time. Yeah, I don't know how I kept my sanity through that either. It's just a blur of staying up all night with Bug, then getting up bright and early with Binker. So, don't judge me for letting showers and appropriate clothing go by the wayside, 'k? Thanks.

One of my cousins told me awhile back that it is easier to go from 2 to 3 kids, than it was from 1 to 2, so I am hoping she is right, and that I will find that I am used to being in a state of constant chaos, so what's one more kid? Also, Husband will be home this time, so hopefully I will be able to get showers in on a daily basis. Or at least weekly.

30 weeks, ya'll!

On Wednesday I will be 30 weeks along. That is so crazy to me! For the longest time it seemed like I would never get into the thirties. Because Bug was born premature at 34 weeks, 5 days, I feel like I have had this worry hanging over my head.

First I needed to make it to 30 weeks, and now that I am just about there, my next goal will be 34 weeks. After the 34.5 week mark, I will finally be able to breathe a sigh of relief for the first time in this pregnancy, knowing that we will (by the grace of God), not face any problems. Bug was born early, but he was healthy and strong, so I just want baby #3 to come at least after the point at which Bug was born for me to feel okay.

Some good news is that I have only gained 6 pounds to date. By this point in my last pregnancy I had gained 29 pounds. Ha. So, yay me. I also wanted to get those 6 pounds on the record before my doctor's appointment tomorrow, because Richard and I ate our weight in pizza the other night, and I have a feeling I might be above the 6 pound mark at next weigh-in, (although I hopefully will still be far from 29 pounds up!). I would like to keep my total weight gain low, since I don't want to have some sort of enormous amount of weight to lose afterward. Weight loss has always been a struggle for me, and not something that I particularly enjoy.

Overall I am feeling good though, so I can't complain. Baby is super active, and I love feeling every kick, and somersault, and hiccup. I am really starting to get excited to meet this little boy and see what and who he looks like.

I have taught the boys his name, and every morning they give my tummy a kiss and tell baby "Good morning!", it is seriously, melt-your-heart adorable. I cannot wait for the day that we will all get to kiss his sweet newborn face.

Pay no attention to the emotionally unstable woman over here.

I am officially in the third trimester of this pregnancy.

As if I couldn't already tell from the fact that I waddle everywhere, I pee about 80 gajillion times a day, and it takes me no less than five minutes to get up off the couch.

In a word: HOT.

And to think, I've got 11 more weeks of getting bigger, less mobility and more incontinence. Remind me why I wanted to get pregnant again?

But while all of this I expected and accept, I have been experiencing something else lately that is new. In the last week I feel like I have been hit by this huge wave of hormones again, which have made me out to be some sort of emotionally unstable person. I don't remember having this happen with either of my pregnancies, (after the first trimester hormonal monster, that is).

For instance, I have cried every day for the past four days, each for the most random reasons. Like today, I was driving with the boys and a song on the radio made me cry. I know that's not totally out there, but songs don't usually make me cry, and if one does, it is a slow, sappy song, usually about kids or something sentimental like that. But this song was an upbeat, happy song, there was absolutely nothing sad, or tug-at-the-heartstrings about it, yet my lip started to quiver and my eyes watered up and I had to change the station before I became too much of a wailing mess to drive. I think the most embarrassing example of my instability happened last week though.

A little background first.

Some jerk wad got access to Husband's credit card number and over the course of two days racked up $600+ on our account. I called the bank right away when I saw the charges. They closed our account, and I told them each of the charges that I thought looked suspicious: two to Wet Seal, one to Newport News, one to Uncommon Goods, one to Urbanog.com, and one to iTunes. I use iTunes, but I never get anything more than a movie rental here or there, so my purchases are always about $4.00 or less. The charge that appeared suspicious to me was for $25.00, and I knew I had not purchased anything in that amount, and I didn't think Husband even knew how to use iTunes.

Well, a few hours later I noticed Husband was playing with our iPad, and I casually asked him if he had been buying anything from the app store. He said yeah, about 25 dollars' worth.

AWESOME.

So the next day I called the bank to correct that one transaction on our fraud report. You know, I'm an honest person, and I just wanted to make it right. Apparently though, Bank of America is being run by clowns, because I was transferred TWELVE TIMES, yet they could not get me to the right department. Each time, I had to retype in my 16-digit account number, then answer FOUR security questions. I was beyond frustrated, and at about person #8, for no logical reason, I began to cry.

I WAS SOBBING TO A CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE OPERATOR.

She was very apologetic, but even my tears couldn't help me, as it took four more transfers before I finally got sent to the fraud department.

And they fixed my fraud report error in all of 10 seconds.

30 emotional minutes, all for a 10 second procedure. Awesome.

In any case, if you should see a woman, waddling around the grocery store, with a bag of Depends in the cart, crying over the latest People magazine for no explicable reason), don't mind me her. She's just in her third trimester.

Wakin' Up is Hard to Do

I have been so tired lately. Actually, tired doesn't even seem to be enough. Exhausted is more like it.

I get that I'm pregnant, and with pregnancy comes a lot of sleepiness, but I am fully into the second trimester here, almost the third, and I thought I was past the overwhelming grogginess that accompanies the early stages of pregnancy. For a few weeks there I did have some energy, I wasn't needing a nap every day, and I was feeling a lot more productive.

But then, like a freight train, this exhaustion hit me again. Every day I feel like I count the minutes until I can get the boys down for their naps so that I can collapse onto my mattress. At the same time though, I always go through this inner battle over the things I should be doing...

Vacuuming
Laundry
Starting dinner
Laundry
Cleaning bathrooms
Laundry

...versus what I am doing:

Passed out, drooling on my pillow.

I just don't remember being this wiped out with either of my other pregnancies, although to be fair, there are a lot of things I don't remember from my pregnancies. Big things, sure, but minute specifics are lost on me. I have even been reading my "What to Expect" books throughout this pregnancy, since I honestly forgot all of the things that are happening each week.

Circumstances are different now. I have two very active toddlers that keep me busy from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep at night, which I'm sure is contributing to my sleep-deprived state. I don't remember being anywhere close to this tired when I was pregnant with Binker and worked a nine-to-five job. My mom once told me that when my brother and I were little, she went to see the doctor because she was sooo tired all the time, and she just knew that she had to have some sort of vitamin deficiency. He told her that she was tired because she had two little kids at home. So maybe that's what I'm experiencing here.

No matter what the reason is though, I am getting frustrated at my daily need for a nap; I just feel so unproductive. And the fact that I can't enjoy caffeine doesn't help much either. Do any moms out there have any natural remedies for this constant exhaustion?

Or should I simply tell my inner voice to shut itself up and enjoy these naps while I am still able to sneak them in, and don't have a needy newborn in the house?

Bringing Home Baby

I celebrated the 20 week mark of my pregnancy this week. HOLLA! 

I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, and afterward I was sitting in the lobby down by the front door waiting for my family to come pick me up. While I waited, I watched as a number of new parents left the hospital with their brand new babies. It was so fun to watch them as they headed home with their precious, teeny tiny bundles. I could see the looks of fatigue, and joy, and sheer terror on their faces.

I couldn't help but remember when I was in their shoes for the first time.

After I had Binker, we stayed at the hospital for two days, and then there was a delay in the paperwork, so we didn't get discharged from the hospital until around 8pm on a Friday night. I remember it felt so weird to have the usually busy hospital be so empty and quiet. Husband pulled our car right up to the front doors, and we loaded Binker, who was already in his car seat, into the car. Even though it was literally less than a three minute drive from the hospital to our house, I sat in the back with Binker, watching for any sign that something might be wrong.

All I remember is having a pit in my stomach, thinking there had to be some sort of mistake. They were actually letting US take this baby home?! No nurses? No doctors? No intercom to call someone for help when I was confused? I mean, shouldn't I be required to take some sort of course to be qualified as a parent? I was completely clueless when it came to babies, and as happy as I was to get us all home, into our own beds, and settle into life with a newborn, I was Scared. To. Death.

Eventually we found our way through the early trials of parenting, and when Bug was born, we felt much more ready to bring him home. Because of his prematurity, however, he had to stay in the hospital an additional five days. Had he been our first child, I would have gladly stayed at his bedside day and night, but since we had a 10 month old at home, I felt torn to be with both of my babies. After two days in the hospital I returned home to spend an evening with Binker. I will never forget that horrible feeling of walking away from the hospital with empty arms. Even though I knew Bug would be fine and that we would get to bring him home soon, I felt sick leaving him alone, (obviously he had nurses caring for him). I just felt in my bones that it was wrong to leave the labor and delivery department empty-handed. I was never so happy as the day we finally did get to bring our second son home for good.

Now I look forward to bringing home our third baby in approximately 20 weeks, (hopefully we can avoid any premature labor this time around). I can't wait to hold him for the first time, check out his features: does he have hair? Whose ears does he have? What color are his eyes? I can't wait to cover his little face in kisses, and cuddle him constantly. And then, when we get our clean bill of health, to bring him home to join his family of five.

My Three Sons

It's a boy!!


As my father-in-law said, my husband and I are single-handedly ensuring that the family name will be carried on.

Aside from the fact that I am ridiculously outnumbered now, I am thrilled. I was sort of assuming it would be another boy, even though many things about this pregnancy have been different. Now that we know for sure, and are able to start buying things specifically for this baby, and are calling him by name, it makes him seem so much more real, and I am that much more excited to meet this precious little boy.

Beat Down by a Couple of Toddlers

There are some days when I am so on top of things, and all of the meals are delicious and well-balanced, and the kids are clean and well-behaved, and everything runs smoothly, and I can't help but feel a little smug and think to myself, I could totally have like six kids, parenting is a piece of cake.

And then there are days like today. When I am completely and utterly beat down by these little children of mine, and they are screaming and hitting and climbing and breaking and running circles around my inexperienced self. I feel so drained, and inept at this whole parenting business, and start to wonder how on earth I will ever manage being responsible for three human beings. And while I would normally reach for a nice, relaxing glass of wine, post-bedtime, to calm my nerves...and make me feel less like a complete failure, I unfortunately do not have that option now that I have a bun in the oven.

So, obviously, I do the next best thing, and eat a plate of cookies for dinner.

I made sure they were oatmeal chocolate chip though, since everyone knows oatmeal cookies are the healthy kind.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. And if tomorrow kicks my butt too, at least there are always more cookies.

Being Present While Pregnant

I realize I haven't been blogging quite as consistently as I had been. So much for my goals this year, eh? But, in my defense, I have been pretty busy. See, somewhere around February I found out that I am pregnant! That's right. For those keeping track, this will be number three for us.

So, for about the last two months I have spent most days either with my head in a toilet, or napping every second of the day that I possibly could. I am finally into the second trimester though, and, bit by bit, I am beginning to feel more and more like a human being again - with energy to keep my eyes open, and a stomach that knows how to keep food down, and all that crazy stuff!

Still, this pregnancy has not been as pleasant or easy on me as my first two were. I'd never experienced  morning all day sickness until this one. The aches and cramps as my body accommodates a growing baby have been pretty uncomfortable, and at times, just downright painful. I think I was only about six weeks along when I declared that this will be my last pregnancy.

I always knew I wanted at least three children. Even when I was in the hospital, mere minutes after giving birth to my second son, Bug, I knew that - while I wanted a break from baby-making - I was already thinking about having a third child. The strange thing is though, I am just not loving this pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to have another baby, and to meet this baby, I just kind of want to be done being pregnant.

I have an app on my phone that updates me on where I am in my pregnancy and what is happening each week. And every time I look at it, I can't help but gaze longingly at the "time remaining" section.

34 weeks, 5 days.

30 weeks, 3 days.

28 weeks, 6 days.

25 weeks, 2 days, (as of this morning).

Every time I see these numbers, I find myself trying to convert them into something that doesn't sound like another military deployment, because, that's basically where I'm at right now: just under six months to go.

This morning I was telling myself that the summer will go by quickly, and that I will be keeping busy with the boys, and before I know it, it will be September and I will be heading into my final few weeks of being pregnant.

But then I had to stop myself.

I wished last summer away. All of it.

With Husband gone on deployment, I didn't want the days and weeks and months to take long,  so I filled them up with as much as I could to pass the time, and it worked pretty well. But I can't do that again. I cannot wish away two summers of my life. Even though I may not always be comfortable, or loving being pregnant, I need to be present for my boys.

This is my last summer with just two children. This is our last summer in this house, by the beach. Possibly our last summer in Washington. Most of all, this is our first summer in two years to have Husband home, so I want to take advantage of it as much as I can, and relax and enjoy every day to its fullest, rather than wishing time would speed up.

I don't mean to complain, really. I know there are so many women in the world who would gladly suffer through sickness and fatigue and any other horrible pain, just to have a baby, and I don't mean to diminish this blessing whatsoever. I know we are lucky that we are so incredibly fertile. Like my mom says, all Husband and I have to do is put our slippers together and POOF! Baby.

So in the coming days and weeks, I will be working on my attitude and trying to enjoy this as much as I can, especially since it is my last pregnancy, and I know that once this baby is born I will probably start crying to Husband about how I miss being pregnant.

And when that day comes, I want everyone to remind me of this post. Please.

Worst Flight Ever

The wings were iced over. 

The ground crew kept deicing them, but within a couples minutes they were iced over again. We were nearly 45 minutes late taking off because of this continual deicing process. 

My worst flight ever.

It was December 2003, in Billings, Montana. My brother and I were on board a Horizon flight, all packed and set to go home for the Christmas holiday, except that it was five degrees outside, snowing, getting dark, and those freaking wings wouldn't stop icing over.

My brother Tim is a commercial pilot, (I know, cool huh? Sorry girls, he's married). But in the winter of 2003, he was still going to school for aeronautical science. He had been flying for several years at that point though, so I liked flying with him. Whenever I would get nervous about a bit of turbulence, or a strange sound, I would just look at him, and if he appeared relaxed and unconcerned, then I knew there wasn't any reason to be worried. 

The fact that we were delayed getting off the ground due to bad weather and ice didn't seem to bother Tim, so I tried to not let it bother me. I was so thankful when we finally took off and got above the clouds. I figured we were good to go for the next hour and a half to Seattle. It was a small plane, and Tim and I were seated in the very front row. The flight attendant was preparing to start the beverage service. He stood only a couple feet away from us, getting his cart ready.

All of the sudden, we heard a pop and then an alarm started screeching. Loud. Piercing. Terrifying. The flight attendant's face froze and he ran - RAN - to his seat at the back of the plane. He had abandoned us! I looked at Tim - my last resort - for comfort. He looked at me, serious as I'd ever seen him, and said, "Tighten your seatbelt. It can't hurt."

OMG! OMG! OMG! We're all going to crash and die!

That alarm went on for what seemed like an eternity, although it was probably less than two minutes. No joke, folks, it sounded like the roof of the plane was going to rip off, sucking us all out into the frigid air with it. My heart was racing and I was saying as many prayers as I could. 

Finally the captain came on and gave some explanation, that, honestly, I didn't even hear because I was still too frightened. In the end though, we landed safely in Seattle. But that was my worst flight ever.

When you have kids, the things that used to scare you about going on airplanes kind of shifts. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I still worry about the plane crashing. But when I travel with my kids, my thoughts are usually occupied with worrying about whether or not they will behave on the flight, and hoping that they don't make a terrible scene.

I've had some pretty interesting flights since becoming a mom. In fact, it started before Jacob was even born. 

Richard was taking me to Virginia to see where his parents live. We were on a red-eye flight. I was about 10 weeks pregnant with Jacob, and while I hadn't dealt with any real morning sickness, I had bouts with nausea every now and then.

Everything was going fine, to begin with. Richard was sitting at the window, I was in the middle, and a man, who I did not know, was in the aisle seat. About an hour into the flight, I started feeling notsogood. I was afraid to tell Richard, because I didn't want him to freak out, so I tried to convince my stomach to chill, and to understand that it was seriously not a convenient time.

It didn't work. 

Richard looked over at me at one point, and said, "You look kind of pale. Are you feeling okay?" 

Right then, my nausea kicked into overdrive. I knew we had a problem! I shook my head no, afraid to open my mouth to speak. Richard started searching desperately in the seat back pockets for barf bags, and OF COURSE, we were the only two seats on the entire plane that didn't have them. 

Uh oh. 

Vomit was coming up my throat, I slapped my hand over my mouth, in an attempt to keep it down. Richard looked terrified, thinking I was about to puke all over him. I knew I couldn't wait for him to ask someone if we could borrow their barf bag, so I literally jumped over the stranger next to me, and raced like 13 rows up to the front bathroom. I just barely made it. I didn't even have a chance to shut the door behind me before I was throwing up.

So that was a bad flight.

Then we had a nice break for awhile. Jacob was a really easy baby. Before he was six months old he flew to Hawaii, California and Virginia, and he did great on all those flights. After that we didn't do any flying for awhile. 

Last December we flew to Illinois to spend Christmas with Richard's parents and extended family. At that point, Jacob was 20 months old, and Ryan was 9 months. I had Jacob in my lap, and Richard had Ryan in his. Because of airplane rules we weren't allowed to sit in the same row, so Richard and Ryan were seated about three rows behind us. I knew Richard was nervous, since that was his first time flying with both the kids.

Not even five minutes into the flight, Ryan barfed all over Richard's shirt. Since I was so far ahead of them, and in a window seat, there was nothing I could do to help, so he sat there for the next three hours with a whimpering Ryan, and dried puke on his sweater.

Jacob didn't throw up on me, but I think I might have preferred that. He spent the entire three hours screaming and kicking at me and thrashing his arms. It was exhausting to say the least, and only slightly embarrassing.

The minute we landed in Chicago and the four of us were reunited, Richard looked me straight in the eye and said, "We're not having any. more. kids. And we're never flying with them again!"

That was our last trip with them. It's been almost nine months, and today we are heading to California to visit my mom's family. I keep telling myself that it's not even a three hour flight, and that this will be Jacob's first time in his car seat on the plane. He normally loves being in his car seat, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that we don't wind up being that family that the rest of our fellow passengers shoot dirty looks at, and then recant to their family and friends for years afterward of their "Worst flight ever".

Please tell me about your worst flight ever, so that hopefully, whatever ends up happening today, won't be as bad as the stories you share. 

And if they aren't worse than today's flight, then I guess I will just have to update this post on my worst flight ever.

Yum

It's weird how memories can suddenly pop into your head, seemingly out of nowhere.

I remember being on bed rest with Ryan, and having to go in to be checked out by my doctor, to make sure that labor had slowed down, and that hopefully Ryan would keep cooking for a few more days, if not weeks. Richard wouldn't be home for a couple more days, so my mom was going to drive Jacob and me to Everett for the appointment.

When you're pregnant, you get weighed every time you go to the doctor's office. I know, how cruel, right? Like it's not bad enough that you gain thirty pounds, but they want to remind you every time you're there. They lure you in with fun things, like ultrasounds and getting to hear the baby's heartbeat - Ah! But not so fast, my dear. First, you must step upon the evil scale, whose number gets bigger with each visit.

Because of this, I have my obstetrician visits down to a science. I always book them first thing in the morning, I wear the lightest outfit possible, which is usually a light summer dress (this outfit is seriously inconvenient in the winter months), and I don't eat or drink anything until the appointment is over. As you can imagine, by the time I get out of the doctor's office I am pretty much famished. In fact, the further I get into my pregnancies, the worse it is. Near the end, I have to start bringing a granola bar or some small snack that I can shove down my mouth just as soon as the weigh-in is over...and I do my best to ignore the strange looks I get from the nurse.

Anyways, so my mom was taking me to this doctor's appointment. As we were walking out the door I decided to grab a muffin from my freezer. Yes, I keep muffins in my freezer, they last longer that way. These were actually a unique kind of muffin, individually wrapped in clear plastic, and they are called "Vita Tops", because they are just the top part of a muffin and therefore, kind of flat. So I didn't really look, I just grabbed the muffin top that appeared to be the banana bread flavor.

I tried to schedule my doctor's visit early, but it ended up being like a 10am appointment, and since I had been awake since 7:30, I was pretty hungry by the time I finished. I raced out to the hallway, and as I waited for the elevator to arrive, I pulled out the muffin, tore open the plastic wrapper and took an enormous bite.

Hm.

Something...about this muffin...seems....off.

I pulled my hand back for a closer look. Turns out, in my haste, I hadn't grabbed the banana bread Vita Top. Instead, I had grabbed an individually wrapped frozen breaded chicken patty! YUM!

Or not. And while it had somewhat thawed, it was still pretty frozen in the middle. Oh, and it tasted nothing like a banana bread muffin. Oh, and it was absolutely disgusting.

Banana Nut Vita Top

Average frozen, breaded chicken patty.

I was horrified! I spit out the bite I had taken and threw the rest in the garbage can. Sure, there were some people sitting nearby giving me raised eyebrows, but pregnancy allows you the wonderful excuse of deciding that any food, on a moment's notice, can make you want to vomit until you dry-heave.

In hindsight, maybe I should have embraced the silver lining in this situation, and gone back to have the nurse re-weigh me after my little muffin mix-up.