WeRuGoing? WeRuGoing?

For any first time mom, any baby milestone is a personal achievement, even when your baby is doing all the work. I for one, freaked out when Ozzy didn't start rolling over at four months, nor walking at 8 months.

Lately, it has been this speech delay issue that a health care provider took note of at 20 months. I was a mental patient since then ( metaphorically). I was trying every trick on the book, including letting him cry until he says milk. Of course he wouldn't say "milk" and so he'd cry, then I'd cry.

A couple of days ago, my son started eating something crumbly on the bed, and I told him "Not on the bed. Not on the bed." He looked at me with understanding and left the bed alone. Surprised by his response, I turned to my husband and said, "Did he just understand me?". I was puzzled until yesterday when I asked Ozzy to " Sit properly". He put down his legs from a kneeling position from the chair and continued what he was doing.

We were playing in the yard yesterday afternoon and he started to run to the far end of the house. Naturally, I screamed "Where are you going? Where are you going?". He ran towards me shouting "WeRuGoing? WeRuGoing?" And he was so cute. He pronounced "going" perfectly.

Thank you Lord! Good job , Ozzy!

Mommy Night Terrors

It's a glorious feeling to watch your son take his first wobbly step. The precious boy is walking! I still remember that day Ozzy took three steps towards me and hugged me ... to keep his balance. His face delighted and proud. His smile drew a wide crescent moon on his face. I loved it! I felt drunk happy!

Then he started walking... then jumping ... then climbing...then hopping...and then trying to get himself to fly. I had terrors. I worried too much that my blood would stop flowing for a moment several times. I felt like the best solution was to strap him onto a chair FOR GOOD! Or at least until he turns 21!

I had night terrors. After a peaceful day of routine, I would suddenly be dreaming about poking his eye out somewhere and he was bleeding. And I would dialogue in my dream and say "There was nothing I could do. I've damaged my boy forever" and resolve that I would love him no matter what. There was this one time I dreamed that he had been walking freely and I warned him  not to go down the stairs. In my dream, I knew he would fall, but I thought I kept warning him. Then he fell. He fell down eighteen steps, leaving permanent damage that I couldn't do anything about.

I am constantly worried...and paranoid even during times when I'm supposed to be resting. I just need to know how legal it is to strap him on a chair for the rest of his life.

Things I learned while being a Stay-at-Home mom:

1. Every penny counts, but every moment matters.

2. Things rarely go your way.

3. Spontaneous combustion is possible between mother and child.

4. A mother's instinct is true. My son rarely got sick when I was in charge of his health.

5. People love to criticize and give unsolicited advice. People "think" they can do better by your son by pointing out your "errors".

6. Lunch hours at work are so divine.

7. The more I took care of my son the more I loved him. More interaction creates more fondness.

Labor

Anybody who’s given birth has enough material to write a chapter of a book. And anybody who has given birth for the first time has an experience all to her own. My friends and I notoriously tell each other the same story again and again, and like Dory (in Nemo), we listen to each other as if we were hearing it for the first time. The anesthesia helps us on that one, I think. Clearly, our feelings, and emotions never wane about the day our first born came.

It doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read, although reading up is a good way to go about the process.  I read somewhere that you’re supposed to conserve your energy for all the pushing you have to do during delivery and that it doesn’t help to use up all your strength cursing at your husband during labor. That was helpful! I’ve also read that natural, un-medicated birthing was the best.  I told my OB about not wanting an epidural. I wanted to give birth as naturally as I could! She gave me a smile. A smile I could only understand the day I went into labor. Two years later, then maybe more, I could still remember that smile on her face the day I so casually decided on the matter. It said I was up for something heroic, and only heroes, physically tested in battle, can do. 

Labor took a good twelve hours, half of which I faced bravely without the epidural. The longer I went into labor, the more out of body I felt. I wasn’t screaming, or crying, or whining. I was saving up my energy for pushing. But there was enough pain to recap, my adolescence, my first heart ache, my failures, and my disappointments, my regrets and every bit of traumatic hurtful thing that ever happened to me. I said to myself, this is what dying must feel like. There was so much pain, and there was so little of me lying in that labor room. I was looking at the clock thinking, ‘this is taking far too long.’

Doctors and nurses were busy all around me. Mothers in labor were rolling in and out. For some reason, the labor rooms were full, and some mothers had to bunk with another…haha…kind of like the red cross in battle. And I could hear almost everything from everyone. Somebody was going to have a c section because, apparently, she’s been in labor since the day before. Somebody was heaving like she was giving away her last breath to every person she ever came across. But nobody was actually cursing at their husbands. I guess that stuff happens only in the movies.

I was lying in my own private section, with a devoted nurse (kind of like an angel) jotting down everything on a sheet of paper. I was as limp as a rag doll. By the time somebody decided to give me the anesthetic (I wasn’t really sharp on who decided on it-- which the doctors warned me of, by the way, and made me sign a waver for.), all of me was somewhere zen-- er, else. My impressively visual self couldn’t remember what anything looked like.  It took three people to curl me up for that first doze of comfort.  I was quiet, lifeless, not a sliver of anticipation in my face. When the anesthesia  hit me it made a load of difference. I began to read a book.  I felt the contractions coming, but my ‘self’ was beginning to come back to my body. I was getting ready to give birth. I remember telling my friend, I was going to push “para sa lechon!--sa binyag”.

I gave birth at 8:57pm, to a 7.2 lb baby, 49cm long, after six hours of indescribable pain, 6 hours of tolerable pain, and five pushes. Yes, five pushes. Even I couldn’t believe how God could let me off that easy.  It felt like I was out of the delivery room in twenty minutes.  My chunk-of-cheese (a name I fondly call him now when he’s being an angel) was crying until he was swaddled tightly in a blanket.  He looked at me as if to say “mom” in confident silence. I’ve crossed the threshold. I have performed a right that only women have the opportunity of.  I have given birth.