Month: August 2015

Okay, so here I am 35 plus weeks into my third pregnancy.  Mostly I don’t really have the time to think about the fact that I am pregnant, with a three year old and a one year old to be worried about all the time.  I mean, I always know that I am simply exhausted and sore all the time, but I don’t really have time to think about the amazing thing that is happening inside my body.  But, what I have found is that with each pregnancy I have had some crazy, irrational fear.  I’m sure this is just another pregnancy symptom that all mothers get but no one talks about.  But, I was laying in bed the other night suddenly struck by my irrational fear for this pregnancy and I decided I should just put these fears out there.  Maybe someone will laugh at it.  Or, maybe someone else who is pregnant and having irrational fears will accidentally stumble upon this and find some relief in the fact that they are not alone.  So, here they are:

Pregnancy #1:  I was convinced, from the time I took my pregnancy test until the moment I held my daughter in my hand that the doctors were just playing some cruel trick on me.  Every time I had an appointment I went in with the expectation that the doctor would look at me and say, “oh, sorry, you are not actually pregnant, you are just getting fat.”  Even though I could feel the baby moving inside, even though I could hear the baby’s heartbeat, even though I could feel the contractions, I never really believed that it was real.

Pregnancy #2: Second time around I knew it was the real deal, but that didn’t stop my fears.  During my second pregnancy I was convinced that something was going to happen to my baby.  Every time I had an appointment I had a sinking feeling that there would simply no longer be a heart beat, or that the heart beat would be irregular, or something.  I was convinced that I would either lose my baby or that something terrible would happen and the doctors wouldn’t be able to sustain my baby’s life for very long after birth.  In spite of being able to feel the baby moving inside, in spite of hearing a strong heart beat at every appointment, I just felt like something bad would happen.

Pregnancy #3: This time, I know my baby is really there, and I know my baby is healthy.  My fear this time is about me.  I had myself almost to tears the other night as this fear hit me.  My fear this time is that I will not make it through the delivery.  I know that it is not as common any more, but I also know that it still happens sometimes.  I know my children would be fine if anything were to happen to me, but I don’t want to miss my children growing up, I want to be a part of their lives.  This fear is the worst yet, I do not want this to happen to my children.  And, even though I know that this is an irrational fear, just like the fears I had during my first and second pregnancies, I just can’t shake it, and I can’t stop thinking about how terrible it would be for my children to have to go through that, and for my husband to have to look after three very young children on his own knowing that the youngest is the reason that I am not there to help.  Knowing that there is no life insurance on me to help my husband through it if something did happen.  But, it is just an irrational fear, the baby and I are both healthy and will make it through this.  Then, one day, maybe, I will look back at these terrible things that I was so worried about and have a little chuckle about how ridiculous it is.

So, every year we take a road trip in the summer.  Sometimes we take two, a short one just to New Brunswick for a couple of nights and a longer one to Ontario to visit my mother-in-law.  This year we did one two week road trip, we went to Quebec for a week instead of New Brunswick and then on to Ontario.  I spent months online trying to find ways to entertain my three year old daughter.  I spent time on Pinterest for the first time ever.  I do not like Pinterest.  I am not sure who these people are on Pinterest, but it is near impossible to make anything half as nice as what they put up for anywhere near the price they say they paid to make it.  However, I decided I wanted lots of distractions for my daughter so we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on the DVD player.  So, what did I find?

I found a Lego kit, amazing, a small metal lunch box, some Lego and some felt, seems easy enough, and should be able to be made fairly cheaply.  Not cheap.  I bought a small metal lunch box at the dollar store for $3, peel and stick felt from Walmart for maybe $6 (I don’t really remember), a bag of random Lego at Value Village for $4, but then I had to find a Lego baseboard.  New these are $10 which I was not willing to spend on this, they did not have any at Value Village, so I hit up Kijiji, this is not something you can find easily on Kijiji either, maybe because they are so expensive, I don’t know.  I did end up finding one on Kijiji that came with a small amount of Lego bricks for $7, I didn’t dare say what I was going to use it for because they may not have sold it to me if I had said I was going to cut it up.  I decided to use hot glue to hold it together, seemed like a good idea at the time, however, day 1 of our trip we had to pick up a double sided foam mounting tape for $2 at the gas station to fix it.  So, for roughly $22 I managed to make a little Lego kit.  It was worth it!  She loves it and still plays with it now.

I also found an activity binder.  Filled with wonderful, quiet activities perfect for in the car.  They used three ring pencil cases to put activities in the binder, everything was nicely organized.  How could this be bad, and how hard could it be to find some fun activities to put in there?  Well, turns out it could be very difficult.  I wanted to have a magnet board so she could have some magnetic activities, maybe some letter and number activities, maybe put some magnets on the bottom of some animals so she could do some pretend play in the car without risk of losing the pieces.  I could not find anything that would work for a magnet board, and by the time I realized I already had a magnet board in my house it was too late to make up any fun activities so she just had some random magnets to play with.  I had a hard time finding three ring pencil cases, too.  I ended up finding some at the dollar store but they were quite narrow so once I got the activities in the binder it was hard to close.

But, I put in some small toys and finger puppets for pretend play; some craft sticks with velcro for building; some foam beads and pipe cleaners for threading with a foam bunny with holes punched in it and some string for lacing; some felt pieces to go with the peel and stick felt I attached to the back of the binder; a tic tac toe board that came from a valentine’s card that I laminated and used velcro to attach the X’s and O’s; a number page, also laminated with velcro for the pieces; and an I Spy bag that I made with glitter pebbles from the dollar store and some small toys from Value Village.

Then, the binder I used also had a file folder part where I put some other activities. I put in a few books; a reusable sticker book; a sorting box with foam beads; a tin of wooden blocks that she got in her stocking at Christmas; a puzzle from the dollar store with velcro so she wouldn’t lose the pieces; and a notebook with paper for drawing and some markers.

So many things for her to play with, this should make the trip easy, right?  Wrong, this was a bad idea.  It was too difficult for her to get into and too big for her to keep on her lap.  She used it when we were at our destination, but didn’t use much of it while we were driving.

The sorting box was definitely a favourite.  So, some of my work paid off, but not as much as what I had put into it.  Next time I will just pick up some of those magic marker books and other little activities designed for in the car that take no effort on my part.

She also had her DVD player with lots of DVDs to choose from.  I set it up so that I could put the DVDs in and start and stop the movies when needed.  This was great because it meant that I could decide when she had had enough movies and I could also turn it off if she fell asleep.  She brought along her LeapPad as well.  Which was great until the batteries died and I realized I didn’t bring the actual charger for the LeapPad with us.  We also had a great little Lego mp3 player.  It was an amazing find.  Remember that bag of Lego bricks I said I purchased at Value Village for $4?  Well, inside that bag was this mp3 player.  I erased all the music on it and put on songs that she likes.  We spent some time on YouTube listening to songs to decide what she wanted on there.  I think this accidental find was by far the best one for keeping her entertained on the drive!

But what about the baby?  How will I keep him entertained?  I looked all over the internet for ideas.  There are no Moms posting fabulous ideas for entertaining an infant on a road trip.  So, he was left with just a bag full of toys, mostly toys he had his whole life, but with one new toy, an O-Ball rattle.  He loved this new toy, I am very glad that I bought it for him.  But, being an infant strapped into an infant car seat, he was not able to dig through his wonderful bag of goodies to keep himself entertained.  I had to sit back there with him and pull out new toys every so often, or mix him a bottle of formula.  But, he did very well in the car for all that time, I can’t really complain.

In Quebec we stayed in a vacation condo so that we could be together with my parents, my sister, her husband and their four children.  It was great, it is so much more relaxing to rent a place that is like a home rather than a hotel room.  We were able to cook our own meals for supper and we could put the kids to bed without having to worry about keeping them awake as we lay in the bed next to them watching “grown-up” TV.  There was no air conditioning and it was HOT, but it was adequate for our needs.

We did a lot of touristy things while we were there as well.  We went to the Montmorency Falls, the cyclorama (waste of time), the church that was next to the cyclorama, the Aquarium du Québec, the Méga Parc which is an indoor amusement park in the middle of a Mall, Old Québec City and Valcartier Village for the water park.  Aside from the cyclorama, these were all worth the trip.  I was a little disappointed with the water park, being pregnant there wasn’t much that I was able to do there.  But, in comparison to where we normally go the water park and the amusement park were amazing.  The aquarium was impressive as well, it was much bigger than we had anticipated and we didn’t really allow ourselves the time to see the whole thing, but we still had a lot of fun.

Ontario was amazing as always as well.  We took the children to visit their Grammie and Grob.  For Lily, anything with Grammie is exciting since she only gets to see her every couple of months.  We did a lot of fun things while we were there as well.  We went to the Ripley’s Aquarium and Canada’s Wonderland.  We also took the kids to a river to play in the water with Grammie’s dog.  We went up to Grammie and Grob’s camp and camped there for a night.  We did a bit of shopping and went to a swimming pool.  Both of the kids had a great time.

So, a baby’s first birthday is, for a lot of Moms, a time to hit up Pinterest for ideas on cakes, decorations, favours, snack trays and I’m sure so much more that all follow some specific theme.  Because we all want our child’s first birthday to be extra memorable, right?  Because they are going to remember it, right?  Well, I am not one of those Moms.  With our daughter, I went to the dollar store and bought some generic birthday decorations, plastic table cloths and a number 1 candle.  I also ordered a Minnie Mouse cake using a gift certificate my mother bought at an auction (read: it didn’t cost me anything).  I did pick up some party favours since I knew there would be some kids who are used to going to parties and getting favours, but nothing themed and nothing that took me any time.  I threw the little plastic toys and stickers into very generic bags and set them out on the table.  There was no theme, just a bunch of people getting together for cake.  I also did a cake smash photo shoot for her because they look like fun and a great way to preserve that first taste of cake.  I should also mention that we ended up postponing her first birthday party for six months because of snow storms, but we still had it because every child deserves a first birthday party, no matter how simple it is.

For our second child, I decided that I was going to go even simpler!  We still did the cake smash photos, but we did them outside because who cares if cake gets smeared all over the grass, it will just wash away or the birds and bugs will eat it.  And for the party, we will meet people somewhere in public where we will have to clean up, but there wont be as much to clean up, and we can just leave when it’s done.  A picnic party, perfect for a summer birthday.  This also means, no decorations, no party favours, just snack trays and cake.  So simple, how could this go wrong?  Well, it could rain, then we could need to come up with an alternate location, and that alternate location could end up being our house.  This is what happened, we had this birthday party in our house.  It was a rather small gathering in comparison to our first child’s, but there was cake and there were snacks.  No decorations, although I do still have the dollar store birthday banner from Lily’s first birthday, just people and food.  And do you know what?  It was just as nice as Lily’s first birthday party.  And, much less stressful, I can’t imagine if I had been up all night for weeks on Pinterest trying to make his birthday perfect.  What does it matter anyway?  He won’t remember the details, all he will remember are the photos and the stories.