The Gospel According to Karith: What I Would Tell My Pre-Pregnant Self

While being a mother has truly been the most awesome thing I have ever done in terms of love, time, energy and effort there are things I wish I would have known/done before I became one.

I'm not mad, but feel like my friends who did this before me should have done a better job of warning me. Maybe they did, but like most impending moms I was just too excited/ scared/ nervous to listen, and my friends just did their due diligence by reassuring me that it was all going to be okay. And that's what good friends are supposed to do. 

I do vaguely remember a few friends and my mother saying something like, "You're going to be so tired after the new baby gets here, that you need to sleep when the baby sleeps." Which is all great in theory, but especially if this is your first baby, you're going to be so in awe of the little creature that came out of you that you'll be spending the first few weeks just staring at them every second you get especially when they're asleep.

If I was sleeping I NEVER would have gotten this precious shot!

I'm also sure they write about it in all of the "What to Expect..." types of books, but I don't think they put it like this.  So for all of you about-to-be-mommies or mothers of newborns this is the Gospel According to Karith:

I. Do NOT Take (ALONE) Bathroom Time For Granted!
    

   a) Take long enjoyable showers for as long as you can stand to be under the water. Same goes for baths. Take lots and lots of bubble baths or baths with Essential Oils. Luxuriate! I promise you will miss this! It will be a very long time before you can do this again uninterrupted. 

  b) Poop like a man! Not trying to be crass, but what I mean is take your freakin' time. Don't think about all the other things you could be doing in that half hour - as we women tend to do.Take your favorite magazine in with you and read that sucker from cover to cover until one or both of your feet fall asleep. OR take a book in with you- I don't care if it's 50 Shades or  A Tale of Two Cities but R.I. P. Ladies- Read In Peace. You will long for it one day.

  c) Take your time doing your hair. After a baby a quick brush and up in a clip or pony tail is considered "doing your hair". That's why so many women cut their hair after they have a baby. It's just easier to be able to get up and go. Weaves and braids are a great solution to this too!

  d)  Give your skin love. While that's a habit we should never fall out of THE LAST thing you're thinking about are your pores if your baby is "cluster feeding", teething or dealing with diaper rash. So whether it's putting a mask on a couple of times a week or having a full on facial somewhere (like a real spa). Do it! Relish it!

 II. Dress nicely. 

   a) Put on that cute outfit you've been saving and accessorize! Not that you won't have opportunities to dress up after baby, but if you normally looked like you stepped out of a Talbot's catalog your head's going to spin at how easy it is to spend all-day in a comfy t-shirt and yoga pants or pajama bottoms.

  b) Wear make-up as you regularly would- no need to over do it and look like a clown. But that pregnancy glow will wear the hell off after about 2 weeks of not sleeping your regular 8 hours.

III. Enjoy ALL positions. Yes I'm talking about sex AND sitting and sleeping.

   a) Even if you don't, sleep on your stomach, because you won't be able to at a certain point in your pregnancy and  you're going to want to. So get it out of your system now.

   b) Same with all the wild sex positions you and your honey can come up with. Do them ALL. TRUST ME at one point some positions will be like an uncomfortable game of Twister and some downright impossible and then when baby  eventually comes you may not have the same kind of time to go through the karma sutra you once did. Because a cry from this little thing will kill the mood instantly.

I write this with love because that's hopefully how you got into this in the first place. I hope those of you who have yet to give birth, give this heed and I hope that those of you who have been in this boat pass the Gospel According to Karith along to your unsuspecting friends. We women need to stick together 'cause who else is going to tell it like it is?!

Much Love,
~Karith

Mommy Blogs- My Godsend or My Curse?

I thank God for the support I get from groups on the mommy and mommy-to-be websites. What to Expect.com and Just Mommies, Cafe Mom and Babble of some of my faves to peruse. But I'm finding that they are my blessing and my curse. Meaning it's been a lifesaver having a place to go and read up on folks who are going through EXACTLY what I'm going through at the same exact time- the night sweats, the crazy cravings, the silly spouses etc... That's the upside. The downside is I get to read about conditions, reactions and a few tragedies that I didn't even know existed. Ironically, the tragedies i.e. miscarriages I can make peace with. I serve that up to being a God-thing and an agreement of souls.

It's the completely out of this world "side affects" of pregnancy I'm having some issues with. So if you're someone like me who has even the slightest tendency towards hypochondria your goose is cooked. You should see my eyes bug out when I read what these ladies are sharing about what's happening on the surface of their epidermis like abnormal hair growth in unusual places i.e. on their back  (not me thank goodness). And let's not forget dry patches of skin that make you think you're half reptilian. Oh, and then there's the part of about extra saliva and mucous production. That's delectable.

I'm sure next week I'll be reading about some poor woman who developed leprosy from being prego. It's all enough to make you want to put a sign up quarantining yourself  from the rest of the world. (Like pregnancy was contagious- 'course in my neighborhood in SoCal it might be.)

It's a few months in when the really exciting physical stuff starts happening in pregnancy because your blood vessels are increasing, you've got twice as much water in your system and your sweet little darling and placenta are taking up more room and weight. So make way for things like severe headaches, back aches, sciatica and leg cramps. Ooh let the fun begin. Um, how does that Duggar woman do it again?

My Mom...and The Baby "Bean"

From the moment CJ and I found out we were pregnant we were excited. In all honestly, he was a little more excited than me. But I kind of think that's normal. I had A LOT to take in- not just that my life would be changing FOREVER, but so would my body over the next better part of a year. Of course we told my parents first. We e-mailed our family overseas and then kept the secret to ourselves as best we could for the first few months. We diligently began reading everything we could about our baby-to-come and it's development. Excuse me, I mean his or her development. My mother HATES when we call the baby "it". But again, honest moment here- that's what it (he/she) was to me the first several weeks. I mean you don't really look any different and aside from being tired and nauseous you don't feel that different. Nice or not, I compare the first few months of pregnancy to having a really bad cold or the flu- just sans the sniffles. But I digress, so back to my mother. 
My Mom is one of the coolest women you could ever hope to meet, but she does carry herself in a certain manner. I like to liken her to Claire Huxtuble  which is very fitting as growing up my life was JUST like the Cosby Show. (Sometimes I wondered if they had hidden cameras in our home and then they just took what they saw to make episodes.) Like Claire, my mother is the consummate lady, extremely intelligent, always professional, but still knows how to laugh and have fun. However, she does have her "snob moments". Meaning if something or someone isn't too her liking she'll find a way to convey that so that everyone regardless of their IQ gets the message.
Sometimes it's a verbal condemnation other times it can just be a look. She was ALWAYS good with looks- that's why I didn't get spanked in public as a child because she didn't have to. Her look said/did it all. And I knew if I kept up whatever I was doing that was inappropriate or embarrassing to her I'd be in more trouble than I bargained for when I got home. 
As, my husband and I were following the growth of our little one on all these mommy-to-be sites from What to Expect When You're Expecting to The Bump to Babble.com we found that they give you weekly fetal updates about your baby's development. When it starts to grow ears, or fingernails or when the liver and spleen start to develop- it's really fascinating even if you're not having a kid. But they also do something really cute on these sites to better help you comprehend how big, or rather little, your baby is- they compare your baby to food. 

So in your first couple of weeks it's the size of a pea, then a blueberry, then a bean, then a plum, then a peach...then a lemon...an orange- you're following me. Well, the name that stuck for us was Bean. Don't ask me why, but it did. So my husband to this day will rub my belly which really isn't even showing yet ('cause it's my first pregnancy) and he calls the baby "The Bean". He's even created terminology around it. For example when I'm on stage and I mixed a joke up or forget the punch line- he's like, "I saw you get "beaned" up there." Or when I had my awful bouts of nausea, he'd rub my back and say sympathetically, "I'm sorry you're getting 'beaned' so badly." It's become terminology around our house and kind of a cute nickname for a child we clearly can't decide on name for yet (see The Infamous Name Game Part I or The Infamous Name Game Part Deux). 

Well, during a phone conversation while I was relaying to my mom how excited CJ was about becoming a father I happened to mention that our pet name for the baby was "The Bean". You would have thought I called the kid Alouicious! She didn't even find it even mildly amusing. In fact, she was rather indignant when she replied back, "That IS NOT a bean you're carrying- that is MY ANGEL!!!" I realize I could argue and have a never-ending mother/daughter fight about this. But I will concede. I suppose for someone who's in her mid-sixties who's friends are ALL grandmas by now, some several times over, this is HER ANGEL. So CJ and I will just call it "The Bean" in the privacy of our own home.

I Am Literally Becoming a Mummy

My husband, CJ, likes to joke that I'm actually 6,432 years old. He swears that I'm from ancient
Egyptian times and that if we went to the pyramids today we would find a hieroglyph of me. 'Course all I can picture is my face plastered over a figure that looks like it's doing the dance from the Bangles hit song "Walk Like an Egyptian."

 I am so not offended by this. I totally get that it's my husband's humorous way of addressing my incredible genetic make-up. I must give props where they're due; God & my ancestors have blessed me with melanin and close to zero wrinkles. Or, as I like to call it "The Black Don't Crack Factor". See, my husband is Australian and though he does brown nicely in the summer he has mostly Viking and Northern European ancestry which makes him rightfully jealous of my year-round tan. Even he admits that as the years go by he's going to look like a dirty old man while I'll continue to look like a fresh-faced 20-something even well into my 40's -God willing. I can't disagree so I tell him to take comfort in the fact that by then most people will just assume he has a buttload of money or a huge you-know-what or both. That usually makes him feel better. But egos aside- this pregnancy has me feeling like I could be a few thousand years old- or at least that my skin is! I have NEVER had an issue with dry skin outside of winter. But right now there's not enough Cocoa Butter in the world to soothe my dryness and occasional itching. That's right, I'm sexy and I know it! I will say I was warned by articles on the fantastic site from the What to Expect When You're Expecting people- but I had NO idea til it hit me! This is a war on my epidermis I have to going into combat mode. So short of an IV I'm pushing the extra fluids and hydrating my body inside & out so that I don't become the Mummy my darling husband already gives me credit for being. Guess I'm going to need that "find a bathroom" app. asap!