motherhood, the breast things in life are free

Miracles

It would have been a lovely Monday if not for the fact that it is getting quite unbearably hot around here. It seems compounded by the fact that my pregnant ass is generating heat like a Josper Charcoal Broiler Oven. As I’m sitting here spritzing myself with the spray my mom uses to water her plants, I so wish I had a tub of ice to soak my super hot, heat generating self in for the rest of the day.

But then I wouldn’t be able to blog because I’m probably going to end up dropping my laptop into the tub and electrocuting myself. Which would be bad because I do have something I wanted to talk about today.

Days like these, I wish I had a personal assistant to type whatever I said while I sat in my ice-tub all day. And also feed me grapes. And massage my feet.

The husband says it would be a whole lot easier to blast the air conditioning because people these days don’t have to rely on a tub full of ice to cool down. But the man hasn’t been pregnant before so he obviously doesn’t know the difference. Sitting in an air-conditioned room having to do my own typing isn’t nearly as fun as sitting in my ice-tub with a grape-feeding, feet-massaging personal assistant who was also good at dictation.

Anyhow, last night, I dreamt about Finn. Or rather, I dreamt about myself giving birth to Finn, who by the way, was beautiful and perfect and tiny. In fact, he was far too tiny because in my dream, I had gone into labor and given birth to him at 26 weeks. The whole time I kept screaming that it was far too early for him to be born and they were supposed to STOP HIM FROM COMING OUT QUICK PUSH HIM BACK IN NOW!! But he was intent on coming out and because he was so tiny, all his organs haven’t fully developed so they had to take him away and stick lots of tubes into his body.

Even though it was a dream, it was terrifying because there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.

I know I sometimes kid about how difficult it is to be pregnant and make a baby but the truth is that while being pregnant is occasionally uncomfortable, I’m really not much more than a storage facility. I mean, I go about my day, go to sleep and wake up and without me even thinking about it, the baby develops and grows. God is the one forming the little fingers and ears and intestines and all I do is channel part of my bacon sandwich to the baby. I can’t make him grow any faster or slower or tell him when to come out.

And I’m glad because if I was the one who had to call the shots and make the baby, he’d probably have misshapen toes and a gallbladder where his liver should be.

This being the third pregnancy, I hardly even think about being pregnant until the discomfort from the backaches and constipation hits me, then I send the husband passive aggressive emails about how difficult the pregnancy is because it usually results in an extra back rub when he comes home from work. Or maybe a tub of ice-cream.

I always hear people say that having kids is a miracle and such cliches usually make me cringe inside but today, I’m a little sappy.

So I woke up this morning and after checking to make sure that Finn was still snug in my uterus and growing healthily, I snuck over to give my 2 other kids a hug, thankful for how perfect they are. 

picture perfect

A thousand words and then some

A couple of weeks back, we finally did a family photo shoot, the kind shot by proper photographers who knew things like backlight compensation and spot metering. And since I’m usually the one behind the camera, I thought it’d be nice to do a shoot with all of us before I get too preggers to appear in photos.

The pictures were taken by Josh (and Esther, his beautiful fiancé) from The Beautiful Moment Photography (Facebook page here) and they turned out absolutely gorgeous. A big thank you for spending your afternoon running after the kids and blowing bubbles.

We’re going to print out a whole bunch to put up at home – the only problem is deciding which ones to pick because I want them all.

pregnancy

It’s a boy!

Uh huh. Looks like there’ll be more testosterone and manly grunts on the horizon because us girls are going to be outnumbered around here.

I know I’ve been saying how my gut feel was that it’s going to be another girl but turns out I was wrong again. That makes it 0 for 2 as far as my mother’s intuition goes. Well at least this time, I knew better than to call him Hailey for the first trimester so instead I called him baby just to be safe.

Speaking of names, the original plan was to call the next boy Travis but we were sitting in the doctor’s office and we both felt like this one didn’t feel like a Travis.

This one sort of feels like a Finn.

Not short for Finnegan or Finnick or Finley. Just Finn.

Finn Kao.

Ok bring on the jokes – seriously, if you can think of any puns, do share. We couldn’t think of any but just in case we’re missing out something obvious, it’s better to find out now than 5 years down the road when he goes to kindergarten.