Leggings, Henry Higgins, Natural Childbirth and a Swear Word.

I must have pregnancy depression.  I’m not usually a depressed person, per se…I’m not the sunshine in the room, bubbly optimistic person either, but to say I am a basic depressed individual would be very wrong.

Lately, I’m just not happy.  Everything is getting on my nerves.  Everything.  Drivers of other cars are the worst.  Every other person on this planet is absolutely incompetent behind a wheel.  And there’s more.  So very much more.  But as Shawn would ask if he knew I was writing this:  “Why?  What’s the point?  This is so depressing.”  
I’ll blame it all on hormones.   They are annoying, too.

In no particular order of annoyance they are:

1.  People who do not follow any sort of rule at the curb pick up at the elementary school.  Is it that hard to drive to the curb, have the child get in the car and drive away?  Or must we park in the middle of the street, get out of the car, walk to the sidewalk, say Hi to a few people, and then mosey back to the car without a care in the world?  Where are the cops when idiots like this are around?  I would like to hit these women with my car.  (I also have pregnancy induced aggression leaning to violence.  When I explain this to my OB, he laughs and says:  “All women having their 5th baby are constantly pissed off at the world.”))

2.  People who put on their facebook status:  “Well, that was interesting!”  or, “Wow!”  or “Hhhmmm…..”  Just that….nothing more.  Give the story or don’t post.

3.  Leggings at church.  I’m not talking about under a dress, I’m talking about the style of leggings and a tunic, one that barely goes over your butt.  That is not a dress, it is a shirt.  That is not appropriate for Church.  There were 2 women in my prior ward who wore leggings and tunic shirts or longish sweaters to Church and it drove me INSANE!  They both had the bodies to pull it off, but I wanted to corner them and ask them: is fashion more important, or is wearing appropriate clothing to a conservative house of worship more important?  (These women were not in dire financial straits and this was all they could afford.  Most of the time their outfits from head to toe could not have cost less than $400.00—and that’s a conservative estimate.)  It’s not as if these women were first timers in a Mormon Church.  Also, leggings on anyone who is not a slim size 6---are a horrible, horrible fashion statement.

4.  Family Pictures of people from behind.  You know…they are all holding hands, walking away from the camera, or just staring at the sunset. The picture is of their backside.  No faces, no profiles—just the backside.   I may offend plenty of friends, because I’ve been given loads of these on Christmas cards these past few years, but this pose strikes me as particularly stupid.  Why do I want to look at the back of my friend’s head?  Or their butt?  Because I don’t.  Lamest photo trend I can think of.  When they come on Christmas cards, I actually throw them away they bother me so much.

5.  Women who say that  our bodies were made to give birth and that babies come when they want to.  Explain infertility, miscarriage, early fetal death, still births and the deaths of millions of women throughout history who didn’t have an option of a cesarean or medical intervention.  And why would a baby come when it “wants” to?  Why would a tiny little creature want to leave a warm, dark, comfy place in which it is never hungry, tired, sick or bored?  And if the average child from the ages of 1-18 can’t stay up as late as it wants to, or get up when it wants to, or get ready when the parents want it to, why do they assign such backward logic to a 5-9 pound human…as if they are the ones controlling the onset of labor anyhow?

6.  Granola Moms who spout natural childbirth…I hate these women.  I really, truly HATE these women.  I want them to be in extreme agony during childbirth.  I go on birth boards and give my really nasty all natural, 19 hours of natural childbirth story in which I had back labor, I barfed repeatedly and I honest to goodness begged Shawn with 100% sincerity  to kill me.  I get nasty emails for a week calling me a troll, and that I obviously wasn’t breathing properly in order to be so miserable during that childbirth, but I feel like I need to let women know that giving birth unmediated in a bathtub, or with a doula, or even at a hospital does not give them some golden stamp on their forehead, or make them better than anyone else, and that their child is not going to be the most gifted in the room, and frankly, no one gives a shit how you gave birth anyways.

7.  I might have channeled too much Henry Higgins from “Pygmalion” because I find myself critiquing everyone’s speech.  Not that I am the grammar queen…hah!  No, it’s speech inflections, accents, mispronunciations, lisps, lost consonants.  For instance, people who are not from the South who drop their g's:   “We’re not doin’ much.”  Then there is Madonna faking a British accent.  There is also this woman on the radio that is a cohost and she has the weirdest variations in her speech—she goes from a southern drawl, to speaking as if she has marbles in the back of her throat and listening to her makes me feel like I’m listening to fingernails being scraped on a chalkboard…but I force myself to listen because I cannot for the life of me figure out her problems.  I actually sent an email to the radio station saying I like the show, but until she gets some speech therapy I simply cannot listen to her anymore because her speech is so distracting. 

8.  I am annoyed that I got some lame college degree in History of all things and that I didn’t get a useful degree or a skill, such as being a Speech Pathologist or Dental Hygienist.  I’m doing one of those next, some day, when I have the time.  Seriously. 

9.  How easily my children break costly items.  I wont mention them here, for legal reasons, but I swear they could break a house, a car, a steel wall if given just the briefest amount of time.  I haven’t had anything nice in years, simply because someone will destroy it.  On a very small scale, I bought two necklaces on clearance at Target—they were both about $15.00.  I put the bag on a shelf in my closet, behind some hanging shirts.  The next day, in Brooke’s room, I discovered one of the necklaces in a pile under her bed, totally destroyed.  She fessed up that she wore it while doing cartwheels and it got so tangled that she had to rip if off.  This is the minutest of minor destructions that I must endure, but there it is—So darn ANNOYING!!!

10.  Books that fail to please.  True, it’s so much easier to critique than to create,  but seriously, can I get a good book out of every 5 I try?  Is that asking too much?  I think it might be.

11.  Imagine that for, whatever reason, you are in extremely tight economic conditions.  You might be losing a house, have been out of work for a while, had medical bills that ruined you.  You claim to have cut back on everything.  You even dropped the word “luxury” from your vocabulary because you couldn’t afford to speak the word.  Unbelievably, on your fingers are fake nails.  I have a handful of friends how claim to be in dire straights, but then I see those pretty, pretty fake nails, and I know they are big, fat liars!!!  Never, ever trust a woman who claims financial hardship while wearing acrylic nails. 

12.  Honestly, my biggest annoyance is my situation right now.  I am at my wit’s end mothering and caring for my 4 kids.  I feel as if I am constantly coming up short in giving them the attention, the love, the one on one time they need.  I have to really get on them to do chores, homework, to stop fighting, eat their dinner, turn off the TV, get off the roof, pee in the toilet, stop picking your nose, don’t color on the wall…and oh yeah, lets try to squeeze in some family time, some Bible reading, some family prayer.  Getting the kids ready in the morning, in the car with all essentials required for the day and to school on time forces me to be gruff and blunt.  So when they get out, and I say:  “Have a great day!  Remember you are special, be a good example and I love you forever!”  feels very fake.  Not to me, but I see little glints of doubt in their eyes as I speak it and it breaks my heart.

I have no idea how I am going to even be half this functional when baby #5 rolls into town, and I am finding myself for the first time ever in my life, wishing I could just stay pregnant for another year, because I am not now, and will probably never be ready for another one.  Shawn is gone all the time, and it’s just me, running the show.  I’m responsible for my childrens’ well being.  If my kids don’t know the real meaning of Christmas (Brooke said it’s about presents)  then it’s my fault, because I don’t have any religious Christmas emblems in my house.  (The kids broke them all.)  I haven’t had any talks about the real meaning of Christmas.  We haven't had Family Home Evening in 2 months.  We don’t read the scriptures because it’s too much of a fight, and after the struggles of the day, I am completely done by 8:30 pm PLUS I am bitter because I imagine that everyone else with kids the same age as mine has already tucked them in bed and is enjoying some quiet or alone time by now and I don’t get to!  It’s my fault because I am the primary care giver and that’s just the way our life functions at this point and it’s not going to change anytime soon.  

It’s like  my #11 above: imagine you are barely, and  I mean barely scraping by every month.  You have cut out any and all extras and make do with pretty meager means.  You just found out in about 2 months time you are going to have a bill that is over $50,000.00, and there is no possible way to avoid paying it.  Family members can contribute a small amount, which is certainly appreciated and will help, but in the long run, not much.  You wonder every single day how on earth are you going to pay that bill?  What could you possibly sell or give up to cover that cost?  You got rid of those things long ago.  You are ready to beg, borrow and steal, but just the thought of that $50,000.00 bill makes you sick with worry when you really stop to think about it.  There is no easy answer, only that you’ll have to pay it one way or another and it’s not going to be easy.  You will most likely spend the rest of your life paying off the debt.   Well, that’s basically how I feel about having another baby.  It’s probably the root of all my crabbiness and depression.  But not why I threw in a swear word on #6—I did that simply because it made me feel better.

Now that I have this off my chest, I will go turn on the TV, and then probably fill the need to come back and add one more annoyance to my list:  that there is never anything good to watch on when I have a spare moment (as in, I should be cleaning a bathroom but today, I just need to sit on the couch and be entertained.)

So, to wrap up, and not annoy me:  drive properly,  try to get rid of any wacky speech inflections, make your facebook posts full bodied stories, leave out all bragging about painless, 3 hour natural births and for heaven’s sake, do NOT mention my pregnancy to me.  If you give me a diet coke and something Chocolate, you might get by with wearing leggings, but I wouldn’t count on it.