this is what happens when you bottle your own wine

So sometimes you drink a lot of wine and want to have a third, baby that is. That was a really confusing statement at first, wasn't it. That could have been a different kind of post all together couldn't it of? But, I will not be distracted by scandalous sex and sentences ending in prepositions. Geesh people, focus.

So lots of wine and suddenly you're pining for a third or not suddenly because these things rarely come about suddenly. One isn't usually afflicted with a raging urgency to have a third, that shit mulls about in the back of your mind and slowly dawns on you while you're all warm and glowy and totally winey. And so there it is and you wake up with a headache and the nagging feeling that you may or may not have drunkenly accosted your husband to make a baby last night.

Good thing I argue a very weak case...

Drunken Reasons to Have a Third (baby) As Sheepishly Recalled in the Morning

- Midwives are cool beans. I like to hang out with midwives, I like to hang out with midwives a lot. I mean who else can check your cervix while you're on your bed petting your cat. (again an unintentionally confusing statement) Midwives that's who, making them very awesome to be around and practical as well.

- 3 just makes more sense, what with my ch'i and all.

- (in whiny/winey voice) But Tori and Dean are having a third!

- Periods are shitty. The less periods the better. Especially, without getting into the gory details, periods after you've had two kids. Don't I too deserve to wear light coloured pants all month if I so choose.

- Boobs, its a win win.

- I need to cut back on the drinking anyways. Just as soon as we finish the last case of our wine. Once that's down, baby making time.

- Really I just want to be able to stick out my gut.

- But my womb is so nice and cozy.

- I look unbelievably gorgeous when I'm pregnant, like Giselle Bundchen gorgeous. And that lone hair I always have to pluck off my chin every few weeks doesn't grow when I'm pregnant. Again, a win win.

- Using the 'Expectant Mother' parking at Loblaws is super convenient, so make an honest woman of me.

- Nursing bras are awesome especially if you're boobs get really hot and you just want to cool them off for a bit. So convenient.

- Pregnancy hormones are a fucking rush!

- I could really use another mat. leave right about now. (muffled, with my head face down on the table)

At this point I began slurring through Jack Nicholson's lines from A Few Good Men, the truth was adequately handled. It got real fuzzy after that.

Fortunately a mistrial was called. Because of a hung(over) jury.

if you don't know what a Grateful Dead cd cover can smell like then you probably won't want to read this post

Alternate Title:
how I came to nurse my babies in an old Ikea chair for university that smelled like a Grateful Dead cd cover

Because that is what happens when you blow out your asshole, pushing a nine pound baby into this world all hopped up on an epidural you totally hadn't planned on getting, so you can't really feel how hard you're pushing and because sitting on the lovely oak rocker gifted to you by your mother-in-law feels like your holding a sandwich baggy of hot coals, the red glowy kind at the bottom of campfires, between your bum cheeks.

So you can see how obviously necessary it was to drag up the old Poang chair from the basement where it had been retired with the lava lamp and the lucite coffee table. You know because of the hot coals. And 16 months later when my asshole went back to its congenial self, the Poang remained. My perch through hours of nursing, and bouncing, and soothing. A staid presence in both my kids' nurseries. Its where I sat humming softly to both my newborns, taking them in, kissing their soft heads, whispering into their tiny ears. Its where we first met, where we first became acquainted.

I mean, there are certain moments as a parent where you expect the heartache, the overwhelming emotion. First steps, first words, first day of school, graduations. All these Hallmark moments, you prepare yourself for, you're ready for the tears, the trepidation. You steel yourself to these times, gird your loins if you will.

And so I was as surprised as anyone when over this past week, moving my daughter into a big girl bed and removing the last vestments of her nursery, that moving the Poang chair back down to the basement was so fucking hard. Like sitting-in-her closet-in-a-pile-of her-old-baby-clothes-ugly-crying hard. My husband just shakes his head, understanding of my idiosyncrasies.

I peer from the top of the stairs at it, alone in the dark, and I feel sad. Because that chair, sitting in my basement, will take on a new smell, of what I don't know. But I will never sit in it nursing a newborn. My newborn. That chair will never smell like baby, my baby, again.

while you're at BlogHer, I 'll be enjoying 6 years of wedded bliss. get some perspective people.

In six years there have been some peaks and valleys, as in all marriages I suspect.

Exacerbated by two kids.

Wiping ass all day, as you can imagine, is trying on the best of relationships.

Babies can be such buzz kills. Except when they're not and you sit together in awe of what you have created.

And then somebody shits their pants and the moment is gone.

Fortunately we have a lot of those moments and consequently a lot of shit pants.

But the thing about peaks and valleys, is the view from the peak is so spectacular that the valley is lost to you.

I can't remember what that fight was about where we didn't talk for a day, or what angry words we've said to each other. But I do remember the look in his eyes when our children were born and the smell of our first apartment.

After six years, we spent a day in the mountains together. We mostly spent time in the peaks.