Today was Maggie’s blessing day. When children are born in my faith they are given a name and a blessing. It is a special occasion, as it is a once in a lifetime event. Many special blessings and promises are given to the child from their Father in Heaven. As a mother, I am deeply touched by these exceptional insights. They reconfirm how precious and sacred my children are, and what unique individuals they are. The blessings given to my children are all of the things that I want for them.

I know that God and Jesus love my children and I am so grateful to them for sharing them with me. This opportunity for motherhood gives me the chance to learn so much. I know that God is a loving Father and that we are all His children. When I think about how I feel about my babies, the intense adoration and almost undescribable level of gratitude I have for them, and know that I would do absolutely anything to protect them and keep them safe, I can begin to see how it is that my Father in Heaven would send Christ to die for us, because of His great love for me and for you. I cannot fully comprehend how much He loves me, but through the love I have for my children, I can begin to understand. What a perfect gift.

Motherhood teaches me so much every day. When my life is aligned with how the Savior would have me be, those simple lessons transcend everyday knowledge and become very profound and deeply spiritual lessons. They buoy me up in low moments and remind me of who I ought to be and the sacred calling that motherhood is.

As I listened to the special gifts given to my sweet daughter today, it is my deepest hope that I might live worthy of the amazing person who she is. I am so humbled that God would trust me with His dear little girl. I am truly blessed.

My parents and I took the kids on an adventure to the BX today. I say adventure because anytime you venture out of the house with small children you have to look at it from the adventurer's point of view or you’ve lost before you've started.

The first five minutes in the store went well. Then Maggie woke up and began to cry. As soon as I picked her up, I found out why. She had a serious poop-splosion and it had shot all the way up her backside turning her outfit a lovely mustard color. I hadn't thought to restock the diaper bag since yesterday's adventures, and I didn't have a spare outfit on me. We very quickly perused the baby section for something suitable to change her into, then my mom handed me a twenty and I dashed to the register and bought the little, yellow sleeper we chose. I then ran to the restroom and began to change her.

I quickly discovered that I had no baby wipes on me either (you'd think I was one of those amateur first time mommies), so I used wet paper towels to clean my daughter. She is, of course, screaming the entire time at the indignity of being naked and cold in a ladies restroom of questionable sanitation. Meanwhile, we are attracting quite a bit of attention from the over sixty crowd. Every granny in the restroom had to peer adoringly at my screaming infant and then look at me questioning my competency as a parent (and seeing as how I forgot both a spare outfit and wipes it was a pretty legitimate concern). I am acting as calm and collected as I can feign under ths kind of scrutiny.

Finally, she is de-pooped and I just need to rip the tags off the little sleeper, unsnap the snaps, and wedge my failing baby inside of it. This sounds really easy, doesn't it? Well, those snaps are the industrial type. They don't just unhook easily. It is very definitely a two handed job. So while the grannies all stare, I juggle the baby and the sleeper with the super glued snaps. I'm sure I was quite amusing. They probably thought I was one of those wackos who steals a baby from it’s pram, then changes her clothes and hair color in the restroom and disappears into the crowd.

Then this saint of a woman enters the restroom, sees me struggling and offers to help me unsnap the blasted sleeper and dress my squalling baby.  With a little assistance, Maggie was clothed in a matter of seconds. The other grannies busied themselves washing their hands and adjusting their graying hair. I'm sure they were secretly staring at me out of the corner of their eyes to see if I would drop her on the way out. Which I did not, thank you very much.

I return to the BX and find my family. We shop for a few more minutes then my son fixates on a Buzz Lightyear toy that is far too advanced for a two year old. Being the typical two year old that he is, and since it is an hour past naptime, he has a total meltdown. There is no reasoning with him when he is like that. He carries on for about ten minutes before we decide to get the heck out of dodge. As soon as we hit the checkout isle he calmed down. There was CANDY in the isle. He hands me a pack of Starbursts quite placidly for someone who looks so tear streaked. I ask him if he is ready to be calm now. He is. So I tell him to go ask grandma if he can have the treat. Since he is expressing his want with composure instead of screaming with his head spinning around Exorcist-fashion, he gets the treat.

My parents decide to check out the Commissary on their own while I took the kids home for a nap.

I got Jonas in bed and sat on the couch with Maggie on my lap. Suddenly, she makes an extremely forceful and loud poop. She still has the newborn startle reflex so her little arms fling out to the side and her eyes open wide. She looks up at me in absolute shock.  And I busted up laughing at her.

Today I put on a shirt that was completely clean. I pulled it out of the dryer when it was still warm. It was a beautiful twenty-seven seconds.

At that point, my darling bundle of joy missed the burp cloth covering 98% of my person and left a big trail of warm, sticky baby cheese down my front. This has become an almost daily occurrence, so I’m used to it. It’s not even a good enough reason for me to change my shirt any more. Eau du Sour Milk may not be my fragrance of choice this season, but it’s what I’ll be wearing.

My parents are coming all the way from North Dakota for a visit. It is time to meet the new grandbaby. We had a hard time scheduling this trip. You see, I was due on January 17^th. But my due date doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. I’d gone early the first time, and certainly the fact that I was on bed rest was pointing toward an early delivery this time around, but you just never know what nature has in store. I’ve heard of women who were on bed rest for months having to be induced at 42 weeks. So we had to plan carefully. This week looked perfect because it was after the due date, but not so far past it that if she came early she’d be all grown up already. We wanted to keep the ‘new’ in newborn. Amazingly, it worked! Maggie is five weeks old, still wearing her preemie clothes, but she has woken up to the world enough to be interesting and not just cute. Perfect timing.

This visit has spun me into a cleaning frenzy. Last week I cleaned out the laundry area, swept the floors, mopped, vacuumed, scrubbed toilets and the bathtub. I organized, and got rid of the pesky piles of contraband we’ve confiscated from our two year old and put in amazingly high places that we hope he can’t reach. You’d think it would be somewhat clean here but I have an extremely messy son, and we’ve all come down with a particularly nasty cold that has kind of wiped me out the past few days, so the house went to seed again.

Now we are all doing last minute clean sweeps of the various rooms, trying to promote a sense of hospitality without too much time being involved. It’s a We’re Glad You’ve Come To See Us, But Please Don’t Look To Closely kind of welcome. It’s not that we aren’t putting forth an effort, we just realize the futility.

Every improvement we have tried to make has been carefully undone by the darling grandson. I mopped the kitchen floor today. I even got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the spots you can only see, well, when you are on your hands and knees. I used up almost all of the cleaning solvent to make it really shine. Real attention to detail cleaning. As soon as the floor was dry and the mop and broom put away, and I had moved on to another room that needed my attention, Jonas got thirsty. Instead of asking me for a drink, he asserted his independence and dropped the brand new, 64oz bottle of orange juice. When I saw the mess, he handed me his sippy cup and said "Uh-oh." Then he dropped to his hands and knees and started lapping it up like a dog. Good thing the floor was clean.

Chris is upstairs working on Jonas’ room, otherwise known as the guest room. He made the beds and put all of the stuffed animals on the top bunk all sitting up neatly, instead of tossed randomly around the room, which is how Jonas prefers things. He put all the books back up on the shelves too. Now he is standing guard over them with a broom. Jonas has been sent back downstairs quite a few times.

Tonight we will put Jonas to bed, then do a few last minute things. As soon as we get up in the morning I plan to sweep, mop and then leave the house until Wednesday morning when we pick you up at the airport. Seriously, we are going to my in-laws so Jonas can trash their house and spare ours.

Now, I do know that my parents love me unconditionally. They know me well enough to know that my perfectionism doesn’t extend to my surroundings (they saw my room as a teenager- my home as an adult is a vast improvement). They have also been the young couple with small, destructive children, so they have got to understand. I didn’t grow up in a home riddled with pristine sterility. It was comfortable and lived in, just as any real home ought to be.

So why do I want the house to look good? I am a mature, responsible adult who pays her own bills (ok, Chris pays the bills- but I made the budget!), cooks the meals (we had yogurt and Andes mints tonight), and who has given birth to not just one but two grandchildren.

Deep inside, I still want my parents to be proud of me. I want them to think I keep it together and am doing pretty well. I don’t want to be a worry to them; I want to be a credit.

Ahhh. Naptime. I live for naptime. It is actually better than bedtime because come bedtime I am too drained to appreciate it. Somebody up there must really like me because I have both of the kids down at the same time. While that is the goal every day, I must say it doesn’t happen very often.

At the hospital they tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps. It’s a nice thought. I always had trouble getting there. Most days I don’t even manage to lay down, let alone sleep. You see, I have to cram a whole days worth of activities into the hour and a half that naptime is. If I have any hopes of a balanced meal - it will happen during naptime. Likewise, any hygiene activities that are above and beyond the boot camp style shower I spend one minute in every morning will have to happen now. If I want to do anything that is more enjoyable than taking care of basic bodily functions I could possibly do that during naptime as well. I just have to remember that it needs to be an activity that can be instantly shut off and cleaned up in about 3 seconds, or I am going to have a situation on my hands when the kids wake up.

Take scrapbooking, for example. I could realistically haul out my scrapbook supplies and work on a lay out during this hour and a half. But the second my 2 year old wakes up he is going to be tearing up the paper, putting sticky fingerprints on the photos and running around with my fine point, extra sharp scissors, or coloring on the walls with an archival quality marker. If I didn’t manage to get the page I was working on completed I am going to have to put it away amid all of this hullabaloo, totally interrupt the creative process, and pull it out the next day- only to find that my sleep deprivation has made it impossible to remember what my original plan was, so I will be starting over from scratch anyway. Not a very tempting idea.

It is much safer to stick with the less productive, but ultimately smarter, activity like checking my e-mail or watching a slightly more risqué than G-rated DVD. I can’t pull out the actual adult movies because if I do that, my son is bound to wake up, sneak half way down the stairs and watch as millions of people are blown up, or worse, somebody drops the F-bomb. Then, even though he is a late talker and only uses his words under extreme pressure, the F-word will become his favorite phrase and he will use it in front of his grandparents and at church. He will shame me in supermarket lines and point out to the entire world that I am unfit to be a mother. So, no. Nothing more offensive than PG can be shown while they are napping. It will bite me in the butt.

During those times when I do attempt the aforementioned ‘sleep while the baby sleeps’, trying to fall asleep is nearly impossible. I have a 100 mile an hour diatribe in my head.

Me: the dishes are filthy and the ants are going to be everywhere if I don’t clean the kitchen right now.

Me: go to sleep, don’t think about it.

Me: was I supposed to call so and so about the whatzit next Sunday? Oh no, I totally forgot. . .

Me: just sleep, the kids are going to be up any minute now.

Me: I’ll lie and say the answering machine must have missed the message or Jonas deleted it. . .

Me: tired. Want to sleep.

Me: yeah, lie, Lou, then you can burn in HELL

Me: would you shut up! Just Shut Up! SHUT UP! SHUTUP!!!!

At which point I usually find myself getting out of bed and retreating to a safer activity like my internet message board. (I know you are wondering does she call so and so back or wash the dishes? No. That was all a ruse to get me out of bed.)

Anyway, I live for naptime. Even though, to be completely honest, I just sit here like a blithering idiot.

I had been having contractions every 3 to 5 minutes for 3 days. So when I went to my appointment at 3:30 on Friday the 17^th I was really looking forward to seeing some change. I had been dilated to a 3 on Monday- I figured with all the contractions I had to be at least a 4. Dr. Leggett poked around a bit and decided that I was maybe a 3.5. I was not pleased. She said that she wasn’t sure if there had been any change because someone else checked me last time. So- she gave me instructions to go home, record my contractions and come back in 2 hours if they were regular.

So I went home and decided that just waiting around for my weird contractions to become productive was not a good use of my time. I was tired, uncomfortable, and figured that after all the bed rest and hyperemesis I had been pregnant long enough. So I put on some classic rock and started running up and down the stairs with my two year old. I ran up and down the stairs for two hours- timing contractions on my watch and calling them out to Chris who was keeping the record of them.

After two hours my legs were numb from the workout and I hopped in the car heading to Labor and Delivery to see if anything had happened. They checked me out and said I was a definate four now. Woo-Hoo! I was in labor! But, of course it couldn’t be that simple. I was moving so slowly that they considered sending me back home. They decided that I should walk around the hospital and see if I made any more progress. So I started doing laps through the Mother-Baby unit and L&D. I called Chris and told him to drop Jonas off at our friend’s house and come walk around the hospital with me.

He got there about 45 minutes later and we started walking. At about 9 they checked me again and I was at a 4.5. Time to be admitted! I walked around the hospital with Chris for a few more hours. The contractions weren’t very strong. They hurt- but nothing to get excited about. I was the only woman having a baby that night- so it was very quiet on L&D. The doctors and nurses all stood around chatting waiting for me to do something that could make them useful. I chatted with them and kept walking around. They said I was the happiest laboring woman they had ever seen. The funny thing was, the nurses in the last hospital I gave birth in said the same thing. They don’t understand how much I despise pregnancy! I fall apart when I am pregnant. I have severe morning sickness the entire nine months that is barely kept in check with IVs and medications. I am weak, I am dizzy, and my pelvic bones had separated too soon so I was in a lot of pain any time I tried to change position. Then at about 30 weeks I go into preterm labor. I get stuck in the hospital (7 weeks with Jonas! Only three days with Maggie) drugged up, then sent home on bed rest. Was I happy to be in labor? Heck yes! Labor hurts- but it is a short space of time and when it gets over- it’s over. If all I had to do to have a baby was go through childbirth - I’d have more kids.

They keep asking me if I would like an epidural. But I am hardly in any pain so I can’t see any point to it. Finally, I am dilated to a 5. I have been in labor now longer than the entire 4 hours it took to have my son. I am getting impatient and hungry. They decide to break my water to speed things up. I am all for that. When they broke my water with my son - labor took off at rocket speed.

Two hours later, it is 2 am. I am barely at a 6. I cannot believe that I have been sitting there moving at the snails pace of .5 centimeters every two hours. I’m not hurting - but I’m not getting anywhere either! Last time I was at a 6 I had gone into an altered state due to the pain and was getting an epidural. This time I’m mildly uncomfortable. I was on pitocin last time - so there is the difference between induced labor and natural labor. My doctor comes in and asks if I would like some pitocin to speed up the process. I tell her lets wait an hour or two and see how things are. She asks again if I want the epidural. I’m not in pain- so I decline.

Two minutes later I have a BIG contraction. I rock back and forth on the bed. Soon after I get hit with another one. "Tell them I want my epidural NOW," I instruct Chris. The contractions are dog piling on top of each other. The anesthesiologist arrives. My eyes are glazing over from the incredible amount of pain I’m in. She starts asking me questions; I start throwing up. Finally she is done being the Spanish Inquisition and starts the process of sticking the mile long needle in my back to administer the much needed pain relief.

I am sitting on the edge of my bed, trying in vain to stay totally still through the contractions. A nurse is standing in front of me and I am holding onto her arm for support. I am whimpering like a puppy. I feel the sting of the needle go in and know that sweet relief is imminent. Contractions are pummeling my body and I am hunched over, clinging desperately to the nurses arm. I am beginning to get extremely lightheaded from the pain. My first instinct is just pass out and be free from the pain. Then the reasonable, intelligent person inside realizes, "If you faint- they are going to freak out. And you will be unconscious, at the mercy of a room full of doctors who you don’t fully trust. You will have no control over anything." That thought was enough to keep me conscious. I focus on my husband who is standing on the other side of the room. He is a calming presence. I ask the anesthesiologist when the epidural is going to kick in. She says soon. I am thinking it had better be soon because I really can’t take it getting any worse.

The epidural still isn’t kicking in. Not even a little bit. I am in more pain than I have ever been in at any time before in my life. They decide to check me since I seem to be so uncomfortable. It turns out that while I was getting the epidural I went completely through transition. I am not ‘nearly dilated’ as the doctors were guessing. I’m nearly done. The baby is right there; I am fully dilated and effaced. And the epidural isn’t working.

My doctor asks me if I feel the urge to push. I’m not, so she asks me if I would like to push. I figure the sooner I push, the sooner she’s born, and the sooner the pain stops. I’d LOVE to push.

As soon as I lay down the heart rate monitor for the baby goes off. Suddenly I have people on every side of me trying to hook me up to oxygen, take my blood pressure, put a monitor (that I didn’t want) on the baby, and just irritate me in general. The only thing getting me through these contractions is my ability to focus through them in a comfortable position and now these people are literally pulling me in 3 different directions. I hear them bickering amongst themselves. "I need her laying down, I need her over here, she’s gotta lean this way." In an instant I hate them all.

Things stabilize about 30 seconds later, so we go forward with the pushing. I am a good pusher. I push long and hard. After 3 pushes everyone starts telling me they can see her hair. I could care less. I am not focusing on the fact that I am bring life into this world. The baby isn’t even a part of this. So many mothers use this "I can see the hair" moment as a big motivation to push harder so they can meet their offspring sooner. Pain is my motivating factor. The harder I push - the faster the pain stops. That is all I care about. In my mind there is no baby. There is no loving husband holding my hand- there is just pain. I push again.

The contraction stops and I am forced to stop pushing. The baby’s head is halfway out- and I can’t push. When they use the expression ‘ring of fire’ to describe the kind of pain one feels down there when the baby’s head is coming out- they aren’t kidding. I was only stalled for about 7 seconds until the next contraction hit, but those are officially the longest 7 seconds of my life. I push through the next contraction and she is born.

It is 2:36. She cries immediately and I am relieved. She is a preemie- but she is here and healthy. I see the nurses hand her to the NICU team. In that instant I think, "there’s my little Maggie." I turn to Chris and ask if we can name her Margaret Donna. He says yes. The NICU team gets done checking her out and they hand her to Chris who brings her to me. She is amazing, but I can’t focus on it because my doctor is trying to assess the damage done to me and make sure everything is as it ought to be. Chris holds her again.

My doctor is frustrated because I am bleeding quite a bit. She asks me if I will push out the placenta. I refuse. I tell her I’m tired and I’ll do it in a little while. She doesn’t push me. A few minutes later I have another contraction and push it out. I still won’t stop bleeding. We have discovered that I have two tears, so she starts fixing those. After she does that, she reaches up inside and finds out that there is still a bunch of the amniotic membrane stuck inside of me. So she had to keep pulling that out and scraping out the inside of me until it was gone. The whole time I am still mad that the epidural never kicked in. This part is awful. At about 3:30 I’m ready to go over to Mother-Baby.

I finally get to hold my beautiful girl with no distractions. She is incredible. She has long, slender fingers and pretty dark hair. I’m in love and perfectly content. I wanted a daughter. I know you are supposed to just be grateful for a healthy baby but I really, really wanted a daughter. I pleaded with God to give me a girl this second time around. And He granted my wish.

My two year old needs more attention. All the parenting resources out there warned me that upon the birth of my second child, child number one would morph into a desperate, attention seeking nutter. Since Jonas already terrorizes on a level unsurpassed by most two year olds, and managed to get even worse when I was on bedrest, I, in my hopeful naivety, thought - it can’t possibly get any worse.

Maggie arrived, the newness wore off in approximately 10 days, and he upped the ante. He started getting into things. We have known for about a year now that there is no such thing as child proofing when Jonas is around. He will find a way to accomplish that which he has set out to do. So, while I am nursing Maggie on the couch, Jonas is busy squeezing diaper cream all over his room. He is using the permanent black marker we keep on top of the fridge to draw on the table. He is hiding pacifiers and baby blankies. He is climbing the walls- literally, then jumping down shouting his garbled version of, "To infinity and beyond!"

When he realized that I was ignoring many of the obnoxious things he was doing (just like it says to in the parenting books) he discovered that Mom will come running if he is in real danger. He figured out how to loge his legs into the back of the baby swing. He would then hang there screaming desperately for help before he had to let go and his little head smashed into the linoleum below. Clearly, it was in my best interest to put down my darling, nursing babe and rescue my older child. Why? Because I didn’t want to see him get hurt? No. Because I wanted to avoid the pesky trip to the ER that a concussed child seems to bring about.

The next day he decided he needed my attention just after the baby nurse had called me on the phone. While I was trying to find the pens I had hidden from him so I could schedule an appointment in my planner, my firstborn ran into the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled out a serrated bread knife ensconced in a plastic sheath. Before I had time to react, he had pulled off the sheath and was running up the stairs. I’m sure the baby nurse was wondering why this new mommy was huffing and puffing so since she couldn’t see me bolting up the stairs after him, trying to walk that fine line between apprehending the fugitive without becoming a victim or skewering said fugitive through the stomach with a bread knife because he tripped while being pursued. He was in time out for quite awhile after that maneuver.

I tried to hold firm to all the parenting schools of thought that "good" mothers subscribe to. I gave him extra attention when my dear daughter was asleep. I took him out on little Mommy-Jonas dates. I begged him to come be read to while I nurse. Not much seems to be helping. It has rocked his little world to have to share the center of Mommy’s universe. He is so happy when he has my attention, so excited, so thrilled to be with me. Lately he even locks himself in our tiny little half bath with me when I need to go potty. You know anyone who willingly encloses themselves in a 5 by 2 foot space with someone passing a stinky BM has got to be starved for affection. So the Mommy Guilt sets in.

Clearly, I have been yelling too much. I have, at times, ignored my offspring, trying to hold on to the last shred of sanity I have left. I have left him in time out a little too long, and read naptime stories a little too fast. I have failed to really get down on the floor and play with him when he needs me to. I haven’t run to his side when he has enthusiastically invited me to "c‘mon" to his room. Why? Because I’m tired. I am out of energy.

At the level of sleep deprivation I am working with, most days my goals of being a "good" mother have been altered to a slightly deranged "if he is alive and there are no visible marks of abuse on his person come bedtime- I have succeeded." Not impressed by my lack of maternal patience? Well, this is reality, folks. And reality has knife wielding toddlers and lots and lots of guilt.