My Hospital Bag: Second Pregnancy

First off, I'd like to say I'm a minimalist. I try to be, anyway. I call myself a minimalist parent too. My first would've gone naked without handmedowns and even her toy collection was bought second hand or given to her by friends and family. The only thing new we made sure to buy was her infant car seat and stroller (it was a package deal).

I can't stress enough the importance of packing light for the hospital visit when delivering your baby!!!!

Ask yourself:
- How close is the hospital to your family and friends?
- Will someone be able to run to your house "real quick" and get anything forgotten?
- Do you live in an area that provides late night food options if the hospital cafeteria is closed?
- Will people come to visit you and the new baby? Have you hired a photographer to take your first pictures?

PUPPP sucks.

PUPPP or Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy, sucks. Doctors know very little about why it happens but some researchers in the UK found a connection to dairy consumption, having multiple babies in one birth or it being the second+ pregnancy and mothers pregnant with boys. They think it's a conflict between the male DNA and the already established female DNA--- but that's all speculation since it wasn't a formal study.

Couponing + 30 Weeks + HOTHOT Summer

Ah, normalcy!

We have our own place now and are living with our heads barely above water with one paycheck. It's awesome.

I know... I know... Awesome to live paycheck to paycheck? Crazy talk, right? Well, At least we manage to get our bills paid with one source of income and still manage to eat on the regular. I can't be more thankful. Hubby always seems to provide everything we need. He may be stressed out about it and I drive him crazy because a hundred dollars in the bank account doesn't scare me enough to not spend thirty dollars of it on groceries. In couponing terms, that's atleast seventy dollars worth of groceries anyway... so I don't see the issue.

Did I tell you I'm pregnant?

I have been pretty well immersed in my own life for the last few weeks. For those of you that don't know, I'm pregnant (and halfway to my due date already!) and we finally got our own place again.

The new place has given Hubby a new kind of confidence that I haven't seen in quite awhile, BabyG has developed a rash while I'm just pregnant and bitchy.

I keep telling myself it's pregnancy hormones and that I'm not actually depressed. I keep assuring myself that I'm not actually a horrible person. It's not working. Watching mutual friends meet up while I'm uninvited on Facebook brings me back to high school. "Sorry... Didn't know you were available..." And "Well, [random name] kind of just thinks you're a bitch." Yeah, well... I guess I am. I'm just lonely. I'm at that place where I want to invite people over to our place now that we have one but when no one shows up it will crush me.

I've stopped unpacking. I am slowly just shoving the boxes to the spare room and shutting the door to hide the stacks of boxes and bags of clothes. I can feel my blood pressure go up just thinking about that room.

I've pissed my family off. Well, my sister has always been very critical of me and even her positivity can only be met with curiosity. Why is honesty so bad? Why am I the bad guy for saying how I feel? My mom kept asking me, "Have you thought about my feelings in this?" In something that didn't even directly involve her. Obviously, I left my grandmothers house in bad terms. It didn't have to be that way, I so desperately didn't want it to be that way. I still have a handful of things there that I need but am too agitated to go back and get. I guess when you become old and senile you can do no wrong. Even me expressing my anger (not directly at my grandma) is some big disrespectful thing that I shouldn't have done. Do you even know how suffocating it feels to be told you aren't allowed to feel a certain way? How robbed of free will and disgusted it is to be told you aren't allowed to feel a certain way simply because of whom it is you feel that way towards? I called no names or made any remarks that weren't based on facts but yet I was the one who was told to feel guilty and wrong for my simple act of feeling. It became clear to me, through the actions of everyone in my family that there is a clear line between me and them. I guess because of my relationship with my family I have always approached all of my relationships with people on thin ice. The only time I remember my mom telling me she was proud of me in my adult life was after having a kid. My sister and grandma began to warm up to me after I had BabyG. I became worth something by joining the unspoken Mother Club. Such a thin string I dangled on with just that.

Well... Anyway.

I'm just bitter and pregnant, I guess. Yes, being pregnant is an absolute explanation not an excuse. If you've never been pregnant before you'll never understand the draining, guilt-filled, bitchfest that is carrying a lovable leech in your womb. I have begun to feel actual kicks now, especially when it's been 20mins since my last bathroom visit. According to the scales at the doctors office I've only gained 8lbs (that's been about a month ago, though) which is on track in the "healthy" weight gain chart for my size/height. 8lbs is a substantially smaller difference than what I had gained with BabyG at this point (30lbs... Yikes!) and it seems to be primarily in my torso area. I catch myself lifting my gut and carrying it. Elastic bands are my friend! My belly is so heavy some days. I can't avoid it. I remember feeling this twisted and alone while pregnant with BabyG but I lived thousands of miles away from everyone I knew... This time is different, I live just mere minutes away from the few people I call close and the same amount of minutes for those in the ripples of the friendship scale. I'm probably just being neurotic and needy but I can't help it. Hubby says all the right things and caters to my insecurities to the best of his ability, I am very lucky in that way.

I guess you could say this blog is a cry for help. A passive aggressive bitchfest that I hope will turn into hugs and sympathy. Just being honest. 

Painful Truth

I have been mulling this blog post over in my head for days. 

I mainly want to talk about the most heartbreaking news I've had this month without sounding like a complete cretin bitch. Especially when a heartbreak also happened with my sister and the situations are so different and so brittle it's hard not to take notice of the obvious.

Hey Look, it's January!

Are you annoyed by all your friends facebook posts about going to the gym yet? How about their new sobriety? Or the most annoying... "New Year, New Me."

Yeah... none of that here.

I have one goal for 2015: 

Getting out of my grandmother's house.

Last time we went to the storage unit we did a lot of throwing away of things and finding things we could give away or sell. I sold another $10 Surprise and it's got me all excited about the coming year. Hubby says we can buy the trailer by valentines day... so you know what that means? No shiny things for me, just the foundation to our house! It's cool though. I hate valentines day (see previous post) anyway so it's whatevs.