If you are unsure about having another child, or simply want to teach your teenagers the importance of abstinence or birth control, read on.

Five years ago today I went into labour, just over 5 weeks early.  My babies were due on Christmas day, and even though my scheduled c-section was booked for mid-December, I was hoping and praying the babies would come early.  I felt like a house, even though I only gained 30 pounds, and my insides felt compressed and painful.  Of course, I couldn’t sleep because when I laid down the babies woke up and began performing water ballet.

It was dinnertime, my 6, 4.5 and 3 year olds were waiting impatiently for their food, and I was cooking and baking cookies at the same time.  When my water broke I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening, I simply thought that I had lost my bladder control and continued cooking.  After all, it would have been just one more indignity I was to suffer during pregnancy, and my kids were hungry!!!

When I finally accepted that I was in labour, I realized that my back pain wasn’t coming from standing all afternoon, it was labour pain.  I made the mistake of saying out loud in the bathroom that the babies were coming, more to myself than to anyone else.  Strangely, although my kids never hear when I ask them to do something, they all came running and then wildly began running circles around the house screaming ‘the babies are coming, the babies are coming.’

My father drove me to the hospital and then proceeded to hightail it out of there as quickly as possible, perhaps not comfortable with the fact that the nurses assumed he was my husband and the father of my twins.  My hubby arrived from his office as they were whisking me into the OR and it was all a blur, happening much faster than in the past because it was a high risk twin pregnancy.

And then, suddenly, we were parents to five children and I had no idea how we were going to care for all of these little people.  But my worry didn’t last long because then I had to be taken into OR for a blood patch procedure to fix a hole in my spinal dura that was leaking fluid and giving me a terrible headache.  It got me an extra night in the hospital and even though I begged them to let me stay about 6 more months, those insensitive witches made me leave after day 5. 

 For your amusement, I am posting this pic of myself taken a couple of weeks before my babies came.  And a close up of my veins, which throbbed and ached basically from the minute I got pregnant until the day my baby’s came.  I had to wear prescription stockings that cost hundreds of dollars and needed to be put on with rubber gloves (my 75 year old mother in law wears the same kind). I was never happier than when I threw those suckers away, after all, I wore them ALL SUMMER LONG.

Obviously I am a slow learner, but after 4 pregnancies, this glutton for punishment feels ‘done’.  There will be no more pregnancies, no more babies.  I do, however, get twitchy at the sight of a newborn and I ache to hold it, SMELL it.  Ahh, how I miss that new baby smell.

Pretty gross right? Be kind-remember I couldn't see or reach my feet!

Before I had children, I knew that my future children would never talk saucy, fight with each other, watch tv, play video games, or jump on the couch when I wasn’t looking.  They would certainly never roll their eyes at me or drop notes that read ‘I haet you’ down the stairs for me to find after I had sent them to their rooms.  They would not draw on my wall with markers and crayons or stick kitten stickers all over the dining room furniture.  They would certainly never have a noisy temper tantrum at the mall or in a restaurant. They would never lock a very pregnant me outside during a snowstorm or run away from me at the mall causing me to run with a breastfeeding infant still latched, pushing the double stroller and yelling after them like a lunatic in need of a child services intervention. 

No, I thought that my future children would be perfect children. I mean, I knew they would be.  They would never cover their entire face and hair with Penaten cream or flush a wind up bunny toy down the toilet and they certainly wouldn’t hide a wet pullup in their closet for me to find, weeks later.
Nope, not my children.  They would only speak when spoken to and when they weren’t doing something educational, they would be practicing the piano or quietly drawing while I sipped a glass of wine and painted my toenails.

I was definitely a better mother before I had real children with opinions, and ideas, and attitudes.  Before I was sleep deprived, harried, exhausted and impatient.  Before I had experienced life with a colicky nursing infant (or two), before temper tantrums and leaky diapers, before midnight trips to emerg and before being vomited on-at the doctors office.

Before I didn’t know what it was like to be judged by strangers who undoubtedly thought I should never have had children.

But I also didn’t know the joy that giving life brings, how easily tears can fill my eyes from simple happiness, or the sweetness of an early morning snuggle with a little body clad in flannel pajamas.  I didn’t know the excitement of cheering for my child at soccer or hockey games, or that receiving a note that said ‘I haet you’ would make me smile and kiss the angry child who wrote it.  I may have been a better mother before I had children, but my real babies have given me much more joy than my imagined children ever could have.   I’ve gotten used to ‘haet’ mail, and now that I have a ‘tween’ I’m getting used to being told I’m hairy, zitty, embarrassing, etc.  I’ve developed a thicker skin and it had better keep on thickening because I think I’m going to need it when the teen years arrive.

Wait, what am I saying?  MY teens will respect me, help around the house and NEVER cause any problems.  We will have open relationships based on trust and will discuss all issues with calmness and fairness.  MY teens will never think me unfair, untrustworthy, or unable to understand them.  No, the teen years will be a breeze, I know it.  My teens will concentrate on their studies, quietly in their bedrooms, while I sit back and relax, maybe even paint my toenails…

At night after we have read to, kissed and said ‘goodnight’ to the kids, hubby and I go downstairs and get ready for some quality time without them.  If we are lucky, they don’t ask for a drink, inhaler, nasty toenails cut, bandaid, or try to tell us a story about what happened at recess that morning.  But it is their custom to take turns calling downstairs “goodnight Mom” pause for my answer, “I love you, Mom” pause for my answer, “goodnight Dad” pause…etc.  With five kids, this means we are guaranteed at least 20 calls from uptairs, not including our expected replies, which adds another 20 more interactions.  Some nights when I am tired (or pms’ing), or the kids start the rounds again, I yell upstairs for them to zip it, and then I feel guilty for the rest of the night. 

I remember as a child my brother and I doing the exact same thing, and there were only the two of us, yet by the time we started saying goodnight to the dog and the cat my Dad would bellow in his very mean Dad voice that ‘that was enough’.  Then I would lie teary eyed in my little white bed with its pink and purple sheets, and wish fervently that my father was more like Pa Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie.  Pa would never have let Laura go to bed upset.

So Sabrina and I went head to head again while I was, yet again, in the bathroom with her, performing my least favourite parenting duty.

‘Mom, are you sure Santa’s not watching right now?’

Me “Yes honey, quite sure.”

Sabrina “But how do you know for sure?”

Me “Santa is everything that is wonderful and magical and good, and he would NOT be watching right now.  He wouldn’t want to.”

Sabrina, looking me in the eye, squinting accusingly and pointing her little finger at me, “You must be him or you wouldn’t know that for sure!’

Me, a little flabbergasted but thinking fast, “If I was him, I would say he IS watching right now, because I’m here with you and I’m watching.”

Sabrina “Oh, so you can’t be him.”

Phew!!!!!!! Sabrina is obviously fixated on Santa invading her privacy, even though I haven’t reminded her that he is watching in a long time.  I guess I won’t be able to use that tactic to my advantage this year or my daughter might just develop some serious anxiety.  She turns five next week and seems awfully young to be questioning the jolly old elf’s existence, but that seems to be a function of having older siblings who do not censor their conversations just because she is present.

Next thing I know she’ll be asking me about sex, condoms and whether or not her boobs are growing.  Hell, she was so interested in the deodorant I bought the other day that I wouldn’t be surprised if she asks me this week if we can go shopping for maxi pads.

***WARNING-graphic and potentially alarming info regarding childbirth follows.  Do not read if you are not yet a parent or if you are expecting!!!! This is a no holds barred account of a rather awful labour and delivery experience, (though with a good outcome).

11 years ago yesterday I performed my biggest and best accomplishment (for the first time).  I struggled through 27 hours of labour, most of which was endured without an epidural because I was an idiot first time mother.  After pushing for over two hours with my knees to my ears, during which time my husband and good friend Suzanne cheered me on, I was strapped down to an operating table, hooked up to all kinds of wires, prepped for a blood transfusion, and told not to push anymore because the baby’s heart rate was decreasing with each contraction.  The anaesthesiologist was then delayed for 45 minutes  because he was performing gall bladder surgery and I began hallucinating that I my old neighbour, Simon, was in the OR with us, withholding my meds, and I had a freaky conversation with him while my hubby apologized to whoever this guy really was. 

My body began lifting itself off the table and slamming itself back down again and again in a scene reminiscent of the movie ’The Exorcist’.  Apparently my body wanted to continue the pushing that it had been doing for the last two hours and was going to do it with or without my cooperation.   I screamed and screamed and was quite certain that death was near.  Then 45 minutes later, the doctor arrived, increased the meds and the c-section began.  The ob could not get the baby out because she was now so tightly wedged inside my tiny malformed pelvis, and I heard her ask for a stool and some assistance.  20 minutes later Paulina was born, healthy and pink, swaddled comfortably in cotton blankies, while I was swollen and bruised from tummy to thigh, with a frozen pad between my legs to ease the swelling and another pad on my incision to help ease the pain that none of the drugs could make go away. 

By day two my breasts were swollen and I was feverish, had a migraine, and then Paulina began puking up pink froth, which turned out to be MY BLOOD because by then, my bruised and battered body also had to endure the horrors of cracked nipples, which made nursing feel like broken glass being squeezed into my breasts each and every time my hungry newborn latched on like a little piranha during a feeding frenzy.  Once I got home, I developed severe anxiety, a nasty infection, PPD and insomnia.  Oh yes, and let’s not forget that wonderful visit with bronchitis as well.

So… can someone please explain to me why I did not receive any birthday gifts today?  Why Paulina got to celebrate HER day with a party and friends and I did all the work, again?  Who decided that this is the way that birthdays would be celebrated?  The only thing that I am certain of, is that whoever started this tradition had never given birth.

Dare I say that I’m guessing whoever started this tradition was likely a man, maybe proud of himself for being born a male? (Down boys, that’s the way it was gazillions of years ago.  Anyway, it was just a little joke…heh heh heh…)

Don’t get me wrong-I ADORE my baby girl.  But I think some of those prezzies she got today belong to me and I’ve got my eye on that crystal making set AND the animal encyclopedia…..