Kassandra Lynne

There are lots of new babies among my coworkers. Some of them are first time moms, others have other children at home. I thought I would share some of my experiences when I was a first time mommy, 16 years ago. Maybe it will make some of the first time mommies feel a little better. Or, maybe not...



When Kasey was born, I was a mothering EXPERT. I knew everything there was to know about babies. Stan was 3, Jessi was 7 months, and as far as I was concerned, I had experienced everthing baby-like there was to experience. Guess, what? I was WRONG.



Apparently, my mom did quite a bit of the rearing as far as Stan and Jessi were concerned. In my teenage brain, I had done it all, except breastfeed. And, really, how hard could that be??? (note-I was 19. I knew everything by that time..)



After hours of labor, and a whole lot of pain, out comes this screaming red messy squirmy thing. This is the point where you instantly fall in love, right? Well, I was already in love with her, and dangit, I was STARVING! I looked at her briefly, then asked the nurse when I could eat. I mean, she was absolutely adorable, but quite slimy, and if they were gonna have to wash her off, I might as well eat..



After I ate, and she was clean, it was time for her to eat. I had absolutely no idea how to even start. The nurse came in, looked at me holding her, must have known instinctively that I was clueless inside, and proceeded to MANHANDLE my breast! It took about 30 seconds of this before I asked for a bottle. She didn't even try to talk me out of it.



First diaper- wow. What was all that black sticky stuff??? I didn't remember this from Stan or Jessi. I proceeded to get meconium all over her, me, and both of our sheets and blankets. I am sure the nurses were very impressed with my mothering skills.



Bathing- OK. I refused my bath demonstration. Now that I am older, and have been working with babies for a long time professionally, I know a little more about bathing babies than I did back then. Luckily, I have the whole first bath on video. It took about 45 minutes. The entire time she was laying on the counter, naked, with noone beside her. I would walk from the counter to the sink, wash, rinse, repeat. Luckily, she didn't freeze to death, or fall off the counter. At one point, as I am digging at her little girl creases with a Qtip, I am telling my mother-in-law, Diana, how I am going to have to ask the hospital what kind of diaper rash ointment they used, because this stuff didn't come off for anything! Can anyone say "VERNIX"???


Then there is the period about 15 minutes, where Kasey is laying in her bassinett, unattended. She is cooing, chewing on her hands, kicking, all the cute baby-like things that make you go "AWWWEE!!" Then she finds the bumper pad. She proceeds to place the bumper pad over her face. All you can see is her kicking her legs. The background noise in this video is Diana and me in the kitchen, banging around pots and pans, with me complaining how the nurses starved me during labor. Luckily, God was watching her, because noone else was. Can anyone say "NEGLECT"???


Flash to a scene of me holding Kasey, with her screaming her head off. Diana inquires whether she could possibly be hungry. "I don't know," I say, holding up a bottle. There is less than 1/4 of an ounce out of this bottle. "She has had this bottle since this morning." This was about 6 in the evening. Can anyone say "FOOD POISIONING"??? or "STARVATION"????

Kasey was a preemie. She ended up on soy formula, and spoon-fed cereal by a week old, because she was losing weight. (hmmm, wonder why??) When she was about 4 days old, around 2 in the morning, I was changing her diaper. She proceeded to pee and poop ALL over me. It was a nice shade of green, seedy, and SMELLY. I had never seen anything like this particular poop with Stan or Jessi, and immediately decided something was wrong. I woke up Diana, and she agreed, not normal. So, what did I do, you ask? I saved the diaper. We drove all the way to the hospital the next day. I went to the OB department, to the nurse's station desk, and shoved the diaper at the first nurse I saw. "WHAT is THIS??" I demanded. I don't know if this nurse had ever been in this particular situation before, or if she just remembered me from my stay. She looked me straight in the eye, and with all the professionalism in the world, simply stated "It looks like baby poop to me." Can anyone say "IDIOT"???

Kasey is going to be 17 this July. This seems impossible to me, and makes me kind of sad. She is everything anyone could ask for in a daughter, beautiful, talented, doesn't get in to trouble, and knows absolutely everything about everything. I love her more and more each day. And when I tell her something, and she looks at me like I am a buffoon, I think to myself "Sweetie, it is by the Grace of GOD that you made it this far to look at me like that, and one day you will realize that, but until then, I love you anyway."

Can anyone say "THANK YOU GOD!"???

marci

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire??? ME

One of these days, I am gonna be RICH. Not wealthy, but STINKING RICH. How, do you say, am I gonna accomplish this? Well, I promise that it will NOT be from hard work. Not to say that I don't work hard at my job, it is just that I don't really want to go to work anymore. I would rather stay home with my family. Which I will do, when I am STINKING RICH!

Since hard labor isn't going to make me my millions, I have to find another way.

OPTIONS FOR RICHNESS OPEN TO ME:

1) Win the LOTTERY- probably not going to happen. Not because the odds are like 1 in a million, but because I don't play...

2) Have a rich relative kick the bucket- NOPE. Not me. Pretty sure I don't have any rich relatives. I don't even have a relative NAMED Rich.

3) Scratch-off lotto tickets- The problem with this is simple. If I pay say $2.00 apiece for 5 scratch-offs, and win $2.00 in the process, I feel like it is my lucky day. And, I will take said winnings, along with another $4 or $6, and buy MORE tickets, because HEY if I won once, the BIG WINNER has to be there, just waiting for the next person. And if I don't buy more tickets, the next guy may win! (this mind-frame also works if I win nothing on the initial 5 tickets, because what are the odds that the next one is a winner???)

4) Slot machines- see number 3. Same principle.

5) Slipping and injuring myself (or the like) at a super-center, food establishment, etc. Well, I have not got the gumption to intentionally injure myself in this way, and if I did, I would probably end up in a wheelchair for life, and the super-center's lawyers would probably find some way to prove I did it intentionally, and I would end up working off my remaining days as a greeter(in a wheelchair) to pay off the fines of false accusation/slander...

6) Playing the stock market (see item number 1)... You have to have money to PLAY the stock market, or know something about the stock market for this to work.

7) Have 10 more kids and go on welfare... (hmmm, gonna have to give this one some thought, lol)

Thats it. Cannot come up with any more Get-Rich-Quick schemes that aren't illegal.

On a positive note, yesterday at the grocery store I bought two boxes of Golden Grahams. When I got them home, Matthew pointed out that 1 in 10 boxes of said cereal contained a CASH CARD! "Yeah, right!" I thought to myself... "Like that will ever happen." This morning the kids wanted cereal for breakfast. I made them both bowls of Trix, and opened up the first box of Golden Grahams for myself. Low and behold, THERE WAS A CASH CARD INSIDE!!!! I won $5!!!! So, children, I don't know if you like Golden Grahams, but if not, SUCK IT UP. They are still on sale. I can get 2 1/2 more boxes with this $5!!!!

(oh, and I opened the other box, incidentally...no cash card. Gonna have to eat alot of cereal today so Hubby doesn't figure out I opened the second box just to find out if there was another cash card...)

marci

The Joys of Having Siblings That are MUCH Younger Than You

When my parents decided to have another child, when I was almost 16, I was thrilled. You see, we had just recently moved from Podunk, Indiana to Wilmington, Delaware. Difference in population: about a million, difference in crime: unmeasurable. Basically, I was on a leash that was about 2 foot long. Of course, this probably wasn't really a bad thing, now that I am older and can reflect on it. But, at the time, I thought my life was a living hell.

So, Stan was born. YAY!!! He was sooo cute, and cuddly, and all. AND basically mom and dad must have decided it was ok if I was out and about more, cause they had a back-up...lol SO, I went from never going anywhere, to going basically anywhere I wanted. Of course, 90% of the time, I had a newborn with me, but still, he was easy to hide being as small as he was. Cruising in Newark, stop to talk to cute guy. Him: "what is that in the back seat?" Me: "oh, just some dirty laundry." Him: "it smells like baby shit!" Me: "Yeah, new brother at home, all he does is poop!" (crap, gonna have to find somewhere with a semi-flat surface to change the little stinker!) Him: "did your laundry just cry???" Me: "no, I ran over a cat." Him: "you are sitting in a parking lot, you know." Me: "GEEZ you ask a lot of questions for someone I just randomly met!"

Then, Stan got to that cute baby age, around 6 months or so.. this was when my friend Becca and I discovered that by feeding him random condiments, we could get him to make the funniest faces! Lemon juice was our favorite, but could be substituted by mustard, olives, pickles, you get the idea. BOY did we have fun! For the record, I loved/love him to death. I took him everywhere, including school.

A couple years later, along came Jessi, my sister, shortly followed by my daughter Kasey 7 months later. Around the time they all became toddlers, I discovered that they thought I was GOD. I could tell them anything, and they would believe it. NO MATTER HOW CRAZY IT WAS!
This was awesome, and the source of endless hours of entertainment on my part.

Examples:

1) they were convinced that my car was a helicoptor, and when I turned the flashers on, we were off the ground, flying. I usually did this as we were going up a hill, so they could see the treetops out the windows... This was great, until one day Stan asked me what the little lever on the seatbelt was (the thing you use to adjust the height of the shoulder strap). Going along with the flying mantra, I told him it was a seat ejector. All three kids screamed when I tried to touch it....

2) I convinced them once that the reason they had tailbones(because Jessi asked...) was because they were all born with tails, but for cosmetic reasons, we had them removed.

3) Jessi has a small mole on the inside of the arch of her foot. She asked me one day what it was. I told her it was a mole. She said "what is a mole?" ...... So I told her it wasn't anything to worry about right now, that eventually she would have to have a special shoe made as it grew, but that would take a couple years. She really didn't say too much else about it. Later that night tho, after she went home to mom, she very innocently pointed to the mole and said "mommy, what is this?" to which my mom replied "its a mole" . I got a very ANGRY call from my mother because Jessi immediately went in to hysterics when mom confirmed that she had a mole.... (backfire)

4) This one wasn't just me. My brother Rob was involved. We convinced Stan that he had a disease called Gizzards, that he contracted from eating chicken... There were several remedies to this disease, none of which were nice, some of which may or may not have bordered on abuse (please don't report me, it was all ROB I swear). Stan has since forgiven ME, but maybe not Rob so much...

I cannot think of others off the top of my head, but Jess, Stan, Kase, feel free to leave other examples in the comments. Just make sure you don't incriminate me...

This all-in-fun sibling/child teasing has backfired a couple times. For example, one time Jessi came to visit me at work when I was working in Pediatrics. There was a little boy in an oxygen tent. She wanted to give him a toy car. I explained to her that he couldn't have anything that could cause a sparkm because the oxygen could catch on fire. Mom told me later that Jessi went ON AND ON about how she didn't believe me, that I was pulling her leg. Luckily, she does believe Mom, so we have been able to avoid oxygen related explosions.

Another time, when I was pregnant with Matthew, Stan made the comment that I was having three babies. (kasey had somehow gotten this idea from that stupid pencil test, that said I was going to have a girl and two boys) I explained to Stan that I only had one baby. He said "No, you have three. Here, here, and here. (pointing to my stomach, and then each of my rather pregnantly induced large breasts. I told him , no, just one, in my stomach. He said "then why are THEY so big?" I told him that my body was making milk, and that was how I was going to feed the baby when it was born. His response? "YEAH RIGHT". After I finally convinced him that I wasn't lying to him, he had three questions. One: why did HE have boobs then? Two: were his going to get as big as mine? Three: (My personal favorite) "Well, after you get done feeding the baby with them, what good are they????" I responded to this last one that one day he would understand what they were good for. He was 9 when this conversation took place. He is 20 now, and still hasn't figured out what they are good for... ( I love you Stan!)

marci