Night-before-birth memories

I’ll be the first to admit my memory isn’t that great. It’s a good thing, really—I tend to remember only the positive things about major events that happened in my life.

This drives my husband crazy, because it kind of skews my reasoning for doing things again.

For instance, when we decided to paint our entire house—ceilings included—Iremember a ton of great pizza nights, loads of fun choosing colors, and a lot of satisfaction once the job was done.

Hubby, on the other hand, points out that the entire process took over a year, I hurt my shoulder at one point and couldn’t help with anything above my own head, and we actually ended up switching our colors multiple times due to a heavy case of indecision.

It’s not that he’s negative. He’d call himself a realist. Me, I’m an optimist.

When it comes to remembering the birth of our son, Caden, I can recall everything I did the night before. It started with prenatal yoga, then I came home and talked on the phone to a friend for an hour, and then we went for our one mile dog walk.

We ended up at my parents’ house, which is only a couple blocks away, and sat in the hot tub till midnight (turned down for me, of course). After we got out, my water broke. It was all very mellow and enjoyable. At least, that’s the way I remember it.

This time around was certainly less calm, to say the least.

Let’s just say the evening following my baby shower, which I wrote about on Monday, was … odd. My son started dozing off in his high chair during dinner, which made me think he’d be easy to put to bed. We skipped his usual bath and I got him straight into his jammies, read a quick book, and tucked him in.

Of course, instant sleep would have been too easy! Instead, his eyes popped open once the lights were off. What followed was an hour of jumping on the bed, giggling, throwing himself on top of me, and general non-sleeping activity. Worse, after my fun-filled day of shower-related chatter, I was at my most tired … and my most impatient. I even barked at Caden like I never have before. Then again, exhaustion combined with feeling strange didn’t really suit me. I’d actually felt strange all day. Hot in the face and a little light-headed. I thought it was just excitement from the baby shower.

Once Caden finally passed out, I went downstairs and basically just fretted. I wanted to get some work out of the way, yet the kitchen was a mess, yet I really needed to eat something … In short, I was a very grumpy, very preggo lady.

I decided eating was most important, so after a solid meal of leftover Mexican food followed by chocolate ice cream mixed with raspberries and a cookie, I made a ten-minute attempt at cleaning the kitchen. I usually don’t care about going to bed with a clean kitchen if I have other things I need to do, but it seemed important at the time.

After that, I went to my office and hammered out a few projects, ahead of time — also something I don’t normally do. Feeling quite accomplished, I headed to bed around 11 p.m. and was passed out before my head even hit the pillow.

As for how I woke up and what happened right after … well, I hope you pop back by the blog next Monday! I’ve got a heck of a story to share.