5 Ways to Capitalize on Your Husband's Forgetfulness

I'm taking a quick break from pretending I know stuff about being a mom to demonstrate that I really know stuff about being a wife.

You see, as a general rule, men are forgetful. It can be annoying. More than annoying, really. Basically, the only way to avoid the desire to punch your husband in the face every time he forgets something, is to capitalize on that sh*t.

I suppose if your wife is forgetful, one could use the following ideas on one's wife. But, if you are a man with a forgetful wife, chances are you're actually just a man who forgot that his wife has a great memory.

Now, the degree to which you can practice the following is directly tied to just how forgetful your husband is. I do all of these things nearly every day.

Also, you really have to sell it every time, or else he will start to get suspicious. Unless he's oblivious in addition to forgetful.

If you do it right, you can enjoy the following life improvements almost immediately:

1. Never again watch a movie you don't want to see.

Just tell him you've already seen it. This works particularly well for us, because we don't have cable and our antenna only gets one channel, so we watch the hell out of Netflix.

The key to success with this one is mixing it up. Here are some responses that have worked for me:

Simply and definitively, We've seen that already.

I think we've seen that one... What was it about? (Pause to let him read just a few words.) Emphatically, Oh yea. Yup.

That sounds familiar, who's in it? (Pause to let him name an actor.) I'm pretty sure we've seen that one. (This works best when there's a well-known actor in it.)

Oh we watched that one awhile ago, it was alright, but not good enough to watch again.

Oh that one was stupid, I think you were asleep.

You have to know your husband to know how often you can get away with this. I do it all the time because Ryan very frequently really does suggest titles we've seen already. Since it's often legitimate, sometimes his memory sparks, and he realizes it. So, he'd really never think to question me. I mean, he's even come home from the grocery store all excited to watch a movie that we've already gotten from Red Box. Seriously. The Campaign with Zack Galifinakis and Will Ferrell? How do you forget you saw that?

2. Never hear another long-winded story from his past.

Does your husband do this, too? Tells you stories from his glory days, usually at least seven times? Or is it just because mine is 12 years older than me and feels like he needs to justify his age with tales of excitement from long, long ago? The thing is that a lot of them are interesting the first time. A 720-POUND TUNA?? But, everyone knows that the third time you tell a story, you inescapably make it boring. I know you caught a 720-pound tuna, Ryan. I caught a fish once, too.

At a certain point in your marriage, you have officially heard all the interesting stories. And then there are the ones that might be new, but aren't even close to interesting. So, you'd rather just not hear any stories, to be honest. It's okay, your husband can't hear what you're thinking. This is a safe place. So let's get to work.

Managing this requires some finesse. You have to lay the groundwork when he starts telling a story you've actually already heard. You have to develop a consistent reaction every time he begins a familiar tale, I had the best mac and cheese ever in Aspen... I'd finish my runs for the day and go to this restaurant at the bottom-- (I've heard about Aspen's mac and cheese like nine times, which sounds like an exaggeration, but if anything, is an understatement.)

I have this look, it's like a frozen half-eye-roll. He got the message quickly, and started asking, Oh, have I told you this already? So, then I'd say yes, and recite back a few details. Eventually, I started making the same expression when I really wasn't quite sure whether I had heard the story he was about to tell or one that was close enough that I just didn't want to listen, at which point I simply dropped the detail recitation.

But, it's important to still let him tell a few stories here and there. I try to let this happen whenever I have something that I've been meaning to think about and figure out, because I find that my "thinking" facial expression looks a lot like my "interested" facial expression, as long as I make sure to keep eye contact. If you let the eye contact go, it's all over. He will know you're not listening.

In any event, I'm sure one day Ryan will start to catch on and start to tell me a fake story, so I try to pay particular attention to any glimmer in his eye that might indicate he's trying to trick me. I don't know how crafty your husband is, but you should probably look out for that, too.

3. Never get blamed for dropping the ball.

Forget to tell your husband that you guys have to drive two hours tomorrow to go have lunch with your grandmother? No you didn't! He simply forgot that you already told him.

I'm sure you've already tried this. I mean, it's so obvious. But, if it didn't work, either your husband's memory isn't bad enough, and I don't feel bad for you, or, possibly, you just need to try a little harder.

First, make sure you also "forget" to tell him good news on occasion. It's triple pay check month? I told you three times already! You were supposed to decide how you want to celebrate! Get it?

Second, act like he already gave you grief for it. Well if I didn't tell you last Wednesday, why did you huff about it? You get it.

4. Get what you want for dinner. (Kind of.)

This one really only works if what you want is burritos, and your husband is almost always subconsciously craving burritos.

What should we do for dinner?

I thought you said you felt like burritos.

Oh yeah! Let's get burritos.

That may never be useful to you, but I pull that one out at least once or twice a month.

5. Trick him into agreeing with you on almost any subject.

This one is fairly amazing, but I would caution that it shouldn't be used as frequently as some of the above tactics.

All you do is back off completely and pretend that you agree with him. Then later, say, I know we think (insert whatever you pretended to agree on), but, like you said before, (insert something that supports your point), and the more I think about it, maybe (insert whatever you thought in the first place).

Nope, he never said that thing you said he said. But he doesn't know that. He forgot.

And, now that it came from "him" and not you, he won't argue with it.

I know we said we should get racks on the Jeep before getting a new camera, but like you said before, Fin's growing fast and we'll want good pictures of every stage, and the more I think about it, maybe we really should get the camera first.

Yes, now, on the Casper family list of upcoming major purchases, a Canon EOS Rebel T4i does come before the Jeep rack system Ryan wants.

The important skill here is in knowing for how long you need to pretend to agree with him. Sometimes, you have to wait days. Yes, you have to pretend he's right when you know he's wrong, for days. Hopefully your disagreement isn't over a time-sensitive topic, because sometimes that's an unworkable situation. But, when I'm in a pinch, if I'm feeling lucky, and Ryan's been particularly forgetful, and I know that he truly knows less than nothing on the issue, I'll go for the retroactive, Well, I think it's like what you said last week...

I say that this works on almost any subject, because this is destined to fail with whatever subject(s) your husband is really an expert on. Ryan, for example, has a few deep skill sets: surfing, fishing, mostly all ocean-related things really, emergency medicine, carpentry, cars. Now, I'm no marriage counselor (as you can probably tell), but it's very important to acknowledge when your partner knows more than you do.

There you have it. I hope this saves some other husbands from face punches as it has saved mine. XO.

3 Signs You're Over-Attachment-Parenting

Psych. I don't there's such a thing.

I do not like to put my five month-old down. Like, at all.

I am well aware that a lot of people think holding a baby too much can "spoil" him or her. Listen, you can put your kid down as much as you want. But whatever you do, don't accuse a mom of "spoiling" her baby unless you have substantial evidence that it causes harm.

And by evidence, I mean more than the panicked vague assertion I heard from my husband one day when he misinterpreted Finley's gas for clingy-ness.

You hold him too much, he's getting too used to it.

Really? So even though all the research says it makes them more independent in the long run--

I don't care what research says. Everyone says they'll get too attached.

Everyone does? So now that we're listening to "everyone" instead of research, can you name one specific person?

I don't need to. It's EVERYONE.

So out of EVERYONE, you cannot tell me one specific person's name, who held his or her child too much, and which child, upon learning to walk, still wanted to be held all the time?

I'm wrong and stupid and you are smart and always right. (This is what I chose to hear, because whatever he actually said was not a person's name.)

Here's the thing. I work, and I have a commute. I'm gone 11 hours a day. And my baby is on a good sleeping schedule. This means that I have, almost without fail, precisely two hours of awake time with my awesome kid on weekdays. All the weekdays. And on weekends, I have to clean, to my dismay, which means I have to put him down for a good chunk of both days. And this is how it's been since I went back to work when he was two months old. Mathematically, it makes sense not to put him down when I can hold him.

And here's the other thing. He's a wild man. I know what the odds are that he'll want to be held once he's mobile. Again, math is on my side. And you can't argue with math. Everyone knows that.

You know you're in the club if:

1. Your baby has ice cream on his leg.

My in-laws were in town from south Florida one recent weekend. As I ate a ginormous burger with my boy sleeping in my lap, head on my left arm, they looked at me as if I were eating the poop out of his diaper. All three of them were telling me to put him down. I'm not sure what they didn't understand. Two of my favorite things in the world right now are eating and holding my kid. When I get to do them at the same time, it's like being stampeded by puppies. And, I'm good at it. I actually managed to eat that half-pound of grass-fed goodness without anything falling on Fin-- not even a drop of cheese or avocado, which might be the only thing more amazing than the fact that it took me about five minutes to destroy. But, ice cream, which I prefer a little melt-y, is a different story. I've had to lick ice cream off him a few times. Maybe I just need more practice. Any excuse to eat more ice cream.

2. He's quiet when you put him down. Or he's not.

As often as I hold Fin, I know for a fact that he can play happily by himself. I also know that sometimes he doesn't want to, and he gets pissed off when he gets put in his pack n' play.

You might be tempted to panic, like my husband does, on those rare days that your baby has something going on and wants to be held. If that happens, just wait a day, maybe even a week, before you accuse your spouse of spoiling the baby. We had a really rough week or two just before he was a month old, when Fin was really gassy and really didn't want to be put down. Fortunately, my husband didn't dare say anything to me during that week. (He was still afraid of new mom hormones back then. Life was so much simpler.)

No matter how often he wants to be held as a baby, he won't be a baby forever. If you think a little boy is never going to leave mommy's side just because she held him whenever he wanted to be held as a baby, I think you're psychotic. That simple.

3. The back of his head is wicked round.

Most babies spend a lot of time on their backs, so if you carry your baby a lot, you might notice that he or she starts to look a little different. That is to say, more awesome.

My husband is 41 and has been surfing for decades, which is reason enough for him to idolize Kelly Slater, the 40 year-old surfer who holds like 11 or 12 world championships, and the record for both youngest and oldest world champion. And he is beautiful. One other thing about Kelly Slater is that he rocks a shaved head, so when Ryan realized his hair was starting to get a little thin in one area, he told me he wanted to shave his head "like Kelly Slater". The problem is, Ryan's head is not as beautifully round as Kelly Slater's, and would therefore look creepy and ugly. I didn't know how to put that gently, but apparently my blank stare sufficed. Ryan still has hair.

Attachment Parenting: Your beautifully round-skulled child will thank you one day.

4 Lies About Breastfeeding

Know why I don't criticize moms who don't breastfeed? It's f*cking hard. Sometimes impossible.

I've heard a bunch of lies about breastfeeding. Lies become material for criticizing formula feeders, lies make it difficult to distinguish the hard from impossible, and lies are just annoying.

So I'd like to debunk the following (I've always wanted to debunk something):

1. "Your body will produce the right amount." (My mom)

No. And I have no idea why she told me this, because she supplemented fairly early because she was afraid she wasn't making enough. (And despite not being EBF, I have always been very, very healthy. On the rare occasion that I stayed home from school (and now work), it was almost always because I was faking it.)

I've had a lot of friends give up once they first tried to pump and were only getting a couple ounces at a time. That's exactly what I was getting when I first started. I gave myself a month to get a backup supply for when I went back to work, which resulted in somewhere around 30 ounces, if that. But, that was buffer enough as long as I pumped the equivalent of what Finley ate while we were apart. But I didn't. At first.

I Googled the hell out of ways to increase milk supply and found some good stuff. Like this and this and this.

The best of that good stuff: snacking. The downside, though, is that you're snacking on oatmeal and carrot juice. And fenugreek supplements. (Spell check doesn't even know what fenugreek is. No, I don't mean "greenback".) And worse, no candy canes! I know. It's July. I'm not sure whether I'm turning into Buddy the Elf or if it's just forbidden fruit syndrome, but as soon as I read that peppermint decreases milk supply, all I've wanted is a stupid candy cane. And then there's the unthinkable horror that I'll still be breastfeeding and stocking when it actually is Christmastime. I wonder how many Christmas cookies I'll have to eat to compensate for not having candy canes. I digress.

And, it's even harder than giving up peppermint. For a long stretch, I had to be rocking the dairy cow setup for about four hours of the work day to yield four bottles, and sometimes I'd still come up short. As long as Finley only downed three a day, we were cool. But then he started going for four, so we did a little role reversal and I started waking him up in the night for more feedings to give production a kick and fill him up. It took a couple months to get out of the woods, and if I drop the ball on any part of my routine, it's instant regression.

Even if you're willing to work your tail off to keep your kid on nothing but boob milk, it could be out of your hands. Not every mom has an office door and a job where it's usually okay to be in isolation for more than half the workday. And for those moms, hard might really be impossible. That's a big reason I get annoyed at moms judging other moms.

2. "If it hurts, you're doing it wrong." (The Internet)

Just because those mobsters over at La Leche League claim to know how to get it to work without pain, doesn't mean I'm doing it wrong. If my kid is eating, and he's not hungry, I'm doing it right. Listen, Internet, you can tell me that it doesn't HAVE to hurt or something, but don't tell me I'm doing it wrong. YOU'RE doing it wrong! (I kid. I know they're loving humans over at LLL. I know.)

It hurt bad. Like, I would have traded that pain for giving birth again. Toe-curling pain. I was in a constant state of fear of that latch.

And no, I didn't bother to get a consultant. Very often during those first few weeks, I was clothed in at least three bodily fluids. I didn't need to worry about a consultant smelling me, and the problem seemed pretty obvious: There was a creature sucking on my raw nipples for, I don't know, seven hours a day? My friend had a baby two months before me, and she took breastfeeding classes, read books, saw a consultant, maybe more than one. And while basically everything about her makes me feel like a bit of a slacker, I felt pretty okay about things when she told me it hurt for a month for her, too.

Praise the Lord, it got better around a month. I don't think I'd still be breastfeeding if it hadn't.

3. "You have to start supplementing to get enough sleep." (Friends with babies)

There's another option: co-sleeping. It's so easy. Call me lazy, but I prefer the easy way. You can also call me well rested. Because I am. And you get to dangle You've never had to wake up at night to take care of the baby over your spouse's head for, like, the rest of your lives.

I'm sure that's not always the silver bullet combo it has been for me. And, if you're not into co-sleeping, night feedings are what they are, in which case this number 3 isn't so much a lie for you. Lying about a lie. That's no good.

4. "The weight comes right off when you breastfeed." (Everyone who hasn't breastfed)

Seriously. Don't count on it.

I tried to make this happen. Around week two, I wanted to eat every pretzel, dark chocolate chip, bagel, granola bar, and piece of pizza I saw. And I more or less did. A box of granola bars would last one day in our house. And after a full day of eating, I could totally take care of one of those huge bags of Pirate's Booty all by myself. And then ask my husband to get me ice cream.

I hadn't been a big eater during pregnancy, so I actually watched myself gain weight since I gave birth, which I was pretty sure was backwards. So, after a few weeks, I foolishly attempted to get control of my lumberjack appetite. And my production went down.

So, I figured, f*ck that, I need to eat. Cheese. Chocolate. Peanut butter. Almond butter. Regular butter. Eventually my appetite got slightly less lumberjacky, but pounds are still not melting off of me. The only melting going on is in the form of cheese.

4 Things I've Learned About Co-Sleeping

Disclaimer: Like everything I write, this is about my personal experience. I might try to sound as though you should find it worthwhile; I might even include links to legitimate science. But no, I don't think my way is for everyone. I have come to that conclusion based on the fact that not everyone wants to do it my way.

1. It doesn't mean your infant will die.

I know this because Finley is still alive. I was really banking on this, since, like a lot of moms, I would do anything to keep my baby alive.

I read things like this and this and this, and decided I could do it safely.

If you can't do it safely, it would probably be a bad idea for you.

2. It doesn't mean your infant will refuse to sleep alone.

Well, I haven't tried putting my boy down on his own for the night since the first night we got home and I was really tired and didn't yet have the co-sleeping logistics worked out.

But, I can tell you that you can put him down for a nap, and nap he will. Unless he has a burp, in which case he will go bonkers.

3. It does mean you'll get to sleep.

Finley had a fussy week-and-a-half around the end of his first month, and there were a few nights in that time that I could relate to the plight of the "every mom". Other than that, I would have to lie. Which I have done. It's really awkward to tell a frazzled fellow new mom that you get all the sleep you want and are never tired. That's not the best way to make friends. You get a reaction similar to what you'd get if you slapped a puppy in front of her.

Worse, try telling that to someone who has a vendetta against co-sleeping. Then it's like slapping a puppy and a kitten.

So, Finley goes to sleep around 7pm, wakes up to eat a couple times maybe, and is up for the day around 6am. I don't usually remember the feedings because it goes like this: Open Eyes; Flop; Suckle-Gulp (times a few); Un-Flop; Sleep.

If I have to pee, I change him too, but that doesn't happen every night. I assume that's okay because he doesn't get pissed off if I don't change him and we haven't experienced diaper rash yet.

4. It does mean people will judge you.

Um, because they're jealous. (See number 3.) No, I'm kidding. They might not be jealous, they might really think it's a poor decision.

The most common reaction I get to admitting that we co-sleep is a semi-contorted facial expression, which is my signal to go find someone else to talk to, because I would much rather them think I am wrong than try to convince them I am not. (I was one of the cool kids in college. You know, on the debate team. So, in those four years, I did enough arguing and persuading to cover the rest of my life.)

But since this is my blog and I get to say what I want and ignore comments, I'll be straightforward about what I think. Ultimately, co-slept kids are more independent and just better in a whole bunch of other ways. I really like how Mark frames the discussion.

As to logistics, I don't care how long it takes for Fin to wean away and sleep on his own. I don't care if he does it when he's a year, or when he's ten years.

However, I can't say with any degree of certainty whether my husband is okay with that last thing I wrote. I know, you're supposed to be on the same page or at least communicate about those things.

Well, the reason I don't know is only because he doesn't know. If you bring up the story about John, who sleeps on his couch while his two daughters (ages 5 and 8) sleep in his bed with his wife, Ryan will demand a transition plan for independent sleeping. But, if you tell him how Pete, the race car driver, has a ginormous half-room-sized sunken couch in his living room, where he sleeps nightly along with his wife, 13 year-old daughter, and 10 year-old son (with whom he often performs "Boats N Hoes" as a duet), he instantly becomes long-term co-sleeping's biggest advocate.

I'm not sure whether the above paragraph came across as real or not, but it is. John is a friend of a friend, and Pete is my in-laws' neighbor. And those were both Ryan's real reactions.

One of our favorite things to do as a married couple is to "table" issues. It's a great way to not have to deal with something. And, I know that sounds lazy, but you could run through a million hypotheticals and still be caught off guard by an unanticipated nuance. Or, you could just wait and see what happens, and then adjust on the fly. We're both good on the fly, so that's how we do.

3 PostPartum Spousal Battles to Avoid

It's amazing how trivial all our married life arguments seemed as soon as we had a newborn. At the time, like most married folks, we really thought we were limiting our battles to the important stuff. Like, before we got a pet gate to secure the dogs in the back of the Jeep, Tiki used to nose her way into the front seat, where there was nowhere for her 60-pound body to go but 78% on my lap and 22% in Ryan's face. Ryan did nothing to discourage her as he drove along and her happy little tail whacked me repeatedly in the face.

You can't pet her when she does this!

I know...

You have to yell at her!

It doesn't work.

You have to do it anyway, and you have to push her into the back!

You know I can't do that! She was abused! THEY LOCKED HER IN A BATHROOM.

It's DANGEROUS. You even said this is why you rear-ended that Volvo when we first started dating.

That was a minor accident! I'm a safe driver, I COULD DRIVE RACE CARS.

We're still paying higher insurance because of it!! AND YOU GOT A BURRITO FOR LUNCH WITHOUT ME ON TUESDAY!

Those were the days. Because even though I've read a lot of good stuff about communication and productive argument and all that, it never seems to work when we're a collective mix of stressed and sensitive.

Finley's a relatively easy enough baby. But he's not one of those miracle super low maintenance babies. And what that means is that while we've never had any complaints in the sleep department, I don't have much time to contribute to chores. While I think that staying on top of laundry should earn me some kind of medal, Ryan gets frustrated with how much that leaves for him to do on particularly long or hard workdays.

There's no avoiding that pickle for us right now. But there are pickles we can avoid. And so these are some important battles I've learned to avoid:

1. Stop touching my breast milk!

I vented to my friend Shauna about this. Apparently Ryan isn't the only husband who likes to play a role in milk management. Her husband loves to freeze milk and prep bottles. But Bryan must not be as forgetful as Ryan is, because she has yet to send me an iMessage with 7 purple angry face emoticons at the end of it.

I come home from work each day with four full bottles that attach to my pump funnels. But, because they can be used post-milk-storage, we use mason jars for storing milk in the freezer. (On a scale of Emily Post to, say, Honey Boo Boo's mom, how inappropriate would it be to use said mason jars for our homemade Christmas gifts next year?)

Ryan tries to help me by transferring the milk and packing my pump bag. Well, I pumped into a canteen the other day. That day, he forgot to pack the bottles, which was not as catastrophic as the day he forgot to pack the little yellow pieces that facilitate suction.

But when I just said that Ryan likes "to help me", that was basically almost entirely false. He doesn't like to leave it until the morning for one of us to do for some reason that I don't care much about. I'm fine doing it in the morning, but I just don't want to do it at night. But he does. He does that instead of cleaning up the crumbs he manages to strew over every surface in the kitchen, instead of picking up the socks and clothing layers he sheds as he walks around the house, instead of returning empty seltzer cans and tea cups (he's a fancy carpenter) to the kitchen. Those things he leaves for me to do in the morning.

If I sound ungrateful, it's only because I had to walk from Downtown Crossing to the waterfront to borrow Shauna's pump while leaking through my shirt, and accidentally made eye contact with three young men from the Ukraine (or who knows where, there are a lot of accents I'm unfamiliar with), who demanded that I take their picture (four times) at the Boston Massacre Memorial, which is a circle of old bricks on the sidewalk, which, no, you could not see in the picture. At all.

Anyway, I could try to convince Ryan to take care of his sh*t, and let me take care of mine, or I could just make a checklist for myself to run through in the morning. Guess which is easier.

2. You're not the thing I like most about you!

Wha? I know. I'll explain.

One of the best things about Ryan is that there is, literally, no one I'd rather have by my side in an emergency or disaster. Well, maybe I'd want an expert in handling whatever specific emergency or disaster were to occur; but, for the general unknown, my husband is the best.

He trained as an EMT and graduated from the fire academy when he lived in south Florida, which is, if you'll recall, where people eat people's faces. He's been 20 miles out in 16 foot seas, and has even had to dive into the ocean in the middle of the night with a knife in his mouth to cut something or other from the anchor line so the boat wouldn't sink.

But, when I say that my baby's ear is slightly pinker than normal, he is in no way qualified to tell me not to worry, even if Finley had just been laying on that side of his head for 3 hours.

You see what I'm getting at. Sometimes I'm wrong. I have to remember that I don't always recognize that in a timely fashion.

3. Stop being such a little b*tch!

I think this is the dumbest of all the fights we almost have. I think most people know that nothing good can come from comparing pain. And yet, I find it so hard to resist doing.

Ryan had kidney stones a couple years ago. Four of them. His doctor told him he had zero kidney stones. Kidney stones hurt, apparently, and Ryan kept complaining about the pain. I insisted for one month straight that he get the name of his friend's urologist. I wish I could say that the reason was because I felt so bad that he was in pain. That was probably true for the first week or so. But then it was like, you aren't even trying to fix this, and now I just want you to stop b*tching. Fast forward some amount of time I don't quite recall, Ryan undergoes a couple stone-blasting procedures and has been fine since. Also, Ryan has a new doctor.

Fast forward a little further, to my third trimester. One morning, Ryan says, "There's nothing I can do to beat you if you give birth without drugs. You'll wear the tough pants in the family." This was the first and last time he's acknowledged my pain tolerance in comparison to his. Did I actually think he was going to give me a medal? I guess not. But would a piece of foil on a chain of paperclips really be too much to ask for?

But, no matter how hard I wish, there is no way that we can actually compare one another's pain tolerance levels and declare a winner.

What I can tell you is that when Ryan gets a stuffy nose, I get a status update every hour until it's gone. "I think I'm coming down with something." "I'm definitely coming down with something." "I wonder if this is a cold or allergies." "I think I have allergies." "I think I have a cold." "I wonder if I have the flu." "Don't let me breathe on you, I think I have the flu." And so on.

Me, on the other hand. They have this thing called the 5-1-1 rule to tell you at what point during labor you should go to the hospital. (Or, in our case, to the birth center.) I met the requirements at about 8am, but my midwife sent me home because it didn't hurt bad enough. Four hours later, I was pretty darn sure it hurt bad enough, and I told Ryan it was time to go back. He calmly replied, I don't know, I don't think it's bad enough yet. What I wanted to say was, I know it seems that way, but that's because I'm not a b*tch like you. What I did say was, It's bad enough. What the midwife said was, It's bad enough. Finley arrived five hours later.

So, I often want to say, Stop being such a b*tch! But, I have to remind myself that unless I want another sense of the word to describe me, I just have to let him be one.

So, those are the lessons I've learned.

1. Go with the easy option.
2. Know that you might be wrong.
3. Don't be a b*tch.

9 Things About Natural Childbirth

If you are looking for science, this post is not it. This is straight-up anecdotal, based exclusively on my one own experience. That said, I really liked reading anecdotal stuff about deliveries when I was pregnant (read: petrified of delivering).

Apparently I'm not the only one who was terrified of delivering a baby. The other day, my husband ran into the store while I stayed in the Jeep to feed the baby. He met an expecting couple, and learned that mom-to-be was already planning to have an epidural. (He makes friends just as quickly as he asks them intrusive personal questions. Sometimes I'm glad to have been awkwardly trying to breastfeed in the parking lot with un-tinted windows when he "makes friends".)

Now, word on my street was that if you don't get drugs, the pain is usually bearable, recovery is a lot easier, and that babies latch better. I figured it was worth a try. And it all proved true.

It is absolutely definitely certainly not always true. But, I didn't see all that much on my old friend the internet that encouraged me to at least try. I did, however, see quite a few mothers who opted for an epidural because they wanted the day to be nothing but puppies and rainbows, so they could really enjoy both the experience and the memory.

To each her own birth story, but I wanted to alert the masses (or the four people reading this) that you can have puppies and rainbows with a natural childbirth! The contrast between the displeasure (to, obviously, put it mildly) of labor and delivery and the elation (to, also, put it mildly) of your healthy baby plopped onto your chest is the definition of pure joy. I don't know, I mean, when your kid is born, you're probably maxed out on joy, no matter how you get there, so maybe it's all moot. But, in any event, my nine cents:

1. It is a GIFT. And if you get it, you feel like you should start changing into spandex in a phone booth.

For real, biggest high imaginable. Runners and drug addicts, step aside. Super hero high. Which might make you want to brag about the experience. But try to remember that it's a gift. Our prenatal care and labor and delivery was at a midwife-run birth center, where they don't do epidurals, etc. But, if you decide you want drugs, before or during labor, you can go across the parking lot to the hospital. (And they don't even judge you. Or, at least they say they don't.) We had a group meeting with other birth center patients called "the 36 week meeting", which is basically an orientation of the hospital, in case you end up there, whether it be your own, or Mother Nature's, decision. The birth center director had been explaining that we should write our birth plans, so that the midwives could try their best to do what we wanted. She mentioned that we probably won't be able to foresee everything, that the midwives will communicate everything they can during labor, and that any decisions they make will be in the best interest of mom and baby. Of course, that managed to piss off one particularly beast-willed mom-to-be. When she demanded that the director confirm right then and there that she would have the option to refuse any treatment they might think necessary, Linda Ann looked understandably irritated. But, she calmly replied, When people are hardcore against any real medical intervention, they've said, 'Well, what would you have done in this situation 200 years ago?' And I have to say, 'I would have watched you and/or your baby die.' Linda Ann: 1; Beast Mom: 0. It's serious business. So if you successfully deliver a baby naturally, consider yourself BLESSED to have felt what I can only describe as the most empowered, invincible feeling ever. That should be enough. You shouldn't feel compelled to judge the moms who didn't get to experience that, regardless of whether it was a choice for them.

2. That hypno-birthing stuff works.

I think. I actually still don't know for sure what it is. But, like a week before my due date, my also-pregnant cousin mentioned that she had been getting into it. I panicked, briefly, feeling like I was back in college and realizing the night before an exam that there was an entire section I hadn't studied. I Googled it (shout out to pregnancy's best friend), and read that it was about calm breathing and imagery. Sure there was more to it, but that much seemed pretty self-explanatory to me, so I just stopped there. And also, I think you're supposed to call contractions "pressure waves" or something. (Two days before my due date, I saw "pressure waves" in some other pregnant girl's blog post, and had to Google what the f--- those were, too. But it didn't really help.) Anyway, I didn't use the fancy jargon, but I did yoga breathing and sang Jack Johnson's 'Monsoon' in my head while picturing waves hitting the beach. I didn't practice it before labor like you're supposed to, so I definitely wavered between Jack Johnson's lyrics and profanity a little. But, I still think that stuff helped.

3. You forget the pain as easily as my husband forgets where things are kept in our house.

Contractions really hurt, no way around it. The only way to describe the pain is to say exactly what it was: It feels like a human is inside you, trying to get out. But even between contractions, I kept forgetting how bad they were. My contractions were really close together from the beginning; they were about five minutes apart right away. (Of course, this meant I was freaking out on the 5-1-1 rule, and got sent home from the birth center a bunch of times. My contractions aren't bad enough yet? Like, they get way worse? ... Yeah. They got way worse.) But still, those short five-, and later three-, minute segments were everything. Like, if I were live-tweeting active labor it'd go like this:
Please, Universe, make sure no one ever live tweets active labor.

4. You might want to give up after less than five hours even though you told yourself you'd only give up after, like, 20 hours. 

Fortunately our magical midwife somehow knew exactly how I wanted to be coached through labor. (It sure as heck wasn't from my birth plan, because I never did get around to writing that.) At one point, pretty close to the end, I asked her through grimaced teeth, mid-contraction (you can, actually, "talk" through contractions until the end, but it is an odd mix of a yell-ish whimper) what percent of women chickened out and got the epidural, in her estimation. She assured me that my contractions were just about as bad as they were going to get, and from that point on it was just endurance. I don't know if she knew she was lying or not, because they definitely got worse. For all I know it was too late for the epidural anyway, and she thought I'd handle it better if I thought I still had the option, and was choosing not to use it. Either way, I really think my labor was easier without the epidural.

5. You'll know if you poop.

Yea, I mean that as a good thing. I guess. First, let me say how appalled I was when I first learned that you might poop while you're in labor. That was before I was pregnant, and when I expressed this shock to my mom, she laughed in my face. Obviously. Believe me, You won't care. But I was sure I'd be mortified. Mom was right: Did. Not. Care. I did apologize and thank them, though, because who wants to clean up poop? My sister is a nurse. My best friend is a nurse. Nurses are magical. Heroes. Magical heroes shouldn't have to clean poop. I was glad I had the awareness, so I could express a little appreciation.

6. You feel little limbs flail around as you're baby pops out!

Weird? Really weird. Gross? I don't know. But, in the moment, it's magical. (Yes, I know I used that word already. More than once.) Finley's head got stuck in between contractions, and the midwives' eyes were glued to the clock to make sure he would be okay. I knew I had a reason to be nervous. Thank God, another contraction came in time, and I managed to get him out, and feeling his lively limbs was the best moment of my life-- even better than hearing his cute little squeal a second later.

7. Your baby's arrival is like a triple espresso. 

I was falling asleep in between contractions. My water had broken just before 2am, we hung out for a little while as I tried to convince myself that I just had lost bladder control, and then we went in to get checked at 4am. We had a stress test, ultrasound to confirm head position, etc., and got home around 7am. Contractions had gotten pretty uncomfortable around then, so there was no more resting for me. I was pooped from the start, and was falling asleep between contractions, which make the worst alarm clock in the history of the world. I remember telling my mom that she better be ready to take care of my baby for the next week because I was going to need to sleep for days and days. But, once that sucker was out and placed on my chest at 5:08pm, I was ready to go out for sushi. And, although I did pass out about 15 minutes after we got home at 10pm that night (another bonus, no hospital stay required, so our dogs didn't think we abandoned them), and although I did nap a lot with my new snuggle buddy the next day, I really never felt that exhaustion you hear about.

8. It's all cake after the baby's out.

Stitching. The thought still makes me cringe. After I had given birth naturally, I told the midwife I wanted local anesthesia for the ONE, SINGLE stitch I needed. She's the sweetest woman, who rolled her eyes at me in a loving way. She practically insisted that I not bother with it. I asked my husband for his opinion. He stared at me blankly. She reminded me that the needle for the local anesthesia would be basically half the pain of the stitch. Well, that was hard to argue with. She was right, it wasn't bad. Also not bad was the afterbirth. I know it's gross, but I just made a big deal about pooping, so, you know. I don't even remember what delivering the placenta felt like, so it couldn't have been bad. Oh, and I never got cramps as my uterus went back to its normal size and position. FYI.

9. Recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed was WAY worse.

I know I shouldn't write that, because it's not always the case, but, of course, none of this is a promise. A natural birth certainly doesn't guarantee minimal tearing. (I just happened to give birth at place that almost never needs to use more than two stitches. I'll say it again, they are magical.) I used the epi bottle every time I went to the bathroom, and I sat down kind of slowly just in case, but I was literally never in pain. Oh, and I didn't even think of using one of those pad-sicle things they tell you to load up your freezer with. (And all those blogs that promised me I would need them scared the crap out of me.)

Every experience is different. That cannot be said enough. But, I wish I had known natural childbirth could be as easy as it was for me. Please forgive me, moms who didn't have it so easy, but I had to write this. If it makes you feel any better, I'm so afraid I used all my luck delivering Fin that we're considering adoption if he wants a sibling.