Random poll

OK, I need your help to understand something.

My friend, who is 26 and from a small town in Tennessee, has no knowledge of children's books and rhymes that I have known about for years. I'm trying to figure out if a)it's a regional thing; b)it's an age thing, or c)she and her family are just "out of it."

Since you all are different ages and from different parts of the country, you can help me!

Have you ever heard of the rhyme, "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" or the book, "The Monster at the End of This Book?" Because she hasn't, and it's hard for me to believe.

Get behind me, pregnant woman

I hate pregnant women.

This is a strange statement for me to make, because I was one myself just a year ago. But I just can't shake the resentment I feel whenever a woman with a bump starts talking with other people about her pregnancy. In particular, I seethe with anger when a friend who is 12 weeks pregnant talks about the bet she and her husband have about the gender of their baby. As she writes in her blog, "In just 8 weeks we will find out."

Don't you mean, in 8 weeks you will find out if your baby is healthy?

Logically, I know that it is impossible to expect that everyone should be as freaked out about the 20-week ultrasound as I am. Every person has that one "thing" that strikes fear in her heart. For some women, it's the well-baby check-up at the pediatrician's office, because that's where they found out their baby has a life-limiting condition. Whereas I am approaching the 12-month checkup with mostly indifference.

But.

I just can't shake those bad feelings. Part of me wonders if I'll ever be able to see a pregnant woman without feeling extraordinarily uncharitable toward her.

Gossip

I've never been good at being part of a "group." By that I mean that most of my friends are not friends with each other. Rather than getting together with "the gang," instead I hang out with friends individually. The last group I was part of was my office, and there were lots of growing pains there. Finally, I decided to retreat from the office folks and not try to be friends with them.

Two and a half months ago, we moved to a new neighborhood. We happen to be just down the street from good friends. Let's see if you can follow this story: My friend A recommended our babysitter, AM, to us. She watched Tyler maybe a month ago and she was great. However, she hung out with us about an hour after we came home and talked, talked, talked. Among the things she talked about were how she's working so many hours this summer and how her mom really wants her to work hard. She and her family live across the street from A, and A and the mom, L, are good friends.

Are you lost yet?

Well, I made a mistake and mentioned to A some of the things Am had said to us. I had never talked to L, but I certainly didn't get the best impression of her from what her daughter said. A must have shared what I said with L, because when L dropped A's baby daughter off with me today (we're sharing babysitting while A is on vacation), L told me Am has been ordered to apologize to us this afternoon. L and her husband are absolutely FURIOUS with their daughter for spreading all this stuff about their family . Apparently, we only got part of the story.

So here I am, feeling partly guilty for ratting on Am to my friend A, and partly mad at A for going to Am's mom L. What a tangled web we weave! This just makes me more sure than ever that while the idea of having a whole group of friends in your neighborhood is nice on the surface, I'm not sure if it's for me. My problem is that if I had tons of friends with young kids in our neighborhood, I'd always get jealous when they'd hang out together and not include me.

How many tests are too many?

I walked into a conversation today I'm not sure I wanted to have.

Let me back up. Tyler's pedi, Dr. S, is what most would describe as very conservative. His philosophy is, "Better test than sorry." So when Tyler's head got bigger and bigger (it jumped 45 percentile points in about six months), he ordered a CT scan. Everything turned out fine, thank God.

At Tyler's 9-month appointment last week, Tyler had only gained a bit of weight, and hadn't grown in length at all. Acknowledging that there is a margin for error in length measurement, the doc asked him to come back in six weeks for another measure. There could be a thyroid problem, he explained. How things have changed for me. Rather than immediately panicking about my son's thyroid, my first thought was, man, now I have to pay another co-pay.

I shared this news with my friend A, whose daughter also sees Dr. S. She nodded and said she has been considering finding another pedi. They pay for their own insurance and have a high deductible, so they pay $200 for each visit. Dr. S just ordered a bunch of tests, including lead, for her daughter's 12-month and after talking to friends, she doesn't feel the tests are necessary (mother's intuition).

Though I was the one who started the conversation, I found myself bristling. The dead-baby mama in me wanted to shout, "But we did have the worst-case scenario once! How can you just assume everything is fine? I'll tell you how--because nothing bad has ever happened to you!"

Yet, another part of me just doesn't know. How do you draw the line between being responsible and being overcautious?

Envy

It is the way of the world that just about any person can find someone else who "has things easier than she does."

I look at women who had a smooth route to parenthood (and, presumably, will easily have second and third children) and am envious.

Women who had to use IVF or other extreme measures to conceive are envious of me, who only had to use pills for my first pregnancy and miraculously conceived for my second pregnancy.

Women who were never able to have children are envious of those who have.

It is easy to say that one should be grateful for what she has. But, unfortunately, we are all human and can't help feeling sorry for ourselves every now and then.

My friend A's daughter, who turns 1 tomorrow, had 1 hour of fussiness while she was teething. That's all. Then, poof, she had one tooth, and another the next day. This is the same child who doesn't cry when she goes down to sleep and has had a predictable schedule since she was 1 week old.

Tyler, on the other hand, has now had a week of pain. He's absolutely miserable, and while I've tried all the remedies (please don't suggest more), the only thing I can do is wait for that darned tooth to break through. While he's a good baby, he definitely is susceptible to the typical trials and tribulations of infanthood.

I try so hard to just let it go, but I find myself resentful of my friend because she's never "had it rough." She easily became pregnant, had an easy pregnancy and has never once worried about her daughter's health. Call me a terrible person, but I find myself wishing she could go through a rough couple of years so she knows what it's like for the rest of us.

I'm glad this blog is now invite-only, because I wouldn't want somebody who hasn't been following my story to stumble on this post. I know I'm whining, and I know I should be grateful, but it's hard to stop comparing myself to others. I'm worried I won't be able to stop the comparisons when Tyler gets old enough to figure it out. I just don't want to be one of those mothers.

I wish I weren't so damned competitive.

Stuck

I have a unique situation on my hands.

Though Tyler can roll over both ways, he rarely rolls from his tummy to his back and seems to forget that he can, indeed, do so. Instead, he scoots backwards until he gets tired, then cries for me to rescue him.

We have been using a sleep positioner since he was four months old to flatten out his head. Even after his head was looking better, we continued to use it because it deterred him from rolling onto his tummy when he was about to fall asleep or had just woken up. It worked well...until now.

For the past few days, Tyler has woken up in the morning howling because he's stuck on his tummy in the corner of his crib. This morning, he had a hard time going down for a nap because he kept rolling over and getting stuck.

Honestly. Out of all the issues a baby could have, this is Tyler's?

Good news

The CT scan this morning went more smoothly than I could ever have hoped. And, within 2 hours of returning home, Tyler's pedi called us. There is no hydrocephalus; just a larger than average (but still within accepted range) amount of fluid in his head. We'll need to have a follow-up CT scan sometime in the near future. Tyler just has a really big head (97th percentile, but then again, he's 95th percentile for height).

The big surprise was that he has fluid in his left ear. An ear infection! So that's why he's been fussier than normal over the past couple of weeks. And I thought he was teething...