pregnancy - 2/2 - CoupleDumb

angelina jolie 225x300 Celebrity Smackdown: Hollywood Moms

          It’s back to Smacking Down Celebrities today! It’s Wednesday and usually on hump day, a person needs to vent out all the frustrations that we have accumulated over the past couple of days just to make it to another weekend. This week we are discussing pregnancy and if there is one thing celebrities have been doing like its last call in a fertility bar is getting pregnant and having babies. We are not ‘hating on’ people for having babies but what you do with them is a matter where they will get the stink eye every now and then. We don’t have any illusions that we are the perfect parents. However, some things should be painfully obvious to people even through the dark sunglasses and the flash of paparazzi cameras.

          Lee says: This week is kind of a wash for Paul since not once in our marriage has he volunteered to be pregnant or give birth. Other than that, he is the best Dad. Being pregnant is amazing. I suppose in the old days, celebrities went into hiding and you never saw them while they became swollen or their noses expanded (happily, this never happened to me). In today’s world, people start speculating about a woman’s state if she shows even the slightest pooch. I mean, hello people, you think celebrities don’t have water retention? Or maybe even a little gas or all you can eat Chinese Buffet?

          I think what bothers me the most is the new Hollywood mom who insists on showing us that they are good Moms. ‘Ooh look at me take my baby Mousaka to the store to buy organic apples and to the craft store so we can weave our own hair extensions’. Like the rail thin models out there, the true mother is lost in this new image of motherhood. These bitches who lose their pregnancy weight just a month after giving birth and extol breast feeding as the silver bullet to baby fat. Meanwhile, you know they had a C-section, lipo and tummy tuck all in one and they have fake titties anyway which would make it difficult to breast feed in the first place. But still we gnash our teeth and think, ‘If those vapid bitches can do it, so can I’. But we can’t because we don’t have the nannies or the trainers or the private nutritionist or the chef or the house keepers or the funds to do all that.

          Then we have the adoption craze. O.K., here’s a question that has been asked before but I’m still waiting for the answer: did we run out of babies to adopt in this country?

          And of course, the worst culprit of all of this is Angelina Jolie. Look, between you and me I like her. I think she is beautiful and sexy. Paul is still put off by the whole Billy Bob blood vial thing and kissing her own brother. However, she seems like a different person who cares about children. That being said, I think we need to question the sanity or even the appropriateness of a couple having so many kids that they can’t even seem to juggle them all. For example, how often are the Pitt-Jolie’s seen all together? The scene is usually a minimum of one parent to a maximum of two kids. This formation is rotated within the cast of the Pitt-Jolies. One day you see Brad out with Maddox or Angelina out with Shiloh and Sahara. Or that really cute pic of both adults with the twins, but, that’s it.

          What happened to Pax? I’m just saying isn’t there enough Cheetos and junk food that all of them can eat? Wouldn’t little Pax enjoy getting a set of throwing knives like Maddox received? I think as parents of more than one child, you try to balance stuff with the kids so there is no obvious preference. At different ages, you need to come up with equivalences. Maybe knives for Maddox and a ferret for Pax? Or in our case, Chuck E Cheese for the 2 year old and a case of scotch for the 16 year old?

          I don’t have all the Mommy answers. I do believe there is a biological order to having too many kids. The risk of losing your entire girly section and your ass falling out is a real risk. Look it up. I can’t make that shit up. I just feel as Mom’s we need to support one another and not make the other ones feel bad. I think we can all be honest about the pregnancy make-overs and the post pregnancy weight loss. We can balance out the need to shower our kids with gifts or extra-curricular activities with some good old quality time just goofing off at home. I think we all need to be honest with each other. So ease off bragging about the organic food and the craft projects with your kids and I won’t brag about my two year old doing math.

sharebookmarx Celebrity Smackdown: Hollywood Moms

mom day 0131 300x225 Being Pregnant, Carnitas, and Magic Wands

          If you have kids, want kids, have nieces and nephews or have friends who have or want kids, you have come to the right place. CoupleDumb does not sugar coat parenting in any way. We will not give you your medicine with a spoonful of sugar. You will swallow that horse pill without water and painfully digest it like the rest of us. We kid though. We love our kids and yet it is perfectly fine to say that they drive us crazy sometimes. It is perfectly natural to want to get away from them and have some alone time. But what do you do when they are attached to you? Feeding off you like parasites? Pregnancy is just another time to practice your parenting.

          Lee says: Ah, being pregnant. I remember my pregnancies very well. Each has been very different except for the Mexican Food cravings. Oh my God, the carnita tacos were the best when I was pregnant. I felt like I was tasting food for the first time each time I would bite into one of those (which was almost daily). Anyways, being pregnant when you already have kids brings up some strange questions that you may not be ready to answer. Questions like: ‘How’d the baby get in there?’ and ‘Did you eat him?’ or ‘Are you going to eat me?’

          When I was pregnant with Bobby, my five year old, Jeannie would just stare at me. It took her a while to finally ask how this had happened. Jeannie was told about the baby at the very beginning and we took her to all of the appointments where she could hear the heart beat or see him squirming on the ultra sound. If she was going to take the job of big sister, she needed to be able to size up her opponent from the beginning. I constantly asked her if she was O.k. and reminded her that she could come to me if she had any questions. I’m a therapist. I know where trauma comes from.

          Anyway, months went by and she would insist that she didn’t need any reassurance or information. She knew we loved her and that her role was vital to the well being of this child. Jeannie was 10 when I was pregnant and because God has a cruel sense of humor, she began her period as I entered my 6^th month. She knew that it would happen to her eventually but at that age she hadn’t even had the opportunity to have the 5^th grade shocker of watching the puberty movie. So a week after this happened (and yet another thing I was pissed at God for) she asked how I got pregnant. Paul, as is his prerogative as Daddy, was nowhere to be found. I think he was actually hiding under the covers with a pillow over his head. I told her and like a good kid with Asperger’s, she took the information as logical and went about her day.

          When I became pregnant with Ricky, I had Bobby to contend with. Because of his tender age of 2, I could tell him that it was a magical wand and pixie dust that knocked me up (unlike Paul who told him that he told me to have a baby and so I had to). He believed anything. What he really believed was that the creature inside of me would be his little brother and that he, as the big brother had an incredibly important job. He helped us pick out everything when we registered at Babies R’ Us and he helped us set up their room because he refused to have the baby anywhere else. This was his responsibility.

          Now, at ages 5 and 2, Bobby and Ricky are the best of brothers and friends. They play together. They fight together. Bobby teaches Ricky his alphabet, how to break dance, knock knock jokes and he has helped potty train his little brother. Ricky refuses to go to bed unless his brother is already in bed and visa versa. Sure there are some draw backs to this. The three kids are a formidable front because they are stubborn and smart. They could take us if they put their minds to it. Luckily they don’t read this yet and this post will self destruct in a few weeks.

          Paul says: I must make a correction. I told Bobby that I used my magic wand to put Ricky into Mommy. I also told him that I did it well and that Mommy begged for it.

sharebookmarx Being Pregnant, Carnitas, and Magic Wands

026 25A 200x300 Do Children Change a Relationship? Ha!

          It’s Monday again. For some parts of the world, autumn has arrived with a vengeance and has even flexed its meteorological changes with a little snow. Down here on the southern tip of the U.S., we have just had record heat and are supposedly in a cold snap. Please don’t interpret that to mean we experienced anything that can be construed as frigid weather. The only thing this means is we may actually have a day that the low is lower than what our thermostat is set at. The heat and general discomfort reminds us of those wonderful days when we were pregnant and the recordable temperature meant absolutely nothing since in Babyland it was always hot and humid.

          Lee says: There comes a time when a couple will decide whether they want to be parents or not. Some couples will decide this prior to amalgamating their lives (this is what CoupleDumb would strongly suggest!). So what do you discuss? Do you talk about who’s eyes the baby will have? Will you have more than one? Do you want a boy or a girl? Or are you discussing the real important things like discipline or the non-negotiable things like circumcision?

          I know that you think I’m being harsh but the reality is that becoming parents, whether you adopt, use a surrogate or do it the old fashioned way, is the biggest decision you will ever make. I believe that most people understand that concept on a cognitive level but only grasp the idea on a visceral level when a child is placed in their arms. Today, we spend so much energy on the pregnancy part that we often forget the aftermath; baby. The only people that are really stuck with that are you and your partner (or you alone).

          Now, being pregnant is difficult enough. I know this. Becoming pregnant was a difficult thing for us. We suffered infertility for several years. Yes, I used the word suffered because that is really the only term that encompasses the mental and physical anguish a couple goes through to get pregnant. Paul and I went through the sheer embarrassment of not being able to procreate. The single thought that would run through my head was, ‘A fucking 13 year old can do this and we can’t?!’ I was the one with the problem so I had the added layer of guilt that I was going to deny my husband a child. So for us, getting knocked up was magical; a blessing we would never take for granted.

          So how does a pregnancy affect a relationship? Easy, it flips it on its head. Raging hormones, fear, expectation, grief, elation and the overwhelming worry that you will not be enough or have what it takes to parent thrusts each parent into an isolated torture chamber within their own heads (yes, both parents). The hormones are self explanatory but what are we grieving? A person with any sort of insight will realize that a pregnancy means the end to a lifestyle. Whether you were flying high as a single jet setting person or you were a young married couple fucking on the couch or eating dinner at mid-night because you were working late, life as you know it is changing. Permanently.

          From the pee stick, to the sounds of the heartbeat, to the ultrasound, first kick, hiccoughs and contractions, to the moment you see that cute smooky face, you realize that your life is forever changed. Your decision to have a child has irrevocably changed you. This doesn’t change if you give that child for adoption or even miscarry. The act of having the child, in anyway, has changed you.

          This is Heavy Monday and a baby is no laughing matter. Yes, celebrate and make your plans and buy the bibs and plan on being the Earth Mother and use cloth diapers and only eat organic and only listen to Tibetan Bells and chanting for the duration of the pregnancy but at some point you better get centered. Get centered in the idea that your life is changing and this child will not give a shit whether his onesie is from Target or Gap.

          Paul says: I want my sperm back. If I knew that kids would change my life so much I would have worn a condom, maybe two. How was I to know that I would go from college jock to being a dad? OK, I can’t pretend anymore. I’m a big teat with children hanging off and I like it. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

sharebookmarx Do Children Change a Relationship? Ha!

Celebrity Smackdown: Hollywood Moms

Being Pregnant, Carnitas, and Magic Wands

Do Children Change a Relationship? Ha!

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