Number 2

2) The second dramatic turn in my life was giving birth to Mason. Gosh, I remember that day like it was yesterday.  I checked in to the hospital on Monday night to begin the induction process.  My doctor came in the next morning to break my water.  I had no idea just how much of that crap there was.  I felt like i had just wet myself.  Then the pain started shortly after, and it increased with every breath that I took.  I remembered reading that it is a good thing to wait until you are at least dilated to a 4 before having the epidural.  I was pretty damned determined that I could do the whole labor without any type of pain med/epidural.  Suddenly, something was wrong........SERIOUSLY wrong.  I told my mom to go get the doctor because the baby needed to be checked.  She asked me why, and my reply was quote, "I know that labor is suppose to hurt, but this is not right, something is WRONG!"  She sort of shrugged me off and laughed as she said "Mandi, this is what it feels like, you and the baby are fine".  NOOOOO, I was NOT fine.  This shit hurt, and it hurt bad. But i shut up and agonized on.  The next time the nurse came in she noticed that I had tears in my eyes and politely asked if it was OK for her to "check" me.  I was finally gonna get the point across to my Momma, that something was indeed WRONG.  She "checked" me and to my dismay i was only dilated to a 2.  WHAT?????  There is no way on earth a persons belly and back hurt that bad and the only progress "mother nature" was giving me was a 2. PSSSSH!!! The nurse gave me some pain meds, and I felt good, for the moment.  Side note: during my pregnancy my Granny Elsie, with whom i was very close, had gotten very ill due to a shunt tube surgery malfunction.  She was in a nursing home(to be rehabilitated) and was unable to be there with me.  End of side note!  So, I'm all loopy and i look over and I see her.....standing there in a fur coat and all dolled up.  I just started laughing. I KNEW she wasn't actually there, but it seemed real.  As fast as she appeared and gave me a smile, she was gone.  Apparently, that is when the pain meds wore off.  I was again convinced that someone needed to do something and do something fast.  I had been in labor just shy of 4 hours since my water was broke and this was just not going to do.  I was DONE!!!!!  The nurse decided it was time to go ahead and get the epidural for me(still only a 2, but i didn't care). 

AHHHHHHHHH, no more pain, finally!! Much to my disbelief and my mother's skilled knowledge from birthing 2 kids, there was nothing "wrong", besides the fact that my body was preparing to push something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon.  After the epidural, the labor was smooth, (for me).  I had no idea that I was literally not going to have control of the ENTIRE lower half of my body.  They turned me, peed for me, put pillows in places I couldn't feel.  So about three hours go by and feel something. Was this it? surely not! I had only been in labor for 7hrs. The nurse comes in and does the whole "check", which is basically putting her whole entire fist in my vaginal canal. It is time to start pushing. She assures me that being a first time mom that i will probably push for about an hour before the doc needs to come in.  SOOOO, we begin.  I take a deep breath in and my feet are pushed up next to my ears. I push. "Whoa, stop pushing" the nurse says.  Are you freaking kidding me?? I can't just STOP, this is nature lady.  Mason was on his way  out. So,  they didn't get the mirror for me so that i could see myself in all my glory.  My doctor rushed in, while i was still pushing!!  Deep breath in, hold it, and push for 10.....then again, then again.  Good god people,cant you see my face is bright red and I am on the verge of loosing consciousness.  Same thing again at the next contraction. Six pushes, and the doctor is finally in position.  Second and third verse same as the first!!! But to my surprise, 7 was my lucky number.  Mason was out, and they immediately put him on my chest.  That moment, the entire world stood still.  It was just me and my son, and gosh was he beautiful.

I knew at that moment, that he was the reason I was on earth.  He had a head full of brown hair streaked with blonde.  I can tell you that I know he was a beautiful baby, and not just because he was mine, but my sister and I made a pact.....I'll tell you, you tell me. Honest truth about what the little ones look like when they are born.  I looked at Whitney and asked, "so, is is just me? is he a beautiful newborn, or is he an ugly one?" With tears in her eyes, she said "Mandi, he is beautiful". 

I can stand here today, 5 1/2 years later, and still feel that he is my reason for being.  He is still just as beautiful today as he was the first day I layed my eyes on him(just a little mouthier, lol)!!!!

One Of Four

Ok,  I started this whole blog thing as an outlet, well I'm about to start letting it out.  I plan on giving my background up unto this point in my life and then we will go on from there. Let us start, ummmmmm say 2003.  I had just graduated college at the age of 25. I felt accomplished, proud of myself, and completely full of hope for an amazing career. I got just that, I was very fast one of two "ER Techs" that worked solely in the ER as a Trauma x-ray tech.  I loved the people I worked with, I loved what I did. I was happy. I was living the "single-life", making good money. I had,what most people would consider, a successful life.  That is where my life took one of 4 dramatic turns. 

1) I met a boy.  I never really considered him the "man of my dreams".....but he was the type that girls think they can change.  I was one of those girls.  He was smooth with his pick-up lines.  He was a "bad boy"!! I was basically his sugar mama, with whom he decided to become emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive.  Here I was putting up with this shit....He would cheat, I would find out, we would argue, and eventually it lead to me being pushed around, bruised up, and a house to clean up after.  This relationship was doomed from the start, and I knew it.  But, I insistently wanted him to love me.  When we were finally giving up and I had enough....That is when I found out that I was pregnant. This changed everything.  I was gonna be OK(at least that is what i kept telling myself).  I was 27 when I found out.  I honestly had a hard time believing this to be true.  I mean, I was told all of my life that it would be difficult for me to conceive because I have PCOS(Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome), plus I was on birth control when I got pregnant.  After two blood tests, it sunk in......I WAS WITH CHILD.  Being the romantic idiot that I was at the time, I believed the father when he told me he loved me and that he wanted us to be a "family".  Yay, I had managed to get this cheating, mean, unemployed, strip-club patron to see things how they should be.  We were gonna do this.  It goes without saying that nothing really changed throughout the pregnancy.  Same shit, different day.  The fights were less physical while i was pregnant, unless you count the time in the drive thru window at McDonald's when I didn't get a joke and was back-handed in the stomach.  Now, of course, he would never admit this.  Nor would he admit the time that he ripped my nightgown off of me when I was 7 Months pregnant.  Nor, would he admit that his favorite thing to call me was quote..."Fat Tuna Cheesy Melt". Yep, I had a winner.  You might be thinking, "why on earth would you stay with him?"  I still to this day do not have an acceptable answer for this question.  I can say without pause that when he would walk past me, at times, I wanted to throw up.  Me, of all ppl was putting up with this BS!!!!  But, I loved him, right??

Let us fast forward about three weeks after my son, Mason, was born. I was breast feeding him in the recliner, and for a reason I no longer remember, this J-hole walked by and slapped my feet off of the recliner.  I remember being told he was taking MY car(to go do only God knows what), and by the time he got back I needed to have a written contract made up and signed as to how I was going to "fix our relationship".  Ok, at this point I finally started getting some balls of my own.  While he was gone, I packed up clothes for Mason and me, and all of the baby essentials and hid them.  He gets home about an hour later, gives me the whole spiel about how much he loved me and he was gonna cook dinner and BLAH, EFFING BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!!!!!!!!!!  When he got in the shower, I left and went to my parents house.  I had finally done it.  I went to stay with my Granny for about a week and then came home to live with my parents for the next 5 1/2 months.  Then, I fell back into it.....we moved back in to MY house(which had been sitting vacant, but fully furnished this whole time).  That was toward the end of November 2006 and he proposed on Christmas eve, same year. I accepted.  We were to be married the following Sept. Needless to say, absolutely nothing changed.  He would leave for a couple months then come back.  I was miserable, I couldn't stand him, and yet I was LIVING with him(well, when he needed a place to recoup).  I could literally go on and tell story after unbelievable story of things he did to me and the LACK of things he did for his son.  I will get to the absolute end of our relationship with DRAMATIC TURN #2. 

GO ahead, people......tell me what you think.  I promise that it won't be anything that i haven't either already heard or told myself!!!! 

CIAO~ Mandi

WTH am I doing?!?!?

Everyone probably wonders why in the hell I, of all people, would want to start a blog.  The answer to this question is quite simple - I'm an unemployed, daily migraine sufferer with a 5 year old now in Kindergarten (which leaves me with a lot of spare time)... so, I have a lot of shit to say!  So you might be asking yourself, what exactly is this blog going to entail?  Amanda - uncut and uncensored.  My life, my problems, my wacky sense of humor, my crazy and amazing family, random stuff that niggles me, and how I cope with day-to-day life.  At one point in my life, I was an adament journaler, but that was ripped away from me (we may get to that at a later date).  This is a way for me to collect my thoughts and figure out where I fit in life, now that everything that I held so highly to be true, well... isn't true to me anymore.  My life has taken a dramatic turn over the last 3 years, so I'm going to blog about the highs, the lows, and everything in between.  Hopefully you'll enjoy it, follow it, and provide feedback.  AND if you decide not to, okay... fine... I didn't want you here anyway!