Why Percocet scares me

One week after major surgery and wrestling with the Benevolent Dictator (BD), I've dropped taking Percocet as a painkiller on the urging of my mother-in-law.

"It's been a week after surgery and you probably don't need it now," she said. The woman's pretty smart -- I mean, she's a nurse who knows her way around medicine and different surgeries. She's also the one who helped calm my fears about the spinal for the C-Section.

So today was my first day off the drug and I noticed the following: I feel a hell of a lot better now than I did yesterday or two days ago.

Maybe it's that I'm slowly figuring these things out. Maybe it's that my hormones are trying to calm down. But above everything else, I don't feel zonked out, tired and wonky from the drugs.

It was kind of scary. I was holding BD once when I dozed off and dreamed that I dropped her as I fell out of the chair. That's when I dropped it down from two pills to one pill. But even then I felt tired, listless and unable to do anything, which was maddening.

Today? I can go upstairs and downstairs, do some light chores and pay bills and slowly get back to a normal routine. I feel more awake now than before and I can write and blog again, which I desperately wanted to do.

So I guess it's fair to say that things are slowly settling in. But to end this on a lighter note, I have to pass on a list of three things that I didn't think would happen after I had BD. I'd do five, but really, my brain's pretty much fried right now.

1. We said we didn't want pink outfits. Now we're looking for cutesy girly gear for her because it's so freaking adorable on her. I think I'll also buy her a pair of combat boots when she's older so she can get her angry girl thing going.

2. I never realized that babies use poop as a self-defense mechanism similar to squids using ink. We gave BD a sponge bath yesterday, which she SCREAMED throughout (seriously, you would've thought I had exposed her to Maroon 5 or something). While we toweled her off and comforted her, we all heard a *splort* sound.

"What was that?" Jeff asked.

"Was it the sink?" I replied. Then I looked in the mirror. The nice new turtle hooded towel we got her had a moist, yellow stain on it. Apparently in a self defense gesture, she pooped all over it. Fortuantely, the stain has washed out so you can't see it anymore.

3. I never thought I'd be a light sleeper. I can wake up at the faintest "Wah" sound going "What? Does she need to be fed?" as I rip off the nursing bra, grab the Boppy and prepare for my job as a milk bar.