Die Slowly
He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience,
dies slowly.
He who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones "it’s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,
dies slowly.
He who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,
die slowly.
He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,
about the rain that never stops,
dies slowly.
He who abandons a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know,
he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know,
die slowly.
Let's try and avoid death in small doses,
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.
Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.
Pablo Neruda
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Ridiculously Long Retelling of My Relatively Short Birth!
The players:
Mama - Lina, 39 weeks and 5 days pregnant, reluctant to admit she was in labor because she had a hair appointment the following day and REALLY needed it
Dada - Sebastian, aka Saby, who had been trying to get Mama to agree to go the hospital since about 5pm Friday
CNM Midwife - Neva, a Family Beginnings nurse from our first birth who had told us (back in 2008) that she was studying midwifery... AND SHE DID! Now she's our super awesome midwife!
RNs - Sarah (from Triage), and Judy and Brooke (in Family Beginnings)
The Scene:
Miami Valley Hospital, and the Family Beginnings Birth Center at MVH (the only accredited birth center in Ohio)
The Day:
the evening of Friday, December 2nd and the very early morning of December 3rd, 2011
the evening of Friday, December 2nd
When I went into labor with my first pregnancy, I had no doubt that it was the real thing. But this time around, on Friday morning, my crampy uterus was being a little more mysterious. I made a few phone calls to family saying that something "miiiiight" be happening, but probably not. Naw. Went about my business. Made a grocery list. Wrote about my baby shower. Laid down to take a nap around noon while my toddler slept, and... could not sleep. I couldn't sleep through the cramps. The oddly regular, increasingly uncomfortable cramps. Oops. Contractions.
Well. Not being able to sleep through the cramps/contractions made me realize this was probably the real thing. But I didn't want to alarm my husband at work earlier than necessary, so I kept it to myself. The kid was still napping, so how to take advantage of these (potentially) last few quiet hours of one-kidness? I went into the craft room thinking I'd be all crafty and throw together a homemade rice bag to warm up and put on my aching contracting back. My nesting efforts resulted in me destroying a spool of thread and a bobbin.
Epic nesting fail
When my hubby got home, things took a turn for the... irritating. Sebastian timed a few contractions and wanted to head to the hospital right away. Our 3-year old daughter was getting agitated by Dada's anxiety and her mama's new, slightly cranky, dealing-with-discomfort persona, which we'll collectively call "our agitation", and our agitation was spiraling out of control. I didn't want to be in labor because I had stuff to do - a haircut! a movie with the family! shelves to fix! - and my denial was not helping quell Dada's mounting panic. We reviewed the "stages of labor" information from the birth center, and confirmed that Sebastian seemed more "in labor" than me, with his "growing seriousness, apprehension, increased backache, uncertain if she can do it" vibe.
I called the midwife to let her know something was up, and then the birth center. This is when the emotional roller coaster crested that first big hill: the birth center was full. This destroyed me. I was mature enough to know that "yada yada, birth can take any turn" but any turn I'd even remotely anticipated still involved Family Beginnings. So I called a friend crying and she reassured me that everything would go well, no matter what happened. I decided to stall - if I wasn't actually in labor, I might have better luck with one of the three birth center rooms being open later - wtf, was there a full moon or something?!? I took a shower, we loaded the car, and we headed to a friend's house to drop off our daughter. If I was indeed going to have a baby that night, that is where she'd spend the night; so we thought we'd hang out for a bit and see what happened.
Folks gave me a huge amount of encouragement in reply to this, mixed with a few cheers of "who needs a hospital! Have baby at home!" But my home doesn't have room service and a giant hot tub...
At our friend's house, Sebastian had a well-deserved drink, and I just hung out. I'd had a glass of wine before we left, but felt dirty having it. Damn Health and Human Services and their "pregnant-women-should-never-ever-drink" billboards for screwing up my first glorious glass of wine in 9 months! I tried to relax and sit down, not sure what all the night might bring, but felt better on my feet. Sebastian put an app on his phone for timing contractions, and we did better timing now that it wasn't my sole responsibility. I called the birth center back to ask what the deal was with getting a tub into a regular delivery room, and sea change: Nurse Judy tells me matter of factly "Oh! We'll get you in... we just need enough time to bounce someone else who's recovering out and down to regular post-partum. So why don't you just take a nice hot bath... try to go to sleep... and if your contractions continue to the point where you can't sleep, give us a call and maybe we'll see you early tomorrow." (I like how they either never think I'm actually in labor, heheheh)
WELL THEN! That was great news! Talk about a horrible miscommunication! We decided to head home and try to follow Judy's instructions, but only after stopping for some adult diapers. (the best advice you never want to hear: wear adult diapers instead of the mesh panties after delivery. Comfy, easy awesomeness!) It was a cold, calm night, and Rite Aid was closed so we headed further out to the 24-hour Kroger. It felt odd and secretive, like sneaking out of the house in high school to just walk around, to be randomly driving around in the middle of the night, in labor. I waiting in the car while my poor sweet husband went in to try and find an appropriate adult diaper for me. He was armed with information about my current massive size, and my more optimistic pre-pregnancy size, and was putting his Engineering degree to work trying to formulate some happy medium that would fit. "Carry On My Wayward Son" was playing on the labor cd we'd burned just before leaving the house. My contractions were still coming, and getting stronger and making me think in Tarzan language. Husband spotted trotting across parking lot, car doors unlocked. I turn down music and ask go home.
But poor hungry Sebastian needed food, because the shopping trip we'd planned to do that evening had been abandoned in all the hubbub. So we decided to drive through the McDonald's by our house for a sandwich. The drive-thru line was blissfully short, with only two cars in front of us: big, shiny white matching sedans, with out of state license plates, that immediately set off my husband's douchebag radar. Possibly a convoy of D-grade rappers on their way over to Columbus? (Dayton probably only gets F grade rappers, fyi) They had strategically positioned themselves as to not quite allow enough room for our car to pull up to the speaker. Frustration. Saby ordered, and then the white cars repeated their trick at the pay window. Sebastian muttered profanities about inconsiderate, unaware bastards as we inched towards the cashier, who smiled at us and shrugged. He leaned out to take the credit card from Saby's outstretched hand, and I clapped in a pantomime of encouragement. As he handed it back, Saby played his trump card and yells casually across to the cashier:
"My wife?"
[He points to me. I smile, wave, and grimace]
"She's in labor."
BOOM!
Cashier gone. Cashier back. Sandwich handed out of window. Our car zooms out of line past the douchemobile convoy, and we head back home.
Our bags had been thrown into the car in the earlier stages of chaos, so once home we just watched The Office and timed contractions. I sat on a yoga ball, really wishing I had been able to poo properly before things had taken off. Sebastian was unfortunately having similar issues, not at all helped by the McDonald's. Midwife called me back as he sat in the bathroom, and she repeated my options: "labor at home for about two hours until a room opens up in Family Beginnings, or go to Labor and Delivery at the hospital where they'll verify you're in labor... then wait for your room there." I asked her to hold on while I repeated that back to my husband, and put the phone on my shoulder. I hadn't gotten much past "wait two hours" before a stream of incredulous profanity issued forth from Dada, and from my shoulder I could hear Neva say, "I can tell he's not comfortable with that. Why don't you just come on in?"
So off we went.
1:45am L and D Triage at Miami Valley Hospital
Our nurse Sarah was quite the cheerful sweetheart, despite my thinly-veiled crankiness at being there in "regular" hospital labor and delivery section instead of Family Beginnings. I suppose I was harboring birth-snob issues, and in my head, "regular" meant vaaaaaastly inferior. But my misgivings with the whole "regular" hospital evaporated when she saw my name and said, "oh, Family Beginnings called down and said you were coming." Ooh! Color me impressed with the communication between FB and the "regular" hospital staff. I was also relieved that the birth center was so aware of my rather frantic desire to get in there.
Look ma! I'm in labor!
For a Friday night, the place was a ghost town. Well... this was labor and delivery triage, not "da club." Still, there had been a surreal stillness as we pulled exited the highway into the industrial area near the hospital, and that stillness carried through, all the way from the entrance of the Berry Women's Health wing straight up to triage. We were in "bed" (bed meaning the little curtained off area) 3 of 5, and the only people there. A boom box on a shelf by the door was tuned to the local 24/7 Christmas music station. Nurse Sarah's cheery, confident demeanor and our lack of neighbors made it less unpleasant as she hooked me onto a fetal monitor and then "checked" me - "four centimeters, super thin [cervix], and a nice bulging bag." Ha! Well that dispels any doubt about me actually being in labor...
From about four months onwards in this pregnancy I could not lay flat on my back. It gave the painful sensation of my hips popping out of alignment, and even more so when trying to get up from a supine position. I could immediately see why the on-your-back, hooked-up and constantly-monitored hospital birth would be miserable; each contraction I had while being monitored was made ten times worse by not being able to move through it. If I squirmed around to relieve the pain in my hips, much less to bear a contraction, the fetal monitor would lose the baby's heartbeat. I was cranky about the whole situation because I didn't know how long I would have to sit like that, but luckily it wasn't very long. Maybe 3 contractions worth.
Oh, and my blood pressure was still low enough to make Sebastian jealous... 122/70 or something ridiculous like that. I would have liked to have seen his at that point, though he seemed much more relaxed now that we were at the hospital.
Dada with the rice bag says, "I'm the one that needs some stress relief!"
2:20am - Dada heads out to forage for food
We grilled Sarah on the availability of food, as I hadn't really eaten anything since the afternoon, and was slightly worried about getting hungry and not having anything available either further into labor or afterwards. She said the cafeteria would be open in a few minutes (for some bizarre 2am-3:45am shift, apparently) and Saby headed off with orders to procure enough yogurt, apple sauce, and gluten-free protein to sustain him and I until we could order breakfast.
(Let me interrupt here for a second - isn't it cool that I could eat? Whatever I wanted? No restrictions, beyond what sounded good to me? Well, think about it. Would you like to go into the most laborious chore of your life nourished with clear liquids and ice chips? HELLS NO. I had a hot dog, baby. If you can call that "nourishment", heh heh. That's just one of the many fabulous things about choosing a more mother-centric birth.)
With nothing else to do, I started lock stepping around the triage to pass the time. I was alone... but alone with the twenty-four hour holiday hits station, baaaay-bee! Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. Walk walk, wiggle wiggle, twirrrrl, and then sloooooow it down for a contraction. George Michael's Laaaast Christmas... I gave you my heart... waddle waddle squaaat swiiing! Vince Giraldi's stuff from the Charlie Brown Christmas. Swaaaay, swaaaay... twiiiiirl... and again a contraction. I updated a few Facebook statuses, thanked folks for their encouragement, and tried unsuccessfully to get my Twitter account back up. (I'd vowed to "tweet" as much of my birth as possible, but alas the hospital Wifi had other plans)
I would occasionally wander out into the hallway, past a well-staffed desk full of nurses sitting in, what seemed to me, the dark. They offered to get me water, which they did, and I had them warm up my rice sock a few times too. At one point a nurse said to me, "you appear to be getting a little more uncomfortable." I growled "no shit" smiled and nodded, and kept my mouth shut while tweeting my amusement. In hindsight, I think the "Social Networking During Labor" method could be the next big thing in the natural birth community - move over Bradley and HypnoBirthing! Coming to a birthing class near you...
Really I felt all the more awesome to be there, soldering-on through what I was pretty sure was the beginning of some serious, cervix-rending labor, on my feet and still ready to bear much more. Yeah beyotch!! Yaaah! I wandered like a drunken grizzly down the hallway towards Family Beginnings, all the while keeping an eye on triage since all our stuff was in there, and encountered nurse Judy. She (if I remember correctly) recognized me, gave me a hug and told me we could bring our stuff to the birth center's common area, and even stay there and wait if we wanted. Sebastian was getting back with the food at that point,so I told him how things were going (good/painful/fine/I'm a drunken grizzly bear) and we headed down the hall. We passed a member of the janitorial staff, and she gave a wary glance at my belly, so I said, "thank you... I think you just cleaned our room." That got a smile.
So we get into Family Beginnings, and find... we get the same room Elena was born in! It was like coming home. (Except home had been upgraded and redesigned since our last stay) The nurses, Judy and Brooke, were just setting up a few last things and so we started making ourselves comfortable. I asked for the birthing ball and sat on that for awhile, but soon after our midwife Neva arrived, and suggested I lie down on the bed so she could check me. Four centimeters, nice and thin, with a bulging bag? At this point I was "a good 7... no, I think 8... and I can see that baby's got HAIR." Saby congratulated himself on another win for his bizarre "how-dilated-are-you" clairvoyance (he had said 8 or 9), and busied himself texting our doula/friend Tabby to let her know how things were progressing. Neva, the nurses and I all chatted about whether we knew the baby's gender - no - and the consensus in the room, from heart rate and general vibe, said our baby was surely a girl.
I was in the midst of trying to tweet that I was probably in transition, but predicative text and autocorrect just do not understand my penchant for streeeeetching out wooooords, so the tweet was never twat (isn't that the past tense of tweet?) due to a few pretty massive contractions. I was sprawled out parallel to the headboard of the bed, and squeezing Saby's hand, and I believe he was pressing somewhere on me - my back, my legs, my shoulders? I was only vaguely aware of what all was happening at the time, much less trying to remember it now! Seemed Saby was talking to Tabby, and then she and I spoke while I was still sprawled all sideways on the bed. The poor dear had been excited to be a part of this birth, and we'd been excited to continue the tradition of having her help out, but she was a solid 30 minutes south of the hospital and it looked like I might have a baby before she could even reach the parking garage.
Neva had started filling the tub after checking me, and announced that it was ready. "You can get in, I'll break your water, and you'll have a baby." Sounded good to me.
3:35am Family Beginnings Birth Center.
Transition is over, the tub is full, and so is my, errr... colon. So here I am, sitting (and laboring) on the toilet in a double effort to a.) not get in the tub too early and decelerate progression (and if you're keeping track of the time, you'll see how silly I was on that) and b.) finally take the crap that I've been unable to do all day so that I wouldn't poop in the tub! Alas... no poop. None in the toilet at least.
Try and pretend I'm not sitting on a toilet... "CHEESE!"
I'd read in a couple Ina May Gaskin birth stories how the mothers would stop progressing because of some real or perceived subliminal issue, like "my partner and I aren't married" or "I was sexually abused" or "the guy who bagged my groceries yesterday said natural birth was stupid" or "I forgot to unplug my curling iron." So on my way off the toilet, I announced that I felt getting into the tub during my last birth had slowed my progression down and that's why I took so long to pop out our daughter . I do not remember if anyone even said anything to my "monumental" admission, but hell... I'd said it, so I was at peace. Time to get into the tub and have a baby.
As I lowered my hulking mass into the water, it was just midwife Neva, my husband and I in the bathroom. Nurse Judy popped in at that point and asked Neva, "Did you check if she's at 10 yet?" Neva, in all her awesome-est of awesomeness, shrugged and replied, "she's close enough." I wanted to kiss her on the mouth for trusting her own experience and my instinct. It also meant no more "checking" - yay!
I'm a turtle. I am Zen. And... damn this water's hot!
3:39am In the tub! It feels so good and hot and warm and I'm suddenly BUOYANT! Brilliant feeling. I think this may have been part of that "eye of the storm" break between transition and pushing urges, because I was chatty and cheerful. Well, honestly I was chatty and cheerful throughout, as long as I wasn't having a contraction. There was some discussion as to what color of lights to put on under the water... blue, red, or green? Green won, in the spirit of Christmas, and the spirit of "hey we don't know what gender your baby is."
Hot tub party!
3:49am This must have been right before Neva broke my water with the medical knitting needle. "Nice clear water," she said. We never saw my mucus plug at any point during labor, home or hospital... which was kind of a bummer, because it had been such a monumental thing in my first delivery and I'd been, oddly enough, looking forward to it.
(Flashback to 2008: We'd been at Family Beginnings for probably about an hour, and I decided waddle into the bathroom to pee... and lo and behold, out comes my mucus plug, floating in the toilet, all gigantic and... mucus-y! I got my phone and called my husband to proudly proclaim it's loss. He was slightly distracted, and not just because he'd been sent out of the hospital by a wildly pregnant wife to buy some Gatorade, but because the convenience store where he'd gone to purchase said Gatorade had just been held up at gunpoint about 5 minutes prior. Nothing but excitement surrounding that first mucus plug, baby!)
But it probably wasn't ten minutes before I went from solitary frog-woman floating around the tub to contraction-beast, flipping over and announcing through clenched teeth that "I think I want to push... yeah I want to push... I NEED TO PUSH!" Somewhere here Neva told Saby that he needed to get behind me, in the tub. He had not been prepared for that - though he did bring shorts, he hadn't intended, EVER, on going beyond being the supportive loving husband sitting on the edge of the tub. Suddenly, he was there behind me, submerged up to his shoulders, in a polo shirt, in (still) piping hot water that was soon to have poo floating in it. I asked for the "pulling thing"; my birth plan has specified my desire to use the "tug of war" method in order to have a focused and purposeful push. A nurse put one end of what was essentially a dog's rope toy into my hands and positioned herself at the other end. I put my legs up against the side of the tub and puuuuulled.... which made me PUSH.
I was conscious of a couple of things at this point:
Pushing your second baby out, even in a tub, still is hard work
It was going to take a little longer than I'd expected/hoped
My poor hubby must be boiling like a lobster behind me in the hot water
The nurse we'd handed our camera to was still snapping photos
and
I'd pooped
Going into this birth, I had been interested in the whole concept of "pushing only when you get the natural urge" - and boy did I get the urge. I wasn't going to endure enough of these urges for my body to get to that magical Ina May orgasmic hairy hippy birthy stage where it would just expel the baby on it's own, though; all magic aside, I was still in a great deal of "discomfort" and I just wanted to push that kid OUT. I could tell there was a bit of progress with each push, but it still didn't happen as quickly as I'd (perhaps naively) expected. After maybe five pushes I imagined we ought to be crowning, but instead Neva began holding down the lip of my cervix. (Wow. Just wow. I didn't know that could even be DONE!)
Intermittently, someone would Doppler the baby's heart rate and it was still good and healthy, and I'd let go of the rope and take a break. I lost all circulation in two of my digits from such concentrated pulling on the rope, and at one point Saby said he was sure I was going to haul the poor little nurse Brooke over the tub's edge into the water with us. (There was room... those tubs are big!) This was working well, but I was ready to be finished anytime. I whispered an apology to Sebastian for pooping in the tub, and he simply replied that I was doing great.
4:28am or so - After what seemed like a nice productive push, Neva announced "she" was in the birth canal... "she" meaning the baby, not Neva, though I think Neva was still holding something down by my baby exit sign. I shifted in the water and Neva told me "your instinct is to snap your legs shut when something's coming out of them, isn't it?" Yeah, I tried to shut my legs. In all the burn-y discomfort, it felt better to do what would apparently have held the baby in. So I splayed my chunky thighs further apart, planted my feet against the tub's sides, and pulled that rope. Saby was even pulling my shoulders at that point. Someone was using a little goldfish net to scoop "stuff" (poop, sigh) out of the water in as subtle a fashion as possible, while Sebastian tried his best to pretend he'd seen nothing. I wondered when it would be over, but I still knew we were almost there. The midwife and nurses were urging me on...
4:30am so I pulled... and pushed, and even as I'm nearly crowning, I can hear that nurse taking pictures and in some of the most primal moments of my life I still managed to have enough conscious brain to think to myself, "totally. inappropriate. timing!"
4:33: With Neva and the nurses calmly encouraging me that "she's almost here!" I deliver the head.
4:34: "Push her out... c'mon, she's almost here..." Head is out, and "oooh, she's got lots of dark hair."
I curled my body around my belly and gave one laaaaaast push.
"Here 'she' comes, your baby is coming, and here she is..."
and here's her penis!?
My husband was the one who first voiced the fact, in a subtle, shocked sort of way... "that's not a girl!" I was vaguely aware that a baby had just come out of me and was being spun up through the air by the midwife to land safely on my chest. If I remember correctly, I asked again and again... "it's a boy? Really? A boy?" I was flabbergasted by, well, EVERYTHING. I'd just delivered a baby, in a tub, with my husband behind me, in record time, and the baby was a boy. (We'd never found out, but we never expected a boy. We'd mentally played Sebastian up as a Last of the Mohicans kinda guy.) But there he was... our boy. A man-cub! And such a sweet little thing, though not terribly little... not terribly big either. Perfect. Big eyes. Lots of hair. I recall waiting to hear him cry and thinking he seemed a little floppy. "Ohhh, baby! Hello baby!" was about all I could say. It was a tender moment, and such a fabulous surprise to have my heart in my arms finally... and with a wiener. We made a man cub!
"Ohhh, baby! Hello, baby!"
4:35am Here I am!
Oh, how we love him already!
Still suctioning him out, as he's not made much noise yet
4:36am And there's some nice baby noise, yay!
4:45am - ten minutes old!
About the time that they were cleaning him up and getting measurements, I was attempting to leave the tub. Oh Lordy. The thing they don't tell you about a water birth is... it's hard to get outta that water. You've been gigantic-yet-weightless for upwards of 45 minutes, and now you're still gigantic and exhausted and responsible for walking 17 feet over to the bed to deliver the placenta? It's all warm peace and buoyancy in the tub, baby, but cruel gravity and cold await you on land. And that first step is over the three foot tall side of the tub. Lordy, Lordy. As I went up over the tub's edge, I giggle to recall that my umbilical cord bounced off of me like a freaky unmanned bungee cord off a bridge, right down to the floor. "Dang, that's a long cord!" said Neva, as she caught the end and lead me towards the bed. Yay! My biological peculiarities impressed my midwife. Mission accomplished. It was the least I could do for the woman who'd held my cervix down for me.
5:31am Vincent and I with my Dream Team at Family Beginnings Birth Center, Miami Valley Hospital
Nurse Judy, CNM Neva, and Nurse Brooke
To make the long story of what all happened after that shorter, I delivered the placenta without much ado, received hellaciously painful stitches for my second-degree tear and had a surgical resident come and stare at my undercarriage for a bit to confirm the tear wasn't actually third-degree. (The atmosphere in the room after the initial hubbub of giving birth is so surreal. About half of your attention is focused on the wonderment of the new baby in your arms, and you're higher than a kite on that cocktail of maternal hormones that is surging through your system. The other half is intently eavesdropping on the small crowd gathered at your vaginal amphitheater while they drop words like "anus" and "only superficial." P.S. "only superficial" is a GOOD thing to overhear, especially when overheard anywhere remotely near "anus"). Neva was surprised at the degree of tearing, especially with how smoothly his delivery had been. She surmised it to have been an issue with his shoulder, and looking back at the cephalohematoma he had on the upper right hand side of his head, maybe that cervix lip was holding him in at a slightly odd angle. (but in hindsight, no big deal, because the recovery from this delivery was easy, easy, easy... epic level easy)
I asked to take a picture with everyone and then they started to disperse... first Brooke, then Neva, and finally as we were settling down, me to nurse and Sebastian to get his clothes into the wash, Judy must have finished her shift because she came in and gave me a hug and a God bless you. We ate our remaining food - a chicken breast and another hot dog, "yay" - and I snarfed down about 4 containers of hospital apple juice. Then we snuggled into bed, all three of us together.
At 7am on the dot, Dr. R arrived and said, "this doesn't look like an 18 inch long baby... they didn't stretch him out." So we never found out exactly what Vincent's birth length was. He was 7 lbs, 7 oz, btw.
Dada could not get out of bed because he wasn't in anything but his shirt (the rest was in the wash), but at some point we got his comfy clothing back and he had a nice snuggle with his son before knocking off to sleep.
Dada, get me a shirt please
by 7:30am, both were zonked. I was high on life, though, and eager to put our breakfast order into room service! I called my sister, texted a few friends, and finally did sleep too.
Notice the goal/plan for the day. Isn't that awesome?
Successful Latch, Get to Know Vincent, and Rest.
I added the activity... and we did that too.
Vincent Mathew...
born 12.3.11 at 4:35am
7 lbs 7 oz.
18.5 (or so) inches long
We love him! And we loved how he came!
Rejecting the New Year's Resolution!
Dropped in to check on my pal Flutie McD and found this neat post about Flutie's adaptation of the traditional list of New Year's resolutions. Don't have time to read her post? (Shame on you, she's super fun to read!) The concept is simple: chose one word or phrase to live by during the year. I love it. And I'm going to do it. So without further ado...
2012 is my year to
sew/sow
But Lina! That's TWO words!
Ahhh, yes my friends, it is two words... two words that are pronounced the same yet spelled differently (and with different meanings to boot). That's called a homophone. [insert tasteless iPhone joke here]
2011 ended on a pretty good note. Two important things were crossed off the omnipresent to-do list: potty training the toddler, and popping out a healthy baby.
With a new baby in the house, I don't have a clear plan of what all the year ahead will bring, but I do have two goals - two concrete goals. And looking at these goals in light of this one word challenge, each allows me elaborate them into the self-improving sort of goals that New Year's resolutions should be.
Sew: I want to sew. Plain and simple. I want to use the sewing machine, and make things. Create. Be creative, be crafty. Even more so, be utilitarian. Resourceful. Creativity doesn't necessarily mean wreaths and hairbows... I want to mend things, fix things, improve things, make-instead-of-buy things.
In the figurative sense, this year I'd like to mend some relationships, strengthen others, and create new ones. I'd even like to be crafty and sort of reinvent myself - the same me, but with a fearless and constructive purpose. Remodeled and Bedazzled in 2012, damnit.
Sow: Lord help me, I want to garden! We'll call 2011 a practice year. I attended the first Gardening Basics class at Cox Arboretum but never made it back for the rest. My much anticipated garden area was never tilled, then flooded and remained absolutely squish-sodden until mid June. My composter remains half-assembled in the box in the garage. Two Jiffy pot trays full of seedlings did produce a plethora of seedlings, some of which survived weeks of neglect and went on to actually be potted and produce viable vegetables in a container garden of sorts on our deck. The containers, by the way, are still all on the deck. I'd like to imagine that the cold will make them easier to clean when we reach those first few warm days of spring? And how handy... the half-empty potting soil bags are still there on the deck too...
This year, I WILL garden. How and where has yet to be hammered out, but I do know what. Sunflowers. Bell peppers, chili peppers, tomatoes. Basil and cilantro. Zucchini. I hope to swap seeds with a few gardening friends to attempt a few patches of "the three sisters" - corn, beans and squash, grown in the style of the Native Americans of the Midwest. May morning glory twine up the sides of our fence, and blueberry bushes find a home somewhere in the ground. For Mother's Day, you can tell my husband I want two apple trees. I want to make things grow, for the pure joy of it... and also for the pure produce of it.
And "sow" what? (haha) Let this additionally be a year of responsibility, and awareness. "As you sow, so shall you reap." Let me sow good things - intentions, thoughts, actions - and reap the benefits. And let me be reminded that bad seeds, lazy seeds, irresponsible and thoughtless seeds, will yield fruit of the same.
Sticking with the gardening theme, I hope these words in 2012 will lead to a more fruitful me. My overall goal is to have a Life Well Lived. So far, so good.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
I took a bath
I just took a bath.
It was HEAVENLY. It was nap or bath, and since I couldn't relax enough to sleep, I chose bath. Ran the water and realized it wasn't hot enough, so about halfway through I turned the faucet completely over to scalding hot. The results were divine. I sunk into the tingly hot water slowly. It was not too hot, but perfectly hot enough to make me love every sweet second it took to get all the way into the tub. I repeated over and over in my head, "I took a bath" and thought about how I would write this blog, which would be the perfect segue into writing down all the things that have been going on in the last month or so. I sat in the tub, eardrums slowly soaking up the perfectly hot enough water, swishing blissfully my phone-and-infant-and-toddler-and-spatula-free hands back and forth, thinking how I could cover a myriad of topics so easily now, when I before hadn't had any idea where to start... all because I took that awesome bath.
I hadn't felt a bath that fulfilling since the tub at Family Beginnings... where my son was born about a month ago.
It's been an up and down month.
Our son was born, but our friend's son, who's due date was the day after ours, was born still. Stillborn. There's so much to say, but it's so difficult to put any words together. I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing, but also afraid of not saying anything, because the long and short of it is that she and her angel son are very often on my mind. We are new friends, this mom and I, and our nearly-matching due dates had been the foundation of our new friendship.
She blogs, she's on Facebook; she's allowing her grieving process to be very out in the open. I endlessly admire her honestly, courage, and dedication to her family after such a tremendously difficult and unexpected loss.
I'm learning from her, a lesson from which we all could benefit: putting on a brave face does not necessarily mean you are brave. I think it takes much more strength and confidence to bare your [proverbial] soul... to show that vulnerability and be so honest. (I barely have the courage to hit "publish" on this particular post)
It was HEAVENLY. It was nap or bath, and since I couldn't relax enough to sleep, I chose bath. Ran the water and realized it wasn't hot enough, so about halfway through I turned the faucet completely over to scalding hot. The results were divine. I sunk into the tingly hot water slowly. It was not too hot, but perfectly hot enough to make me love every sweet second it took to get all the way into the tub. I repeated over and over in my head, "I took a bath" and thought about how I would write this blog, which would be the perfect segue into writing down all the things that have been going on in the last month or so. I sat in the tub, eardrums slowly soaking up the perfectly hot enough water, swishing blissfully my phone-and-infant-and-toddler-and-spatula-free hands back and forth, thinking how I could cover a myriad of topics so easily now, when I before hadn't had any idea where to start... all because I took that awesome bath.
I hadn't felt a bath that fulfilling since the tub at Family Beginnings... where my son was born about a month ago.
It's been an up and down month.
Our son was born, but our friend's son, who's due date was the day after ours, was born still. Stillborn. There's so much to say, but it's so difficult to put any words together. I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing, but also afraid of not saying anything, because the long and short of it is that she and her angel son are very often on my mind. We are new friends, this mom and I, and our nearly-matching due dates had been the foundation of our new friendship.
She blogs, she's on Facebook; she's allowing her grieving process to be very out in the open. I endlessly admire her honestly, courage, and dedication to her family after such a tremendously difficult and unexpected loss.
I'm learning from her, a lesson from which we all could benefit: putting on a brave face does not necessarily mean you are brave. I think it takes much more strength and confidence to bare your [proverbial] soul... to show that vulnerability and be so honest. (I barely have the courage to hit "publish" on this particular post)
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"If you know someone who has lost a child or lost anybody who's important to them, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died, they didn't forget they died. You're not reminding them. What you're reminding them of is that you remember that they lived, and that's a great, great gift.'" - Elizabeth Edwards
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So... well. There you go. More on this and everything (including, eventually, my proper birth #2 story and an introduction to a certain little someone) later.
(And if you'd send some thoughts and prayers up in honor of our friend, her family, and their angel son, along with all the other families who've lost children too soon or even before getting to meet them, God and the universe will know where to direct them. Thank you.)
Friday, December 2, 2011
Did I ever tell you about my super awesome baby shower?
I had a super awesome pair of friends throw me a super awesome baby shower.
Or rather, a "Baby Sprinkle," it's called, as on your second kid you don't necessarily need very much. I certainly don't need much (unless this child comes out with a weiner and doesn't look good in pink, but we'll cross that bridge later) but was excited at the thought of having a ton of friends out to my rather distant home for the afternoon, feeding them, showing them a good time and yeah, getting a few presents in the meanwhile. I admit it... the presents are always fun. But honestly I just wanted to have an excuse to get folks to come over en masse and hopefully not forget about me as I prepare my descent into mothering-newborn-antisociality (just in time for the holidays! and the dead of winter! ahhhh! goodbye, social world... see you in May.)
The party was everything I dreamed of and more. Shelly busted out her creativity and glue gun and made the most fantastic decorations and party favors, all on an elephant theme, and all under the constraints of "unknown gender, secret name, and non-pastel colors." (alas, I did not make things easy for her!) It was a triumph of artistic awesomeness. She used circus peanuts (that bizarre candy made of marshmallow?) as the stands for little elephant signs! And that's just one among a bazillion other excellent things, like brown bags of animal crackers with an origami elephant pinned to it for the guests to take home... a baby banner... four awesome canvases for baby's room... the best diaper cake evaaah! And then Loreen, a picture of humility in the kitchen inversely proportionate to her utter awesomeness behind a KitchenAid, made the classiest, tastiest menu of tea snacks and appetizers... and ALL GLUTEN FREE. And a cake. With a three-dimensional elephant-carrying-an-umbrella that matched the invitation, formed out of fondant, on the top.
A-maz-ing.
Shelly recorded it for party-planning posterity at her blog The Screaming Tomato. Which I'll lazily just link to (again) since I am not sure if I uploaded the photos yet. Though there are some super cute ones. If I don't go into labor today I'll upload them and record them here for my posterity. Or... Posteriority? That's the history of my big fat a$$. Har har har.
But all profanity and joking aside:
Shelly and Loreen... you went above and beyond the call of duty and took time out of your own very busy lives to basically spoil me out of my very mind with all that excellent attention, effort, creativity and care. Thank you SO MUCH. It was, aside from my wedding day and the kid being born and maybe some holidays, one of the most memorable and love-filled afternoons of my 32-something years. Sniff sniff :-)
Or rather, a "Baby Sprinkle," it's called, as on your second kid you don't necessarily need very much. I certainly don't need much (unless this child comes out with a weiner and doesn't look good in pink, but we'll cross that bridge later) but was excited at the thought of having a ton of friends out to my rather distant home for the afternoon, feeding them, showing them a good time and yeah, getting a few presents in the meanwhile. I admit it... the presents are always fun. But honestly I just wanted to have an excuse to get folks to come over en masse and hopefully not forget about me as I prepare my descent into mothering-newborn-antisociality (just in time for the holidays! and the dead of winter! ahhhh! goodbye, social world... see you in May.)
The party was everything I dreamed of and more. Shelly busted out her creativity and glue gun and made the most fantastic decorations and party favors, all on an elephant theme, and all under the constraints of "unknown gender, secret name, and non-pastel colors." (alas, I did not make things easy for her!) It was a triumph of artistic awesomeness. She used circus peanuts (that bizarre candy made of marshmallow?) as the stands for little elephant signs! And that's just one among a bazillion other excellent things, like brown bags of animal crackers with an origami elephant pinned to it for the guests to take home... a baby banner... four awesome canvases for baby's room... the best diaper cake evaaah! And then Loreen, a picture of humility in the kitchen inversely proportionate to her utter awesomeness behind a KitchenAid, made the classiest, tastiest menu of tea snacks and appetizers... and ALL GLUTEN FREE. And a cake. With a three-dimensional elephant-carrying-an-umbrella that matched the invitation, formed out of fondant, on the top.
A-maz-ing.
Shelly recorded it for party-planning posterity at her blog The Screaming Tomato. Which I'll lazily just link to (again) since I am not sure if I uploaded the photos yet. Though there are some super cute ones. If I don't go into labor today I'll upload them and record them here for my posterity. Or... Posteriority? That's the history of my big fat a$$. Har har har.
But all profanity and joking aside:
Shelly and Loreen... you went above and beyond the call of duty and took time out of your own very busy lives to basically spoil me out of my very mind with all that excellent attention, effort, creativity and care. Thank you SO MUCH. It was, aside from my wedding day and the kid being born and maybe some holidays, one of the most memorable and love-filled afternoons of my 32-something years. Sniff sniff :-)
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Here and there
Nothing much happening, but little things here and there that aren't necessarily Facebook worthy but I still need to try and remember somehow.
- our kid was really, genuinely NICE last Tuesday. We had friends in town visiting over the weekend before that and I think seeing another kid in action, plus the throwing of routine to the wind, turned her into a little poophead. After much lecturing, bench-sitting, and probably a few whacks on the behind between Dada and I, she woke up last Tuesday and was a really. good. girl. ALL. DAY. LONG. I mean, shining faced angelic, and not just for show. She turned to me at one point and said, "I am being a good girl right mama?" Oh. Heart melt. So much that when I offered to let her watch the Goodnight Moon cartoon before commencing the bedtime routine, I started thinking of the limited time with just me and "my little girl" and fell into a horrible crying jag that did not stop until probably an hour later. Hormones, you suck.
- the flip side of that coin is that occasionally this good little girl will throw a hellacious fit and tell me how her bedroom is NOT HER ROOM and SHE NOT WANT IT and SHE NOT WANT TO BE A BIG SISTER! This is usually saved for me, because if she pulls this with Dada he throws a similar fit and then leaves the room muttering how he's turned into his own father. (not a bad thing, mind you... but it's always fun when you make that realization.)
- Since Saturday I've been goin' like a mad woman, trying to get stuff done. This makes for great naptimes... but makes for exhausted, horrid, limping aching cramping evenings. By the time I hit bed on Saturday and Sunday, I needed my back pressed and patted to distract from the enticingly suggestive twinges in my hoo-haa that seem to say something is happening. Want more details? [TMI ALERT!!] It feels like someone is taking a string tied around the uppermost part of my vajay-jay and is pulling on it. It's not terrible but it's unpleasant. I don't remember having it before, but wonder if it's something to do with my stitches "up in thur, up in thur?" But yet nothing much is happening. My midwives haven't actually physically "checked" to see if any dilation or anything is going on, but I wouldn't be surprised if I've got a good jump on things. I swear my pootie is chubbier, whatever sense that makes. I dare say I may have had one or two actual "contractions" - slightly different from the Braxton-Hicks fest that's been going on since 22 weeks or so, but still nothing painful or even unpleasant... just different.
- Meh, that's all I can remember right now. Went swimming the other day. That was fun. (seriously)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Maternal Black Out
Crossing the 37 week mark in pregnancy numero dos made me realize...
I have no recollection of what happened last time from week 37 (essentially, the day I stopped slinging bras and fat pants at Motherhood Maternity) to week 40 day 2, when I awoke at that eerie 3am-ish moment to find myself in labor during an electrical storm.
Oops, I lie... thanks to good ol' Spampylandia and a smattering of photos on Picasa I remember that I
So today, at 37 weeks 2 days, I head off to Family Beginnings Birth Center at Miami Valley Hospital to turn in my paperwork for the sepia toned zen labor (thanks, Shelly) and delivery of this second child, whose early pregnancy has been wiped into obscurity but whose emergence seems so very important and requisite of recollection.
I often wonder how Michelle Duggar even remembers the names and birthdays of her 19+ children, much less any factoids or dreamy vignettes from their individual pregnancies.
Guess the bottom line is: I need my own TV show.
I have no recollection of what happened last time from week 37 (essentially, the day I stopped slinging bras and fat pants at Motherhood Maternity) to week 40 day 2, when I awoke at that eerie 3am-ish moment to find myself in labor during an electrical storm.
Oops, I lie... thanks to good ol' Spampylandia and a smattering of photos on Picasa I remember that I
- stopped working on July 2nd or 3rd and then had a bunch of out of town friends visit over the Independence Day long weekend
- sat and hand stitched the beginnings of a stuffed bunny for baby - the pieces of which are still in the sewing kit
- effectively freaked out a waitress at Olive Garden
- ate a lot of Logan's Roadhouse
So today, at 37 weeks 2 days, I head off to Family Beginnings Birth Center at Miami Valley Hospital to turn in my paperwork for the sepia toned zen labor (thanks, Shelly) and delivery of this second child, whose early pregnancy has been wiped into obscurity but whose emergence seems so very important and requisite of recollection.
I often wonder how Michelle Duggar even remembers the names and birthdays of her 19+ children, much less any factoids or dreamy vignettes from their individual pregnancies.
Guess the bottom line is: I need my own TV show.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Ten Things...
Thanks, Shelly (The Screaming Tomato) for a brilliant idea... to steal!
Hindsight is 20/20, much like the grass is greener on the other side.
I've a list of about 37 things, not necessarily to "do," but just my own Unsolicited Advice that is eerily similar to the fabulous book, How to Have Your Second Child First: 100 Things That Are Good to Know, the First Time Around.
Since there actually is a second child coming in about78 days 21 days, let me ponder finish pondering the ten ways in which we may choose to do things differently this second time around.
1. I will push harder during delivery. The irrational fear of blowing my backside out, plus possibly a little overconfidence in my body's "beautiful natural ability to birth" led me to get a little lazy and not bear down with all my might. This time 'round, watch out... I plan to merge these two issues into An Irrational Overconfidence in My Body's Beautiful Ability to POP ITSELF BACK IN! Should anything end up where it shouldn't be, I'm now quite sure it'll go back... after awhile. I just will not be pushing for 2.5+ hours this time. (Oh. And have kid in tub. That's on the agenda too)
2. This child gets a nursery. This is more of a coincidence than a decision, as this child decided to come along when we just happened to have a house with at least one extra room that screamed "put a child in me!" (har har... apparently this house made my body scream that too.) Rather than a hybrid guest room/baby room/office in a two bedroom apartment, the ugly neglected blue room has been painted beautiful neutrals and will become Elena's new big girl room, while her current room is going to be overhauled into the nursery. With all her old furniture. Including the 12 year old crib she still sleeps in.
Hmmm... which leads me to...
3. No rush on the Big Kid Bed! Hells bells! Now I almost wish we had actually spent some money on our crib, since we're getting so much use out of it! Though we've had a toddler bed for her since she was about two years old, our strange little child still enjoys sleeping in her crib at night. And we still enjoy her inability to escape it. (Though sometimes we wonder at her complete lack of initiative to attempt escape, as well) I have no regrets or shame about the fact that my 3.25 year old child sleeps in her crib, because it works for us.
4. Potty Training and the Parental Black Out. This is one of the marvels of parenthood - Blacking Out. You fret and complain and worry and research and bitch and moan for days, weeks or months on a particular subject - nursing/teething/sleeping/pacifiers/potty training - and then suddenly, EVERYTHING MAGICALLY RESOLVES ITSELF and you have no recollection, even just days later, of how any of it went down. The things that seem to be such huge, all-consuming shit storms today will soon be just a vague memory, only chronicled by whatever evidence you leave behind on Facebook and Twitter. They seem like things you'll never forget. But now... timeline? Nope. No clue of either when it happened or how long it took. Did my kid wear Pull-ups for months or was it just a week? Did he nurse through the night until at a year old, or was it just til 9 months? When did paci disappear? Oh, she used a paci? I had forgotten, [chuckle, chuckle]... because I BLACKED OUT.
I'm vaguely aware of being in the midst of our Potty Training Black Out right now. I know it was just a few weeks back, maybe... or months?... that I was bitching on Facebook about how hard potty training is. And yet today my bizarre little child pees into the potty at least four times a day, saving her daily dumperoo for a Pull-up and then segueing right back into Princess and the Frog panties. Right now I'm cognizant enough to suggest to anyone that they potty train sooner rather than later. But I'm pretty sure 3+ years down the line I'll be writing another entry saying that now, "since we've tried it both ways, I'll be attempting something entirely different with subsequent offspring..."
5. Pregnancy Changes. Technology moves so duuuurn fast, kids... and just gives you more forums from which to hear all the new research telling you how awful everything is. My goodness! The fact that Elena doesn't have an eye in the center of her forehead is amazing, considering the amount of BPA I consumed last time 'round. It's in canned food and on receipts. Lo and behold, peanut consumption is now horrible... even vitamins are going to give you prostate cancer, apparently, if you have one (a prostate, not a vitamin). Seems we're all effing it up somehow. So just do your best. Don't worry too much about it. Don't drink or smoke or walk barefoot through rusty nails, but use some common sense. Ah, horrors - goat cheese... feta... LUNCH MEAT! Chillax. You're honestly gonna be okay. Odds are decent that five years after accidentally consuming that unpasteurized goat cheese and getting an ulcer (not to mention the restraining order from your obgyn) over it, you'll be researching raw milk for the whole family anyway.
6. Cloth Diapers. Sunnovabitch. Who knew? The reusables my mom used on me, not to be environmentally friendly but just because it was cheaper than whatever nascent maxi pad of a disposable was available at the time, is now back in style. And literally, IN STYLE. How freaking CUTE are cloth diapers?!?
Let me digress a little. I caught the "ahh new baby stuff!" bug when my child was about five months old, and went out of my way to buy every different feeding utensil and flavor available. It was so much fun! Things to try! Stock! Store! Organize! Ah, exclamation points!! Then, as she settled into a routine of eating "meh" and "meh" over and over again (see #4, the Parental Black Out), I realized it was the novelty of buying new stuff that had driven this wild mommy fervor, not the actual nutritional value or awesomeness or even kid's love for any particular product. This made me skeptical of any such situation in which I had multiple, colorful options in varying price ranges.
Now, think of cloth diapers as jars of baby food. Twelve-to-twenty four dollar a piece... jars of baby food. You can buy them in a set! You can buy them a la carte! You can have someone make them; or even make them yourself... from scratch or a kit. Then from there the combinations are infinitesimal. Meanwhile your kid couldn't care less that their diaper is made from your old beloved sorority sweatshirt/organic bamboo fleece/personalized $30-a-yard-print. What they give a bigger crap about is literally doing bigger craps on them. The novelty did not match the required effort.
Or so I thought.
Now, seems cloth diapering is becoming much more mainstream. Enough friends do it that I can confidently spread my stupid questions thin enough among them all that no one person thinks I'm a total idiot. And here's the shiny, blinking awesome bonus:
So we're going to cloth diaper. At least half of the time is the goal, with eyes towards the prize of seguing to "almost always" as that seems to be the way it works for folks. It'll be fun and interesting and yes, it will be very cool to not have to worry about spending $35+ every 1-2 weeks for disposables. Disposables that you have to dispose of. That are made of junk. That cost too much. That become a crutch for delayed potty training. That contain uncomfortable chemicals I wouldn't want held against my hootie.
Speaking of that...
7. Never Make Your Kid Do Something You Won't. I can't say there probably aren't a million exceptions to this rule, but this became especially evident to me during our episode with the bummer Flu Mist. Since then, I've often thought about what all trouble I could be getting my kid into by not following her down the path of, say, ordering matching hamburgers (the horrible story in Food, Inc. where the kid eats a burger but the parents don't, and kid dies a horrible bloody E. Coli type death and parents are left wishing they'd died instead) or having her eat the apple sauce with the high fructose corn syrup in it while I high and mightily refuse. Little things like that. Does that even make sense? What I mean is, just because she's a kid doesn't mean she is a little garbage can. If I'm going to demand "better" she can have it too.
(But damn straight neither she nor I will have the Flu Mist vaccine ever again)
8. Videotape the birth. I never thought I'd write THOSE words anywhere publicly. But we've tossed around the idea of having Elena present for Baby #2's delivery, and for all intents and purposes have since tossed it completely back out, unless the situation were to flow in ONE SPECIFIC MANNER.
(Something like this [cue sepia tone and dreamy zen music]: my mom is already in town, house is cleaned, I go into labor, labor mostly at home while everyone naps/chills/bakes things for me, we go to hospital, Wonder-Doula Tabby shows up to help, mom and kid come also and eat early dinner/watch movies in birth center lobby while I labor, and then mom and kid stand in the doorway for the last 3 minutes of a lovely peaceful water birth for cute "hi baby!" moment photographed for posterity... and then she and my mom both fall asleep in a recliner watching Dumbo.)
Since the odds of that happening so perfectly are pretty low, I instead hope to have at least a "A Baby Story" style snippet of each stage of labor (a la "the daddy cam") and then all the good stuff at the end (from the head-down, not bottom-up angle!) so that we can show Elena just how things went when her baby brother/sister arrived on the scene. PLUS... since we honestly, totally have no clue what the gender of this little person is, I want to be able to relive the moment where we find out. Err... hopefully I'll want to relive it!
9. Gender Martyr. Yeah, it's really fun not knowing what your kid is until you actually meet them and hold them in your arms. But maybe it'd be fun to find out too. So if there comes a little baby #3 someday? We will find out. We'll have done it every way then. Found out supah-dupah late... didn't find out... and bada-boom-bada-bing, ultrasound the nether regions please and give me those 20 extra weeks to obsess about it. Might as well try everything once.
10. Doing differently... everything. While I guess we have no major course corrections planned, we do realize this is an entirely different baby. The pregnancies have been different, and the resulting human will be different too. It's a new time, a new house, a new situation as "second" child... we have new friends to help, farther-away parents to miss, and winter weather to endure. We're older, and supposedly wiser, but who the hell knows what all might happen.
One thing that isn't going to change is that we'll love this little baby like nothing else on earth.
Hindsight is 20/20, much like the grass is greener on the other side.
I've a list of about 37 things, not necessarily to "do," but just my own Unsolicited Advice that is eerily similar to the fabulous book, How to Have Your Second Child First: 100 Things That Are Good to Know, the First Time Around.
Since there actually is a second child coming in about
1. I will push harder during delivery. The irrational fear of blowing my backside out, plus possibly a little overconfidence in my body's "beautiful natural ability to birth" led me to get a little lazy and not bear down with all my might. This time 'round, watch out... I plan to merge these two issues into An Irrational Overconfidence in My Body's Beautiful Ability to POP ITSELF BACK IN! Should anything end up where it shouldn't be, I'm now quite sure it'll go back... after awhile. I just will not be pushing for 2.5+ hours this time. (Oh. And have kid in tub. That's on the agenda too)
2. This child gets a nursery. This is more of a coincidence than a decision, as this child decided to come along when we just happened to have a house with at least one extra room that screamed "put a child in me!" (har har... apparently this house made my body scream that too.) Rather than a hybrid guest room/baby room/office in a two bedroom apartment, the ugly neglected blue room has been painted beautiful neutrals and will become Elena's new big girl room, while her current room is going to be overhauled into the nursery. With all her old furniture. Including the 12 year old crib she still sleeps in.
Hmmm... which leads me to...
3. No rush on the Big Kid Bed! Hells bells! Now I almost wish we had actually spent some money on our crib, since we're getting so much use out of it! Though we've had a toddler bed for her since she was about two years old, our strange little child still enjoys sleeping in her crib at night. And we still enjoy her inability to escape it. (Though sometimes we wonder at her complete lack of initiative to attempt escape, as well) I have no regrets or shame about the fact that my 3.25 year old child sleeps in her crib, because it works for us.
4. Potty Training and the Parental Black Out. This is one of the marvels of parenthood - Blacking Out. You fret and complain and worry and research and bitch and moan for days, weeks or months on a particular subject - nursing/teething/sleeping/pacifiers/potty training - and then suddenly, EVERYTHING MAGICALLY RESOLVES ITSELF and you have no recollection, even just days later, of how any of it went down. The things that seem to be such huge, all-consuming shit storms today will soon be just a vague memory, only chronicled by whatever evidence you leave behind on Facebook and Twitter. They seem like things you'll never forget. But now... timeline? Nope. No clue of either when it happened or how long it took. Did my kid wear Pull-ups for months or was it just a week? Did he nurse through the night until at a year old, or was it just til 9 months? When did paci disappear? Oh, she used a paci? I had forgotten, [chuckle, chuckle]... because I BLACKED OUT.
I'm vaguely aware of being in the midst of our Potty Training Black Out right now. I know it was just a few weeks back, maybe... or months?... that I was bitching on Facebook about how hard potty training is. And yet today my bizarre little child pees into the potty at least four times a day, saving her daily dumperoo for a Pull-up and then segueing right back into Princess and the Frog panties. Right now I'm cognizant enough to suggest to anyone that they potty train sooner rather than later. But I'm pretty sure 3+ years down the line I'll be writing another entry saying that now, "since we've tried it both ways, I'll be attempting something entirely different with subsequent offspring..."
5. Pregnancy Changes. Technology moves so duuuurn fast, kids... and just gives you more forums from which to hear all the new research telling you how awful everything is. My goodness! The fact that Elena doesn't have an eye in the center of her forehead is amazing, considering the amount of BPA I consumed last time 'round. It's in canned food and on receipts. Lo and behold, peanut consumption is now horrible... even vitamins are going to give you prostate cancer, apparently, if you have one (a prostate, not a vitamin). Seems we're all effing it up somehow. So just do your best. Don't worry too much about it. Don't drink or smoke or walk barefoot through rusty nails, but use some common sense. Ah, horrors - goat cheese... feta... LUNCH MEAT! Chillax. You're honestly gonna be okay. Odds are decent that five years after accidentally consuming that unpasteurized goat cheese and getting an ulcer (not to mention the restraining order from your obgyn) over it, you'll be researching raw milk for the whole family anyway.
6. Cloth Diapers. Sunnovabitch. Who knew? The reusables my mom used on me, not to be environmentally friendly but just because it was cheaper than whatever nascent maxi pad of a disposable was available at the time, is now back in style. And literally, IN STYLE. How freaking CUTE are cloth diapers?!?
Let me digress a little. I caught the "ahh new baby stuff!" bug when my child was about five months old, and went out of my way to buy every different feeding utensil and flavor available. It was so much fun! Things to try! Stock! Store! Organize! Ah, exclamation points!! Then, as she settled into a routine of eating "meh" and "meh" over and over again (see #4, the Parental Black Out), I realized it was the novelty of buying new stuff that had driven this wild mommy fervor, not the actual nutritional value or awesomeness or even kid's love for any particular product. This made me skeptical of any such situation in which I had multiple, colorful options in varying price ranges.
Now, think of cloth diapers as jars of baby food. Twelve-to-twenty four dollar a piece... jars of baby food. You can buy them in a set! You can buy them a la carte! You can have someone make them; or even make them yourself... from scratch or a kit. Then from there the combinations are infinitesimal. Meanwhile your kid couldn't care less that their diaper is made from your old beloved sorority sweatshirt/organic bamboo fleece/personalized $30-a-yard-print. What they give a bigger crap about is literally doing bigger craps on them. The novelty did not match the required effort.
Or so I thought.
Now, seems cloth diapering is becoming much more mainstream. Enough friends do it that I can confidently spread my stupid questions thin enough among them all that no one person thinks I'm a total idiot. And here's the shiny, blinking awesome bonus:
I got a bunch as shower gifts!!!!! :-)
Beautiful new customized ones. Lovely sturdy hand me downs. Tiny little hand sewn newborn ones in badass prints! Promises for more later when I've learned what I like and what works (and what gender this freakin' kid is, too). This bypasses the somewhat scary start-up cost of cloth diapering and just throws us into the thick of doing it. (and now that I have the diapers, damnit... I have to do it! Win-win!)
So we're going to cloth diaper. At least half of the time is the goal, with eyes towards the prize of seguing to "almost always" as that seems to be the way it works for folks. It'll be fun and interesting and yes, it will be very cool to not have to worry about spending $35+ every 1-2 weeks for disposables. Disposables that you have to dispose of. That are made of junk. That cost too much. That become a crutch for delayed potty training. That contain uncomfortable chemicals I wouldn't want held against my hootie.
Speaking of that...
7. Never Make Your Kid Do Something You Won't. I can't say there probably aren't a million exceptions to this rule, but this became especially evident to me during our episode with the bummer Flu Mist. Since then, I've often thought about what all trouble I could be getting my kid into by not following her down the path of, say, ordering matching hamburgers (the horrible story in Food, Inc. where the kid eats a burger but the parents don't, and kid dies a horrible bloody E. Coli type death and parents are left wishing they'd died instead) or having her eat the apple sauce with the high fructose corn syrup in it while I high and mightily refuse. Little things like that. Does that even make sense? What I mean is, just because she's a kid doesn't mean she is a little garbage can. If I'm going to demand "better" she can have it too.
(But damn straight neither she nor I will have the Flu Mist vaccine ever again)
8. Videotape the birth. I never thought I'd write THOSE words anywhere publicly. But we've tossed around the idea of having Elena present for Baby #2's delivery, and for all intents and purposes have since tossed it completely back out, unless the situation were to flow in ONE SPECIFIC MANNER.
(Something like this [cue sepia tone and dreamy zen music]: my mom is already in town, house is cleaned, I go into labor, labor mostly at home while everyone naps/chills/bakes things for me, we go to hospital, Wonder-Doula Tabby shows up to help, mom and kid come also and eat early dinner/watch movies in birth center lobby while I labor, and then mom and kid stand in the doorway for the last 3 minutes of a lovely peaceful water birth for cute "hi baby!" moment photographed for posterity... and then she and my mom both fall asleep in a recliner watching Dumbo.)
Since the odds of that happening so perfectly are pretty low, I instead hope to have at least a "A Baby Story" style snippet of each stage of labor (a la "the daddy cam") and then all the good stuff at the end (from the head-down, not bottom-up angle!) so that we can show Elena just how things went when her baby brother/sister arrived on the scene. PLUS... since we honestly, totally have no clue what the gender of this little person is, I want to be able to relive the moment where we find out. Err... hopefully I'll want to relive it!
9. Gender Martyr. Yeah, it's really fun not knowing what your kid is until you actually meet them and hold them in your arms. But maybe it'd be fun to find out too. So if there comes a little baby #3 someday? We will find out. We'll have done it every way then. Found out supah-dupah late... didn't find out... and bada-boom-bada-bing, ultrasound the nether regions please and give me those 20 extra weeks to obsess about it. Might as well try everything once.
10. Doing differently... everything. While I guess we have no major course corrections planned, we do realize this is an entirely different baby. The pregnancies have been different, and the resulting human will be different too. It's a new time, a new house, a new situation as "second" child... we have new friends to help, farther-away parents to miss, and winter weather to endure. We're older, and supposedly wiser, but who the hell knows what all might happen.
One thing that isn't going to change is that we'll love this little baby like nothing else on earth.
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