Things I want to remember: The Drunken Sailor
Sometimes, when Ali has had a great feeding and is still nursing even as she slips into a milk-drunk stupor, she'll take her top arm (she LOVES the football hold) and throw it casually over my breast, letting it hang there as she sucks (and sleeps) contentedly.
It looks like a drunken sailor throwing his arm around his favorite drinking mate as he staggers away from the bar.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
And so we begin . . .
I don't think anyone is ever prepared for being a parent to a newborn.
Okay, maybe Mrs. Duggar is prepared. I would hope so, after 18 practice runs. But me and TH? Even knowing how hard it would be, knowing about sleepless nights, and knowing that "all babies do is eat, sleep, and poop," even knowing these things conceptually couldn't have--didn't--prepare us for the reality of parenthood. This girl lights up my face in a way nothing ever has before. She also can make me cry at the drop of a hat. (To be fair, I'm attributing that partly to her and partly to these crazy postpartum hormones.) I cry because she won't eat. I cry because she wants to eat too much. I cry because she cries and I feel like I would do anything in the world to make her stop, to take away whatever misery it is she feels.
But we also laugh. We laugh at the faces she makes. We laugh at her yawns and stretches, and the shocked expression on her face when she noticed her feet waving in front of her for the first time. We laugh at her farts--so predictably the first sign that she is starting to wake up! And when her eyes are open and she is staring intently, rapturously at our faces . . . well, there's no where else I'd rather be.
We had her newborn shots taken by a friend of ours the other day. Ali was a champ, sleeping through most of her set changes and posing attempts. She had been in the buff for hours--who wants to see unsightly diaper lines in her first official photo shoot??--and she hadn't dirtied the blankets we'd kept wrapped around her tooshy or the photographers beautiful baskets and blankets. What a great baby!
We wanted to get some family shots at the end, so I delicately positioned myself on the floor and held her cute little naked body in my hands. We heard a fart. Laughed it off--funny lady. I should have remembered. Should have remembered this was her "I'm starting to wake up" routine. I heard another fart . . . and then felt a warmth ooze quickly over my fingers. Poo! My sweet little lady was crapping all over me! I called to TH, "She's crapping on me! Get a towel!" and in the seconds it took to get those words out, Ali let loose a gusher of orange-colored poop, grinning away contentedly the entire time.
You know you are a parent when the funniest thing that has happened to you all day is getting crapped on by your child. The photographer, TH, and I laughed riotously for minutes!
TH came to my rescue, bringing me wads of paper towels, and we swabbed my hands and her butt as well we could. He then told me to hand her to him so that I could go and wash my hands. I had just turned on the water when I heard a gushing sound, followed by more riotous laugher . . . she had just peed a torrential flow all over her daddy!
If there's anything funnier than getting pooped on by your daughter, it's having your husband peed on by your daughter right after you've been pooped on. Gotta love that girl for being an equal-opportunity baby.
So the start of parenthood has been not at all what we thought it would, and paradoxically, everything we thought it would be. It has been harder. And more rewarding. It is the scariest thing I have ever done. And the most comforting. There have been more tears than expected. And more laughter. I have had to be more disciplined and more easy-going at the same time. I cannot wait for Ali to be older, to be more interactive. And I know that I will sorely miss this sleepy, cuddly baby.
What an adventure this has turned out to be.
Okay, maybe Mrs. Duggar is prepared. I would hope so, after 18 practice runs. But me and TH? Even knowing how hard it would be, knowing about sleepless nights, and knowing that "all babies do is eat, sleep, and poop," even knowing these things conceptually couldn't have--didn't--prepare us for the reality of parenthood. This girl lights up my face in a way nothing ever has before. She also can make me cry at the drop of a hat. (To be fair, I'm attributing that partly to her and partly to these crazy postpartum hormones.) I cry because she won't eat. I cry because she wants to eat too much. I cry because she cries and I feel like I would do anything in the world to make her stop, to take away whatever misery it is she feels.
But we also laugh. We laugh at the faces she makes. We laugh at her yawns and stretches, and the shocked expression on her face when she noticed her feet waving in front of her for the first time. We laugh at her farts--so predictably the first sign that she is starting to wake up! And when her eyes are open and she is staring intently, rapturously at our faces . . . well, there's no where else I'd rather be.
We had her newborn shots taken by a friend of ours the other day. Ali was a champ, sleeping through most of her set changes and posing attempts. She had been in the buff for hours--who wants to see unsightly diaper lines in her first official photo shoot??--and she hadn't dirtied the blankets we'd kept wrapped around her tooshy or the photographers beautiful baskets and blankets. What a great baby!
We wanted to get some family shots at the end, so I delicately positioned myself on the floor and held her cute little naked body in my hands. We heard a fart. Laughed it off--funny lady. I should have remembered. Should have remembered this was her "I'm starting to wake up" routine. I heard another fart . . . and then felt a warmth ooze quickly over my fingers. Poo! My sweet little lady was crapping all over me! I called to TH, "She's crapping on me! Get a towel!" and in the seconds it took to get those words out, Ali let loose a gusher of orange-colored poop, grinning away contentedly the entire time.
You know you are a parent when the funniest thing that has happened to you all day is getting crapped on by your child. The photographer, TH, and I laughed riotously for minutes!
TH came to my rescue, bringing me wads of paper towels, and we swabbed my hands and her butt as well we could. He then told me to hand her to him so that I could go and wash my hands. I had just turned on the water when I heard a gushing sound, followed by more riotous laugher . . . she had just peed a torrential flow all over her daddy!
If there's anything funnier than getting pooped on by your daughter, it's having your husband peed on by your daughter right after you've been pooped on. Gotta love that girl for being an equal-opportunity baby.
So the start of parenthood has been not at all what we thought it would, and paradoxically, everything we thought it would be. It has been harder. And more rewarding. It is the scariest thing I have ever done. And the most comforting. There have been more tears than expected. And more laughter. I have had to be more disciplined and more easy-going at the same time. I cannot wait for Ali to be older, to be more interactive. And I know that I will sorely miss this sleepy, cuddly baby.
What an adventure this has turned out to be.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Birth Story
She's here. She's amazing.
We were quickly seen at the office and low-and-behold I was at 4 c.m. and 70% effaced. My doctor gave us a couple of options: go and walk around the grounds for a bit and check into the hospital later, or just go check into the hospital now. I had to make him repeat himself, sure that he had simply forgotten the third option: go home and come back when you're closer. Nope! Going home was not an option. One way or another I was staying to have a baby. It was at that moment that the enormity of the day hit me: I was having my baby!!
After being assured I was not going to be strapped to a monitor and held captive in bed, we went and checked into the hospital. It was about 7:30 a.m. I knew that there were only a few wireless fetal monitors and squat bars for delivery, so I wanted to get checked in early to try and get access to these tools. One serendipitous detail: our labor and delivery nurse's name was Ali!
After getting my initial assessment (baseline fetal monitoring of heartrate and contractions, etc.), we were allowed to walk the halls. And walk we did. The L&D floor was essentially set up in a big rectangle, so TH and I simply walked, lap after lap, hour after hour. (TH knows me so well, in fact, that he suggested that we time how long it took us to make one lap and then challenged me to beat that time on our next lap. I love that man.) We learned that six laps around the loop equals one mile; by my calculations, we probably walked five or six miles by the end of the day! I had to get back on the monitor every 30 minutes or so just to check on baby girl, but other than that, we had the freedom to labor however we desired.
Laboring together with TH was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. It was incredibly intimate. He was there for me in every way I needed him to be. He did everything right. He used all the coaching techniques we learned in our class. He supported me, encouraged me, made me laugh, kept me distracted, and basically made me feel like I was the most amazing woman in labor who had ever existed. We walked. We bounced on the labor ball. We swayed side to side. I used his shoulder for support and breathed into his neck. I can honestly say my labor experience was awesome.
My doctor arrived around 12:30 to check on my progress. Once you are in active labor, "they" like to see progress of about 1 cm per hour. It had been five hours since we checked into the hospital (when I was at 4 cm), and roughly 12 hours into my labor. I was only at 5.5 cm and 80% effacement. Not the kind of progress we were all looking for. We decided to break my water to try and encourage my body to pick up the pace.
After the doctor broke my water, I could tell that my contractions did not, in fact, increase in frequency or strength. In fact, the opposite happened. They spaced out and got easier to handle. My periodic checks on the monitor confirmed this; the mountains spaced out to six or seven minutes apart again. I had handled the lack of progress fairly well, but this change in pace was frustrating to me. I wanted labor to progress, not get set back!
When I was checked again at 3:30, I had only progressed to 6 cm and was still at 80%. So, three hours later and only a .5-cm change. Boo. I had now been in labor about 15 hours.
We talked about other ways of encouraging my body to pick up the pace. The next step after breaking my water was starting pitocin. I was wary of this step, as it had often been badmouthed in our Bradley class as the first step of a slippery slope. Pitocin made contractions unnaturally intense, so most people moved from there to an epidural. And epidurals, statistically speaking, made c-sections more likely. So pitocin was like the gateway drug of the L&D world. We decided to hold off and see if my body didn't pick things up on its own. But the doctor expressed concern over my slow rate of progress and we agreed to revisit the topic at the next check if I hadn't made good progress.
When I was checked again at just after 5 p.m., I was at a 6.5 and still 80% effaced. I was so discouraged by this. I had been in labor now for almost 17 hours and had only progressed 2.5 cm. We started the pitocin on the lowest setting possible.
Pitocin lived up to its reputation. The next 2.5 hours were not like the 17 hours I had experienced up to that point. The contractions became very painful and were starting to come with greater and greater frequency. Because I was on pitocin, I had to be continuously monitored. There was a wireless monitor, so TH and I could have continued to walk the halls, but I honestly didn't think I could just walk through these contractions the way I had the others. The best thing I found to do was to stand and sway back and forth, from side to side. I started moaning through the contractions, unable to last through them without vocalizing some of my discomfort.
Then baby girl's heart rate started to be affected. It wasn't picking back up the pace after each contraction the way it was supposed to. I had to get into bed and lay on my side. Then they gave me oxygen. Though it helped her hear trate recover, experiencing pitocin contractions in bed was honestly the worst part of my entire labor. I could no longer sway for relief. TH started to apply counter pressure, pushing his fist as hard as he could into the small of my back with each contraction.
I knew I couldn't last through hours and hours of this. What was more, I didn't want to. I didn't want to be so miserable through the end of my labor after having such a positive experience through the beginning. On the other hand, surely the hours of intense, painful contractions coming one after the other meant something. Surely I was now making progress and the end would be in sight. I decided I would wait for my next check; if I had made significant progress--I was hoping for around 8 cm dilation--I would continue to soldier through. If not, I was getting the epidural.
The doctor checked again at 7:30. I was still at 6.5 cm. Zero progress. I was shocked. Discouraged. Disappointed. Upset. Scared. Scared that things were not happening as they should. In the last seven hours of hard labor, I had only progressed 1 cm.
The epidural was ordered and I counted each minute, each contraction, until the anesthesiologist arrived.
Getting the epidural was scary to me simply because of the horror stories I had heard and because of the side-effects they talked about before giving it to me. Spinal headaches, paralysis . . . things that only affect .01% of the people who get epidurals. I was still in the throes of pitocin contractions, too, so staying perfectly still for the doctor was a challenge. There was a point when I felt a sudden pain to the left of the numbed area and I jumped. "Don't move!" the doctor ordered. Oh shit, I thought, I just screwed something up! I apologized again and again and kept asking him if I had messed anything up. He assured me that everything was still fine.
After I got the epidural, I had only two unpleasant side-effects: I started shaking, and my rectum started hurting with each contraction. I tried to ignore the shakes. Baby girl's heart rate was dropping again, so I had to stay on my side and keep the oxygen mask on at all times.
Tthe nurse encouraged me, saying that the rectal pain I was feeling was more than likely baby girl's head moving down into position. This was what really made me feel like we were finally making progress. Surely the epidural helped my body relax. We were cranking up the pitocin since I couldn't feel the pain anymore, and surely my body was finally being forced to progress! With each contraction that hurt, I simply pushed the little button and gave myself a little more medicine. Soon, I could feel the pressure of the contractions but no pain at all. I relaxed enough to be able to sleep a little.
The 9:30 check came. I want to take a break here and explain that my doctor got off work at 5 p.m. but had stayed around just to be there for me. We had told him how much we wanted him to be the one to deliver our baby. He was the doctor we trusted, and in the face of a labor that was longer and more complicated than we had anticipated, he was the one we needed to be there for our own peace of mind. What an amazing testament to the man and his dedication to his job and his patients that he stayed just to be there for us.
Anyway, the 9:30 check came. I closed my eyes and prayed for progress. Please body. Please do what you are supposed to do. It was closing in on 22 hours of labor now. I was tired physically and mentally. I just wanted my daughter born. I didn't want to worry any more about how she was tolerating such a long labor, about her heart rate dropping, about oxygen, about anything. I just wanted her here, safe, in my arms at last.
I was at 6.5 cm. Still. Zero progress. Despite increasing the pitocin every half-hour. Nothing. In the last four and half hours, I hadn't progress one bit. I was crushed.
We started talking c-section. TH and I asked the doctor every question we could think of, from risks to benefits, both immediate and long-term. It honestly didn't take much. I was tired. I was worried about my daughter. I was nervous about my ability to keep going with enough energy to make it through the actual delivery part, nevermind how much longer it might actually take me to finally hit 10 cm. I was anxious about the physical aspects of delivering a big baby, anxious about what it would do to my body.
Even then, though, I was so disappointed. We had dreamed for nine months about this moment, had prepared for labor and delivery. I had never doubted myself, never doubted my ability to give birth to my child. I cried. I cried from exhaustion and from disappointment and fear and from being overwhelmed with the events of the day. I sent TH to get my mother. I needed to see her smile, needed her to tell me that everything would be ok, needed to hear I was making the right decision.
At 10:15 I was wheeled into the operating room. While TH was putting on scrubs, they transferred me to the operating table. The jostling made me nauseated and I vomited. It was an awful feeling to not be able to move, to have your arms stretched out to your side, to be stapped down, and have to throw up. The anesthesiologist who was at my head was an angel. She was comforting and kind and knew exactly what to do and say to calm me down. I wish I knew her name so that I could tell her in person how much I appreciated what she did for me, how much she helped.
The surgery itself was a breeze. I was told to expect tugging and pressure and to try and relax through it, but honestly after all that I had been through that day, it was a total non-event.
I heard them telling me they were making the incision. I remember looking at nothing else but into my husband's eyes. He was stroking my hair, telling me how proud of me he was.
I remember telling him to take pictures.
I heard the doctor tell TH to get the camera ready.
I saw TH's eyes open wide with a kind of amazement I have never before seen on his face. It was the most pure light I have ever seen. It was joy. I remember hearing him say, "Oh my God!"
I heard a cry.
At 10:35 p.m. on 9/15/09, my daughter was born. She weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz--far from the 9+ pound gigantor baby they were predicting!--and was 20.75 inches long.
I remember hearing her wails fill the room and feeling so thankful.
I remember TH holding her up in my line of sight. I had a hard time focusing, but I remember seeing her face. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I remember them taking her to the nursery, and I remember telling TH not to leave her side. I knew he would be worried about me, and I remember knowing it was vital that he understood that he needed to stay with her.
I remember the doctors finishing sewing me up, and as they left the room, I remember telling them thank you multiple times. Thank you for giving me my baby.
After that, I was wheeled into a recovery room. I drifted in and out of my medicinal haze. I could have visitors, and one at a time my parents came into the room to greet and check on me.
Then TH came in. I was surprised to see him . . . hadn't I told him to stay with our daughter?? But he had been too worried about me and had snuck away to make sure that I was ok. And he had brought pictures. Pictures of our daughter. I remember saying "She's beautiful!" over and over again, as if it was the only true statement left in the world, as if it was the only thing I could say.
I later learned that Ali was face up, rather than face down as she "should" have been. My doctor explained that this probably played a roll in my failure to progress beyond 6.5 cm. Baby girl never dropped below a -1 station, in part because she was positioned wrong. Even if I had fought through to 10 cm (and who knows if I ever would have made it that far), there is only a 30% I would have been able to deliver her without resorting to an emergency c-section.
So, I left home one day as a wife and awoke the next day as a mother. Were the events that happened in between the ones I had hoped for and planned on? No. It wasn't the birth I had prepared for, wasn't the birth I had dreamed of in my mind. I still struggle with feelings of envy when I hear another friend has dilated beyond a 6, has given birth vaginally. I wanted the experience. I wanted to know what it was like to push.
But all of that is secondary to the end result. Baby girl is here. She is safe. She is healthy. All those months of worry, all those times I held my breath and prayed that she just be ok, all of that waiting has finally come to an end, and I can at long last hold her in my arms and kiss her cheeks and stroke her gorgeous dark hair. The "how" did not go according to plan, but in the end, those are just details. It's the "what" that truly matters.
And here, at long last, is my "what."
My daughter is one week old today. I've fallen off the blogging wagon in the last week. Understandably. I hope to continue this blog, continue to use it as a place to record my thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears about parenting the way I've used it to record these emotions about both getting and being pregnant. And I know I still have the whole second half of the alphabet to get through! But I also want to spend every waking moment with her, staring into her dark grey (blue? brown?) eyes, and the moments she sleeps seem to disappear in a fog of napping, catching up on emails, laundry, and somewhere fitting in meals for myself. Blogging has just dropped off the wayside.
But for today, I just want to get down her birth story. It was such an incredible day. Such an incredible day. And already some of the details are fading, worn soft around the edges by sleepless nights and days filled with more smiles and laughs than I knew possible. I want to have a place I can come back to and remember it. The day my daughter was born.
I had my last doctor's appointment the morning of my due date. I had been having contractions all weekend, though they weren't painful. Just tightening. The morning of 9/14/09, I awoke to a bit of spotting on the toilet paper. I knew enough to know that this was not something to be worried about; this was something to be excited about! At the doctor's appointment, I got hooked up to a monitor, and TH and I could actually see the contractions as they happened, a series of little mountains spread across the paper. The doctor said he gave me a 5-10% chance of actually making it to my induction date of Friday the 18th. TH looked at me with wide eyes and we agreed we had better finish packing our hospital bag that night!
I went to work for what would be my last day, and the contractions gradually got a little more uncomfortable as the day wore on. I wrapped up all my loose ends--my boss and I had agreed I would work from home for the rest of the week, so one way or another I knew that would be my last day in the office for a long time. TH took me out to dinner--Chili's--for our "due date." We came home and walked around the neighborhood. As we walked, I noticed that the contractions were coming a little more consistently. I started glancing at my watch whenever I felt one. Five minutes apart. Seven minutes. Four minutes.
We got home and packed the hospital bag. Then, with nothing left to do but wait, I fell asleep to the sound of my husband reading our last chapter out of our pregnancy week-by-week book.
I was woken up by a painful contraction around 11 p.m. Another about 40 minutes later. Another about 20 minutes later. By 1:30 a.m. I had had enough and got up to start timing them. They were about 3-4 minutes apart and about 45 seconds long. I used Contraction Master, a website that helps you time contractions, and seeing each one consistently follow the previous one was surreal. Was this actually happening. I didn't want to be that woman, the woman who goes to the hospital only to be sent home again (and again?? Did anyone see Father of the Bride 2?), so I kept a healthy dose of skepticism about me. But after seeing the contractions come, one after another, for about an hour and a half, I woke TH.
We called the on-call doc, and he said to come on in. Still holding onto that fear of getting sent home, or perhaps to my incredulity that I was actually in labor, I asked if we could labor at home for a while instead, and he said we were more than welcome to. Around 3 a.m. I baked cookies for the nurses at the hospital, and we put the finishing touches on the hospital bag. All the while we had contraction master pulled up on TH's laptop (which he kept with him as he moved from room to room in the house). I would yell "Spacebar!!" from wherever I was in the house when a contraction started or ended, and TH would yell back "SPACEBAR!" from wherever he was in the house. We laughed a lot, overcome by excitement.
By around 5:30 a.m. my adrenaline was wearing off. I realized how tired I was. I sat down in the chair in Ali's nursery and tried to relax/sleep a little. We played her lullaby CD, which was already set up in her CD player, waiting to be used for real. As I relaxed, the contractions spaced out to about 6-7 minutes apart. Somewhere between uncomfortable and painful, they felt like intense menstrual cramps.
We were quickly seen at the office and low-and-behold I was at 4 c.m. and 70% effaced. My doctor gave us a couple of options: go and walk around the grounds for a bit and check into the hospital later, or just go check into the hospital now. I had to make him repeat himself, sure that he had simply forgotten the third option: go home and come back when you're closer. Nope! Going home was not an option. One way or another I was staying to have a baby. It was at that moment that the enormity of the day hit me: I was having my baby!!
After being assured I was not going to be strapped to a monitor and held captive in bed, we went and checked into the hospital. It was about 7:30 a.m. I knew that there were only a few wireless fetal monitors and squat bars for delivery, so I wanted to get checked in early to try and get access to these tools. One serendipitous detail: our labor and delivery nurse's name was Ali!
After getting my initial assessment (baseline fetal monitoring of heartrate and contractions, etc.), we were allowed to walk the halls. And walk we did. The L&D floor was essentially set up in a big rectangle, so TH and I simply walked, lap after lap, hour after hour. (TH knows me so well, in fact, that he suggested that we time how long it took us to make one lap and then challenged me to beat that time on our next lap. I love that man.) We learned that six laps around the loop equals one mile; by my calculations, we probably walked five or six miles by the end of the day! I had to get back on the monitor every 30 minutes or so just to check on baby girl, but other than that, we had the freedom to labor however we desired.
Laboring together with TH was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. It was incredibly intimate. He was there for me in every way I needed him to be. He did everything right. He used all the coaching techniques we learned in our class. He supported me, encouraged me, made me laugh, kept me distracted, and basically made me feel like I was the most amazing woman in labor who had ever existed. We walked. We bounced on the labor ball. We swayed side to side. I used his shoulder for support and breathed into his neck. I can honestly say my labor experience was awesome.
My doctor arrived around 12:30 to check on my progress. Once you are in active labor, "they" like to see progress of about 1 cm per hour. It had been five hours since we checked into the hospital (when I was at 4 cm), and roughly 12 hours into my labor. I was only at 5.5 cm and 80% effacement. Not the kind of progress we were all looking for. We decided to break my water to try and encourage my body to pick up the pace.
After the doctor broke my water, I could tell that my contractions did not, in fact, increase in frequency or strength. In fact, the opposite happened. They spaced out and got easier to handle. My periodic checks on the monitor confirmed this; the mountains spaced out to six or seven minutes apart again. I had handled the lack of progress fairly well, but this change in pace was frustrating to me. I wanted labor to progress, not get set back!
When I was checked again at 3:30, I had only progressed to 6 cm and was still at 80%. So, three hours later and only a .5-cm change. Boo. I had now been in labor about 15 hours.
We talked about other ways of encouraging my body to pick up the pace. The next step after breaking my water was starting pitocin. I was wary of this step, as it had often been badmouthed in our Bradley class as the first step of a slippery slope. Pitocin made contractions unnaturally intense, so most people moved from there to an epidural. And epidurals, statistically speaking, made c-sections more likely. So pitocin was like the gateway drug of the L&D world. We decided to hold off and see if my body didn't pick things up on its own. But the doctor expressed concern over my slow rate of progress and we agreed to revisit the topic at the next check if I hadn't made good progress.
When I was checked again at just after 5 p.m., I was at a 6.5 and still 80% effaced. I was so discouraged by this. I had been in labor now for almost 17 hours and had only progressed 2.5 cm. We started the pitocin on the lowest setting possible.
Pitocin lived up to its reputation. The next 2.5 hours were not like the 17 hours I had experienced up to that point. The contractions became very painful and were starting to come with greater and greater frequency. Because I was on pitocin, I had to be continuously monitored. There was a wireless monitor, so TH and I could have continued to walk the halls, but I honestly didn't think I could just walk through these contractions the way I had the others. The best thing I found to do was to stand and sway back and forth, from side to side. I started moaning through the contractions, unable to last through them without vocalizing some of my discomfort.
Then baby girl's heart rate started to be affected. It wasn't picking back up the pace after each contraction the way it was supposed to. I had to get into bed and lay on my side. Then they gave me oxygen. Though it helped her hear trate recover, experiencing pitocin contractions in bed was honestly the worst part of my entire labor. I could no longer sway for relief. TH started to apply counter pressure, pushing his fist as hard as he could into the small of my back with each contraction.
I knew I couldn't last through hours and hours of this. What was more, I didn't want to. I didn't want to be so miserable through the end of my labor after having such a positive experience through the beginning. On the other hand, surely the hours of intense, painful contractions coming one after the other meant something. Surely I was now making progress and the end would be in sight. I decided I would wait for my next check; if I had made significant progress--I was hoping for around 8 cm dilation--I would continue to soldier through. If not, I was getting the epidural.
The doctor checked again at 7:30. I was still at 6.5 cm. Zero progress. I was shocked. Discouraged. Disappointed. Upset. Scared. Scared that things were not happening as they should. In the last seven hours of hard labor, I had only progressed 1 cm.
The epidural was ordered and I counted each minute, each contraction, until the anesthesiologist arrived.
Getting the epidural was scary to me simply because of the horror stories I had heard and because of the side-effects they talked about before giving it to me. Spinal headaches, paralysis . . . things that only affect .01% of the people who get epidurals. I was still in the throes of pitocin contractions, too, so staying perfectly still for the doctor was a challenge. There was a point when I felt a sudden pain to the left of the numbed area and I jumped. "Don't move!" the doctor ordered. Oh shit, I thought, I just screwed something up! I apologized again and again and kept asking him if I had messed anything up. He assured me that everything was still fine.
After I got the epidural, I had only two unpleasant side-effects: I started shaking, and my rectum started hurting with each contraction. I tried to ignore the shakes. Baby girl's heart rate was dropping again, so I had to stay on my side and keep the oxygen mask on at all times.
Tthe nurse encouraged me, saying that the rectal pain I was feeling was more than likely baby girl's head moving down into position. This was what really made me feel like we were finally making progress. Surely the epidural helped my body relax. We were cranking up the pitocin since I couldn't feel the pain anymore, and surely my body was finally being forced to progress! With each contraction that hurt, I simply pushed the little button and gave myself a little more medicine. Soon, I could feel the pressure of the contractions but no pain at all. I relaxed enough to be able to sleep a little.
The 9:30 check came. I want to take a break here and explain that my doctor got off work at 5 p.m. but had stayed around just to be there for me. We had told him how much we wanted him to be the one to deliver our baby. He was the doctor we trusted, and in the face of a labor that was longer and more complicated than we had anticipated, he was the one we needed to be there for our own peace of mind. What an amazing testament to the man and his dedication to his job and his patients that he stayed just to be there for us.
Anyway, the 9:30 check came. I closed my eyes and prayed for progress. Please body. Please do what you are supposed to do. It was closing in on 22 hours of labor now. I was tired physically and mentally. I just wanted my daughter born. I didn't want to worry any more about how she was tolerating such a long labor, about her heart rate dropping, about oxygen, about anything. I just wanted her here, safe, in my arms at last.
I was at 6.5 cm. Still. Zero progress. Despite increasing the pitocin every half-hour. Nothing. In the last four and half hours, I hadn't progress one bit. I was crushed.
We started talking c-section. TH and I asked the doctor every question we could think of, from risks to benefits, both immediate and long-term. It honestly didn't take much. I was tired. I was worried about my daughter. I was nervous about my ability to keep going with enough energy to make it through the actual delivery part, nevermind how much longer it might actually take me to finally hit 10 cm. I was anxious about the physical aspects of delivering a big baby, anxious about what it would do to my body.
Even then, though, I was so disappointed. We had dreamed for nine months about this moment, had prepared for labor and delivery. I had never doubted myself, never doubted my ability to give birth to my child. I cried. I cried from exhaustion and from disappointment and fear and from being overwhelmed with the events of the day. I sent TH to get my mother. I needed to see her smile, needed her to tell me that everything would be ok, needed to hear I was making the right decision.
At 10:15 I was wheeled into the operating room. While TH was putting on scrubs, they transferred me to the operating table. The jostling made me nauseated and I vomited. It was an awful feeling to not be able to move, to have your arms stretched out to your side, to be stapped down, and have to throw up. The anesthesiologist who was at my head was an angel. She was comforting and kind and knew exactly what to do and say to calm me down. I wish I knew her name so that I could tell her in person how much I appreciated what she did for me, how much she helped.
The surgery itself was a breeze. I was told to expect tugging and pressure and to try and relax through it, but honestly after all that I had been through that day, it was a total non-event.
I heard them telling me they were making the incision. I remember looking at nothing else but into my husband's eyes. He was stroking my hair, telling me how proud of me he was.
I remember telling him to take pictures.
I heard the doctor tell TH to get the camera ready.
I saw TH's eyes open wide with a kind of amazement I have never before seen on his face. It was the most pure light I have ever seen. It was joy. I remember hearing him say, "Oh my God!"
I heard a cry.
At 10:35 p.m. on 9/15/09, my daughter was born. She weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz--far from the 9+ pound gigantor baby they were predicting!--and was 20.75 inches long.
I remember hearing her wails fill the room and feeling so thankful.
I remember TH holding her up in my line of sight. I had a hard time focusing, but I remember seeing her face. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I remember them taking her to the nursery, and I remember telling TH not to leave her side. I knew he would be worried about me, and I remember knowing it was vital that he understood that he needed to stay with her.
I remember the doctors finishing sewing me up, and as they left the room, I remember telling them thank you multiple times. Thank you for giving me my baby.
After that, I was wheeled into a recovery room. I drifted in and out of my medicinal haze. I could have visitors, and one at a time my parents came into the room to greet and check on me.
Then TH came in. I was surprised to see him . . . hadn't I told him to stay with our daughter?? But he had been too worried about me and had snuck away to make sure that I was ok. And he had brought pictures. Pictures of our daughter. I remember saying "She's beautiful!" over and over again, as if it was the only true statement left in the world, as if it was the only thing I could say.
I later learned that Ali was face up, rather than face down as she "should" have been. My doctor explained that this probably played a roll in my failure to progress beyond 6.5 cm. Baby girl never dropped below a -1 station, in part because she was positioned wrong. Even if I had fought through to 10 cm (and who knows if I ever would have made it that far), there is only a 30% I would have been able to deliver her without resorting to an emergency c-section.
So, I left home one day as a wife and awoke the next day as a mother. Were the events that happened in between the ones I had hoped for and planned on? No. It wasn't the birth I had prepared for, wasn't the birth I had dreamed of in my mind. I still struggle with feelings of envy when I hear another friend has dilated beyond a 6, has given birth vaginally. I wanted the experience. I wanted to know what it was like to push.
But all of that is secondary to the end result. Baby girl is here. She is safe. She is healthy. All those months of worry, all those times I held my breath and prayed that she just be ok, all of that waiting has finally come to an end, and I can at long last hold her in my arms and kiss her cheeks and stroke her gorgeous dark hair. The "how" did not go according to plan, but in the end, those are just details. It's the "what" that truly matters.
And here, at long last, is my "what."
Monday, September 14, 2009
40 Weeks!!!
Today I am 40 weeks pregnant.
What a journey it has been. Looking back, I can't believe the time has come for baby girl to make her appearance . . . but at the same time it has been a loong 9 months, too.
I have been so, so lucky during this pregnancy. Lucky to get pregnant at all. Lucky to not face any major complications along the way. Lucky to feel so good the entire time. Lucky to have such an amazing man by my side to pamper me and read to me and learn with me and dream with me. I cannot wait to make him a father in the newest, realest sense of the word. I cannot wait to see him hold his daughter in his arms.
Last weekend was our last weekend together as just a couple, as just us, a pair of high school sweethearts who, for the last 13 years, have only known what it's like to have each other. It was the ending of an era. A wonderful era. We definitely took full advantage of the occasion. We played Boggle like we used to (I won but only by 5 points . . . it's amazing how close we always are in that game!). We went and saw a movie (9 . . . amazing animation, but a bit darker than I was anticipating). We went out to dinner (Chuy's burrito topped with Boom-Boom sauce . . . delish!). We went for walks and talked and remembered our time together and looked forward with excitement to what this week would bring us. We went to bed on Sunday night, looking each other in the eyes and saying, "Can you believe we are going to have a BABY this week?!?!"
Our 40-week appointment was this morning, and it brought with it a new and fun experience: we got hooked up to the fetal monitors and got to actually see the contractions happen. I had been having contractions all weekend, but they weren't painful . . . just periods of tightness across my belly. In fact, at first I thought baby girl was just pushing OUT very forcefully. It took a while for me to realize my stomach was in fact pushing IN. The fetal monitor showed a visual of each contraction, making a pattern of small mountains across the printout. I think it really helped TH connect with the experience, since he can't really feel them come and go the way I can.
We found out I had made more great progress over the week, and the doctor gave me only a 5-10% chance of making it until Friday, my scheduled induction day. We picked Friday because he will only let me go one week overdue, and it seemed easier for family and friends to come visit over the weekend than if we induced on a Monday. I knew all about stories of progress only to have baby not come for weeks and weeks, so I wasn't really getting my hopes up too high . . . plus this doc had no idea how stubborn the women in my family (even if they're babies) can be! While I hoped baby girl would come on her own in the next few days, I also planned on Friday being the day.
I went to work. I think I made my boss thoroughly anxious by being there. I assured her I would not go into labor while at work, though the more constant contractions I started feeling all day made me wonder if something was, in fact, happening. TH and I went out to dinner on a "due date." We walked around our neighborhood. We packed our hospital bag. Though the contractions were becoming more uncomfortable and uniform, I managed to fall asleep to the sound of him reading our weekly chapter out of our Pregnancy Week by Week book.
I awoke to a contraction. Typically able to sleep through pain, I tried to relax. An hour later another. 20 minutes later another. TH heard me moan in my sleep and tried to make me comfortable. Eventually I just got up. 1:45 in the morning the day after my due date, I started timing contractions. Real contractions. And they were coming about every 3-4 minutes and lasting about a minute. And they've stayed consistent for more than an hour.
So here I am. I am excited. Anxious. Nervous to take this too seriously and have it be a false alarm. Scared to get my hopes up and have it not pan out just yet.
Hoping against hope that this IS it. That the time has come. That in only hours I will get to meet my daughter, get to hold her in my arms, get to kiss her cheek and marvel at her hair and cry at the miracle of it all.
40 weeks. What an amazing milestone. What an amazing day.
What a journey it has been. Looking back, I can't believe the time has come for baby girl to make her appearance . . . but at the same time it has been a loong 9 months, too.
I have been so, so lucky during this pregnancy. Lucky to get pregnant at all. Lucky to not face any major complications along the way. Lucky to feel so good the entire time. Lucky to have such an amazing man by my side to pamper me and read to me and learn with me and dream with me. I cannot wait to make him a father in the newest, realest sense of the word. I cannot wait to see him hold his daughter in his arms.
Last weekend was our last weekend together as just a couple, as just us, a pair of high school sweethearts who, for the last 13 years, have only known what it's like to have each other. It was the ending of an era. A wonderful era. We definitely took full advantage of the occasion. We played Boggle like we used to (I won but only by 5 points . . . it's amazing how close we always are in that game!). We went and saw a movie (9 . . . amazing animation, but a bit darker than I was anticipating). We went out to dinner (Chuy's burrito topped with Boom-Boom sauce . . . delish!). We went for walks and talked and remembered our time together and looked forward with excitement to what this week would bring us. We went to bed on Sunday night, looking each other in the eyes and saying, "Can you believe we are going to have a BABY this week?!?!"
Our 40-week appointment was this morning, and it brought with it a new and fun experience: we got hooked up to the fetal monitors and got to actually see the contractions happen. I had been having contractions all weekend, but they weren't painful . . . just periods of tightness across my belly. In fact, at first I thought baby girl was just pushing OUT very forcefully. It took a while for me to realize my stomach was in fact pushing IN. The fetal monitor showed a visual of each contraction, making a pattern of small mountains across the printout. I think it really helped TH connect with the experience, since he can't really feel them come and go the way I can.
We found out I had made more great progress over the week, and the doctor gave me only a 5-10% chance of making it until Friday, my scheduled induction day. We picked Friday because he will only let me go one week overdue, and it seemed easier for family and friends to come visit over the weekend than if we induced on a Monday. I knew all about stories of progress only to have baby not come for weeks and weeks, so I wasn't really getting my hopes up too high . . . plus this doc had no idea how stubborn the women in my family (even if they're babies) can be! While I hoped baby girl would come on her own in the next few days, I also planned on Friday being the day.
I went to work. I think I made my boss thoroughly anxious by being there. I assured her I would not go into labor while at work, though the more constant contractions I started feeling all day made me wonder if something was, in fact, happening. TH and I went out to dinner on a "due date." We walked around our neighborhood. We packed our hospital bag. Though the contractions were becoming more uncomfortable and uniform, I managed to fall asleep to the sound of him reading our weekly chapter out of our Pregnancy Week by Week book.
I awoke to a contraction. Typically able to sleep through pain, I tried to relax. An hour later another. 20 minutes later another. TH heard me moan in my sleep and tried to make me comfortable. Eventually I just got up. 1:45 in the morning the day after my due date, I started timing contractions. Real contractions. And they were coming about every 3-4 minutes and lasting about a minute. And they've stayed consistent for more than an hour.
So here I am. I am excited. Anxious. Nervous to take this too seriously and have it be a false alarm. Scared to get my hopes up and have it not pan out just yet.
Hoping against hope that this IS it. That the time has come. That in only hours I will get to meet my daughter, get to hold her in my arms, get to kiss her cheek and marvel at her hair and cry at the miracle of it all.
40 weeks. What an amazing milestone. What an amazing day.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
L is for Love
Love.
Nothing will play a bigger role in your life.
Nothing will bring you more joy. Or more pain.
Nothing will drive your decisions more. Nothing will be a bigger influence.
Love is an eternal motif. It is found in every great story.
Love is paradoxical. It is both culturally defined and an integral part of what makes us human.
There are a thousand, million, billion different types of love. The love you feel for your family. The love you feel for your friends. The love you feel for your romantic partner. The love you feel for yourself. The love you feel for your job, your pets, your home, your beliefs, your peers, your hobbies, your favorite possessions, your favorite ice cream flavor . . . the list goes on forever. And each of them is different, a different kind of love, than the last. Yet they are all love.
How can I possibly talk to you about something so ubiquitous, something so universal? What can I possibly tell you that will help you when it comes time for your own experiences with love?
Ultimately, as with everything else baby girl, you will have to decide what love means for you. You will have to decide what love feels like. What love looks like. What love acts like. What love's limits are.
There are many who would say I've been lucky in love. I met your father when we were 16. We fell in love almost immediately, though it wasn't the romantic kind of love, not at first. That came later. That may be why our relationship is so strong; it is one layer of love built on another, different kind of love. We met when we were 16, and now, 14 years later, we are expecting you. And our love keeps growing. One layer of love added to the previous.
So I've been lucky in love. Yes. Blessed. I would say everyone who has experienced love has been lucky. Blessed. But those who would say that our experiences with love have been easy would be wrong. The truth is, love isn't easy. Not true love. Not lasting love. That's because life isn't easy, and love is the thread that connects our lives, connects one day to the next, one moment to the next, one experience to the next.
Some of those transitions are jarring. Some are painful. Such is life. And love has to be there to make those jarring, painful steps.
Sometimes the steps are too much, and love is lost. Such is life.
Ultimately, it's up to you to decide when love has been stretched too thin. But know this: love is stronger than you think. It is stronger than faith. It is stronger than hope. Even when you have lost your faith, when you have lost your hope, even then, love remains. Love remains, often times long after things like common sense and personal safety and respect are gone. In times like these, there are two different loves at odds with each other: love of self and love of another. I can't tell you which trumps which. You will have to discover that for yourself when the time comes.
What I can tell you about love, or about my own experiences and discoveries about love, is this: I do not believe those who say the best you can do is simply love someone for who they are. There is some truth to that, yes. You have to have the ability to know who a person is, deep down, beneath all the pomp and circumstance and flair they put on to impress others. That person--the REAL person--is who you have to know and love, just as they are. But you do NOT have to love and accept the pomp and circumstance and flair. You do not have to love a person's decisions. You do not have to love a person's actions. Loving someone does NOT mean you have to accept their behavior as is, take it or leave it.
In my opinion, in my experiences with love, loving someone means not being able to imagine a life without them. It means you would rather argue with them than not have them around at all. It means they make you smile every time you see them . . . even if you are only seeing them in your mind's eye . . . even if you are only smiling on the inside. It means they are the first person you think of telling when something funny happens to you, or something sad, or something moving, or something surprising or amazing or scary or heartbreaking or thought-provoking, or simply something as trivial as wondering how it's possible that some fruit juices have twice as much sugar as sodas. Loving someone means you want to share your life with them, in all it's big and small moments.
But loving someone also means loving them enough to hold a mirror to their face, to not allow them to sell themselves short, to not accept self-destructive behavior, to always fight to raise them up, to support them to be the best they can be . . . to be the person deep down that you know they are. It means wanting the best for them even when they don't want the best for themselves. It means accepting their anger. No one likes the mirror being held to their face.
Loving someone means, when it's all said and done and the time comes for decisions to be made, being willing to walk away, being willing to give that person exactly what they want, remembering that ultimately it's the other person's decision about what kind of life they choose to have. You can't choose for them. Loving them means remembering that.
And love means always coming back to help that person fight their fight, even when it hurts. Love means being there for someone, no matter how little they deserve it.
Love means never giving up on someone.
And of course, the paradox: balancing the love of yourself with all of the above. Love means knowing when you have to love yourself more, knowing when the love of someone or something else becomes damaging to your own life. And, because love of others will always eventually result in a situation at odds with love of yourself . . . knowing where to draw that line. You cannot only love yourself, cannot always put yourself first. But you cannot only love others either. You cannot always put yourself last.
There are no wrong answers when it comes to love. You get to choose your own life. You get to define love for yourself. But remember, when struggling to define love for yourself, when struggling to find your balance, when struggling to decide on your next move, remember that love is not easy. Something so important, so big, so wonderful, was never meant to be easy. Even back in the 16th century, Shakespeare knew, "the course of true love never did run smooth."
You will have to fight for what you love. For those you love. You will have to fight yourself. You will have to fight others. You will be consumed with the most wonderful, terrible confusion and clarity. You will feel lost and found at the same time. You will want to escape your thoughts, and you will want to think of nothing else.
Yes, love is a fight. But this I promise you: it's worth it.
Even the loves that don't last. Worth it. Because they will, for the time you had them, have brought you the highest of all human emotions.
And the loves that do last? The loves that stay with you, that move your life, your identity, your soul, that flow through you like a river through a canyon until you are shaped into a new, deeper, more beautiful version of yourself?
Those loves are what put a smile on your face before you even open your eyes. Those loves are what puts the life in life.
Know that you are loved. Already your father and I love you more than you know. That love will never end, no matter what you do, no matter what you say. You are surrounded in love. You were conceived in love. You will be brought into the world already the focus of so many people's love.
And one of the things I'm most looking forward to about being a parent, about having created a new life to bring to the world, is that I'm giving one more soul the chance to know love.
I wish for you a life filled with a thousand, million, billion different kinds of love.
Nothing will play a bigger role in your life.
Nothing will bring you more joy. Or more pain.
Nothing will drive your decisions more. Nothing will be a bigger influence.
Love is an eternal motif. It is found in every great story.
Love is paradoxical. It is both culturally defined and an integral part of what makes us human.
There are a thousand, million, billion different types of love. The love you feel for your family. The love you feel for your friends. The love you feel for your romantic partner. The love you feel for yourself. The love you feel for your job, your pets, your home, your beliefs, your peers, your hobbies, your favorite possessions, your favorite ice cream flavor . . . the list goes on forever. And each of them is different, a different kind of love, than the last. Yet they are all love.
How can I possibly talk to you about something so ubiquitous, something so universal? What can I possibly tell you that will help you when it comes time for your own experiences with love?
Ultimately, as with everything else baby girl, you will have to decide what love means for you. You will have to decide what love feels like. What love looks like. What love acts like. What love's limits are.
There are many who would say I've been lucky in love. I met your father when we were 16. We fell in love almost immediately, though it wasn't the romantic kind of love, not at first. That came later. That may be why our relationship is so strong; it is one layer of love built on another, different kind of love. We met when we were 16, and now, 14 years later, we are expecting you. And our love keeps growing. One layer of love added to the previous.
So I've been lucky in love. Yes. Blessed. I would say everyone who has experienced love has been lucky. Blessed. But those who would say that our experiences with love have been easy would be wrong. The truth is, love isn't easy. Not true love. Not lasting love. That's because life isn't easy, and love is the thread that connects our lives, connects one day to the next, one moment to the next, one experience to the next.
Some of those transitions are jarring. Some are painful. Such is life. And love has to be there to make those jarring, painful steps.
Sometimes the steps are too much, and love is lost. Such is life.
Ultimately, it's up to you to decide when love has been stretched too thin. But know this: love is stronger than you think. It is stronger than faith. It is stronger than hope. Even when you have lost your faith, when you have lost your hope, even then, love remains. Love remains, often times long after things like common sense and personal safety and respect are gone. In times like these, there are two different loves at odds with each other: love of self and love of another. I can't tell you which trumps which. You will have to discover that for yourself when the time comes.
What I can tell you about love, or about my own experiences and discoveries about love, is this: I do not believe those who say the best you can do is simply love someone for who they are. There is some truth to that, yes. You have to have the ability to know who a person is, deep down, beneath all the pomp and circumstance and flair they put on to impress others. That person--the REAL person--is who you have to know and love, just as they are. But you do NOT have to love and accept the pomp and circumstance and flair. You do not have to love a person's decisions. You do not have to love a person's actions. Loving someone does NOT mean you have to accept their behavior as is, take it or leave it.
In my opinion, in my experiences with love, loving someone means not being able to imagine a life without them. It means you would rather argue with them than not have them around at all. It means they make you smile every time you see them . . . even if you are only seeing them in your mind's eye . . . even if you are only smiling on the inside. It means they are the first person you think of telling when something funny happens to you, or something sad, or something moving, or something surprising or amazing or scary or heartbreaking or thought-provoking, or simply something as trivial as wondering how it's possible that some fruit juices have twice as much sugar as sodas. Loving someone means you want to share your life with them, in all it's big and small moments.
But loving someone also means loving them enough to hold a mirror to their face, to not allow them to sell themselves short, to not accept self-destructive behavior, to always fight to raise them up, to support them to be the best they can be . . . to be the person deep down that you know they are. It means wanting the best for them even when they don't want the best for themselves. It means accepting their anger. No one likes the mirror being held to their face.
Loving someone means, when it's all said and done and the time comes for decisions to be made, being willing to walk away, being willing to give that person exactly what they want, remembering that ultimately it's the other person's decision about what kind of life they choose to have. You can't choose for them. Loving them means remembering that.
And love means always coming back to help that person fight their fight, even when it hurts. Love means being there for someone, no matter how little they deserve it.
Love means never giving up on someone.
And of course, the paradox: balancing the love of yourself with all of the above. Love means knowing when you have to love yourself more, knowing when the love of someone or something else becomes damaging to your own life. And, because love of others will always eventually result in a situation at odds with love of yourself . . . knowing where to draw that line. You cannot only love yourself, cannot always put yourself first. But you cannot only love others either. You cannot always put yourself last.
There are no wrong answers when it comes to love. You get to choose your own life. You get to define love for yourself. But remember, when struggling to define love for yourself, when struggling to find your balance, when struggling to decide on your next move, remember that love is not easy. Something so important, so big, so wonderful, was never meant to be easy. Even back in the 16th century, Shakespeare knew, "the course of true love never did run smooth."
You will have to fight for what you love. For those you love. You will have to fight yourself. You will have to fight others. You will be consumed with the most wonderful, terrible confusion and clarity. You will feel lost and found at the same time. You will want to escape your thoughts, and you will want to think of nothing else.
Yes, love is a fight. But this I promise you: it's worth it.
Even the loves that don't last. Worth it. Because they will, for the time you had them, have brought you the highest of all human emotions.
And the loves that do last? The loves that stay with you, that move your life, your identity, your soul, that flow through you like a river through a canyon until you are shaped into a new, deeper, more beautiful version of yourself?
Those loves are what put a smile on your face before you even open your eyes. Those loves are what puts the life in life.
Know that you are loved. Already your father and I love you more than you know. That love will never end, no matter what you do, no matter what you say. You are surrounded in love. You were conceived in love. You will be brought into the world already the focus of so many people's love.
And one of the things I'm most looking forward to about being a parent, about having created a new life to bring to the world, is that I'm giving one more soul the chance to know love.
I wish for you a life filled with a thousand, million, billion different kinds of love.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sweet Cheeks
That is your new nickname, baby girl. We had another great weekly appointment yesterday and got our first picture of you in a while that wasn't just a head/stomach/leg measurement:
This is a shot from beneath your chin (chin would be in bottom left corner), looking up your nostrils (you will see "NOSE" labeled in the middle). Check out the scrumptious cheeks on either side of that nose!! You DEFINITELY take after your momma in this feature . . . I simply cannot wait to get you out and kiss and squeeze those squishy cheeks!
There was a full moon over the weekend, which has been shown to have the power to bring on labor. All it did for me was make me extra crampy. We had more slow, steady progress this week: we are now just under 2 cm dilated, 30% effaced, and my cervix is soft! The doctor said he doesn't expect you to come anytime this week, but he also doesn't expect you to be very late, either. He is sticking with an on-time delivery of you! (Can I just say I will be soo impressed if you actually show up ON your due date?!)
Today is 9/9/09. I will admit, ever since we found out your due date, I have been secretly hoping that you would choose to come on this fun day. I was cautiously optimistic over the weekend with all the cramping, and the night before last was the MOST uncomfortable I have been yet--waking every hour, pain when I shift positions, the whole nine yards--so yesterday we took advantage of already having had an internal (which can bring on labor) and added to it a nice long walk and some "other" ways of inducing contractions. I went to bed hoping something exciting would happen overnight . . . only to get the most comfortable, deepest sleep I've had in days! So, it looks like 9/9/09 will not be happening for us. Which is okay. I love the fact you are already asserting your independence, already reminding me that mommyhood is just another thing I'm going to have to get used to being flexible about.
So baby girl, sweet cheeks, we are close. How close remains a mystery . . . but close! See you soon!!
This is a shot from beneath your chin (chin would be in bottom left corner), looking up your nostrils (you will see "NOSE" labeled in the middle). Check out the scrumptious cheeks on either side of that nose!! You DEFINITELY take after your momma in this feature . . . I simply cannot wait to get you out and kiss and squeeze those squishy cheeks!There was a full moon over the weekend, which has been shown to have the power to bring on labor. All it did for me was make me extra crampy. We had more slow, steady progress this week: we are now just under 2 cm dilated, 30% effaced, and my cervix is soft! The doctor said he doesn't expect you to come anytime this week, but he also doesn't expect you to be very late, either. He is sticking with an on-time delivery of you! (Can I just say I will be soo impressed if you actually show up ON your due date?!)
Today is 9/9/09. I will admit, ever since we found out your due date, I have been secretly hoping that you would choose to come on this fun day. I was cautiously optimistic over the weekend with all the cramping, and the night before last was the MOST uncomfortable I have been yet--waking every hour, pain when I shift positions, the whole nine yards--so yesterday we took advantage of already having had an internal (which can bring on labor) and added to it a nice long walk and some "other" ways of inducing contractions. I went to bed hoping something exciting would happen overnight . . . only to get the most comfortable, deepest sleep I've had in days! So, it looks like 9/9/09 will not be happening for us. Which is okay. I love the fact you are already asserting your independence, already reminding me that mommyhood is just another thing I'm going to have to get used to being flexible about.
So baby girl, sweet cheeks, we are close. How close remains a mystery . . . but close! See you soon!!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Single Digits!
Only nine days, baby girl!
NINE.
Nine short, long, fleeting, interminable days until your due date.
I wonder how accurate that really is. Since due dates are notoriously inaccurate (I mean, it IS hard to pick a single day nine months ahead), I wonder if you are actually going to make your appearance in fewer than nine days or more.
People all around me are having their babies. Women who were due just before me. Women who were due just after me. It's a constant reminder that I am actually going to have MY baby sometime soon, too! So far I've been pretty successful at balancing the "oh my god it could happen ANY TIME" with the "remember it could still be more than two weeks away and going crazy will just make those two weeks impossible." I've been pretty good at balancing the excitement with the patience.
There is a full moon this weekend. Supposedly that can have some effect on going into labor. I'm not sure if it was related at all, but you were SO squirmy yesterday, SO active. Could you feel the pull of the moon? I found myself restless at night, kept inside by rain, not wanting to watch TV, not wanting to be on the computer. Your dad and I ended up going for a walk around 10 p.m., and the fresh, rain-cleaned night air was just what I needed to relax. Was I feeling the pull of the moon?
It is so exciting not knowing when you are going to make your appearance but knowing that it's going to be sometime soon. It's like turning the handle on a jack-in-the-box toy. You know that clown is going to spring out at you sometime soon, you just don't know exactly when. It's exhilarating.
Nine days, plus or minus . . . oh . . . nine days I suppose.
Are you ready to come meet us?
NINE.
Nine short, long, fleeting, interminable days until your due date.
I wonder how accurate that really is. Since due dates are notoriously inaccurate (I mean, it IS hard to pick a single day nine months ahead), I wonder if you are actually going to make your appearance in fewer than nine days or more.
People all around me are having their babies. Women who were due just before me. Women who were due just after me. It's a constant reminder that I am actually going to have MY baby sometime soon, too! So far I've been pretty successful at balancing the "oh my god it could happen ANY TIME" with the "remember it could still be more than two weeks away and going crazy will just make those two weeks impossible." I've been pretty good at balancing the excitement with the patience.
There is a full moon this weekend. Supposedly that can have some effect on going into labor. I'm not sure if it was related at all, but you were SO squirmy yesterday, SO active. Could you feel the pull of the moon? I found myself restless at night, kept inside by rain, not wanting to watch TV, not wanting to be on the computer. Your dad and I ended up going for a walk around 10 p.m., and the fresh, rain-cleaned night air was just what I needed to relax. Was I feeling the pull of the moon?
It is so exciting not knowing when you are going to make your appearance but knowing that it's going to be sometime soon. It's like turning the handle on a jack-in-the-box toy. You know that clown is going to spring out at you sometime soon, you just don't know exactly when. It's exhilarating.
Nine days, plus or minus . . . oh . . . nine days I suppose.
Are you ready to come meet us?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
K is for Kindness
I've known that K is for kindness for a while now, but for some reason it just never seemed like the right time to sit down and tell you about it. I just couldn't find the right mindset. Until today. Today was a rough day at work. Well, today was the latest in a string of rough days at work. I left frustrated with coworkers, irritated with power struggles, annoyed by office politics and policies. And when I got home, it hit me: I am ready to talk to you about kindness.
You see, baby girl, it's one thing to be kind to others when the sun is shining on you, when your life is clipping along exactly how you want it to, when fate and circumstance seem to align and you wind up getting a free donut tossed into your order at the local bakery. Those days, smiling at strangers, waiting your turn, holding the door, giving a friend a sympathetic ear, basically going the extra step to bestow your own good fortune, your own good mood, on others is easy.
It's the days that seem to fight against you, the days that wear you down, that kindness becomes just one more thing that you don't want to have to put effort into. One more thing you think you shouldn't have to put effort into.
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard is this: No matter how little they might deserve it, always be kind to others. Everyone is fighting their own battles.
Keep that last part in mind. Everyone is fighting their own battles. That person who just cut you off in traffic? Maybe they just lost their job. That friend who betrays your trust? Maybe they are struggling to find their own place in their world, their own identity. Everyone is fighting their own battles, so even those people who scowl at you, who treat you without respect, who seem to deserve every bit of ill will and lack of consideration you can throw at them, even those people--be kind to them.
Try to live above reproach. There will be a million, a trillion wrongs done to you in life that you can point your finger at disapprovingly. But try to never let that finger be pointed at you. Don't use others' bad behavior as an excuse for your own. You are your own person, in charge of your own behavior. If someone treats you poorly, respond with kindness. It will be hard to do, and it will seem counter intuitive, but it will keep you from falling into the pit. It will keep you true to yourself. And the more frequently you do it, the easier it will become.
Make kindness a habit. Practice it. The world is a tough place. Whether it seems like it or not, the world is hard on everyone. If you are in the habit of being kind to others, regardless of the kind of day you have had, regardless of how they treat you, you will brighten someone's day without even realizing it. You may, in fact, be the only bright spot in that person's day. Or week. Or month. Being kind to others is like being a shining spot of sun . . . you really never know when there might be a person for whom you are the ONLY spot of sunshine they will see. You really never know how you might brighten someone's day. What you might mean to them.
When I was in high school, there was a girl who tried out for every sport. She was not athletic. She was not coordinated. She was our water girl, our manager, our ball girl, but she never actually made a team as a player. But she still came out and tried out for every single sport. My best friend and I, impressed by her tenacity, befriended her and encouraged her through every grueling week.
Years later, we both received a note from her. She had dropped out of school, but she wanted us to know how, in those early years, our encouragement, kindness, and friendship were one of the only things that had kept her coming back.
You see baby girl, you never know what kind of an impact you are going to make on someone's life by just being kind.
Yes, the world can be a tough place. But it doesn't discriminate. It's tough on everyone. You never know what private battles someone might be facing. So be kind. Be kind and make a difference in someone's day, even if it's just a temporary feeling of happiness they get when they see you smile at them.
Be kind and make a difference in someone's life.
You see, baby girl, it's one thing to be kind to others when the sun is shining on you, when your life is clipping along exactly how you want it to, when fate and circumstance seem to align and you wind up getting a free donut tossed into your order at the local bakery. Those days, smiling at strangers, waiting your turn, holding the door, giving a friend a sympathetic ear, basically going the extra step to bestow your own good fortune, your own good mood, on others is easy.
It's the days that seem to fight against you, the days that wear you down, that kindness becomes just one more thing that you don't want to have to put effort into. One more thing you think you shouldn't have to put effort into.
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard is this: No matter how little they might deserve it, always be kind to others. Everyone is fighting their own battles.
Keep that last part in mind. Everyone is fighting their own battles. That person who just cut you off in traffic? Maybe they just lost their job. That friend who betrays your trust? Maybe they are struggling to find their own place in their world, their own identity. Everyone is fighting their own battles, so even those people who scowl at you, who treat you without respect, who seem to deserve every bit of ill will and lack of consideration you can throw at them, even those people--be kind to them.
Try to live above reproach. There will be a million, a trillion wrongs done to you in life that you can point your finger at disapprovingly. But try to never let that finger be pointed at you. Don't use others' bad behavior as an excuse for your own. You are your own person, in charge of your own behavior. If someone treats you poorly, respond with kindness. It will be hard to do, and it will seem counter intuitive, but it will keep you from falling into the pit. It will keep you true to yourself. And the more frequently you do it, the easier it will become.
Make kindness a habit. Practice it. The world is a tough place. Whether it seems like it or not, the world is hard on everyone. If you are in the habit of being kind to others, regardless of the kind of day you have had, regardless of how they treat you, you will brighten someone's day without even realizing it. You may, in fact, be the only bright spot in that person's day. Or week. Or month. Being kind to others is like being a shining spot of sun . . . you really never know when there might be a person for whom you are the ONLY spot of sunshine they will see. You really never know how you might brighten someone's day. What you might mean to them.
When I was in high school, there was a girl who tried out for every sport. She was not athletic. She was not coordinated. She was our water girl, our manager, our ball girl, but she never actually made a team as a player. But she still came out and tried out for every single sport. My best friend and I, impressed by her tenacity, befriended her and encouraged her through every grueling week.
Years later, we both received a note from her. She had dropped out of school, but she wanted us to know how, in those early years, our encouragement, kindness, and friendship were one of the only things that had kept her coming back.
You see baby girl, you never know what kind of an impact you are going to make on someone's life by just being kind.
Yes, the world can be a tough place. But it doesn't discriminate. It's tough on everyone. You never know what private battles someone might be facing. So be kind. Be kind and make a difference in someone's day, even if it's just a temporary feeling of happiness they get when they see you smile at them.
Be kind and make a difference in someone's life.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
September
On January 1st, staring back at the phantom second line, screaming after seeing the word "pregnant" on screen, September seemed so far away.
In February, when we first saw you squirm on screen, moving distinct limbs, when we learned how healthy you are. In March, when you went from "the baby" to "baby girl," from Cosmo to Alina. In April, when I first started to feel you move inside me, something wholly separate from me, yet so much a part of me at the same time. In May, when you finally let your daddy feel you from the outside, when you started to make my stomach dance and roll, tangible, visible evidence of your existence. In June and July, when we bought a car just for you, when we took pictures, when we had parties celebrating your impending arrival. Even in August, baby girl, as we finalized our preparations of our home--of your home--and our lives, readying them to welcome you.
Even then, September seemed so far away. A mirage on the horizon. A goal that seemed to stay just out of grasp.
And then I woke up one morning, and it's here. September.
September means the end of summer. September means the end of waiting.
September means you.
In February, when we first saw you squirm on screen, moving distinct limbs, when we learned how healthy you are. In March, when you went from "the baby" to "baby girl," from Cosmo to Alina. In April, when I first started to feel you move inside me, something wholly separate from me, yet so much a part of me at the same time. In May, when you finally let your daddy feel you from the outside, when you started to make my stomach dance and roll, tangible, visible evidence of your existence. In June and July, when we bought a car just for you, when we took pictures, when we had parties celebrating your impending arrival. Even in August, baby girl, as we finalized our preparations of our home--of your home--and our lives, readying them to welcome you.
Even then, September seemed so far away. A mirage on the horizon. A goal that seemed to stay just out of grasp.
And then I woke up one morning, and it's here. September.
September means the end of summer. September means the end of waiting.
September means you.
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