Introducing...

Three weeks ago I gave birth to a baby boy. A son! On this blog I will refer to him as "Bud",  mostly because I hear myself calling him "Buddy", and also because he is a blooming new beautiful little thing and next to his sister the Twig that seems fitting. One day they will both have sprouted into larger garden metaphors but for now, so you know who is who, they will be "Twig" and "Bud".

Bud came into the world on May 12th making a more timely but slightly more painful entrance than his sister. Only two days late, I went into labor at 3:30am, and at 2:19pm a whole new chapter of life began for all four of us. It was not an easy labor at all. It started beautifully with contractions five minutes apart right away. We left for the hospital quickly calling a friend to stay and wait with Twig until she woke up. We got to the hospital at 5 am and I was checked in quickly only stopping briefly in the hallway to have a contraction. A nurse checked me and said I was eight centimeters dilated, which was exciting, but when someone a bit more experienced checked me I was really only 5. Still I was thrilled to be this far along and actually having the baby. I knew from my experience with Twig that labor for me doesn't always result in the baby that same day, so I found myself asking the staff if the baby would for sure be born today. They assured me he would.

As I anticipated my contractions slowed down considerably a few hours after getting there. I asked if my doctor could come break my water since that is what helped me with my first pregnancy. At 11am, my doctor arrived and broke my water, and a half an hour later we all sat there looking at each other. It didn't quite have the magic it did before. He checked me again and said there was a fore-bag (no idea) but some other bag of water to break and when he did that contractions came back. I was about 7 centimeters at this point and contractions were very close together and very strong. It stayed like this for what seemed like forever. In this time, I began to run out of steam, encouragement and the ability to move. I never considered an epidural with my first labor and with this one I wanted to get punched out and wake up with the baby in my arms.  My doctor said at this point I might have to consider another option since I seemed to be stuck (or as he said, "not progressing"). I was so discouraged by this and felt so immobilized that I had no response. My friend who was my doula for the day was my anti-epidural champion. She reminded me it would slow things down and that I should get up. I thought she was crazy in that moment too. Getting up seemed an impossibility. A midwife who seemed to always pop in with gems of wisdom, came in and pressed my bladder. She said no baby would come until I emptied it and that I had to get up and try to pee. My husband took me to the bathroom where I confessed to him that I  thought I might die. He told me I couldn't listen to the doctor, or my friend, and that I had to decide for myself what I wanted to do. Again I couldn't think much beyond the pain from the rapid contractions. I had started with such relaxed breathing and visualizations to get me through, but I couldn't think as fast as the contractions were coming.

My friend joined me in the bathroom and suggested I get in the shower. Reluctantly I sat on a chair under the water, in hopes it might refresh me a little. The contractions were beyond intense but I managed to stay under the water for two of them. When I got back to the bed I was hooked up to the monitors again, and one of the nurses started to guide me through a contraction. In the brief minute I had before the next one came on, I asked her if she could continue guiding me like she had. It seemed to help me get out of my own head. She agreed and by the third one, I felt the urge to push. I thought for sure they would tell me I wasn't ready yet but as soon as I told them, they checked and the baby was crowning. I saw everyone in that delivery room jump to their feet and suddenly it all moved very fast. I felt like I only pushed three or four times and he was out. I was absolutely exhausted and a bit out of it, but it was still incredible and amazing. That moment, with my husband at my side, looking from our new baby and then up to him, I was overwhelmed with love and awe again. We made another life and he is so very wanted.

 

The Waiting Game

Family has arrived, the phone calls are coming, Braxton Hicks come and go but no real sign of baby coming yet. Forty weeks today, and my baby is still pretty comfy it seems. All my friends with due dates close to me, or some even a bit after, have given birth already. Two of my friends were at the hospital last week together. Pictures of babies were sent with I wish you were here sentiments. I haven't felt impatient really, in fact for the most part I have been feeling ok, but today I wish I could know exactly when he is coming.

My obsessive nature is playing with dates to see which one sounds best. 5/10/12, 5/11,12, or 5/12/12. I am not willing to accept the possibility of it going beyond that. I have already decided I will stoop as low as castor oil and take matters into my own hands if I go more than a few days late. I can already check that life experience off and frankly ten days late was no picnic at all. There is something to savor with a few extra days. I'm going to get a manicure, frozen yogurt and maybe a massage if I'm still pregnant tomorrow. The downside is the physical discomfort right now. I have a shooting pain down my left leg every few steps, and sleep is a wrestling match between me, my body pillow and the wedge to hold my bump up. I cannot get comfortable, but if I think I will sleep when the baby gets here then I have suffered from a great deal of memory loss.

The worst part of the waiting is the build up of over-thinking. I am starting to worry about the birth, the hospital experience, the logistics of getting my daughter taken care of, and stupid things like remembering to bring what I need to the hospital. I am also now getting anxious to just see who has been inside me for the last nine months. Will he have hair? How much will he weigh? Will he look like my daughter or more like one of us? Will he latch on and take to nursing easily? Is he going to hurt me on the way out? All of these answers will come, that is what I have to remember right now. He is coming, no matter what. I just have to have a little faith that it will all go well. I want to hold this baby very soon but when exactly that will be is out of my hands. In the meantime, I will keep them massaged and manicured.

(Addendum: The conclusion of this story is that my nail polish is now chipped and my back is a bit achy because I have a baby boy safe at home... Stay tuned for the next post regarding his arrival!)

Hand Me Downs

The past few weeks my living room was covered with clothes from my friend's niece who sends her stuff on to Twig. After hours of sorting and two trips to Target for storage containers, everything is finally a bit more organized. My next project will be to wash and sort all of the baby boy clothes I have been given, and put them away as well. I have no issue taking hand-me downs. In fact, mostly all of the clothes that both of my kids will wear are passed on. This week though I got two bags from someone and it made me take pause.  My husband's ex-wife.

There is a longer story here but for the purpose of this blog I will keep it simple. She is remarried and has a baby. He will be six months older than ours and so she very generously offered his clothes. She also offered to drive them here to my house, that she once bought with my husband and lived in very briefly. I know, AWKWARD!  I am working backwards here. She and I have become friendly. We actually used to be friends years ago, when she and my husband were still married and even after they divorced. Time passed and she and I grew apart. Then a few years later my husband and I reconnected from a mutual friend. We dated, we told her (thinking maybe she would be happy for us) -- she wasn't though. Time passed and my husband and I got married. I actually ran into her a few times but chose flight over fight and took off unnoticed. Then my husband and I ran into her. He said she was behind me and I thought he was joking. I turned around and there she was. Suddenly it wasn't so awkward anymore. She is married to a great guy, and over the course of some emails we decided the four of us to have dinner. I thought that would be the first and last reunion, but things happened.

After a few miscarriages she got pregnant, and after I miscarried, having lived through that sad time herself sent over a care package to us. It was sweet, thoughtful and touching. I was going to reach out but we ran into her again a week later. Note to anyone out there who might be in the same situation one day, try to avoid running into your husband's pregnant ex-wife right after you have miscarried. It just doesn't feel good.  After that another few months went by and when she had her son, I dropped off some food and a gift. Note again to anyone out there in the same sitch, try to not get there twenty minutes after the ex-wife gets home from the hospital with her in-laws. Also feels kind of funny. A few months after that though and we have gone for walks together, out to breakfast and last week out to see a play. It is nice. It doesn't feel like we are picking up where we left off and yet there are things we know about each other that do feel really comfortable. We have talked about the elephant in the room very carefully and everything that we thought might be really akward hasn't.

So yes I have taken this woman's hand me downs. The clothes, that is. She and my husband made their own decisions and ended up where they are today. The house that I live in now is ours. We decorated it, made it our home, and have our family here, with no pet elephant anymore.

Ready Or Not

In a about three weeks I am due to have a baby boy. This is exciting and terrifying to me. With Twig around I definitely don't feel that I have bonded with my baby the way I did when she was inside. I didn't know if she was a boy or girl until she came out, yet I was creating imaginative fairy tales in my head of how motherhood would be. This time I know the gender, I know not to buy ridiculously expensive baby crap, and I know the happy part of the mommy hood comes with a lot of tears. 

With Twig I was ten freaking days late and I pray that won't be the case this time. I had sciatic pain that felt like I put a piece of tin foil on a filling. Every few steps I got an electric shock down my leg and buckled down. This time it's back and if I go longer than my due date that is five more weeks of agony, and I want to throw up just thinking about that. Speaking of vomit, I did a lot of it all through labor and I am not hopeful that it won't happen again, but it wasn't pleasant. I also don't look forward to the car ride to the hospital with contractions. With Twig it was a beautiful day and I saw people outside at a Starbucks and had the strongest resentment to them. Didn't they know in that moment that someone was driving by them in terrible discomfort?  How rude! 

At the hospital, I felt like I surrendered to the amazing nurses and my midwife. I knew I was in good hands. My doctor came and broke my water, and in less than an hour our baby was out. I remember only being able to reach as far down as the umbilical cord would let me. I so wanted to kiss the head but I settled at staring at an ear. I stroked it in amazement that my body worked and made a person -- a person with an ear. A nurse with a Russian accent asked/told my husband, "What is it daddy, eeees boy?" Neither one of us knew who "daddy" was because this wasn't a term we were familiar with at this early moment in parenthood, but did she just tell us we had a boy? For that moment, we were surprised. We didn't know the gender, but we had secretly both wanted a girl. My husband peeked and said, "It's a girl!" to which we both shrieked with joy. It was an amazing surprise.

This pregnancy we decided to find out for several reasons, first of which were we knew Twig would have preferred a sister. She is thrilled now though. I have less of a birth plan then I did with her. I don't even have a midwife. I am kind of just hoping for the best. I am not new to being a mom, but I certainly have been up nights trying to figure out how I will get out the door with two. I know that the freedom that having Twig in preschool has given me has been very short lived, and I cherish my time alone with Twig before she stops being an only child. My husband and I were out with her the other night and I went home and cried because our time together as a triangle is limited now. My husband and I have enjoyed watching her grow and it has been a privilege to be with her. Things will be different and we know that. We are receiving another gift though. I know it will be an adjustment for my daughter but she is also getting a sibling, a life long friend, and someone who I hope she will share an emotional bond with. We are all very excited and have been waiting to meet this little person for a long time. I don't know if we are ready, but who is really ever ready?

Mauricio

About a year ago my neighbor decided he wanted to build a deck behind his house. We live in the hills, so the deck would have to built up into the hillside behind his house. The hillside also happens to be the view from our bedroom window. Eventually it would just be a beautiful hillside with a flight of steps going up, but for a few months it was a hillside with a couple of workers who could have a great view into our bedroom. There was never anyone up there before so we never had to get window coverings, until one day while I was reading on my bed I looked out the window to see a man looking back at me waving.  That was my first encounter with Mauricio.

For months he worked on the steps. After two more waves, into my room I put curtains up. His intentions were good, but boundaries were crossed by him one too many times for me to be super friendly. I even wrote a blog post here about how he irritated me so much when he commented on Twig wetting her pants once and how inappropriate I thought it was.

One day a few months ago, while on a walk, I happened to feel particularly chipper and friendly. When Mauricio saw me, he commented on how strong my stomach was getting I felt carefree enough to tell him that there was a baby in there. A few weeks later I lost that baby. While mourning the loss I took another walk on my street. While trying to process how much pain I was in, I looked up and saw Mauricio walking towards me. I froze! I found encounters with people who had known about the pregnancy the most difficult thing about miscarrying. It was like a race to tell them I lost the baby before they could ask me how I was doing. This time I stood face to face with this man who I had tried so hard to keep a distance from in order to protect myself, and now I had to tell him my sad news. Now I know most normal people would say I didn't owe this handyman gardner guy anything. I am not normal though, I was too much of an open book when I told him in the first place. Since he knew I was pregnant, I felt like I had to remedy that misinformation now with the truth. As he opened his mouth to say hello I interrupted him with tears rolling down my face and said "I lost the baby."

Even with a language barrier, a cultural difference, and very few strained interactions between us, in that moment he understood and gave me a hug. He said it was all part of a plan. Now whether or not I believe in higher powers, things being meant for a reason, or "plans", I was grateful for his hug. Months went by and I kept pretty much to myself. I got pregnant again and since the hillside deck was done, I stopped seeing Mauricio on the street. Today I pulled out of my driveway and he was pulling up the street. He honked to wave and as I passed him I rolled down the window to say hello. He quickly noticed by very pregnant belly and smiled. He said congratulations and told me how it was all supposed to work out this way. He couldn't believe how much time had passed and as I was about to drive off he said "Bingo! You won the lottery!" Again there was a bit of a language thing but I knew exactly what he meant. Today running into Mauricio was as exciting as running into an old friend. He was so genuinely excited for this baby, and I was so happy to share that with him.  For the second time an interaction with this man has brought me to tears but this time they are happy tears. He said he will be around cleaning up my neighbors hillside and that he will get to see us again for a while.

With all that said, and in spite of our new friendship, I'm still so glad that I have shades on my windows now.

Miss McGinty

When I was a little girl, just about my daughter's age actually, my Grandmother used to say she would
shove me down her throat. She would follow that statement by calling me Miss McGinty. My sister remembers it as my grandmother saying she was going to jump down our throats, but regardless we both remember it scaring the living daylights from us. I spent so much time wondering how she would be able to do this, and how much it would hurt. We loved our Grandma and she was the sweetest woman, but we obviously didn't quite get her sense of humor at our age.

Last week at gymnastics Twig's coach told her she was going to eat her toes if she didn't point them. I feel like we say silly things like this to her sometimes and she laughs, but she definitely wasn't sure her coach was joking. In fact she asked about it the whole way home, and then continued to bring it up to whoever would listen. She would say it smiling and giggling but I could see she was still trying to figure out if anyone thought her coach would actually try to eat her toes. I explained that she was joking and promised her that her toes weren't going to get nibbled off by a hungry gymnastics teacher.

Today she had gymnastics again. It wasn't the best morning leading up to the class. She had already cried over tiny issues that cost her a bunch of tears and us both a bunch of time. I was patient and gentle with her and eventually the tears ended. We left for class with enough time to spare and when we got there she said she didn't want to go. I tried to talk to her about it and she seemed okay as we got her leotard on and got ready. Just as the class began though she clung to me and started to cry. She said she didn't want to go in. I asked her to tell me what was going on but (she is three in a half maybe -- self expression isn't a refined skill at this point) she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't know. I said I would stay close and watch her but she insisted on leaving. This is where I started fuming up. This is the second time I drove all the way there to have her flat out stubbornly not go in to the class. I told her if we leave I will not be happy and that we are not going home to play. She would have to go straight up to a nap. She said she wanted to leave.

Pissed off and tense I strapped her into her car seat and drove home. Trying not to over react, I stayed quiet to make sure I didn't say the wrong thing, but within five minutes I exploded. I told her she wasted my time, and that I do not like driving all the way somewhere and turning around to go home. I told her I wasn't only around to drive her places, feed her snacks, play with her and then be okay when she gets into a bad mood. As I am saying this, I'm listening to my words come out of my mouth. Of course I am there to do those things. What the heck is the definition of a mother? Those are the job requirements. I was so angry and concerned that perhaps I had been manipulated again, or that Twig doesn't seem to be able to spring back from a meltdown the way other kids do, or why aren't any of the other kids even crying when they go in for class. If any of them get upset they can reel it in fast but not Twig. Then I realize two things. First off, she only does this for me. She hates separating from me and lets me know in the biggest possible way. Secondly, I forgot all about the toes.

Usually my friend drives her to school but last week my husband and I took her because we had a parent teacher conference. She had to be pried off of me while I tried to sit with her teacher in the same space. If I am around and she can't be with me, it is really hard for her. She is fine with anyone except me. Of all people, I should understand that. My parents worked at the sleep away camp I went to. I hated it because even though I wasn't away from them, I could see them on the other side of the dining room but wasn't allowed to be with them. It was a bit torturous. Also, I suppose if my toes were threatened I might be afraid to be alone with someone who I thought might eat them. It's not far off from Miss Mcinty and the throat shoving. I am years away from that threat and even though I don't remember how exactly she said it, the feeling of fear that it it caused is clear in my memory.
                                                          

The Lorax

My husband and I finally took Twig to her first movie yesterday. It was pouring rain and the perfect day for a movie. Our friends who have a daughter (Twig's little friend) had decided to go too. It was a spontanious choice and tuned put to be such a good decision. It wasn't that I was opposed to taking her to a movie earlier ,but there just wasn't the right movie or the right time. "The Lorax" seemed so appropriate since they just read it in school so she was excited to see it.
 She was so happy to see her friend there. The two girls sat next to each other and my husband and I took turns sitting next to her on her other side. It was a 3D movie but since it scared her when things began jumping off the screen, she decided she wanted to watch the movie without them on. She held my hand in her lap and stared straight ahead. She sat through the previews asking every thirty seconds where the Lorax was. When it finally began she got really into it. At one point she put her hand on her heart and said "Mommy, I don't think my heart is beating."

I got up at one point to switch seats with my husband and Twig quickly grabbed her friend's hand and the two of them sat hand and hand for most of the remaining part of the film. When the main character was riding his electric unicycle out of town, Twig told me he really needed to be careful. When one of the fuzzy creatures did something funny she would belt out laughing. The most touching part though was when the Lorax had to send the creatures away because they were having trouble living with out trees and oxygen. Pouting with their heads down they lined up and began to head out of town. I looks over at Twig and she was also pouting but very quickly that pout turned into her bursting out in tears. She climbed into my lap and asked if they will come back. She was so emotionally affected by the story and then of course I began to cry too. I explained that it will be okay and that it is just a story. Obviously there is a much bigger environmental lesson to be learned but she is three and her main concern were the fuzzy guys.She was so happy when at the end the fuzzy things came back.

She truly got a full movie experience yesterday. She even decided she was ready to try the glasses on. By then the credits were rolling but she didn't mind. My husband and I are both pretty sensitive people so when she teared up I whispered to him ow she is definitely our daughter. Later on in the day when we were talking about how sweet it was that she teared up, he reminded me that I cried the night before while watching a documentary. I may be a big mush, and now I have a little mush too. I can't wait to go see more movies with her. I just need to remember to bring double the tissues.