Wherein I stare down the enemy of sleep

Posted on April 30, 2012 by The Waiting

You may remember that back when I was preggo, I was kind of obsessed with the creation of our baby registry, mostly because I had no idea what we actually needed and I didn’t want to look like a fool to my friends and family when they saw the ridiculously unnecessary things I had registered for. More importantly, I didn’t want to get stuck with a bunch of contraptions that we wouldn’t need or the baby would end up hating.

Not breaking with any trends in my life in general, I ended up looking like a fool anyway. Yeah, uh, turns out one does not need a high-priced baby food maker right away if one already possesses a food processor. And boobs. Who knew? When I mentioned that I really had no idea what I was doing when I went bananas on the Target website, my friend Meagan looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yeah, I could tell.”

So, when Miss C arrived, we of course didn’t have nearly enough diapers to cover us for a five-hour period, but we did have a proliferation of sleeping devices, which is ironic because at first it seemed like sleeping was the last thing on her mind.

Look, here’s one:

And another:

One more:

And again:

Not to forget:

And occasionally:

But possibly the best:

Luckily, a couple of them have not been totally snubbed by Miss C. Most notably is her father, and for this I’m grateful because she’s really stuck with him for life. She likes the bunny swing, and that’s where she spends most of her down time. She rests/chills in the pink portable playtime bassinet when I’m showering or cooking. As for the crib, we’re not quite there yet. We have had nothing but trouble with the bassinet in our bedroom, which bums me out because it’s so darn cute*. But each time we try to put her down in it, she is up and annoyed within 20 minutes. So now it’s just a prop in our lives.

*Cuteness is now an actual credible factor in my life now. This would have made me throw up in my mouth a little prior to and during my pregnancy, but now it’s just another instance of me eating my words. Yum, yum. Chowing down.

As for the Pack N’ Play, we’ve only been utilizing it for its “play” function as of yet, but once we hit the road for Florida and elsewhere this summer, we will get more mileage out of it. Geez, I’m sorry. The puns are multiplying. I blame my lactation tea.

Then there’s the whole grown-up bed thing. Occasionally I will nurse her in bed. Lately co-sleeping is something I’ve been thinking about (yet not really doing) because it’s a fact of early babyhood that at times they simply don’t want to be put down. They will be all snuggled up in your arms or on your stomach, resting completely soundly*, and then when they are put down in any one of their sleeping contraptions, they know immediately and start to wail. So you start over and get them in a happy, sleepy place and attempt to put them down again. Wailing commences. This little dance repeats several times and can last for several hours until you’re like, “SERIOUSLY?”

*And yes, you’re sure of it because their breathing is rhythmic, their arms are limp, their diaper is clean as a whistle, and their little stomachs are fully sated. They’re out, beyond a doubt.

Co-sleeping – the kind where she’s not just in the same room with you but in actual contact with you - is one of those things that you are warned against about a trillion and a half times when you’re preggo and when you have an infant nowadays, and I get why. If it’s not done properly it can be extremely dangerous. That’s why I think the Back to Bed campaign is an entirely wonderful thing. It encourages parents and caregivers to take extremely seriously the sleep habits of their babies, and it’s helped to reduce the occurrences of SIDS.

Sleep deprivation is used as a torture device for a reason. It’s not fun. It sucks. A few weeks back when we were in the thick of it, I was sleeping and B was up with the baby. I had pumped and he was trying to get the milk in a bottle to feed her. He was having trouble getting the gasket and the nipple to fit the bottle while she screamed at the top of her little baby lungs for it. He called me in to help, and when I couldn’t get the gasket to fit either I took it and hurtled it across the room. That’s the product of sleep deprivation.

When it’s 4AM and the baby won’t sleep unless she is literally touching you and you are operating on a cumulative eight hours of sleep for the past three days, co-sleeping begins to sound like a not-so-bad idea. Even if you have acquired a good amount of rest, there is also the intimacy factor of having your baby snuggled against you. Admittedly, the idea of having your baby with you at all times is definitely not for everyone, but I would argue with people who say that it’s insane and unbalanced to want to have that much physical contact with your baby. Sure, some people want/need their grown-up time, but some others just don’t. If everybody looked the same we’d get tired of looking at each other and whatnot.

Recently, some other bloggers who I highly admire, trust, and am 100% sure are not coo-coo have left comments and emailed me with their stories in full-contact co-sleeping and how they have navigated it. Their stories have made me a lot more understanding (and I mean, A LOT because I was a total hater prior to them) of the practice of co-sleeping and under what conditions they did/ are doing it safely. I’m still not sure if it’s right for me and my family, but I am certainly much more understanding of it.

This post is troll bait if I ever saw it, and I’m sure there will be someone out there that reads it and decides to notify me of how dangerous sleeping with your baby can be. To them I say, “I KNOW.” I am no expert on the subject and I’m not making any claims or suggestions about what I or others should do. I suppose the main reason for me writing this is to illustrate how parenthood opens you up to a lot of things that you never thought you would consider, and that just like anything used wisely, co-sleeping may be something that when practiced safely and properly can be a good thing that makes life more enjoyable.

I will, however, stand by my statements to proceed with caution when compiling a baby registry.

*****

I am refraining from posting a pic of Kendra and me when we were thirteen because I value our relationship and I know she'd kill me if I publicized our prior awkwardness.

On an entirely different note, I would like to welcome my real-life friend Kendra to the WordPress blogging community! Kendra and I have been pals since we met in computer club in the third grade, so now that we’re both blogging here I guess you could say the high-tech aspect of our relationship has finally reached its pentacle. Her blog is called Over the Spoon and she will be chronicling her love affair with food. Having tried many of her delicious concoctions and eaten at fantastic restaurants she recommended, I would say food loves her back.

Check it out!

The Other Side: Notes on the First Month

Posted on April 27, 2012 by The Waiting

Powered by some high octane coffee and Miss C’s morning power nap, I am now going to attempt to hammer out some comments on this, the eve of her one-month birthday. (I know?! ONE MONTH, right?!)

I am IN LOVE. Obvious, I know, but I can’t help but shout from the rooftops how much I freaking love my little Vienna sausage. Yesterday I went to Target and left Miss C with B. Target at 3PM is a virtual kiddo and mom convention, and every time I heard the whelps and cries of other infants I missed Miss C something awful. Now, this is kind of huge. When we first brought her home, hearing her cry made me want to move back to Korea without her in tow because I felt so incompetent to assuage her. Now, her little cries are music to my ears. I love to hear her voice and her sounds, no matter whether they’re happy or sad. Similarly,

I am learning to read her cries. This, too, is huge. Being able to *kind of* anticipate her needs based on what her cries sound like and when they occur makes me feel like I’m making some progress in mothering her. Mommy’s sanity is a priceless thing nowadays and whatever it takes for me to keep a firm grasp on it is similarly valuable. Her signature cry is “Ehhh-LA!”. She really dislikes the sensation of soiling her diaper and often the cry she exhibits when she’s pooping is roughly equivalent to the cry she would have if I pulled out her fingernails (venturing a guess, of course). It’s pretty dramatic but I’ve learned to take it with a grain of salt.

B nearly fell out of his seat yesterday when he saw that I had changed my Facebook profile pic to a picture of solo Miss C. This is because for years I had been that hater who would say, “Ugh, why would ANYONE set a picture of their kid as their profile pic? LAME.” Yeah, well, I am currently eating my words. What can I say? She’s way cuter than me. And I made her. So she’s my profile pic. It will only be a matter of time before someone submits my online shenanigans to STFU Parents.

Hormones are a biotch. The first two weeks are WAY harder than the later two weeks because hormones are coursing through your bod with no abandon. Yeah, I know every moment with your child is precious and everything, but I would not go back and re-experience those first couple weeks for anything because I felt like an old damaged unwashed sock and I was just as useless as said sock. I cried a lot and felt like I had made a huge mistake in believing I was fit to be a mom. The hormones convinced me that the only thing I could offer her was nourishment in the form of breastmilk, and even then I couldn’t do that well because it took an inordinately long time for my milk to fully come in; it therefore took Miss C three weeks to regain her birth weight. So yeah, I officially hate my insane hormones but since they’ve been on the DL for awhile we’re all happy campers.

It’s amazing what can get done with very little sleep. I hate to be a broken record about the whole sleep thing, but yeah, it’s kind of a huge part of why having an infant is massively hard. What they don’t tell you, though, is that it’s not that you’re getting no sleep at all; it’s that you’re operating on a 24-hour schedule. You (kind of) get sleep, but it’s in one- or two-hour naps. This makes you feel like you’re on ALL THE TIME (because, well, you ARE) and that days go on forever. But the cool thing about it all is that you’re making these sacrifices for an adorable little nugget who really truly benefits from your toils. That and the fact that you can watch She-Ra which comes on TV at 3AM. Circle of life much?

Babies are pretty virile. When the nurses handed Miss C over to B and me at the hospital, we handled her like an egg that already had a big crack. We were just afraid we’d break her or something. What we’ve learned over the month is that she’s not too breakable, though. We’re not dangling her off a balcony a la little Blanket Jackson, but we’re also not wiping her bottom with silk.

Now for some pictures. Yeah, we do that now.

Enjoy your weekend!

Poor kid dons a ribbon

Swaddled and happy. Notice how her arm has escaped.

Sleep in heavenly peace

Gratitude

Posted on April 23, 2012 by The Waiting

I have the best besfrinn in the world. Sometimes it seems like the honorific “best friend” is phased out of people’s vocabulary as they get older, but I will always call her my besfrinn because that is exactly who she is to me, and no amount of years can change that. Cameron and I met as kiddos in sophomore honors English. She felt sorry for me because, long story short, I had to read Last of the Mohicans in a week, whereas the rest of the class had read it the previous summer. I liked her because I was new at the school and she was kind to me. Oh, and she liked Tori Amos. That was a big plus to fifteen-year-old me, too.

Our friendship has grown and matured along the same trajectory as we have as individuals. Where we were once boy-crazed pseudo-poets whose desire to marry our young male English teacher was completely blind to his obvious gayness, we are (or at least SHE is) now well-adjusted adults, married to men who bring out the best in us. We’re aware of our abilities to write well but also that we’re not going to be moving the world with our writing any time soon. But that’s OK.

Besfrinn and me last spring in Berkeley

Having been friends for nearly fifteen years, Cameron and I have seen each other through some strange, difficult times. Bad boyfriends, crappy jobs, rough semesters, deaths, questionable religious practices, general ennui. But miraculously, despite the fact that we haven’t lived in the same city since 2000, we’ve always been there for each other and never let our love lapse. The words we’ve exchanged over the phone and email and on occasional visits have sustained us and continue to do so. When one of us is in a less-than-positive place, the other is always available to offer an ear and one or a hundred kind, patient, edifying words.

Cameron is more than an eternal optimist; she is a truly wise soul who sees the world and loves it and its potential. On her blog Krug the Thinker - which, duh, I highly recommend you check out - she recently wrote a post on gratitude. She’s been thinking a lot about gratefulness this year, and as a result, I have too. I mean, we both have a lot to be grateful for!

Last June, she married the love of her life, and then only a month later we found out about the coming of Miss C. We would of course be grateful for those things in-and-of-themselves, but the icing on the cake was that we were there to share in each others’ joy. Cameron was the first person to find out about my pregnancy and was the only person other than B and me who knew for a few weeks before we made the big announcement. She called me every day over those weeks just to check in, and I am obviously grateful to have a friend who loves me and my little family enough to show such TLC.

Did you think I could write on gratefulness and NOT include a picture of this gal?

Gratefulness means more to me than thankfulness. For one reason or another, “thankfulness” indicates to me being glad something bad didn’t happen, whereas “gratefulness” indicates being happy that your life is exactly the way it is. Things aren’t always fun and pleasant just as they aren’t always hard and tedious, but I’m extremely grateful they are precisely the way they are. Having a baby is the perfect illustration for this. I absolutely adore Miss C more than I could possibly explain. She’s not easy all the time, but loving her and wanting to give her the best of the world completely is. I am so grateful for the complexity of my love for her.

This begs the question, what are you grateful for?

Humor

Posted on April 19, 2012 by The Waiting

A few weeks ago I gave birth to baby. THEN I was Freshly Pressed on WordPress. It was an eventful week. When I was Pressed, WordPress categorized my post as “Humor.” I suppose it was kind of funny, but WordPress has been known to miscategorize these posts before. For instance, I recall that when Never Contrary was Pressed a few months back, her post was obliquely categorized as “Food” simply because she made a mention of cake or something (please correct me if I’m mistaken, Bonnie.)

Anyway, all this is to say that I need some serious humor in my life right now.

Or at least the ability to recognize it for what it is.

My life right now is mostly just humorously absurd; I will be able to laugh at it in the future, but as I experience it it’s hard to laugh. B and I have determined that Miss C actually waits for us to be changing her poopy diaper to teetee all over the changing table. She just likes to do this. It will be funny someday, but it’s really not right now. Her brand of humor is just too ahead of its time. She’s a tiny Andy Kaufman.

Objectively funny

Also, I have tried to infuse my life with humor by watching amusing TV shows. We’ve been watching The Larry Sanders Show on Netflix and my capacity to enjoy it is greatly diminished by my inability to stay awake for the duration of the 23 minute episodes.

When I do laugh heartily, it always seems as though the baby is napping on my tummy, so my guffaws just startle her. If you’ve ever startled an infant, you know that it is objectively hilarious to see their little faces trying to figure out what the heck is going on. But the humor is lost when you realize that it’s now back to the drawing board to get them to fall back asleep.

This is kind of a downer post. Ironically, I have tried to make it funny. I think my time would have been wiser-spent napping.

At least WordPress might label it “Humor” by dint of the Larry Sanders reference.

Do you have any sure-fire things you do to get a laugh?

Tales of the World: Bad Dates

Posted on April 17, 2012 by The Waiting

As I sit here with my teeny little gal, gazing at her teeny little nose, hearing her teeny little sounds, and beaming at her teeny little smiles, I am reminded that this place where she is right now is ohso temporary and therefore extremely precious. I love her smallness more and more each day, but I was reminded by my mom who was here this weekend that in a mere thirty years, this teeny little gal could very well be a mother herself. How’s that for mindblowing?

I can't get enough of you, baby.

The amount of parenting and life decisions B and I are going to have to make in order for Miss C to get to a happy, well-adjusted adult place absolutely blows my mind, although I recognize that we’ll be making those decisions in strides and we don’t have to commit to a college this very day. Today’s hurdle consists just of introducing the “miracle swaddlers” to her. I have a feeling she’s going to dislike them because they restrict the movement of her arms, but since we were gifted so many, I just want to try them out. So that’s today. A nap (or five) would be nice, too. Not to mention getting all the thank-you notes completed.

In the meantime, there are many things I want to tell her. I suppose that’s what this blog is really for: showering Miss C with the redonkulousness of my own life and attempting to demonstrate that everything always seems to turn out alright. This is a lesson for myself too, especially now when I have to recalibrate my life nearly every day, depending on what’s on her agenda and how much sleep I got the night before.

When my lessons are actually age-appropriate for her, she will probably have no interest in hearing them, but I’ll still insist that she sit and listen to my ramblings and learn about the time before I knew her dad. On How I Met Your Mother, Ted’s kids are always entranced by his stories, told to them inexplicably in Bob Sagat’s voice, but I’m not going to bank on my girl being so rapt by my own stories as she ages. So now as she slumbers, I will tell her my tales of the world.

Today I will talk about bad dates. Let’s just break the ice with something innocuous. She’ll eventually be out in the world; crazy – considering I wouldn’t even dream of taking her to Target right now – and some lunatic in disguise will invite her on an outing which she will assent to because she won’t know better. Here’s my story for her when this happens.

When I was 20, I once briefly dated a guy who worked at a health food grocery store. He was a few years older than me, and I was still at the age when dating a guy who was older than me had inherent value. This was back when I worked at the Gap. He found out I worked there and came up there one day to hang out with me on my dinner break and to ask me out. I said yes and the date was set for the following weekend.

The first date went pretty well. We went downtown and saw a really loud band in the basement of some bar. That’s all I really remember of the whole encounter so at that point everything was kosher. There were a few meet-ups at the library in the meantime before the next big date.

The second date was agreed upon. We would be going downtown for dinner and then a movie. I drove to his apartment because it would have been really out of his way to pick me up at my home which was in the opposite direction. This was his idea. Sorry, but I was raised a certain way and that way entails him picking ME up, no matter how far away I lived. But at the time I didn’t know anything so I didn’t question it.

I got to his place and he drove us downtown in his Cadillac SUV. I know, kind of incongruous with his whole health food store persona. He explained that his dad owned/ managed (I can’t remember which) a dealership so he got to lease the Caddy. But he emphasized his own pauperism adamantly, saying that he was barely scraping by on his own financially. I think I was supposed to be impressed by this fact.

I think I was also supposed to be impressed by his enthusiasm over emo music, which was just then becoming popular.

So he goes on and on and on about how poor he was and I thought it was odd that he was so fixated on this but not really important. When we finally got downtown, he mentioned that he needed to make a pit stop at Hot Topic before we went to dinner. Maybe it’s because I’m really tired right now while writing this, but I don’t even have the energy or the creativity to highlight the sheer ridiculousness of this store. This is your invitation to leave jokes in the comments section to which “Hot Topic” is the punchline.

In Hot Topic, after his explanation of how strapped for cash he was, he purchases not one but two Jimmy Eat World t-shirts for himself; one was white with black writing and one was black with white writing. Yeah. You can’t make this stuff up, Miss C.

We arrive at reasonably-priced Italian restaurant. This guy has the audacity to remind me once again how broke he was and actually put a PRICE LIMIT on what I was allowed to order off the menu. You had better be sure at that point that after the t-shirt episode I ordered whatever the heck I wanted, caution to the wind.

This did not go unnoticed. By the time we left the restaurant, his feathers had been ruffled and he said that the option of seeing a movie in the theater was out due to his limited funds. I think he expected me to offer to pay, but sorry, that’s not how I roll since he was the asker-outer. We’d have to rent something instead and watch it at home.

Which we did. A video was procured and we returned to his apartment to view it. This is the part of the story that starts to make my skin crawl, so hang on.

I situated myself on the floor to watch whatever movie we rented, mostly because he had situated himself on the sofa. But within 20 minutes of the movie starting, he was of course on the floor with me trying to be romantic or whatever. You know what happened next; he OF COURSE tried to make a pass at me and shove his tongue down my throat.

He said WHAT?

And I OF COURSE resisted. And what did he say?

“What, did I buy you dinner for nothing?”

Well, apparently you did, buddy.

And I was like Seacrest, out. That was the end of the date. I hightailed it out of there.

Hopefully if anything like this ever happens to Miss C, she will too.

Not the Hardest Part

Posted on April 14, 2012 by The Waiting

So. Two weeks into motherhood. And where oh where to begin? The first thing that pops into my head is, thank goodness for blogging. Even if I’m personally not doing too much of it these days, I sure as heck am glad all y’all are. You see, Miss C and I are breastfeeding on demand which at this point means we are nursing at least every two hours, and these sessions can often go on for an hour. So whilst the babe is eating, I am reading and commenting and trying to keep a hold on reality and grown-up land. Although my grasp on this world of adults is tenuous, it’s certainly alive and well. You wouldn’t know it from my Tweets, though. I am slowly becoming one of those people who can only send notifications about my lack of sleep and my child.

And what a child! She has a voice, and she exercises it at full-volume. It is quite amazing that such a small person can make such a big sound. And she can sustain it. But where her cries would send me into an incredibly intense hormone-induced tizzy during her first week at home, B and I are getting used to them now and can make light of her “er-AAA” intonations. I might even call them cute now, although the cuteness is relative to the time of day in which they occur. 10 AM? Cute. 3AM? Not so much.

These last two weeks have been bittersweet. It’s hard to be a new parent. Wonderful and hard. You think you can’t handle more stress and exhaustion, and then the next day it just piles on thicker. But with that day also comes the promise of a gassy smile. My stress is fleshing itself out in odd ways. I have been unable to relax my mouth and tongue for about a week, so I’m speaking with a lisp. It’s so weird.

Also, at the end of pregnancy, you think you know this thing called Sleepiness. Haha, you don’t.

Not even remotely.

The waiting? It’s not the hardest part. The joke’s on me.

But you survive because your baby is perfect and you realize that this is your life now. At least that’s what I have to realize anew every day. It takes a lot of prayer and meditation for me to remember that it’s not about me anymore. It’s about HER. This is my mantra. It’s all I have in those lonely wee small hours of the morning when my girl is crying, uninterested in nursing, being burped, or resting, and when being a mother isn’t coming naturally for me.

Hello!

Prayer and that face. Oh, that face!

Miss C, you’re the apple of my eye!

Born This Way: Part Deux

Posted on April 11, 2012 by The Waiting

As a reminder, I’m going to break from my general pattern of trying not to gross you out too much with body fluids, body matter, and the gory side of pregnancy simply because it’s impossible not to when you’re describing a person coming out of another person. I mean, she CAME OUT of me….

So we booked it to the hospital. The ride was only about 15 or 20 minutes and I cried about half of it because I was so shaken at the tone the doctor had taken with me. B was a real trooper though and did his absolute best to console me and to get me in a place where I was relaxed and ready to push Miss C out.

We arrived and checked in. I really like the LD ward because it was newly remodeled, quiet, and stocked full of great nurses! I had my doubts prior to the baby’s birth whether the nurses would really have my best interests in mind. The reason for this is because when we went to the express childbirth class a month or so ago, the nurses who conducted it (affiliated with the hospital) kept on saying that they will be our advocates throughout our deliveries but then they repeatedly joked that if we became mommyzillas they would make fun of us behind our backs. Yeah, that may be funny to some people, but not so much to me. Near the end of my pregnancy I tended to take any jab at pregnant women really seriously and had a hard time finding humor in even the most innocent jokes like this. But we were more than pleasantly surprised with how wonderful the nurses staffing L&D ended up being.

I apparently decided some ridiculous faces were in order.

We arrived around 5:20 and checked in. I was quickly ushered into the triage area, asked to give a urine sample which I had no trouble with*, and change into a gown. The whole time I was still thinking that there was still a chance they would send me home because my contractions were still very erratic and no more than 10 minutes apart. However, at the end of the initial exam when I ask the sweet nurse who was taking care of me in triage what the chances were of me being officially admitted, she said, “When your water broke you bought yourself a first-class ticket to one of our suites! You’re not going anywhere!” Needless to say, I was SO HAPPY. Miss C was coming that day!

*Pretty much no one was following my blog when I wrote a post early in the pregnancy detailing my inability to go in a cup, but if you want a laugh you should check it out.

Of course, I still was only about 3 cm dilated which meant a nice portion of pitocin was served up to get things going.

They wheeled me into the huge delivery suite and multiple nurses told us about a thousand times the guidelines about having guests in the room during the delivery. Seriously, about 20 people could fit in that room.
Luckily it was just going to be B and me since we have no family in town and no friends in Fayetteville who we would want to include during the delivery, so all the space just ended up being luxurious for us.

Then the whole question of pain medication arose. I knew the question of what I was going to do as far as pain management was coming. I had put it off until the eleventh hour. I have never been able to gauge my pain threshold. I’ve been through some super painful ordeals in my life, but childbirth is kind of in a realm all to itself and you can’t compare a severe backache to the sensation of a human coming out of you. So the plan all throughout the pregnancy was to just wait and see and go as long as I could without meds or an epidural. The nurses attending me asked me what my preferences were and were extremely respectful of my decisions, offering kind guidance and reminders of how to breathe and focus through the contractions. There was one older nurse whose name I can’t remember now who spoke to me in the most soothing tones, almost like I was a child. In any other situation I would have resented her tone but in this situation I needed to be babied. Having a baby is scary; you’re as vulnerable as the little person you’re attempting to push out.

But yeah, lemme just tell you that once that pitocin got in my bloodstream and started doing its thang on my cervix, I was feeling it. I concentrated on my breathing and focused on certain points in the room, trying my hardest not to cry during the contractions that had started coming pretty hard and heavy within an hour of the administering of the pitocin. But within an hour or so I was DONE. B and I had been working on a crossword puzzle during the early stages and at some point he was reading one of the clues to me and it just occurred to me that I didn’t need to prove myself to anyone by putting myself through the intense pain I was feeling during the contractions at that point (oh and BTW I was 7 cm by then.)

So at that point I just looked straight at him and said, “We’re doing the epidural ASAP. Tell them.”

And he did.

I had tested positive for strep C about two weeks prior which meant that antibiotics were being administered to me at the delivery so the baby wouldn’t contract anything during the birth. When B told the nurses that I wanted an epidural, they said that all we’d have to do was wait until the bag of antibiotics was emptied and then I could get my meds. This took about 45 minutes. Now in the past, when you’re in pain, time drags pretty mercilessly or just straight-up stands still. But I was trying so hard to just focus on the task at hand and the impending epidural that those 45 minutes went by pretty quickly. I don’t know if that is an indication that I could have delivered Miss C sans drugs at all, but in retrospect I’m glad I opted for the drugs.

Finally it was time for the epidural. B was ushered away (I asked why he wasn’t allowed to be in there for it but now I can’t remember the reasoning behind it; I wasn’t annoyed or anything, though.) and the anesthesiologist was ushered in.

And oh my goodness what an awesome anesthesiologist. First off, he totally reminded me of Bill Murray. He was late middle-aged, gregarious, and very soothing and supportive. I felt very at ease with him. Once he had given me my epidural I was very willing to notify him of my thought that he looked like Bill Murray. Yeah, so he had never been told that before. The nurses didn’t see it either. Oh well.

The drugs kicked in pretty quickly. Not being able to feel your legs and your nether regions is indeed a bizarre thing. I didn’t have any feeling whatsoever. I was also getting pretty coo coo pigeon sister in my brain at that point too, just wanting to talk to everyone within a 20 foot radius about any and everything. The nurse in charge of everything came back in and was checking something and I ended up confiding in her how wonderful the entire nursing staff had been thus far and how displeased I was about my OB and what he had said to me hours earlier on the phone. She was awesome and totally understanding; she urged me to notify the practice and other powers-that-be that he had spoken extremely inappropriately. She was very well-aware of some doctors’ inclinations to get uppity and pompous.

And guess who walked in just then? Dr. Davis. Wa-hoo. So glad he could make it.

To his credit, he DID apologize for speaking abruptly on the phone with me, even though his apology was pretty weak. He said he was in the middle of a testy conversation with his seventeen-year-old. Couldn’t say that I cared at all. It was almost insulting that he tried to explain his behavior away to any extent at all, but I chose not to really dignify it with a response. I had more important matters at hand, ie, having Miss C.

Things kind of get blurry after that. The contractions got more intense, even though I couldn’t feel them and I became really nauseated. I never threw up, but I thought I would several times.

Around 10:50 PM, I was again chatting with any and everyone in the room about any and everything when the head nurse abruptly told me it was time to start PUSHING.

WHAH! The excitement begins!

So here’s the thing: I couldn’t feel squat. Absolutely nada. Like I said, I had one amazing anesthesiologist. Therefore, it was difficult for me to gauge whether or not the pushing I was doing was effective at all. In the end the only indication I had to go by that I was pushing hard enough was that I was also crapping all over the table.

Yeah, hi, I pooped. Like, a lot. And I could smell it. That’s how I knew. Fun.

So we pushed and we pushed and we pushed.

And finally the doctor came in. It is apparently kind of normal for the OB to only really attend the birth when the baby is crowning and about ready to actually come. Considering how famously my doctor and I got along, this was absolutely fine by me.

I wish this whole part of the story was more exciting and drawn out, but it was just so fast and easy. I kind of feel like a cheated death when I got that epidural.

After only 45 minutes of pushing, we had A GIRL! MISS C!

I saw my girl and she was a-screaming, the most beautiful sound in the world! I looked at the girl and was simply amazed that SHE was the one I had been thinking about all this time. Finally, a face to go with a name. It’s a very, very strange and beautiful moment when you realize that that’s not just a baby; it’s your baby. And you’ll know her forever. She’s yours.

The instant the baby popped out, my stomach just deflated. It was kind of awesome. Like, one minute you’re pregnant and can’t breathe and the next you’re just not pregnant anymore. It’s strange and comparable to getting your braces off after you’ve worn them for a long time.

They took Miss C to get wiped off but then I got her back within a minute and she immediately latched on and got her nursing on. B and I were both so proud of her! Nursing like a pro within five minutes of life! She also had quite a set of lungs on her as she continued crying for what seemed like an hour.

After a nice long cuddle and nursing time, the nurses whisked her off to the side again to clean her up further and for me to get stitched up.

I asked Dr. Davis if I had torn and in his slippery fashion he replied “Well we had to make a bit of a cut but I’m sewing it up now.”

WHA?! An episiotomy?! Are you freaking kidding me? OK, so I admit that it was kind of my fault for not letting this guy know ahead of time that I would have preferred to tear naturally. The onus is on me. But I kind of assumed that since Dr. Davis wasn’t 75 years old and appeared to be up on some of the more modern (ie, not using forceps) birthing techniques, an episiotomy was never a possibility. I guess I was wrong. Well then, I’ll know for next time. Whatever. Good thing I then had a baby and was less inclined to get worked up over something I couldn’t change.

Stitching complete and baby all cleaned up, I was wheeled into our recovery room with Miss C. I still couldn’t believe I had done it. I couldn’t believe how beautiful and perfect my sweet baby girl was. I couldn’t believe that B and I were parents.

My two loves

I still can’t.

The last week and a half has been full of wonderful, difficult, blissful, scary, and priceless moments. Sometimes all at the same time.

We’re all growing together. It’s pretty great.

Born This Way: Part One

Posted on April 7, 2012 by The Waiting

First off, welcome to all the new followers of The Waiting! I really can’t believe I was Freshly Pressed only FOUR DAYS after giving birth. Not going to lie; I have fantasized about getting that WordPress distinction ever since I started blogging but I never really thought it would happen, much less during the most hectic/stressful/glorious/sleep-deprived week of my entire life.

But when it rains, it pours. And the WordPress gods don’t care if you’re operating on two hours of sleep.

And of course, thanks to my awesome, supportive, loving, thoughtful blogging family who sent all kinds of sweet comments on the arrival of Miss C. I’m not capable of expressing the gratitude I have for you all and how blessed I am to have found kindred spirits from all over the world through this wonderful blogging platform. I love you all like mad.

And that’s not the hormones talking.

I’m going to break from my general pattern of trying not to gross you out too much with body fluids, body matter, and the gory side of pregnancy simply because it’s impossible not to when you’re describing a person coming out of another person. I mean, she CAME OUT of me. They tell you babies come from storks, but they don’t. And quite frankly I’m glad because it’s really creepy to think about giant seabirds flying around with babies. Don’t even get me started on how utterly disturbing the phrase “stork bite” is.

This first chapter will cover the part before I went to the hospital. I confess that sometimes this part of birth stories can be a little boring because it’s before the fireworks begin at the hospital. So feel free to skip on through to Part Deux if you so choose. Or not.

So, without further ado, the story of how I popped Miss C out.

I woke around 3 AM Saturday morning covered in sweat and was initially confused because I thought that my water had broken. From what I’d read and from what I’d learned from childbirth class, your water doesn’t have to break in a torrent like in the movies, and there are only a few cases when it actually does, so I figured the moisture accumulated on my body could indicate seepage. I went and checked myself in the bathroom and concluded that no, my water had not broken and that I just needed to turn the heat down and drink some water. I got back in bed and went back to sleep.

Fast forward to 6:30. I stirred and turned over on my side. That movie gush that Hollywood has made such a thing of but in reality doesn’t always have to happen?

Well, it happened to me. Full-on tidal wave. No joke. I leapt out of bed (well, I was hugely preggo so maybe “leapt” is a bit extreme but I moved as quickly as I could). There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that things had started.

“B, my water just broke.”

“You sure?”

“YES. Get the book*.”

*”The book” being What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

I hobbled to the toilet, leaving a trail of amniotic fluid in my wake. Sitting on the toilet and leaking, I reread the section in the book about having your water break, and it said that when your water breaks you can expect to deliver in 12-24 hours. I called my OB and the nurse at their answering service asked me a couple of questions about the situation. I told her that I was positive that my water had just broken, that this hadn’t been a high-risk pregnancy, and that contractions hadn’t started yet. She asked me if I considered it to be an emergency situation and I said no, considering that the doctors at the practice had told me numerous times that staying at home during the first hours of labor would be best unless the water was tinged in brown and yellow or I was gushing blood. So she took my info and told me to sit tight, which I did.

Light contractions started about an hour later. I felt so alive as they pulsed through my body at timely intervals. Things were happening – squee! For the first couple of hours, they were coming about 10-20 minutes apart and mainly only when I shifted my position or walked around. But then they tapered off and would be absent for 45 minutes to an hour, which was disheartening because I really wanted to get this going. It wasn’t that I was in any serious pain or anything; I just wanted to have the baby THAT DAY and didn’t want to go through false labor.

The day passed by for B and me quietly and peacefully. It was Saturday – Pancake Day at our house – and around ten when the contractions had made a retreat, it occurred to me that there was no reason why we couldn’t enjoy our weekend ritual. When I suggested to B that I whip up a batch for him, he was really excited. So pumpkin pancakes he had, and all was happy. It was the least I could do for him since he was going to have a long day just like I was.

Mid-afternoon I got a lot of rest. When I was lying down, the contractions abated and I told B that I had a feeling I had gone into false labor and that we wouldn’t be delivering that day. It was massively disappointing to feel as though a sure thing had passed us by and that we’d have to wait until the next day to have her. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that since my water had most definitely broken, I needed to call the answering service back and get a more personalized list of instructions on what we should do. I began to doubt the authority of the woman who I had spoken with earlier; even though I had given her a very accurate description of what was going on, it seemed as though she hadn’t notified the doctor on call to the situation or taken the necessary steps to ensure that we were kosher. The longer I went without delivering Miss C increased the risk of infection to her, so we decided that even if the contractions were still really far apart by 5 PM, we would call back.

5 PM rolled around and I called the answering service back. Again I described the situation and the lady at the other end asked me if I considered it to be an emergency situation. I said that I didn’t, but I’m not a doctor and this was my first baby and there was only so much credence I wanted to give to my opinion of the situation. I’m not the healthcare professional. So she said she would notify the doctor – Dr. Davis – and have him call me.

Dr. Davis.

Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Davis. There are four practitioners at my OB office. One I got along really well with and had a fantastic rapport with; I hoped and prayed that he’d be on call the day we gave birth. Another was pleasant, extremely capable, and patient with our questions. The third was the head of the practice; brisk and professional. I wouldn’t say I’d like to go to a party hosted by him, but he’d do.

Then there was Dr. Davis. He poisoned me against him the first time I had a prenatal checkup with him during the second trimester when he essentially made fun of me for asking about alternative birthing strategies, such as water births, etc. In subsequent visits to the office, I would ask him other questions pertaining to the pregnancy and his attitude towards my questions always made me feel as if what I was asking was stupid or that I should already know the answer, and that his time was too valuable to be fielding my silly little questions. At the time I shrugged it off and figured that I only had a 25% chance of delivering with him and that I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head over his social ineptitude, arrogance, and poor bedside manor too much. Dude, I had a BLOG to write about fun and entertaining pregnancy things, not him :)

So about five minutes later, Dr. Davis returns my call. I tell him the situation (why the nurse didn’t relay all I had already said to her to him, I do not know.) My water broke around 6:30 AM, contractions have been irregular all day, I’m concerned about infection, what should I do, etc? His response:

“Why are you just now calling if your water broke early this morning?”

“I’m not ‘just now’ calling. I called this morning and never received any indication from your office that I should take a next step.”

“Well I never got your call. I didn’t hear from you. Your baby could get infected. If your water breaks you must take action. I can’t help you if YOU don’t take action.”

“OK WELL I DID CALL AND THERE’S NO POINT IN ARGUING NOW ABOUT THAT. I am WELL AWARE that my baby could get infected, as I just indicated to you. So rather than argue about whether I called or not, could you please give me instructions? Do I need to go to the hospital now?”*

*I know I get snarky and sarcastic on this blog sometimes, but what you have to understand is that I am a really amicable person in real life and I heartily dislike chewing anyone out. I rarely EVER do it. But yes, this exactly what I said to him and I felt completely entitled to.

“Uh, YEAH you do.”

“Fine. See you there.”

I then hung up the phone, threw it across the room, screamed at the top of my lungs a string of expletives that I only take out for special occasions, and started weeping.

B was alarmed. So was I. But we were in the car two minutes later, heading to the hospital.