On Thursday morning I went to give Henry his bath and turned the heat up so it would be nice and warm when he got out of the water. However, about an hour later the bath was over and I noticed it was still a bit chilly and the thermostat was reading 64. Hmmm. I fiddled with the buttons then went downstairs to see if the furnace was turning on. It was not. But more importantly, it smelled like gas. That will wake you right up. I called J and coolly relayed the situation,which went something like: "Omigodthefurnacewon'tturnonand itsmellslikegaswhatdoIdowhatdoIdo??" After a followup call to my dad, the prescribed course of action was to call the gas company, who said they'd send someone right over. I then had to bundle up the baby and sort of pace back in forth in front of my house because I had to be there to let the gas guy in. It seems like there should be a better system for waiting for a utility guy to come and tell you whether or not your house is going to explode, but apparently there is not.
Eventually he came and said the ignitor was broken. He also asked what nationality I was. I don't think he wanted to know whether I was American, so I answered, "Um, white." "Oh," he said, "Because you look just like this woman I know and she's from...uh...hmm, I can't think of the country. Anyway, it's a compliment! It's nothing bad!" Thank god, because heaven forbid I was compared to someone who is from a bad country. The part was cheap to fix, but they weren't able to get to it until the next day. I figured the baby was my trump card so I mentioned it to the woman doing the scheduling and they promised to be there between 12-2 the next day.
Since it was cold and getting colder in the house, I hightailed it to my parents' place for the rest of the day. When we decided it would be too chilly for the baby without heat in the house, we ended up staying there for the night. Henry hadn't yet slept in a real crib, so it was his first time. He fell right asleep and only took about an ounce of his bottle at 10, then didn't wake up until 5:30. Encouraging! We woke up to the first snow of the season, so it was good that we holed up in the warm house.
I called the repair company to see if I could get a more specific time since I had a baby (trump card) and didn't want to wait in the cold longer than necessary. No help, however: between 12 and 2. I got back to the house at noon and bundled the baby up. Krista came over and we froze in the house watching "Shattered" waiting for the technician. Twelve o'clock passed. Two o'clock passed. I called again and they told me everyone was running behind. Again, I mentioned the poor, cold baby (who was bundled up in a velour jumpsuit and occasionally swaddled in fleece for napping--he was fine, I was freezing). Around 3:30, I got a call from the company telling me someone was on their way...in about 45 minutes.
I told them exactly why I was a bit annoyed. "Well!" the woman said, "If you had mentioned you had a baby, we would have moved you to the top of the list!" Yes. If only I had thought of that.
Anyway, everything's fixed and the sleeping went so well that I was feeling good about the skipping the 10:00 feeding experiment. The bottle was moved to 7:00, the baby fell asleep aaaand...awoke promptly at 2:00 am, as I expected. He was then up at 4:00 and 6:00, so it looks like that 10:00 bottle will stay in play, at least until he starts sleeping through that 4am feeding. However, we were encouraged to try the crib, so Henry slept all by himself in his nursery last night and all went well.
Here is Henry in a white velour jumpsuit as a reward for reading what probably amounts to the most boring entry ever written. I had a cheese sandwich for lunch!
This is just to say that apparently you can put your baby down in the bassinet when he seems a bit sleepy and he will take whole naps! This is a very exciting development on the sleep front. Up until now, I have pretty much been waiting for him to fall asleep in the swing or vibrating chair, sometimes moving him over to the bassinet if he was really out. This is much better. I will take your advice and see what happens when we skip the 10:00 feeding. I am waiting until the weekend, though. That way if there are numerous night wakings, I can get a nap in the next day. I also will nap if someone puts me down when I look a bit sleepy.
Wow. I sure haven't updated in...a really long time. And now I feel like I should have something a bit groundbreaking to break my blog silence with, but all I have is a baby sleeping dilemma. But you are my internet baby experts! Who else to go to?
Henry is doing really great so far, relatively speaking. He eats around 8:00 pm every night, then promptly conks out. We wake him around 10:00, change his diaper, J gives him a bottle, and then he sleeps until 4:00, 4:30ish. He goes out again quickly and then wakes up around 7. Sometimes he'll even sleep a bit more after that, which is nice for parents who like to sleep in a bit on the weekend (sleep in = 9:00 am). My question is this: he really is out like a light after the 8:00 feeding, but we wake him at 10 because I'm afraid if we don't, he'll just wake at 2:00 am and then again throughout the night. I think I'm just replacing that inconvenient 2:00 feeding with the convenient 10:00 pm feeding, which seems to work out great for everyone. However, the books say: never wake a sleeping baby. And I'm a little concerned we're training him to wake up at 10:00 in spite of the fact he's more than happy to be asleep at that point. He's only nine weeks old or so, so are we cool? And if so, when do we play with cutting out the 10:00 feeding? Baby experting commence!
These are my last two weeks of maternity leave. They're my c-section bonus weeks! I can't decide whether I'm excited to get back to a routine involving daily interactions with adults or sad to be ending this incredible bonding period with the baby. A little of both. J and my parents will be taking over baby duty for awhile (J gets a very generous helping of parental leave), so at least I don't have daycare stresses on top of everything else, but those will be coming soon enough. For now, I think I'll focus my stresses on such topics like, what shall I wear to work in two weeks? In going through my winter work clothes, I had a memory of getting rid of almost everything when I was packing it up last year. I believe my exact thoughts were: all this stuff is crappy; I'll just ditch it all now and buy new stuff next year! Very clever, last-year me. Now if only I'd taken into account being on a shoestring budget and having to wear nursing bras and tanks under everything. At least my pants still fit. You think my boss will notice if I alternate wearing the same two tank tops and a hoodie every day? If I wear pearls, does it make the hoodie business casual?
If you ever wonder what someone without Netflix or TiVo does while they are home on maternity leave, let me tell you: terrible, terrible daytime television. I have a book and a stack of New Yorkers, but when you're breastfeeding or hovering over a baby in a swing to see if he's going to spit out his pacifier and wake up screaming, your attention span can really only handle entertainment that works all on its own. Let's take a look at all the ridiculous things I now set my day to!
Gilmore Girls. This comes on at 9:00, so is my motivation for getting into the living room and starting the day. Not that I have a choice about when my day starts, but it is something to look forward to. It also gives me a goal of getting the baby quieted down and content for that hour. I never really watched this show while it was on, but I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I have to be very careful to be near the remote when it ends though, because Full House comes on afterward and WE ALL HAVE OUR LIMITS. The television does something tricky at 3:00 and shows--on a different channel--the following episode. It is very tempting for me to watch this, but I don't because I would be so sad the next day with no Gilmore Girls to wake up to.
What Not to Wear. I enjoyed this show before maternity leave, but oh my god it is on all the time, all day long. It's sort of my default when there's nothing else on, but boy howdy am I fucking sick of Stacy and Clinton. I'm even sick of Carmandy and I love Carmandy.
The Hills, Paris Hilton's New BFF, Dr. 90210. These are shows I should be embarrassed to even acknowledge exist, and yet there I am watching them when they're on and getting excited when they're new. Okay, I was a Hills watcher before, but the other two I can guarantee I would never watch under normal circumstances. Okay, maybe I would have flipped to Dr. 90210 on the weekend during a bored spell, but definitely not Paris Hilton.
John and Kate Plus 8, A Baby Story, Bringing Home Baby. Sometimes I find it entertaining to commiserate with other people with children. Most times, I cannot bear to watch screaming children on television when I'm holding one of my own. Every time I flip to these shows I can't believe I'm actually flipping to these shows.
Also, there are several commercials that I simply can't watch anymore. Most notable are the ones put out by the corn syrup people to try to make their product look delicious and healthy. I hate this one, but this one irks me the most. (Ha! The upside is that there is this spoof on youtube.) It's something about the girl looking like a cheap Hillary Swank. And of course that these ads hinge on the fact that the people can't come up with anything to say against corn syrup. The corn syrup people couldn't even be bothered to address the real concerns behind their product, but decided having slack jawed idiots hemming and hawing pretty much summed up the opposing argument.
There's also this disturbing Sinupret commercial. Creepy! But seriously, I love YOU more.
Fruit flies may be the death of me yet. A bouquet of flowers we had came with some uninvited little guests, but it took us a while to pinpoint that where they were coming from. After throwing away all possible fruit hosts in the kitchen, I realized ground zero was really the bathroom, where the flowers were (kept there because we have to keep the door closed to keep cats out of the toilet. Closed door = no knocking over vases of flowers). I have a very low tolerance for little flying things. Being around them makes me feel like I'm living in a trash heap or something. Yes, this situation was infinitely better than the *shudder* cockroach one a couple years ago, but still: every time I'd move the towel or look in the mirror, more of the little fuckers would swarm about. I wasn't having a particularly good day with the baby yesterday, so the fruit flies were enough to send me right to the edge. I looked up some fruit fly traps and made one with plastic wrap and vinegar, but when it became clear the trap wasn't going to work instantaneously, I pleaded with J to do something. Which he did. With his Shop-Vac. Turns out you DO catch more flies with a vacuum than with vinegar! (Side note: there is one swarming around my head right now. Why are they so hard to catch?? Why? They are slow!)
Anyway, after a heroic battle in the bathroom by J and the master vacuum, we are mostly fruit fly free in there. They are still around the rest of the house, but not as bad. Enough to make me want to scratch my eyes out when I see one, but not enough to make me want to stab anyone. Progress.
The baby is playing a fun game with me where he cries and I run to check on him and then he is sleeping soundly. Or at least pretending to sleep soundly. Fun game.
Today marks day two of wearing regular jeans again. Excitement! Maternity pants do have the nice bonus of holding in your stomach for awhile, and they are more comfortable on c-sections than regular pants, but I am very much through with the elastic waist. Oh the joy of zippers and buttons; who knew you could miss zippers and buttons so much? Now if only I had more than four tops and two ratty hoodies that work with breastfeeding, I'd be golden.
When is the right time to move the baby out of the bedroom and into the nursery? I know it has to be done at some point, but it is so easy to grab him out of the bassinet at night now. And also, what will I do when I can't listen for his sweet baby breathing in the middle of the night when he is really quiet? Won't I get tired of running back and forth to the nursery just to make sure he's okay? Or do you just pass out from exhaustion and not even wake up until he's crying to be fed? I don't think our monitors come with "sweet baby breathing" settings.
After a good night of sleeping (only one 3:30 feeding before getting up at 7:00), I feel ridiculously productive. I even baked some blondies! I am only mildly sleep-deprived today, which is the new-baby equivalent of totally well-rested. I still don't have any non-baby things to talk about, which I'm sure is making this blog a fascinating read for anyone who is actually doing things out in the real world. We're able to be a bit more mobile now--we've all gone out to dinner a couple times and I'm getting good at tossing Henry in the car to run up to the drive-through Starbucks (big treat). He loves the car (or simply can't resist the lull of the engine and the rumbly ride) and zonks out completely as soon as we start moving. Sometimes this can be a great way to kick start a long nap, other times it's just a reprieve until the car stops and we're back home to fussy land.
I know blogs are all about broadcasting, but I really wish we could just get together and talk instead. Being home has its perks, but I miss being out in the world and talking to people on a regular basis. I realize the role would change if I were going to be staying home permanently--I'd find groups and arrange play dates and set up a schedule for myself that involved getting out--but for now this staying home all the time can wear thin. It's probably different when your baby gets a little older, too. I'd actually love to sit and have a chat with Henry, see what's on his little baby mind.
The sun is shining outside, so I think I'll see if I can take the guy for a walk around the block. You're invited if you want to crash the party.
I'm stealing a blog post while the baby sleeps a little. He's in a vibrating chair on the floor of the bathroom, where he was nice enough to be calm while I took a shower. Now he's sleeping and I'm afraid to move him for fear of waking him up, so I just left the door open and am periodically checking on him. Max, too. He's not allowed in the bathroom, so he is very unsure about what to do with an open door guarded by a baby. So far, he's erring on the side of caution.
A bit of a rough night--while we got Henry to sleep before midnight (a small miracle), he didn't do any of his long stretches of sleep. Then he projectile vomited all over my side of the bed around 5:30 am, which meant I had to sleep the rest of the morning on towels and under a small comforter.
Uh oh, he awakes...
Here's a picture of his blue eyes. Will they really turn brown?
First of all, big thanks to Meghan, who reminded me about swaddling. We'd been good about it for awhile, but then stopped when Henry started wearing some warm footie pajamas and we thought he might be too hot all swaddled up. But we tried it again last night and holy bejeezus if the guy didn't sleep like SIX hours in a row. Then he woke up to feed and fell back asleep again. And again! Having mornings available to shower and eat cereal go a long way in making me feel like I can handle the day.
Yesterday was J's and my third year anniversary. We celebrated by having my mom come over and babysit for a couple hours while we went out for dinner. It was weird being out of the house without the baby, but also nice to be able to concentrate on each other for the first time in a couple weeks. Also, big news, I had a lovely glass of pinot noir with dinner and felt like an adult again. Being able to have the occasional drink with dinner makes me very happy. Who knew I had such a love affair with alcohol? It wasn't a huge deal to abstain for nine months, but it was a joyful reunion with that glass of wine last night.
Here's the part in the post where I would update you on new things I saw or did, but, uh, I haven't really left the house all that much. Krista brought me some Jamba Juice! I did another load of laundry! I'm reading American Wife and enjoying it quite a bit! It's very nice and warm outside, though I only get out there every once in awhile.
Henry is starting to track things a bit with his eyes, which is fun. It's almost like playing. His eyes are a lovely blue right now and I'm hoping they stay that color in defiance of genetics.
Hey! Still alive and hanging in there. As you can imagine, my time is a bit more compromised these days. Under any other circumstances, major abdominal surgery would mean you'd be ordered to sleep a lot, stay in bed, and do nothing but eat ice cream and watch Tyra interview teens who are embarrassed their mothers dress like 15-year-olds. Except of course if the surgery is a c-section, in which case you're expected to carry around a crying baby and feed/change him every two hours around the clock. This makes recovery a bit difficult. I mean, thank god for J and my family or I would have lost my mind by this point. This gives me a whole new respect for anyone who has to take on a newborn by themselves.
I'm only exaggerating my exhaustion a little, and I'm only able to do that because Henry had a very good day full of naps and sleepy feedings that allowed me to take a 20-minute nap and read a little of my book. If you had checked in with me on Wednesday, we had a whole different story on our hands with the screaming for no reason and extreme fatigue. Henry crying for apparently no reason for long stretches of time makes me cry and then we're in a bad place. I don't know who invented this breastfeeding cycle, but it's a bit out of hand: baby feeds every two hours for 30-40 minutes at a time. Which leaves you about an hour and a half between feedings to frantically get done anything you might want to get done, including personal hygiene, eating, and sleeping. Of course, you only get that hour and a half if the baby wants to snooze for a bit or be docile after eating. Otherwise, you get stuck in an eating/crying cycle that slowly kills you. We're figuring it out slowly, though. A little pumping, a little bottle, a little timing--we might be getting the hang of it.
Sometimes I just wake up and can't believe we have this little baby and he's all ours and we made him!
That's pretty cool.
Tuesday morning, I went in for an ultrasound so they could check the fluid and see how the baby was holding up in there. The results weren't promising--the technician could only find a few small pockets of amniotic fluid, which isn't great. The baby was otherwise doing okay, but my doctor told me that it should be my last day of work and that I should spend the rest of the week resting and drinking lots of fluid. Being in a holding pattern at work was a bit stressful, so it was fine by me to have a start date for my leave. Aubrey and I went out to lunch and shared the biggest plate of nachos I've ever seen in my life. So if I'm going to credit a food for starting off my labor, it would have to be the ginormous nacho appetizer at Racine's. Can't go wrong with jalapenos, cheese, and beans!
At first I wasn't sure I was feeling contractions because I'd been so uncomfortable the whole week that a few more aches didn't seem out of place. But then they became more distinctly cramp-like and I began suspecting this was the real thing. By the time I got home, they were strong enough for J and I to get excited. They were mild most of the night, but by 11:30 they had progressed into holy-shit-ouch territory. I took a couple hot showers, watched some Chelsea Lately while on the pilates ball, and breathed through them until about 2:00 am, when we headed to the hospital. I know all about the importance of laboring at home as long as possible, and the last thing I wanted was to get to the hospital, have them tell me I was one centimeter, and be sent home. So you should know that by the time we got to the hospital, I was in some crazy pain, the contractions were a couple minutes apart and lasting over a minute each.
The main thing I was concerned about was that the pain was mostly in my lower back. Imagine the worst back spasm ever, concentrated into a small area above your tailbone, that grows in pain and just KEEPS HAPPENING. Anyway: awful. The L&D ward was actually full when we got there and I was admitted into triage where a very nice nurse checked me out and told me I was exactly ONE centimeter dilated. Meaning I had progressed not at all from, like, two weeks ago. I would have been more concerned if I wasn't in mind-numbing pain. She told me to walk around the halls a bit to see if we could get this going. "Walk" is a very general term for what we did, which was shuffle a few feet and then double over in pain. I do pretty good with pain and did the lamaze classes and am all about yoga, but there were contractions where screaming was as close as I could possibly get to "breathing through it."
After the walk, I was still at a centimeter, but they told me they couldn't send me home in this much pain. Back labor is some serious shit, man. At that point I was desperate, and this is what they offered me: morphine. This is how they described what would happen: I would get a shot of morphine, I would pass out, wake up several hours later all well rested, and be much further along. At that point, anything that offered relief sounded good. Unfortunately, a shot of morphine got me exactly nowhere. An hour after the shot, I felt exactly the same and was delirious from lack of sleep and pain. Next option: epidural. Again, this was something I had hoped not to do, but I was past the point of images of my natural birth and signed on for the drugs before they could finish the offer.
I have to say, epidurals are maaaagic. Within minutes, my legs were tingly and I couldn't feel the contractions anymore. Bliss! On top of that, with the added numbness my doctor was able to go in and stretch me to 3 centimeters. There was some sort of scar tissue that had been impeding the dilation, so after that was taken care of, I did okay. I slept a little and felt like I could handle the situation again. It was like returning from a vacation my body took. The television in the room was turned to cartoons, which was fine, though I finally drew the line and made them find a remote when Dora came on. I was not going to give birth with Dora and that monkey staring at me. Luckily, J brought the Wes Anderson collection and we got through Bottle Rocket, Royal Tenenbaums, and half of Newsies (not Wes Anderson) when I got the discouraging news.
Though I had made it to 6.5 centimeters, I had stalled out. The baby was in a weird position, lodged against the pelvis bone and wasn't responding well to the contractions anymore. I had the option of taking some pitocin and seeing that would progress me enough to try to push, but the doctor worried that I'd do that and still be in the same position I was in with the baby and we'd have to do an emergency c-section. So, I could get the section now, or they'd let me try if I was really gung ho about it. Everyone was really nice about it and the doctor especially was incredibly sympathetic to the fact that this wasn't the labor I had envisioned. However, I am not crazy. I just wasn't willing to sacrifice everyone's health and sanity for the small chance I'd be able to deliver vaginally. Really, I was so excited to finally meet the little guy that had been kicking me in the ribs that I was ready to sign on for whatever option got him to me the safest. So c-section it was.
It happened very quickly from there and I was whisked away. After they up the epidural, I really didn't feel anything going on, though the sensation of a team of people cutting a baby out of your abdomen is VERY WEIRD. Actually, the weirdest part was the delivery, where they told me I'd feel "a lot of pressure," What I felt was my chest being compressed rather severely, like I was getting CPR. It was intense enough to make me go, "UHHHHHHHGGHHH" involuntarily. But then! Baby Henry! He was bigger than everyone thought, at 8.5 pounds and had a little dent in his head where he had been pressing against the bone, so the section was the right decision. J was taken away to watch over the weighing and cleaning and I was stitched up and sent to recovery. I was a little sad I didn't get to see him directly afterward, but they brought him to me pretty quickly to feed and hold. I don't think it matters how a baby gets there: when you're holding him or her for the first time, it's really overwhelmingly amazing.
So I'm home now and things are going well. I'm a bit sore from the surgery, but healing just fine. Feedings are going well, even though this whole "eat every two hours" thing can be very exhausting. I feel incredibly lucky to have my family and friends here, who have all been great. My mom's already filled our freezer with food and my dad came and did about million dollars worth of yard work. J goes back to work next week, so we'll see how it goes flying solo.
Lucky I got this cute one.
