A Lot Of Words About Sleep

I took care of other peoples’ kids for years of my life. YEARS. Professionally. That’s a lot of time to study the effects of parenting decisions and form some ideas of how I would and would not parent my own children. I always thought I’d be firm but loving and I would run my household on a schedule which my children would understand and appreciate. My house would be clean all the time and I would kiss the top of my sleeping angels’ heads before retiring at 7:30 to read a book or watch some TV, then off to my own clean bed with my husband for a sound night of sleep. Oh, and we would eat all organic, unprocessed food that I made from scratch each day and enjoy it. I would look fresh and be showered and anyone who wasn’t doing all of these things just didn’t have as much experience taking care of kids as I did.

Are you laughing yet?

We’re almost eight months in and let’s just say that the dream has been drastically modified. But what I really want to talk about today is sleep. I’m going to give you a rundown of Nora’s sleep habits and I’ll save the bitching for after you get a sense of what we’re dealing with here.

Let me first say that I’m not much for a schedule, as it turns out, though we do have a routine. Because I stay home I can pretty much adjust my day to whatever Nora’s needs are so she naps when she’s tired. She does have a bed time (7:30) but I think being somewhat flexible with nap times has encouraged her to be a little flexible if we miss the 7:30 slot at bedtime a night or two, as we did two weeks ago when there was a death in the family and we had stuff going on every night for a week.  I should also mention that I have tried the nap schedule business but my child has inherited every ounce of stubbornness that Zack and I had to pass on (that’s A LOT) and she is what’s called a tension increaser when it comes to crying it out, so unless she’s willing to go to sleep it’s an epic fight for a 30 minute nap. Max.

Oh, that’s the other lovely thing about my daughter: she’s a power napper. 30 minutes and she’s refreshed and happy for hours, nevermind my need for the occasional break.

The 30 minute nap thing, now that I don’t try to force her to nap when she’s not ready, isn’t actually that big a deal. Really, Nora is amazingly willing to entertain herself in whatever room I’m in for impressive amounts of time. That means my attention is almost always divided but I can still accomplish most things that are required of me during the day.

At night Nora has been all over the map, sometimes sleeping long stretches and other times waking up as much as every 90 minutes. Because her nighttime sleep has been kind of rough we decided to co-sleep, so she’s in our bed, and we’ve been doing that since she outgrew the Rock ‘n Play about two months ago. Man, did she love the Rock ‘n Play. She currently sleeps cuddled up to me or flopped on her stomach in between us, and she still wakes up a fair amount (usually 2-5 times) to nurse or, more often, just for reassurance that I’m there (all I have to do most of the time is touch her skin-to-skin and she settles back into sleep). It is not uncommon for breastfed babies to wake during the night to nurse, though many are capable of sleeping through the night. As of today Nora has slept through the night twice in her life. I usually nurse her to sleep for naps and at bedtime.

Okay, so now you have a basic idea of the sleep situation. I know there are things we could do to get Nora out of our bed and sleeping through the night. I’ve read books and blogs and articles and listened to webinars and I am in love with all of Nancy Holtzman‘s ideas on parenting in general. Our pediatrician encouraged us to do a controlled CIO sleep training method at 4months and that was atrocious (and when we learned she’s a tension increaser). I am not into the CIO method. Nora naps in her crib some and we’ve tried doing the first part of the night in her room to get her used to being in there, but she never sleeps as long there, or as well. Which means Zack and I get no time to ourselves in the evening and definitely no time together, as one of us is constantly in dealing with her wake ups.

I know that some of you are reading this and thinking that we’ve created this situation (we have) and that I shouldn’t complain about it. The thing is, I’m not complaining. I know it’s hard to believe, but Nora’s sleeping habits do not bother me now that I am used to them*. No one is more surprised that I am not more of a stickler for a schedule and some sleep training than me. I NEVER expected to bed share and I certainly didn’t expect to love it. But I do, I love being able to watch her sleep, I love the reassurance of being able to hear her breathe, and I love knowing that she is absolutely at ease knowing that we are right there with her. I’m not worried that she will be in our bed until Kindergarten even though we don’t have a plan for when she needs to be sleeping in her own room or how we’ll get her there. I get so much more sleep than I would if she were downstairs in the nursery or even in the Pack-n-Play next to the bed, because all I have to do is touch her or bring her close to the breast to nurse and we both go back to sleep.

My biggest issue is really that I hate telling people how much Nora wakes up at night (AND EVERYONE ASKS – why must this be the stick by which a “good baby” is measured?) and I’m tempted to just start lying about it. I feel like people think she *should* be sleeping through the night and either we’re doing something wrong by not forcing the issue or that there’s something wrong with her because she isn’t there yet. Whether it’s working for us never seems to enter into the equation. I am way more of a crunchy hippie attachment-parenting type than I expected to be and I love it, but it’s taken me some time to come to terms with the fact that I’m a very different type of parent than I imagined I’d be. Isn’t it interesting how much we can surprise ourselves? I also own the fact that I am a little lazy and unwilling to sacrifice sleep in the short-term to sleep train using a gentler method like Holtzman’s trade-down approach.

However.

We are going to a wedding in California over 4th of July weekend and we are leaving Nora with her grandparents for three nights. Understandably, they do not plan to share a bed with her; she will sleep in a Pack-n-Play in the next room. Obviously they can’t nurse her to sleep. They’ve been really our only babysitters, having her at least once a week most weeks even for only an hour or two, and anytime they have to get Nora to sleep it’s a struggle. We plan to do some practice runs where they’ll have her overnight while we are home to help get her more used to sleeping there.

My feeling is this: I don’t want to change what’s working for us just for three nights of someone else dealing with my kid. Is that awful of me? Parenting is such a personal thing, and I really work to not judge other people for their parenting choices. I feel strongly that the best thing for Nora right now is to be in our bed and the best thing for my family is for me to nurse her down at night. It makes bedtime a smooth thing almost every night: it’s soothing and relaxing for Nora, it’s great bonding for her and I, and she sleeps better when bedtime is calm, giving Zack and I an hour or two before I need to go to sleep to spend time on our relationship. I don’t want all of that to shift prematurely because of this trip and I don’t really think it needs to. The three nights we’re gone are going to be difficult no matter what because Nora is used to being with me 99% of the time. It’s the nature of having a stay at home mom. Most of the time it’s the best thing for my kid but it sure does make leaving her extra hard for everyone involved.

It’s amazing to me how many aspects of sleep a person can find to agonize over.

*It took some time for my body to adjust to broken and generally less sleep, but I get 8+ hours most nights and I function fine the vast majority of the time.

Boston

I happened to be on Twitter when people started to talk about the bombings at the Boston Marathon yesterday, the messages of disbelief and outrage pouring onto my timeline faster than I could click all the links to news stories. I still haven’t seen the live footage, having been spared after someone tweeted that you could actually see limbs flying and I decided not to look.

I am angry and sad and mourning the three lives lost so senselessly, right along with the rest of my country. I do not mean to diminish or downplay what happened yesterday when I say that I wasn’t all that surprised to hear about the bombs. And I am angry all over again that I am not surprised. I am so, so pissed that this type of thing has happened enough times in my life – in my country, to my people – that it is no longer a shock to hear of bombings and terrorism and shootings and children dying. That the words we use to talk about these events are becoming overly familiar, cliched. I don’t want my husband and I to have to come up with a plan for how to talk to our daughter – who is seven months old – about this type of thing because we know that one day all too soon it will have to be explained in terms that won’t terrify her. Do such words even exist?

I am enraged that there were members of the Sandy Hook community running in memory of those lost at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December that had to go through yet another traumatic event just as they were maybe beginning to heal.

And under all this anger is, of course, fear. Boston, Newtown, NYC, Columbine, Oklahoma City. Big cities, small towns, where will the next tragic event strike in our nation? Will it be my child huddled in a classroom while a shooter opens fire on her school someday? My loved ones bombed at their places of business or leisure? When will this end, and what do we have to do as a nation to make it stop? To protect our children?

It feels like we go through the same motions each time something like this happens, and we should do anything we can think of that feels like helping, but what can we do to prevent this besides add metal detectors and over-the-top security measures to yet another place or event in our nation?

The status quo isn’t working and I am very afraid.

Snow & a Road Trip

Well! Here it is April 10th and we’re gearing up for as much as 20 (TWENTY!) inches of snow overnight. I thought we were done worrying about plowing our driveway and heavy winter coats and the dogs tracking salty slush all over the floors but apparently winter is not done with us. Minnesota needs a junkpunch.

In related news, Zack is out of town for work and due home late tonight. Which of course won’t happen if flights are canceled because of the snow storm, so solo parenting could continue for another day. Really, it’s not so bad and he’s only been gone one full night but MAN. Nora and I just got back from a road trip to Illinois for my best friend’s baby shower so really I’ve been solo parenting with only a tiny break since last Thursday. Despite being super helpful, my mom is still grandma, not co-parent, you know? I am ready for our regular two-parent life to resume for awhile.

Can we talk for a second about road tripping with a baby? Because I’ve done it a couple of times now, twice by myself, and let me tell you, it’s not for the faint of heart. Nora is great for the first three hours; she sleeps for two, amuses herself or is willing to be amused for approximately 45 minutes, spends 15 minutes ramping up and then all hell breaks loose. There’s no reasoning with a seven-month-old and my singing the same four songs on loop at the top of my voice only goes so far. Suffice it to say that we arrived at both ends of our trip sweaty and frazzled. I did find it helpful to crack a window so we had some cool, fresh air and white noise going in the car, but it still took her 30+ minutes to cry herself out which, in a tiny Mazda3 with her mouth very close to my ears, was achingly loud. Road trips seem to be much more successful when there’s someone to ride in the backseat for infant soothing/entertaining purposes.

As a child of divorced parents who live multiple states apart, I am something of a road trip professional. My siblings and I use the bathroom before we head out and then only stop when we absolutely have to. We don’t mess around. It’s kind of a point of pride in our family that we plow through car trips like our destination is going to disappear if we don’t reach it fast enough, so you can imagine how it KILLS ME that I can’t breeze through the six hour trip to my mom’s without stopping four times. Ah, well. At least she’s cute I guess.

Let’s Talk About Boobs!

These days the girls are hard at work feeding my kid. I sort of expected – here we go, Austin and her EXPECTATIONS again – that breast feeding would be hard or weird and sometimes it is. Mostly it’s weird when you find yourself in a bar for a meeting about a volunteer bike ride you are involved with and you have to bring your baby because your husband’s out of town and then you realize your baby wants to nurse and hmmm. People are already looking at you like you’re carrying around a stink bomb (maybe you are, she did have kind of a lot for dinner) so you go out to your car to nurse and some guy with large-gage (is that what they’re called?) earrings and a neck tattoo comes out and TOTALLY sees what you are doing in there and then pretends not to see so now you’re embarrassed sitting in your own damn car. Or maybe that’s just me.

On the whole, I feed my daughter when she needs to be fed and sometimes that means whipping a boob out in public and other times it means excusing us to the car. It makes me more comfortable to get a read on my surroundings and proceed accordingly. My father-in-law, bless his heart, has been a total champ about the whole thing (he was probably the person I was most embarrassed about seeing me at first and now I feed Nora with him in the room almost like it’s nothing and he is cool with it). The days of calling Zack over to stand in front of us with a blanket held up like a curtain are over; I’ve never been good at being discreet about the whole get-boob-out-and-into-her-mouth thing and Nora runs so dang hot that covering us up is pretty close to child abuse in my book. I usually wear a tank top layered under another shirt so I can pull the top shirt up, pop out the boob, and sort of cover the top part of my boob with the shirt, while the tank top keeps my stomach from hanging out all naked. I’ve been told that it just looks like I’m holding Nora when I’m feeding her but maybe that lady and my mom were just being nice.

While I don’t get the warm fuzzies in the traditional sense about breast feeding I got a reality check about my feelings a few weeks ago. I was having some symptoms of thrush, one of them being a lowered supply, and had worked myself into a ridiculous state about it. I spent a whole afternoon on the phone with various doctors and a Le Leche League leader (I even tweeted to Nancy Holtzman about it) who all basically said “It COULD be thrush even though you don’t have the usual markers…”  So by the end of the day I had pretty much decided Nora and I not only HAD thrush but WE WOULD SURELY PERISH FROM IT.

I’m sure you can sense where this is heading, yes?

We did not have thrush. I was just welcoming back my monthly cycle in a way my body had never experienced it before. None of my regular symptoms happened and a bunch of symptoms I’d heard other women go through happened instead, so I was not even remotely aware that this could be what was going on. Anyway, my supply dip righted itself after a day or two and my other symptoms went away as those things do when you are a totally normal, non-thrush-having woman with a period. Good Christ. But while I thought my supply was just dwindling and possibly never going to return there were some tears about the possibility of having to wean Nora before either of us were emotionally ready. And right now we’re not. While I don’t wax poetic about breast feeding I realized that it is a bonding experience for Nora and I, and a connection I really value. I LIKE that only I can do this for her and that overall it’s been a positive, relatively easy experience for us.

Which brings me to my last point, which is that being able to nurse at night is both a blessing and a curse. It’s wonderful because if your baby is in your room (or, uh, in your bed. Which Nora is) and within arm’s reach you don’t even have to get up for those pesky night wakings. I only fully wake to sit up and change Nora’s diapers at night these days. HOWEVER, about six weeks ago when Nora had a viral respiratory infection and a double ear infection homegirl decided night nursing was the best! thing! ever! And has since insisted that she be nursed to sleep every goddamn time she wakes up. I can get her to nap without nursing (though it’s nowhere near as easy or peaceful as giving the lady a boob) but there is something that happens at nighttime and my pleasant, reasonable baby is transformed into a yowly, impatient little thing that DEMANDS A BOOB. With her waking up 5+ times a night EVERY NIGHT it’s hard for me to deny her the thing that is going to make her go immediately back to sleep and allow ME to immediately go back to sleep. [Sidebar: I need to just do another post about sleep. I have lots to say on the matter, most of it is of the complainy variety.]

Night nursing: so convenient! So addictive! It’s…going to be really, really hard to quit, isn’t it? Shhh, don’t tell me. Let’s just hold each other and you can tell me everything is going to be okay and that my child won’t want to nurse when she’s heading off to college. We’ll keep the dream alive.

My Experience As A Stay-At-Home Mom, Six Months In

Before we had Nora I had a serious decision to make – whether to return to work (I’d have to get a new job, as there was NO WAY we could make my being a flight attendant work with a baby – nor did I have any desire to remain at that job) or be a stay-at-home parent.

That parenting is transformative is surely not a revelation (or a truth) exclusive to me, as I imagine motherhood – parenthood – changes people in huge and unexpected ways. But I can only speak to my experience, which has been resoundingly positive so far.

I’ve not worked full-time for a couple of years now, since before I even got pregnant, because of some issues at the company where I technically held a full-time position. I worked very part-time but was on call most of the rest of the time so I couldn’t even get a second part-time job. I was so bored with housework that it made me question whether being a SAHM was the right choice for me. I didn’t want to spend my life being bored and frustrated, tied to the house and responsible for all the chores I hated doing.

I also struggled with an idea of feminism that at one time had made a lot of sense to me but as time went on, made less sense and caused more guilt. Would I be setting an anti-feminist example for my daughter by giving up my job and income, being fully financially dependent on her father? Or does feminism mean – should it mean – that women have a choice about what we do with our lives and are not just expected to stay home and take care of the children? At the end of the day I discovered that it didn’t matter what feminism meant to other women; to me it meant being able to make my own decisions and it meant my husband not having the expectation that I would automatically stay home with babies. It was a conversation we had over and over, and continue to have, to make sure that it makes sense for us, that I’m still happy to stay home and he’s still comfortable being our family’s sole provider (which is a role I think often gets overlooked in the conversation about SAH-parenthood; it’s a big burden to have on one person’s shoulders these days and Zack wears the burden with exceptional grace).  I’ve known as long as I can remember that I want to have a family and be home with my kids when they are small. I’ve never been passionate about a job or the idea of a career. I decided not to give up on my dream of being a SAHM and I am so glad I didn’t. 

As it turns out, I still hate doing the dishes and I let the laundry pile up until Zack or I are down to our last pair of clean underwear. I am endlessly trying to stay on top of the pet hair situation in our house. Zack and I go back and forth almost every night about what to have for dinner because by the evening we are both so done making decisions. But I do all the things I would rather not have to do because being home with our baby is so awesome. I’m grateful every single day that my husband has a job that is able to provide enough income for me to stay home. I’m thankful that I have been there for every milestone our daughter has reached and when I leave Nora it is always on my terms. Don’t even get me started on how thankful I am that I don’t have to pump breast milk every day, many times a day. The women who do that are straight up heroes in my book; pumping sucks.

Anyway, since Nora came into our lives my life has made so much more sense. Finally, this mom gig has given me a purpose that no other job has ever even hinted at offering me. The passion I feel for my child is incredible; much different than I ever imagined, and much more powerful. I am GOOD at being a mom, at being Nora’s mom, and I’m confident in myself as a mother. It’s inherent, as natural as breathing in and out, and I didn’t expect it to be. 

I expected to spend at least one day a week totally exasperated with being home and going through our mundane routine. I expected to be tired of silly songs with hand motions and dirty diapers and somebody always touching me, crying for me, the endless need. I expected to want to hand Nora off every evening as soon as Zack got home and sometimes escape to the closet to cry and eat ice cream in private and with NO ONE TOUCHING ME. I expected to run out of patience every day. I just hoped that the good would mostly outweigh the bad.

Generally when Zack arrives home I hand Nora over to him, but not because I need a break (though that does happen). I give her to him because they only get a short time in the evenings to be together before Nora’s bedtime. I usually sit with them while they smile at each other and I recount whatever new and wonderful things Nora has done that day. She makes us both laugh. My patience is slower to run out than it has ever been. I have never been called a patient person, yet somehow I’ve found a way to be that for my daughter. It’s just amazing.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to pretend like we haven’t had our struggles since Nora’s birth. Those early weeks were filled with trying to decipher exactly WHY our baby was in such gastrointestinal distress until she was diagnosed with reflux and put on Zantac. There was an element to her stomach problems that only time helped as her system figured itself out and matured a bit. I cut A LOT of foods out of my diet as we tried to figure out if anything I was eating was a source of the problem and we finally narrowed it down to a couple of (beloved) food items that I had to avoid for six months. Now that her stomach is normal and she’s outgrown the reflux we are struggling with sleep. I am up usually more than five times a night with a kid who just. won’t. self. soothe. She just doesn’t get it and I am mostly too lazy to sleep train her. Sleep training means I lose so much more sleep in the short-term and right now I can’t bear that thought. We co-sleep and we’ve mastered side-lying nursing (a genius invention) and while my sleep is very broken I seem to function fine most days even without a nap. We are making it work.

Being a parent has its obvious ups and downs but for me the ups far, far outweigh the downs. Being a mom has allowed me to grow and change in ways that I never thought possible. Every day I get to wake up and hang out with the coolest person I know. I get to be there as she grows and learns and with every forward step she helps me grow and learn, too. I look on while my husband sings to our daughter or volunteers to change a poopy diaper and I love him even more now that he’s her dad (he’s such a good dad). 

I guess what I’m saying is that as far as jobs go it’s not perfect but it’s pretty damn close.

 

Nora

Well, she’s here!

Nora Brooke was born on September 9 at 10:16PM. She weighed 9 pounds 10 ounces and was 21 1/2 inches long. We are, obviously, in love

If you’re wondering whether I was induced, the answer is yes. By my 40 week appointment there was still no real change in my cervix and I wasn’t having contractions regularly despite trying EVERYTHING in my power (and I do mean even some unsavory, but safe, measures) to get things started. At this point it was time to have a serious discussion with our doctor about induction and the risks if we decided to wait (I’d been leaning toward waiting another week going into this appointment). After listening to the facts and possibilities it was clear to us that it was probably time to get her out, much as I’d wanted to go into labor naturally and try for an all-natural delivery (HA! Oh, I was so naive). Even though induction meant an increased risk in c-section based on the statistics, we knew that large babies run in both our families (Zack was over 10lbs. at birth and I have several siblings who were over 10lbs, one was over 11lbs.!) we knew that her size could mean a c-section if she was in there getting too big. We were also not very comfortable with the idea that my placenta could deteriorate as time passed, as well as her umbilical cord.

I was admitted to the hospital on the evening of September 8 and the plan was to spend the night receiving some cervical ripening medication so that my body would hopefully be more amenable to the induction process that would begin the next morning with the administration of Pitocin. I was still resistant to the idea of receiving Pitocin and hoped I could walk myself into labor after my cervix was more ready. At 3:20 in the morning, after two doses of the cervical meds, I rolled over in bed and felt a small gush – my water had broken! I quickly woke Zack to call for the nurse (he says I was kind of frantic and maybe I was, but I felt excited and not too scared). I was so glad my water had broken on its own – one less intervention I’d need to receive in this process.

After my water broke my contractions started coming FAST – they were less than two minutes apart, but I was only 2cm dilated and they were still light enough that I could talk easily through the discomfort. It seems when my water broke it released natural prostaglandins, which is what I’d been receiving through the medication for a couple of hours by that time. My body was overloaded with hormones telling my cervix to hurry up and get going, which was what caused my contractions to come faster than the ideal two or more minutes apart at that stage of dilation. A couple hours later the baby’s heart rate began to dip. They first gave me IV fluids to try to flush some of the hormones from my system and, when that didn’t work, I was given more medication to slow my contractions to protect the baby and allow me to rest. I’d been hoping to avoid Pitocin and thus avoid having an IV (I have a severe needle phobia!) but sadly that was not to be.

Around 8:30 in the morning, after a little more sleep for Zack and I, I was allowed to order breakfast and take a glorious, glorious shower. My God, the birthing process is full of leaking fluids and gross smells – that’s something they don’t tell you in the books. I felt so much better after a shower! After breakfast our nurse agreed to let me walk for 45 minutes to try and get my contractions to start up again on their own before the dreaded Pitocin. Remember, because my water had already broken we had a bit of a clock running due to the heightened risk of infection for the baby and I. In addition to that, they don’t like to have you off the baby monitor for too long during an induction because they are giving you medications that affect the baby and they need to keep tabs on what’s going on in there (I was unhooked for my Maternity Ward stroll). I found the constant monitoring to be very annoying – try getting up to pee every 15-45 minutes and needing a parade of people to help hold the wires and tubes out of your way. I must have apologized to our nurse at least eleventy billion times for calling her back AGAIN to help me go pee AGAIN. She was very nice about the whole thing and I felt less bad when she told me that I was her only patient.

The walking felt nice but it didn’t work. Around 11:00 we began the Pitocin drip.

My memory starts to get a little fuzzier at this point in the story. After we started the Pitocin I tried to rest and enjoy our visitors (our parents and siblings came to the hospital intermittently until it was GO TIME!, then they hovered in anticipation of her arrival). I very graciously allowed Zack to have the Vikings game on as background noise despite the fact that he brought fucking stinky-ass Cool Ranch Doritos into my presence during labor. (I made him brush his teeth after that one). Over a couple hours the ramped up the Pitocin a couple times and contractions started to really HURT around 1:30-2pm.

In our birth plan, the plan we wrote blissfully unaware that I’d end up needing to be induced and on Pitocin, I’d asked that I not be offered pain medication. If I decided to get an epidural that was fine but I wanted to hold out as long as possible and I knew I’d cave at the first offering. After hearing some horror stories about how long it can take to receive an epidural after asking for it, we amended our request to include that the hospital staff let us know if they knew the anesthesiologist would be unavailable and at 2:15 they told us he would be entering a surgery at 3:00 and unavailable for an indeterminate amount of time. By that time my Pitocin had been upped three times and I was in a lot of pain. My contractions were coming pretty fast, too, and I was dilated to about 3 1/2cm. Zack and I asked for a moment alone to discuss our options and I admitted that I felt like it was time for the epidural. I was worried about how much pain I was in relative to how dilated I was and I knew that we could have hours and hours of labor ahead, not to mention the pushing, which often takes hours for first time moms. Zack agreed that it seemed like a good idea for me to do whatever it took to get some rest and conserve energy, so we requested the epidural.

You guys, I do not know how women do this without an epidural. My experience was very positive. The administration didn’t hurt at all and I felt almost immediate relief from the pain. I wasn’t totally immobile as I’d expected to be; I could wiggle my toes and flip myself from side to side, though I was no longer allowed out of bed. I was able to sleep and enjoy visiting with our family and the happy anticipation that comes with knowing you’re about to meet your baby after so many months of waiting and hoping.

Eventually our family went home to let me rest some more. Around 6:30 I was checked and the nurse declared me dilated to a 7 1/2! We’d expected it to take hours and hours but it seemed that my body, once I stopped subconsciously fighting the contractions, wanted to kick the party into gear! The nurse advised us to call our families back if they wanted to see me before delivery so everyone hurried back to the hospital (good thing we live five minutes away and everyone was close!). By the time they arrived I was in VERY intense pain again; the pressure of the baby’s head dropping was worse than my worst contractions before the epidural. I was crying and writhing and feeling pretty panicked that I was in so much pain and I’d already received the epidural – what else could they do for me?! I was convinced the answer was nothing. When the doctor came in to check on me and found me in such distress she immediately called the anesthesiologist back. He asked me some questions about where I was feeling the pressure exactly and how bad my pain was, then he administered some medication into my catheter (no needle prick necessary!) I got some relief and Nora was almost named Travis after that lovely man.

I slept a bit more after my surge of numbing medication. My legs were dead at this point, which was the oddest sensation. A little while later, around 8:30 maybe, the doctor came in, checked me, and proclaimed me dilated to 9 1/2 and almost 100% effaced, save for a small “lip” of cervix. She had me push a few times while she moved my cervix, then said I was fully dilated and effaced, but she wanted me to “labor down” for about 45 minutes. This is where the mother basically hangs out and lets the contractions continue to move the baby down without pushing, which conserves her energy and allows for a shorter, easier time pushing. I spent that time excitedly talking with our family and in total awe that we were finally about to meet our daughter.

Around 9:30 the nurse arrived and it was time to say good-bye to our family. Our room had been transformed into a little mini-nursery for the baby and my bed was now a delivery table with stirrups. Zack and our nurse put my legs in the stirrups because they were still pretty numb. I was feeling a little sleepy despite my excitement and I knew I needed to get this over with before I lost all my energy – it had been a long, emotional day.

After 36 minutes of pushing Nora was born! Her shoulder got stuck for a minute on the way out but the doctor was able to free it without incident and it didn’t cause any lasting problems. I had some 2nd degree tearing and needed stitches but for a 9lb. 10oz. baby that seems pretty reasonable – I was happy to have not needed an episiotomy. Once the medical staff finished their business we enjoyed a little time alone with our new daughter before we invited family into the room to meet her.

She’s amazing, you guys. I can’t wait to tell you more about her.

Home Stretch

Well, here I am, 39 weeks 5 days pregnant, and there’s no sign that this kid is preparing to exit my body. For the past three weeks the doctor has given me the same news upon checking my cervix: 50% effaced, no dilation, head down but not engaged in my pelvis. I know that not every woman dilates before she goes into labor but it is really discouraging to hear that there’s been no change in three weeks. Three weeks, mind you, that I’ve been taking Evening Primrose Oil, drinking Raspberry Leaf Tea, walking and rolling around on a yoga ball to try and get things moving along. I even spent Saturday pulling weeds in the garden, which I was hoping would open up my pelvis and make it easy for a certain someone to lock her head in. No luck.

Arlo doesn’t mind cuddling up to the belly a bit longer

I did have three timeable contractions on Saturday morning. They weren’t painful so I was pretty sure they weren’t going to lead to real labor but it was exciting to finally feel something happening! And it really motivated Zack and I, who’d been enjoying a lazy morning, to kick it into gear and get some stuff done around the house just in case it was Baby Time!

Surprisingly, it’s not so much that I am REALLY DONE being pregnant, which seems to be how many women feel at this point, that is making me anxious to get this show on the road. It’s that I am over anticipating labor and delivery. Not having any idea when I might go into labor is no longer a fun thing to think about and guess at – it is really beginning to stress me out! In part because I don’t know what to expect of myself and my body, but also because the thought of having to be induced if labor doesn’t happen on its own causes me some pretty severe anxiety. I’ve read so much about the increased odds of a c-section when a woman is induced and I DO NOT want a c-section if it’s at all avoidable.

I finished a short-term temporary office job last week and while it was a really good experience, I am thankful to be done working and to have these last couple days, weeks, whatever, to be able to finish preparing for Baby’s arrival. Today I finished sorting and laundering the hand-me-down clothes we’ve received and with the exception of a couple small things, baby prep is pretty much complete. I’m also pretty focused on trying to keep my house clean for after we bring her home from the hospital and have a stream of visitors who want to meet her…I’m guessing we won’t feel much like cleaning then! I would really love it if I’d stop finding the cats chilling in the Pack-n-Play the baby is going to sleep in at first in our bedroom. I’m guessing it’s pretty comfortable since I am constantly chasing one of them out of there!

Sappho would like to know why there was no mint on her pillow?

So, now that the end is [somewhat] in sight, here are my stats:

Weight gain: +23 lbs. Still all seems to be in the boobs and belly.

Stretch marks: Yep. Mostly over the lower part of my belly and extending to my sides. I’ve been smearing Vitamin E oil and Palmer’s Stretch Mark Reducing lotion on my skin for months, but this is something doctors and research say pretty much happens regardless if it’s in your genes. Bummer.

Most bothersome symptoms: Carpal tunnel in both hands; swelling in the feet, ankles and calves (SO MUCH SWELLING OMG); back paaaaaain (finally starting to strain the ol’ back with all the added weight in the front); peeing every 60-90 minutes or so at night; occasional insomnia.

Funniest thing about pregnancy so far: Well, pregnancy is just sort of weird and funny in general, but I am constantly amused by the fact that my belly button now resides slightly to the left of center on my stomach. I do have the linea nigra, or dark line, bisecting my belly from ribs to groin, but my belly button is too far to the left of center for the line to touch! My innie is also a slight outtie at the moment, though not a super prominent one.

My doctor has scheduled us an induction date, September 6, if I don’t go into labor on my own before then. She thinks it might help me relax and get my body going on its own to have an end date in sight, but so far I think the idea of induction being on the table as an absolute is stressing me out more than helping me calm down. If labor still doesn’t seem imminent at my 40 week appointment on 9/5 and the baby is doing well being stubborn and refusing to greet the world, I might decide to put off induction another week. Zack is pretty much on board with whatever I feel most comfortable with and I feel lucky to have such a supportive partner in all this craziness.

Here’s hoping I have some news to report in the next few days – I sure would love to tell you that she decided to come on her own!

 

Changing My Health (And My Attitude)

I am a big girl. I’ve never been skinny or scrawny and unless I am throwing up my toenails I’m hungry at regular, maybe-too-close-together intervals. I don’t eat dainty portions and I almost never order salad at restaurants. I stopped playing sports when I entered high school but I was never overweight until college, when I discovered that I really enjoy beer and that Alfano’s delivered delicious pizza even at 4am to drunk college kids. I gained about 25 lbs. in college but I couldn’t admit to myself that I was making some pretty unhealthy choices.

Something that took me a long time to realize about myself is that I look to what and how much other people are eating and make those decisions for myself accordingly. If we are together and you want McDonald’s, great! But if you prefer a healthy homemade vegetarian meal I am up for that, too. Not to make any of you who know me in real life self-conscious, but I am always aware of people’s food and portion choices. I am more willing to load myself to the gills with spaghetti if you are serving yourself a generous portion. I’ll take that second (or third, or fourth) piece of bread at a dinner party if the other women are helping themselves to multiple servings, too.

When I moved in with my now-husband after college I began to eat portion sizes that were much more appropriate for a man’s body (not to be sexist, but men do require larger portions than women because of body size differences). I don’t say any of this to absolve myself of the responsibility of what I put in my body, because I don’t feel like it does or should. I am responsible for my food choices. It’s just easy for me to allow myself things I shouldn’t (and don’t need) when other people are allowing themselves first – I feel like it gives me permission. Does that make sense?

Since leaving college I’ve gained about another 25 lbs. and a pretty dysfunctional attitude about my body (and food). To be honest, the attitude has been in the works as long as I can remember.

I know I began this pregnancy overweight – not just heavier than I wanted to be for my self-esteem, but heavier than I wanted to be for my health. I figured I was going to gain a bunch of weight when I got pregnant anyway, so why bother trying to lose it before? I would make the effort to lose the weight all at once, after the baby came.

I’m telling you all of this because pregnancy has really begun to shift the way I feel about my body and how I think about body-image issues in general.

Pregnancy has surprised me. I feel very good about myself, generally speaking. My weight gain was almost non-existent until the third trimester, and at my last doctor appointment I’d gained about 10 lbs. so far (I’m not positive of my pre-pregnancy weight so that’s a best-guess estimate). All of the noticeable gain has been in my boobs, which are quite impressive these days, and my belly. My mom and Zack swear that I’ve even slimmed down through the hips and butt. I feel proud of my body until I see photos like this one:

When I look at this photo (taken Saturday as I learned to drive my in-law’s new boat) all I can see is that flabby arm and back roll and the maybe-beginnings of a double chin. I don’t feel chubby anymore, so it’s a shock to see that I still am. And then it bums me out that I’m not as thin as I feel which, believe me, I know sounds weird coming from a lady who’s popping a kid out in approximately five-and-a-half weeks (!). I think because my stomach feels so tight and UNflabby after it being, ahem, not unflabby before the baby bump, it’s lulled me into a false sense of fitness. I don’t even see the chub when I look in the mirror, only in photos. I have to say, it has been quite a nice vacation from my norm to feel good about how my body looks (and that’s nothing compared to how impressed I am with the work my body is doing, which I could fill a whole separate post about! Women’s bodies are so fucking cool, you guys. It’s more than a shame that our bodies are judged so harshly and trash talked so much).

After this baby comes, I want to lose the pregnancy weight and then some, because I want to be healthy and I want to be happy with my body FOR ME. But since we found out at 14 weeks that we’re going to have a girl, there is another reason I want to be happy with myself: I never want my daughter to hear me say things like “I am so fat” or “I hate my body” or “I look disgusting.” I don’t want her to see me squinting at myself with disdain in every photo and I don’t want to hate every picture of myself because now pictures of me are a documentation of her life, too. I don’t want her to witness me on a constant dieting loop or to think that the only thing routine about exercise is how often I begin a new one and abandon it. I want her to grow up with a healthy attitude about food and about her body. I don’t ever want her to look at herself and think she’s ugly or not good enough for any reason, but especially not because of her body and ESPECIALLY not because she has learned that type of self-hate from me.

It is hard to lie to someone you live with. In fact, it’s damn near impossible. If I hate how I look, my daughter will know. It will leak out no matter how carefully I try to hide it. If I overindulge every day she will think it is healthy and fine to do so. She will have a harder time making exercise a regular part of her life if her parents don’t model that behavior.

Our daughters will spend their lives hearing from other people that they are not good enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough just like we do. It is our job as mothers to make them know that they ARE good enough, in every way, and to give them the tools to love themselves. If I can spare my daughter even one moment of self-doubt or self-hate by learning to love myself, then it will be worth all the struggle to get there.

After I have this baby I am going to make the effort to lose weight and get healthy. But if I don’t slim down to my pre-college weight that’s okay. My effort to get healthy – in body and attitude – is going to start now, with trying to love my body as it is right this second, for the incredible work it is doing. It is possible to be large AND beautiful, and I am. I am going to work on loving myself at every size and I’m going to teach my daughter that her self-worth isn’t tied to the number in her jeans – no woman’s is.

 

 

Decisions, Decisions

Good news! My blood pressure has come way down and I am off bed rest. What a huge relief! Two and a half days was more than enough to make me realize that I need to do everything in my power to prevent the doctor from putting me on any more bed rest. I really need to stay active for the duration of this pregnancy, as much for my mental and emotional health as for the physical benefits. While I don’t do a ton of traditional exercise, I am very active; I walk a lot at the airport, I mow and garden about once a week for a couple hours, and I do the majority of the regular household upkeep. I’d love to take more walks through our neighborhood but with the heat and humidity, plus my propensity for swelling, we’ve put that on the back burner at least until I am done flying.

Now that we’re down to just eight weeks before my due date (!!!!) we’re beginning to get into crunch time for some decisions about what we want out of the birth experience and immediately afterward. Here are a couple things we know for sure:

We want it to be just Zack and I (and any necessary medical personnel) in the room for the actual birth.

We’d like at least an hour or two to ourselves immediately following the birth, with both of us having skin-to-skin time with the baby for optimal bonding. Luckily our parents all seem to understand this, which I was nervous about. Everyone’s excited to meet her!

I’d like to go as long as possible without pain medication, but I don’t have a problem getting an epidural if I feel like the pain is too intense or if labor is so long that my doctor thinks I would benefit from getting one in order for me to be able to rest and recoup some energy for pushing.

I don’t want an IV port put in unless I am receiving something intravenously. It’s routine for them to insert a port when you check in even if you don’t immediately need any IV medications or fluids. The idea is that if there’s an emergency they have an easy access point in place. However, I have a huge amount of anxiety about needles, particularly if they stay in the vein (like having your blood drawn as opposed to getting a shot) and I can’t imagine it would be easy for me to forget about that. People have told me I’ll be so wrapped up in labor pains that I won’t notice the needle, but my thought is why add to my anxiety during an already stressful time if it’s not completely necessary? I still need to talk with my doctor about this but ultimately I have the right to refuse the IV port…it IS my body, after all. If there’s an emergency I imagine at that point I will be less worried about my phobia and more concerned with whatever’s wrong.

If everything goes well and we have a normal vaginal delivery Zack would like to “catch” the baby as she is born. We both like the idea of him being the first to touch her on the outside of the womb. Our doctor is on board with this as long as everything about the delivery is text book.

There are some things we have yet to make a firm decision about, but are considering:

Placenta encapsulation: To eat or not to eat? While there are no official studies on the benefits of a mother ingesting her placenta after birth, it is a Traditional Chinese Medicine practice dating back thousands of years. Many women today swear by the benefits and since there are no risks if the placenta is prepared correctly, why not? The potential benefits include staving off post-partum depression, stopping or slowing after-birth bleeding, increasing milk supply, and supplying mom with a whole bunch of vitamins and nutrients lost during labor and delivery. Plus the gross factor is helped considerably by the fact that you’re swallowing the placenta in pill form after it’s been dehydrated and crushed to fit into the capsules – no raw consumption for this lady. At this point our biggest obstacle is going to be cost (it’s around $250 to have someone come to your house and do the encapsulation). There are lots of places on the Internet that could show us how to do the encapsulation ourselves but I’ll admit to being skeeved out by that and, if I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t get it done if I try to do it myself. I imagine we’ll be pretty preoccupied in those first couple of days! We also need to investigate whether our hospital will allow us to take home my placenta, since it is considered biological waste.

We have to find a pediatrician. Which I keep forgetting about and then panicking when I remember but I’m always somewhere dumb like in the car or on an airplane or at a party and I can’t do anything about the fact that I remembered again. And then I forget. Again. You see how this is a problem.

We’d really like to donate our baby’s cord blood. Banking is just too expensive for us and after doing some research and talking to our doctor about it, we learned that even if this kid ends up with an illness where she could potentially benefit from a cord blood infusion, it’s unlikely she’d be able to use her own anyway. My doctor even went so far as to say that she thinks it’s preying on parents’ emotions and desire to do what’s best for their child to have the constant influx of BANK YOUR BABY’S CORD BLOOD (!!!!!) commercials and literature thrown at them. Every time I shop at Motherhood Maternity I get (ANOTHER) brochure for cord blood banking and I’ve received numerous emails from babycenter.com about it – and that’s not even counting all the other places I see the ads. Anyway, we learned that while banking is costly and not likely to be very useful long-term, you can donate your baby’s cord blood for free and it will go to some other person who can benefit from its use. We figured that, karmically speaking, that was a really good idea. However, it seems that Red Cross doesn’t do cord blood pick ups/donations at our hospital anymore, which brings me to my next point…

…When to cut the umbilical cord? There’s a lot of controversy surrounding this topic but to me it makes sense to wait until the cord stops pulsing to cut it (this wouldn’t be possible if we were going to donate her cord blood, since they would need to clamp the cord immediately to collect the blood). By waiting at least the baby will receive as much of the oxygen-rich stuff as possible, which can help prevent anemia and continues to provide some nutrients to her after a pretty big physical trauma! Plus another positive is that by waiting and not clamping/cutting the cord right away it can help slow my blood loss. Wins all around!

Clearly we still have lots to do in preparation for this kid! I can’t believe we are down to the last two months before she’ll be a real live person on the outside. I guess I better focus on accomplishing another task that I’ve already got pretty planned out: finishing the nursery!

Under Pressure

Greetings from my couch! Where I am about ready to drive the TV remote through my skull from boredom.

I’m on day two of doctor-ordered bed rest and man, it really sucks.

I flew home to Illinois for my baby shower on Friday evening and by the end of my shower early Saturday afternoon my feet and ankles looked like sausages about to burst out of their casing, I had one toe instead of five at the end of each foot, and there was some nasty pitting going on in my ankles (pitting is when you swell and push on the swollen body part and it leaves an indent; your skin should pop back up immediately after you remove the pressure and you shouldn’t be able to see where you’d just pushed).

My mom and my stepsister are both in the medical field and insisted that I encouraged me to call my after-hours care line and make sure I didn’t need to go to the ER. After a lengthy conversation with the nurse we determined that I needed to keep my feet up and drink lots of water. My blood pressure has always been on the low side, around 110/60, but since my 28 week appointment it’s been trending slightly upward, which the nurse wasn’t thrilled with, but she said I’d be okay to fly home the following day. So I did.

By Sunday, after being laid up since 2PM the previous day, my feet were FINALLY looking normal and feeling almost normal. Then the plane ride home went and sent everything to hell. I arrived in Minneapolis nauseous, headache-y, and with swollen, pitting feet. Blurgh.

We called the after-hours nurse line AGAIN and I was told AGAIN to stay off the feet, drink water and take some Tylenol with food. The nausea and headache eventually subsided and the swelling got better as I stayed off my feet. We were also asked to go have my blood pressure taken at Walgreens, where I got a higher reading than I’d had yet, though not what would normally be considered too high. I’ve taken my BP so many times since then I don’t remember what the reading was exactly. The following day I went back to the drugstore, took my BP three more times and received even higher readings, prompting my doctor to put me to bed until my routine office visit tomorrow afternoon.

I am really confused by the ups and downs of my blood pressure. I don’t know what to be worried about other than my very serious desire to not be put on bed rest past Wednesday. I’d also really like to continue working for a couple more weeks so we can utilize my flight benefits a bit longer. I’m having a tough time staying occupied on the couch and not being able to do anything around the house has been KILLING ME. I don’t know if it’s nesting or what, but having a messy kitchen and a cluttered living room and a fur-filled floor is making me crazy. Everyone that lives here who isn’t me works 10+ hours a day and doesn’t really give a crap about cleaning when they finally come home. Understandable, but no less crazy-inducing for me.

All this lying around has given me ample time to hang out with the pets, though.

Ella + Lopsided Baby Belly

Please keep your fingers crossed that the doctor gives me the all clear to get out of bed tomorrow!