Flying High

Someone turned SIX this weekend! And even more excitingly, M. and I FINALLY managed to throw an (semi-) outdoor birthday party that was blessed with nice weather. But let's not make this all about ME and my weather issues, let's focus on the birthday boy, who by all accounts, had a very excellent birthday weekend.

There were presents and friends and cake and hiking and LOTS of angry birds - what more could a boy want?

The theme of Finn's birthday party was, in fact, angry birds. I don't normally "do" themes for parties, but Finn picked out angry bird party invitations (none of which were actually sent out because I ended up e-mailing all the parents instead, owing to the fact that I did not know most of their mailing addresses), and we just kind of ran with it. It helped that a friend of mine at work had recently thrown an angry bird birthday party for HER son, and she gave us some extra decorations that really spiffed the party up.

Plus, those angry birds are pretty darn addictive and fun.

This is Finn's impression of an angry bird.

 

He spent a lot of the day acting silly. And wearing a crown.

His actual birthday AND the party were both on Saturday. We had just a handful of kids and their parents over - nothing too overwhelming for our little townhouse. It felt like exactly the right number of people, and exactly the right amount of planned activities vs. free play time.

Some photos of the house before the onslaught of guests:

Angry Birds birthday banner

The "craft" table

FOOD!

We set up a mini angry bird game, with styrofoam cups decorated as the king pig, and ping pong balls painted to look like the birds.

Aren't they ridiculously cute?

 

Unfortunately, many of them are now eyeless. Next time I'll use superglue.

The goody bags. I did the cutting, and Finn and Lucy did the gluing. And Finn helped me stuff them. It was very much a team effort, and the kids loved helping.

The craft table was set up with some angry bird coloring pages I printed out from the Internet (free!), beads for making necklaces/bracelets, and a little "make-your-own-monster-on-a-popsicle-stick" kit that we got at Michaels.

Only the girls did the crafts. The boys just played with some of Finn's new toys.

Then we brought them out back for a little bouncing. We used a timer, and the two groups of kids (girls and boys - they self sorted. I think there is something to this "gender identity" thing...) took turns alternately bouncing

and playing in our "sand" (actually full of pea gravel) box.

Then there was cake. I didn't go all out and bake Finn's cake myself, unlike the one I did for Lucy's last birthday. M. was out of town most of last week, and I knew better than to get myself in over my head while he was out. Instead, I bought a sheet cake, and then decorated it to look like a scene out of the angry birds game using bird and pig figures I bought from Amazon and Twix bars:

Both kids thought it was awesome, and didn't care at all that it wasn't homemade. In fact, given how they react to most of my baking projects, they probably preferred it because it wasn't.

Finn was all over the singing and blowing out candles bit:

All in all, it was a great time - low key enough that I wasn't too stressed about prepping for it (a little more arts and crafts heavy than I'm used to, but thank god for free online printables because they made things MUCH easier), and fun enough that Finn didn't mention going to a "Pump It Up" or other big box birthday place once.

Then today, after M. left me sleep in until ALMOST 9 (I felt like a teenager again!), we went for a hike at a state park. It was a park we've never really been to, other than to drive through the Christmas lights display they set up every year, so we didn't really know what to expect. We started walking around the lake, which looked deceptively small on the map we were holding (a map that did not have mileage noted, by the way). Three and a half hours later, we finally made it back to the car. Needless to say, there were a lot of hidden coves and elevated areas that really added up. Lucy told us she was tired and wanted to be carried about 30 seconds into the walk, but somehow we kept her on her feet the whole time. We looked up the distance online once we got home, and learned that we had walked 3.7 miles. With a three-year-old. What a trooper!

Since 3.7 miles is a long distance for a 35-year-old to walk, too, I'm tired. So please excuse the lack of captions on the following photos:

Finally, just because I can't let the birthday of a child of mine pass without reflecting back on the day they were born, I leave you with a link back to Finn's "birth story" (air quotes to allow for the fact that it was written about 4 years after he was born, so some facts may have been altered by fautly memory and lack of sleep...). Hope you all had as nice a weekend as we did!

Enter Finn

I started this account of Finn’s birth back in April of 2009, a couple weeks after Lucy was born. I meant to finish it, then write Lucy’s birth story. Instead I wrote neither, and let my memories grow fuzzier, so forgive me if this accounting has some holes. It starts with some meandering that is meant to set the stage, of sorts.

October 12, 2006: A Thursday, and Finn’s due date. This day came and went just like all of the 279 days of my pregnancy that had preceded it, with no indication of impending labor. Sigh. Clearly my little boy was going to be late, but the question was, how late?

October 13, 2006: I had a doctor’s appointment, at which I was disappointed by my apparent lack of progress in anything birth related. I scheduled my next prenatal check-up for October 20th. The doctor and I discussed the idea that if the baby still hadn’t arrived at that point, we would set a date for an induction sometime the next week.

October 17, 2006: Feeling tired physically and mentally (from all those co-workers that kept asking me, every day, “Still here, eh?”), I stayed home from work and had a relaxing day with a nice long nap. This was the last time I would ever feel rested. Ever.

October 18, 2006: A Wednesday. I went to work in the morning, and left early for an ultrasound appointment for a bio physical profile (kind of like a non-stress test that just makes sure the baby is still doing OK). Finn did well and hit all the right milestones during the test. His weight was estimated at 8 pounds, 9 ounces – yikes! As scared as I was of a c-section, I was not looking forward to pushing that out of my girly bits.

Driving home from the appointment, I had what I thought might be my very first Braxton Hicks contraction, a vague tightening of my massive belly. Up until then, I had no detectable contractions; though I’m sure I probably had some that I couldn’t feel. I felt momentarily elated, but the contraction was not repeated (yet).

M. and I went to bed that night, probably sometime around 10:30. As I heard M.’s breathing even out and get deeper, I started having contractions. They were painless and pretty far apart (about 10 minutes or so), but they were distracting enough to keep me from getting any sleep. Wee hours of the morning found me surfing the internet out in the living room, tired of staring at my eyelids and not wanting to disturb M. as I tossed and turned. Don’t think me selfless, my rationale was that at least one of us should be somewhat rested for whatever lay ahead, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.

October 19, 2006: I’d say I woke up, but I don’t recall getting any actual sleep the night before. I still wasn’t sure at this point whether I was in labor or not. I had done plenty of reading online of other women’s birth and labor experiences (you know, the scientist doing her research to be prepared for labor, AS IF THAT’S EVEN POSSIBLE), but still had no clue what I was really supposed to look for. Short of my water bursting all over the place (a scenario I was terrified of, and also prepared for, as I had been perching on waterproof pads on my mattress, on the couch, and in my car for the last few weeks juuust in case), I didn’t know what kind of “signs” to look for. But I had enough foresight to ask M. to work from home that day and avoid his hour-and-a-half (each way) commute into D.C.

The contractions began to grow in intensity – I was starting to feel a little pain. I called my doctor’s office, and went in to get checked at around 10 am. The doctor measured me at about a centimeter and a half – apparently I was making a little progress from my last appointment, but it was slow. She thought it was probably “the real thing,” but that it could take a long time. Her advice was to go home and wait it out until the contractions were 5 minutes apart, 1 minute… etc, the standard stuff. On the way home we stopped for bagels – I remember that I stuck to a plain bagel with plain cream cheese, a rarity for this everything bagel lover. Apparently I was in no mood for flavor.

We wiled away the afternoon, periodically timing contractions, I’m sure, which, though getting very painful, were not getting very regular. I don’t think we went on a walk. It was a gray, humid, sprinkle-y kind of day, not very inspiring of outdoor activity. Plus, the contractions were really doing a number on my back, making walking (and lying down, and sitting) pretty hard to do.

At around 5, I sent M. out to get us some dinner – I figured we needed the energy. While he was out, I hopped in the shower (as much as a hugely pregnant, contracting woman can hop), then spent some time bouncing on my exercise ball. We ate egg salad sandwiches and French fries (the last of my excused-by-pregnancy junk food eating), and caught our last episode of Jeopardy as non-parents. I’m sure I still managed to rock the answers through the pain . Though still a little erratic, by this time the contractions were more clearly a minute long and five minutes or so apart. So at around 8:30 pm, I called the on-call doc to check in with him, and he advised us to head in to the hospital.

I’m sure the car ride to the hospital was painful, but I’ve blocked that memory out. I do know that when we arrived at the there, I was sent to an L&D room without triage – must have been a slow night. I changed into my hospital gown, got checked (4 cm? maybe? Not sure), and got hooked up to all the various monitors/IVs/blood pressure cuffs they like to strap you down with.

I need to stop for a moment here and note that by this time, I was absolutely positive I was having back labor. Every single contraction was like a knife twisting in my back. I have never, ever felt pain like that before or since. It was later established that Finn was, indeed, turned to the side, which undoubtedly made my labor longer and harder. Back labor sucky suck sucks. And I can say that, because I’ve now had the regular kind of labor, and can verify that it is not quite as full of suckitude.

So, yes, strapped down with monitors and such, in back labor, and forced to lie in a bed. At this point, I was not a happy camper (see below).



I begged the nurse to let me get off the bed and walk around, and she promised to come back after the baby had been monitored for an hour to let me up.

And then she promptly forgot about me. For, like, ever.

I remember at one point writhing on my side, clawing at the bed rail and telling M. that I couldn’t do this, that it hurt too much. I cried. I pleaded with him to go find someone, anyone, who could get me out of the frickin’ bed.

He took off down the hall and found someone, I think just in time for a shift change. But it was not exactly the salvation I had hoped for, which I suppose could only have come in the form of the epidural guy. Instead, he found my new nurse.

Oh, how I came to dislike my new nurse. For clarification, I shall call her Evil Nurse.

Evil Nurse did let me walk around for a bit, though it did not provide the relief I had hoped for. I’ll give her that. But in no other way was I happy with her. We disagreed, she and I, about whether I was in labor. This is the crux of why I thought her evil. After 24 hours of contractions and searing pain, I was 100% certain (!) that I was in labor. She, however, looked at the monitors that had been printing out a record of my contractions, and told me that I was not really in labor. My contractions weren’t strong enough, or regular enough. She didn’t check me to see if I had dilated more. She didn’t wonder whether the contractions weren’t registering well on the monitor because the monitor was on my BELLY, and the contractions were in my BACK. She just declared me “not in labor.”

October 20, 2010: Sometime after midnight, I begged for an epidural (hmm, notice how many times I’ve used the word “beg” or “plead” in this narrative?) so I could get some rest. So my body could relax and finish doing what it needed to do. Evil Nurse did not want to give me one. She even made vague noises about sending me home. She tried to give me a shot of narcotic instead, which I refused. I demanded the epidural and the epidural only. She finally called the doctor (I don’t believe he actually came to the hospital that night), and he OK’d the epidural. Good thing he was safe at home, otherwise he would have had a smelly crying sweaty pregnant lady trying to french him.

My anesthesiologist arrived, and as I saw on the hospital bill later, his name was, fittingly, Dr. Paine. He made M. leave the room, and I had to hug Evil Nurse while he administered the epidural. I shivered and felt nauseous and tried not to cry, but somehow managed to not have a contraction during the placement of the catheter. I contemplated throwing up on Evil Nurse, out of spite or necessity, not sure which. But the process was smooth, and in no time I was lying much more comfortably in my bed. Dr. Paine must have hit the sweet spot, because this epidural really, really worked.

From about 2:30 to 5:30 am, I tried to sleep, I really did. But my lower body was so numb and heavy that I was kind of freaked out by it, and kept worrying that I would forget to breathe. I think being pain-free probably also let me finally be a little excited about the fact that I was going to meet my baby soon. M. had no problem sleeping, of course.

At 5:30 the jackhammering started. Hmm, what’s that again? Your hospital didn’t have the dulcet sounds of jackhammering in the wee hours of the morning? You’re jealous that mine did? Or maybe you’re wondering who the frick would think it’s a good idea to jackhammer in the pitch dark and rattle the walls and beds of SICK PEOPLE!! (And angry tired laboring women)! Look, I know hospitals occasionally have to expand, to renovate, whatever. But couldn’t the really loud construction-y stuff happen when people aren’t normally still sleeping?

So I officially got no sleep, for the second night in a row. I was really going to start this motherhood thing with a bang!

There was another shift change at 7 am, and I got a new set of nurses (yay!). I also found out that I was about 7-8 cm dilated (take that, Evil Nurse!!). We were really getting somewhere. I hung out for a while, and eventually the doctor came in to check on me. He broke my water to try and speed up the last bit of progress. At some point, I was given pitocin for the same reason. I was still pleasantly numb, so this was all really just background movement for me.

At 11:30 am, I was deemed “complete,” and told that I could start pushing. M. and the nursing intern that was shadowing my nurse each grabbed a leg, a leg that felt like a block of underwater concrete to me. I was completely unable to move any part of my lower body at all. I felt certain that M. and the intern must have been breaking their backs holding my legs up, so heavy did they feel. The sun was shining, we had Gypsy Kings music playing in the background, and we all joked around in between pushes. I felt no pain – in fact, the nurse had to keep telling me when I was having a contraction, so I’d know when to push. It was the most fun and relaxing part of my entire hospital stay.

Eventually, Finn began having decelerations every time I pushed. I was given oxygen, rolled onto my side a bit more, and an internal monitor was placed on Finn’s head. Things became a bit more serious. The nurse seemed certain that the doctor would recommend a c-section, and she had M. gown up in some scrubs. Because meconium was found in my amniotic fluid, a team from the NICU was assembled “just in case.” I was half resigned to getting a c-section, despite an intense fear of the procedure (Abdomen cut open! Recovery time! Probability of forever having c-sections if we have more babies!). Thankfully, the doctor was a bit less reactionary than that. He let me keep pushing since Finn’s heart rate was recovering in between every push. He did cut me to get him out faster, though. I managed to ask the doctor if the baby had any hair – for some reason it was very important to me that my baby have hair. I think they look more “done” that way. Fully cooked. He seemed puzzled that I asked, but I felt as though this was a perfectly natural question. I was assured that he did, indeed, have hair.

And then finally, at 12:30 pm, Finn William was born!

My predicted giant of a baby weighed in at only 7 lbs 3 oz (love the accuracy of modern medicine). The umbilical cord was wrapped twice around his neck, so M. wasn’t able to cut the cord. This probably also explains why Finn’s heart rate kept decelerating with every push. But he was checked over by the NICU team, and deemed perfectly healthy. Perfectly healthy, and with a crapload of hair (with highlights! WTF!) that all the nurses oohed and aahed over for our entire hospital stay.

I don’t think I have ever recovered from the sleep deficit of those 40 hours of labor. And I am quite positive that I shall throw many of those details back in Finn’s face when he is a teenager and aggravating me. And he will roll his eyes, and blow off all the pain and effort it took me to get him in to this world. As he should. Because who dwells on stuff like that, when they could instead focus on the after? The part where a couple was made a family by the cutest little boy you will ever see. For real.


3 Days Old


8 Months Old

Happy 4th Birthday, Finny!!!! XOXOXOXO

AYear Ago

(Note: Very long post follows. Probably only for the truly dedicated blog readers out there. Consider yourselves warned.)

I never wrote about Lucy’s birth.

I meant to, of course. I love reading other people’s birth stories, and I had every intention of sharing Lucy’s. But blogging right after her birth was hard for me – we were struggling with feeding and jaundice issues, and I didn’t have the time or energy to type it all out right away. As each day passed, the details of her birth grew fuzzier and fuzzier, to the point where I wasn’t even sure I could reconstruct it anymore. Also, so many of my emotions and actions during that her birth day were really a result of my first experience, with Finn’s birth. And so I felt like I couldn’t properly tell Lucy’s story unless I told Finn’s first. I actually sat down on several occasions to type out the story of Finn’s birth, which in some ways I remember better than Lucy’s, even though it happened three and a half years ago. But I didn’t get very far before my momentum was lost and the project was abandoned.

Here we are, though, one year later. My hormones and emotions are calmer, though my memory is no sharper. To mark Lucy’s first birthday, I thought I would share with you what I still remember about the day she was born, make a record of what is left of those memories. Minus (most of) the Finn back story, minus many of the details that have been forgotten along the way, probably minus any sense of coherence.

Admittedly, I will occasionally need to refer to Finn’s birth, to put things in perspective. We start with one such detail. Finn was born on October 20th, 2006. His due date was October 12th, 2006. So, EIGHT DAYS LATE. EIGHT LOOOONG DAYS LATE. Another pertinent detail is that M. and I live alone here in Maryland, with no family around within at least a ~430 mile radius. This was no big deal when Finn was born. Who needs a crowd of family members when one is pushing large things out of not-so-large openings, right? Seems beside the point. However, this presents a much greater problem when one is looking to expel baby number 2. It became clear that if I didn’t want to be abandoned to the mercies of a newborn in a hospital that mandates rooming-in while M. was off “taking care of the eldest child” (aka sleeping),I really needed some family around for the big event.

Said family was identified – my mother. The big question then was, when should Grammy arrive? My due date with Lucy was April 25th. Given my history with Finn, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t go into labor early, or even on time. I didn’t want my mom to sit around for weeks at our house, waiting for me to go into labor, while I carted my large self off to work every day. Not fun for anyone, right? So we arranged that Mom would fly into town on the afternoon of Thursday, April 23rd. A total guessing game, and once her ticket was purchased, I immediately began to panic that I would go into labor early, OF COURSE, because you idiot, second babies always come earlier, that’s just my kind of luck, etc etc.

However, April 23rd arrived, and as planned, the baby (keep in mind, Lucy’s gender was still a surprise to us) was still safely ensconced in my uterus. Now it was time to panic that labor would NEVER begin. That two weeks would go by, Mom would be boarding her plane to go home, and I would STILL BE PREGNANT. Sigh. Aren’t hormones wonderful?

So, the story proceeds. April 24th dawns sunny and warm. I took a planned “sick” day from work (if ever there is a healthy condition that calls for a sick day, it’s being 39 weeks, 6 days pregnant). I spent the morning catching up on e-mails (really only a half of a sick day then, I suppose) and trying to clear work off my plate. Mom spent the morning painting the master bathroom. Weird? Maybe, but she’s a doer, that one. Likes doing projects. I couldn’t trap her at my house for a couple of weeks without giving her something that relates heavily to an HGTV program for her to do. Plus, we had recently done some minor renovations to our bathroom stemming from an emergency tile incident, so it was not a project without purpose.

Once painting and work e-mailing were over, we set off to do what we do best – shopping. Not for baby stuff, that was of course all taken care of thanks to my fascination with organizing and reorganizing the nursery months in advance. No, the shopping was to “accessorize” the master bathroom. We hit Home Goods, a source of many excellent decorating finds for my mother. We found pictures to hang on the walls, vases and candles to display, photo frames (that to this day remain empty), a rug – you name it, we bought it. I believe we also stopped at a few other stores, but memory fails on that issue. All I know is, we returned home exhausted and full of purchases. Then it was time for dinner, some TV watching, and bed.

At around 3 or 4 in the morning, I woke up, per usual. This was my typical time for starting the late pregnancy “toss, turn, pee, repeat” pattern. I noticed some contractions – painless, but a little stronger than the Braxton Hicks I had occasionally been having. Plus, they were happening often enough that I was having a hard time going back to sleep. Rather than wake M. up with my restlessness, I went downstairs and logged on to my work computer. I know, total nerd, right? I even wrote this to Outnumbered Gal, time stamp 4:37 am, April 25, 2009:

It's about 4:30 am here - I'm up because I'm having some contractions. Trying to drink some water and see if they'll go away or not. They are about 5 minutes apart, but they don't seem painful enough to be real so I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm biding my time by uploading crap into EGS and timing my contractions on contractionmaster.com. Lame, I know, but I don't want to wake anyone else up by doing something more interesting...

Anyway, I'll keep you posted :-).

Then I went back upstairs to lie down for a while. Eventually it was time to get up. Details are again a bit fuzzy here, but I’m sure the getting up was spurred by Finn waking up, and somehow I broke the news to M. and Mom that I was having contractions. I was adamant that we carry on per usual, though. And this again takes us back to my labor with Finn. For those of you that don’t know (if I’ve met you in person, I’ve probably already complained about it to you), my labor with him started at around 10 pm on a Wednesday night, and lasted until he was born at 12:30 pm on Friday. NEARLY 40 HOURS. OF BACK LABOR (those of you that have experienced this are shuddering and sympathizing, I know). 24 hours of labor at home, and the rest at the hospital.

The parts of Finn’s birth up until the epidural totally sucked, but especially the hospital parts. So, I was determined not to believe that this was active, progressing labor. It could be DAYS before it was time for me to pop this kid out. No way was I going to sit around and fixate on every contraction, and wonder when it was time to call the doctor or head to the hospital. I mean, good God, it was my due date, everyone knows that less than 5% of babies are born on their due date (at least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me). No way that this was the day. So what did I do with myself in the meantime? I went shopping. Even drove the car myself. I strolled through Target with my mom, pushing Finn in a shopping cart, loading it up with shorts and short-sleeved shirts for him, all the while having contractions. By then, they hurt. Not a lot, not in the “take your breath away” sense, but they did hurt. And they were still coming maybe every 5-10 minutes or so.

We got home with our purchases, and some of our neighbors were outside with their kids. It was a hot, sunny day. So I let Mom drag our bags inside (side note – none of us can remember what M. did that morning while the rest of us shopped at Target – perhaps he just hyperventilated into a bag, at home by himself?), and I let Finn play with his friends while I chatted with the other moms. And contracted.

Time passed, things happened. Those details are gone. But the contractions continued, got a bit closer together, and hurt a little more. I was still convinced that they weren’t hurting enough to be “real labor” (whatever the hell that means). Eventually, it was post nap-time (Finn’s, Mom’s), and we were all out on the deck having a popsicle (Finn’s idea). I finished my popsicle, and decided that the contractions were wearing me out, and it was time to take a bath. That’s supposed to help, right? They always have tubs in the birthing rooms, must be something to it. So I drew a bath and climbed in with one of the trashy gossip rags M. had bought that day for my impending hospital stay. As I read about the certain break up of Brangelina and Tori Spelling’s weight loss, I realized that the contractions were coming much closer together, more like 3-5 minutes apart than 5-7. And they hurt. A lot. I found myself on my knees in the tub, suddenly worrying I was in transition and that I needed to GET THE HELL TO THE HOSPITAL.

I dried myself off, got dressed, and went downstairs to call the doctor. Of course it was my least favorite doctor who was on call (the same thing happened when Finn was born, though it was a different practice). I have no idea what I told him, but he cleared us to head to the hospital. We threw our bags in the car and left the house, and my baby boy, at around 5:45. I saw our neighbors outside again as we got in the car, and managed to exchanged some “Is it time? Not sure, maybe” type of pleasantries. And we were off.

Snapped just before leaving to head to the hospital

As we drove, I gripped the chicken bar and moaned, a lot. I was convinced I was in transition, and that the hospital would refuse to give me an epidural. It was a very, very painful ride. We arrived at the hospital, and M. offered to drop me off at the door so I could go inside. I didn’t think I’d be able to make it down the hallway without him, so I refused and parked the car with him. We walked into the hospital, through the corridors, and into the elevators that would take us up to Labor and Delivery. As we road in the elevator, I couldn’t help crying. Not because of the pain (though it did hurt), and not because I was scared of labor (been there, done that – as long as I could get the epidural, I’d be fine). I cried because Finn would never be an only child again. Because his world was about to change forever. I would never be able to be as involved in his life again as I was the first two and a half years (in hindsight, I see this as a good thing, of course). What the hell was I doing to him? Was it too late to change my mind? Oh yes, I brought the DRAMA into that elevator.

Once inside L&D, I filled out some minor paperwork (why any at all is necessary when you pre- register like a good doobie, as recommended, is beyond me), still dripping tears left and right. I got myself under control by the time a nurse came to fetch me. She asked whether I thought I could go straight to a birthing room, or whether I should be checked in a triage room first. I waffled (momentary doubt about my “I must be in transition” thoughts), but decided to take a chance on the birthing room. This turned out to be a good choice, as once in a Johnny and displaying my wares for everyone to see, it was determined that I was over 8 cm dilated! No wonder those contractions were hurting like a [insert epithet here].

So, transition? Check. Panic that I wouldn’t be able to get an epidural and would be forced to push this baby out in excruciating pain? Check. The first words out of my mouth to the nurses were, “Can I still get an epidural?” And bless their hearts, they said yes. While a bag of IV fluids dripped into me, the nurses gathered all my patient information and I winced through several contractions. Then a tiny little Asian man came in my room to administer the epidural. This process, even though I had been through it once before without any issues, was nerve-wracking for me. They make you sit on the side of the bed and hunch over your belly to lengthen your spine – not a comfortable position for someone who hasn’t seen her feet in months. The entire time, your body is tensed, waiting for the needle/catheter to be inserted, and the simultaneous contraction that will screw everything up and render you paralyzed forever. Or so I imagined.

In all honestly, this time around there were issues. It took a while for the doctor to get the catheter in, and at one point he was literally wailing on my back, pounding on… something. I chose not to imagine what or why. The whole process hurt. But eventually, it was over, and the pain relief began to set in. Well, sort of. It soon became apparent, after the doc adjusted my meds once or twice to little effect, that I was too far into labor for the epidural to do much more than take the edge off of things. But hey, that’s better than nothing, right? Funnily enough, once Lucy was born, the epidural really kicked in, and I was nice and numb where it counted, just a little too late.

So, at this point, I’m lying in bed, resting a little more comfortably. M. is by my side, we’ve called my mom to let her know we were staying/baby was definitely coming, and we had some music playing in the background. For all of 5 minutes, we were somewhat relaxed. Then I felt some strange pressure down there, and (sorry folks, this is where it gets graphic) being the curious girl that I am, I investigated and found something, er, bulging out of me. This was apparently my “bag of waters”. Ew, right? I kind of imagined that my water would break, but apparently that amniotic sac of mine was pretty tough.

I called the nurse’s attention to this alarming development. She may or may not have called the doctor in at this point. This may or may not have been my first time seeing him (honestly can’t remember, as he was such a minor participant in the whole birth experience). Someone broke my water, and I was told to let everyone know if I started to feel a lot of pressure. I still kept waiting for that totally numb feeling to kick in, the one I had during my labor with Finn, so I kind of passed off this whole “pressure” thing as something I wouldn’t feel. I figured eventually they’d check me again, I’d be at a 10, and they’d tell me to start pushing.

But low and behold, about 5 minutes after my water broke, I started to feel crazy amounts of pressure in a “why isn’t the epidural working, this kinda hurts” way. I have no idea if anyone checked me again (probably yes), all I know is suddenly it was time to push. The nurse had me roll from my side to my back, and I started the whole “raise your knees to your chest and count three sets of ten” routine. M. encouraged me as he held up one of my legs, while the nurse alternately typed things on the computer and criticized my pushing technique. Did NOT like her. I could feel what was going on, though it didn’t hurt too much thanks to the epidural, and I could tell that I wasn’t pushing effectively. It just did not feel right. But the nurse was no help at all. She was terrible about noting when I was entering a contraction, didn’t help me try to find a good physical spot to focus on (sometimes a nurse will sort of guide you by using her hand to show you where to push), frequently wasn’t by my side to help hold my legs up, and flat out told me I was doing it wrong. She also told me that I wasn’t pushing right because I was afraid to poop. Good god, if she only knew that I came to terms with labor pooping a long, long time ago, she would have realized it was not holding me back.

After about 30 minutes of frustration, the nurse finally had me roll to my side to try pushing that way. I was glad, as lying on my back in late pregnancy has always been very uncomfortable for me (makes me feel “weird,” there is really no other way to explain it). The position change made all the difference in the world. Within two pushes, I could feel the baby move all the way down. It was crazy! I was told to stop while the nurse called in the rest of the nursing team and the doctor into the room. While we waited, M. and I sort of smiled and chatted, making the kind of small talk that requires absolutely no brain power, knowing we were just a few minutes away from meeting our baby.

In came the doctor, I was put on my back again, and the bottom of the delivery bed was dropped away. It was show time. M. held a leg (as he had been the whole time), and had a front row view of our baby as she crowned.[Side note: I always said my husband would need to stay by my head when our babies were born. Who knew that birth was such an “all hands on deck” experience? For both Finn and Lucy, if M. hadn’t been down there holding a leg, I don’t know if they would have ever come out. With only one nurse in the room with you during most of the labor process, there really is no one else to “hold the other leg.” So, there goes the romance and mystery in our relationship, eh?] The doctor did his best to help ease the baby out, but I still managed to tear over the scar from my episiotomy (ugh) with Finn’s birth. During the process, my water broke again, oddly enough. Two fluid sacs, or something weird like that. The doctor announced that we’d had a baby girl (!), and M. cut the cord.





And… that was it! Birth over. The next few minutes are a blur for me, memory-wise. I think I was in shock that this moment I had been waiting for since August 16, 2008 (the day of the positive HPT) was already over, less than two hours after I had arrived at the hospital. I couldn’t believe I had another baby, I couldn’t believe I had a daughter. I was happy, but quietly so, and there were no tears. Lucy was taken to an isolette right next to my bed for assessment and weighing, while the doctor took out the afterbirth and stitched me up. She really didn’t cry much at all. While the nurses looked her over, M. and I talked about what her name should be. We had arrived at the hospital with a short list of girl names and one boy name. I had been going back and forth a lot on the girl names, and sort of thought to myself, “well, shoot, this would be a whole lot easier if this baby was a boy!” We decided to wait until we could get a good look at her, and put the decision off for a bit.

Lucy was brought over to me, and I got a chance to cuddle her and nurse her a little. Then, while she was given a bath in my room, I called my mom to let her know the news – Baby girl! Born at 8:14 pm! 8 lbs, 5 oz!! And… no name yet.

There was a not-so-fun trek to the bathroom on numb legs for me, a “couldn’t care less because I can’t feel it anyway” catheter experience when my numbness prevented me from actually USING the bathroom, and a few other phone calls to various relatives. Then, while M. and I pondered our name choices, he ran out to get us some food from Chipotle while I waited for the feeling to come back into my legs. I THINK Lucy slept next to my bed, but she may have also been whisked away for some tests at that point.

M. returned, and I had the BEST TASTING black bean burrito ever. It was like I hadn’t eaten in days, and it tasted soooo good. As we ate, we talked it over some more, and finally settled on a name. Lucy Elaine. Lucy because we like it (and it’s short – with a long last name, you really need a short first name), and Elaine because it was the middle name of my Aunt Donna, my dad’s sister whom I was very close to before she died of cancer in 1997.

During this name-deciding effort, my mom texted M. (?? Didn’t even know she could text!) and suggested the name Jennifer Elizabeth; the Jennifer after one of my closest friends, and Elizabeth after her (it’s my mom’s middle name). I called her up to tell her the name we had chosen, and she started crying! And said, “I thought you could use the name I picked out”, clearly disappointed with our name choice. Or so I remember it, anyway. According to one of my sister’s, though, she really started crying because we chose to use Donna’s middle name. Not sure what was really behind the tears, but I will always remember that when I told Mom Lucy’s name, she cried.

At some point, the three of us were moved to a maternity ward room, and we all settled in for the night. The shock of the whole experience was starting to wear off, and I was busy marveling at Lucy, her chubby cheeks and legs (a chubby newborn! Crazy!), her soft dark hair. I was too wired to sleep, though M. dropped off pretty easily. Lucy began making some noise at around midnight or 1, and I had M. bring her to me so I could nurse her (why they make those little isolettes so high off the ground that a post partum, “feeling like a Mack truck just hit between your legs” woman cannot grab the baby herself makes absolutely no sense to me, by the way). While he went back to sleep, she and I became fast friends. We had a wonderful, peaceful night. She latched on like a champ, and ate for at least 20 minutes on each side. Steadily, quietly, without fussing. I thought to myself “How wonderful! I have a good eater; this breastfeeding thing is finally going to work out!” And I held her in my arms the rest of the night, smiling, smelling her and touching her, listening to all those wonderful little new baby noises.



The craziness eventually set in (Jaundice! Supplementing! Painful latch! Threats that Lucy would need to be admitted to the Pediatric ward while I was discharged!) and stayed with us once we left for home. But instead of thinking of those things, the many tears I cried, the countless bili checks, the frustration and eventual end of breastfeeding, I like to think of that first night. When everything was dark and quiet, and my baby girl and I were the only two people in the world.