AS had a rougher first few weeks than I did: more exhaustion, much more nausea. She actually lost about 5 lbs. But it seemed to be clearing up about a month earlier than mind did. She was still very tired, but she could function, and her appetite came back somewhat. She gained a couple of pounds back.

Then this past week, she suffered a relapse. Some of the nausea and all of the exhaustion came back. She sleeps whenever she doesn’t have to be doing something, and the sleep doesn’t do any good. She’s found that ginger candies help keep her from throwing up, but she’s so disappointed that she’s not out of the woods yet.

We nicknamed the lil’ thing “bunny,” but we’ve taken to referring to it by whatever fruit or legume it’s the size of in any give week, usually with “ungrateful” tacked on: ungrateful lentil, ungrateful chickpea, ungrateful kumquat. This week it’ll become the ungrateful fig!

So … like … yeah.

AS found the whole ovulation-calendar thing a bit off-putting the first month she started trying to conceive, so she decided to try to be less conscious of that and just go with the flow. Last Thursday, she did do the math to see when she should expect her period, and realized it was already a day or two late. Friday she bought a pregnancy test. NT and I were going out of town with lil’ AA, so it was kind of strange that if the test came back positive, we wouldn’t be there with her. But she didn’t think she could wait all weekend to find out, especially if there was no sign of her period.

Early Saturday morning no period materialized, and early morning is supposed to be the best time for detecting an early pregnancy, so she tried the test. As with my test lo so many years ago, there was no waiting required; that second line showed up immediately!

She talked to us Saturday to give us the news; we were in Ohio for a family reunion and were in our hotel room alone, thank goodness. This time, for me, there was all the elation and none of the what-the-fuck-have-we-just-done feeling, because this time I know we like being parents and have some experience under our belts.

We are going to be much cagier about telling people this time … I think. We’ll see, because AS has several social functions coming up, so if anyone hears her ordering noncaffeinated, nonalcoholic beverages, they might just suspect something — she usually has a Diet Coke in one hand and a beer or mixed drink in the other at parties!

Needless to say I have an inner glow that I’m trying hard to keep unseen. I feel like I’m grinning a lot. I don’t think I’ll give anything away, but I’ll probably imagine that I am at times.

I have all the same worries that I did when I was pregnant, but giving myself the same reassurances. Mainly, that at least now we know she can get pregnant; that’s at least half the battle.

AS can now point to a couple of weird incidents she had before she tested positive, such as not being able to eat a dessert she would normally have loved, that are probably pregnancy-related. I had the same thing happen! Now that she does know, she’s able to identify weird cravings and repulsion to certain foods and smells for what they are.

Here we go again!

Parenting is constant work, it’s true, but most of the time doesn’t feel like a chore. We have more than just a sneaking suspicion that so far we’ve gotten off really, really, really easy. We have a mostly good-natured kid who sleeps through the night; is physically active and seems reasonably smart; and eats lots of different kinds of food; and has been very healthy other than a couple of fevers, colds and bumps on the head. And has tons and tons of personality and cuteness (the photo doesn’t even do her justice)! Maybe it’s made us cocky, but …

… We’re trying for another one! This time it’s AS who’s trying to conceive. So if we do get pregnant successfully, I’m going to try and strong-arm her into doing some guest posts for this blog. If not, it’ll just be a lot of posts of my observations of her pregnancy. I’ve gone back through my past entries, and I’m very glad I documented so much, because just a couple years later, I’d forgotten much of what it felt like to be pregnant, and the exact sequence of events in labor and delivery! So I’d love to also record my impressions (and hopefully AS’s firsthand) for this next pregnancy (if there is one).

AS went off birth control in late April, but she’s only begun trying this month. The main reason for waiting until June (go ahead and laugh) is that all four of us (NT, AS, me and little AA) have March birthdays, and we thought it would be cute if baby #2 was also born in March.

Of course we know the chances of hitting the jackpot on the first try are slim, but at least it gave us a definite starting point for trying; otherwise we might have waffled indefinitely. Anyway, what’s interesting is that AS has been having some strange symptoms (of what, we’re not sure) the past couple weeks. Crampiness, constipation, a bloated feeling, tiredness, waking up early for no apparent reason … as I’m beginning to remember so clearly from my own pregnancy, everything is both a definite sign of pregnancy and a definite sign of something other than being pregnant. So maddening!

But AS says she tends to have a really clockwork period, so we’re focusing on that. We have a pregnancy test that says it’s 57% effective at detecting early pregnancy 5 days before the start of your next expected menstrual cycle, so that means this Saturday morning AS can test and see if she gets a result. It won’t rule out pregnancy if she gets a negative, but if she gets a positive then we’ll know it’s on!

I’m on pins and needles, even though it seems unlikely that it would happen so immediately. And even if she is, there’s so much uncertainty that only goes away in stages as you hit each milestone, so I know we’ll have a worrisome time ahead of us. But still — OMG OMG OMG what if I’m going to be a mom again?!?

PS: If any of our real-life friends are still following this blog, please keep any news under your hat until we announce officially. Not that there’s any news yet, but I’m saying it now in case there is some news later and I’m too excited to remember to say this!

The first moments of life

Growing awareness

Still more alert...

Sheer happiness

I finally figured out how to post some pics of AA!

Life continues to get better with the baby. She is a fantastic smiler now (though her brow can cloud over without warning), and verbalizing is coming along slowly but surely. Yesterday was a breakthrough day for me; she emitted over a dozen peeps at me when I was hanging out with her right after work. Her little eyes widen and sparkle and her mouth and tongue work frantically, and then the result is this tiny little coo. It’s hilarious.

We’re gradually getting her to spend time on her tummy, which is essential to strength training for a baby. Back in the 80s or 90s public awareness spread that babies should always sleep on their backs, and SIDs cases dropped dramatically. So now there’s even more publicity about and emphasis on always placing babies on their backs to sleep (“Back to Sleep” is the slogan). But as a result, some parents are so careful that their kids don’t get any time on their tummies, which is how they strengthen many of their muscles (including arms, legs and neck) and learn to crawl. So “Back to Sleep” must be balanced with “Tummy Time.”

Most babies don’t care for Tummy Time, and AA is no different. But if one of us lies next to her so she can see our face, or if she can see the TV screen, she’ll stay for a little while. She’s made some moves to push herself up, but her most notable achievement is digging her toes into the blanket as if trying to push herself forward. She’s really good at that. But within a few minutes she’ll start bawling and we have to pick her up.

When we started out, I felt very unsure of my parental instincts and was resolved to do everything by the book. But then we developed our own rhythm and, as with many parents I presume, have already broken many rules of good parenting:

- As alluded to above, our baby likes to watch TV! We’re one of those families that always has it on and is half-watching it. One day AS and I realized that she was watching it too, rather raptly. A frisson of guilt ran through me, but she only likes it for about 20 minutes before she needs something else, and sometimes it calms her down when nothing else will.

- We seem to only get around to bathing her every two weeks. Common wisdom is once a week; I’ve even seen reference to a quick wash once a day. Maybe when she likes it more, or gets dirty more. But she hates bathing with a passion, and she doesn’t really get dirty; I mean, if she spits up we clean her up with a wipe, which has similar ingredients to her body wash, and her bottom and genitals get cleaned many times a day. The other day I discovered toe-jam(!) and cleaned that out with a wipe (that’s not something I’d catch in a regular bath anyway, because I try to go quickly and minimize her time wet, exposed to the air and screaming so bad she almost chokes). Nonetheless, everyone presses their nose to her head and exclaims about that new-baby smell, so I think it’s OK. I hope to move up to weekly baths once she doesn’t seem as furious and terrified during them.

- We give her a pacifier all the time, whenever she wants it. She loves it and it calms her down immensely when she’s agitated (as the name suggests). It also helps her go to bed. I realize this is something we’ll need to scale back on, especially to encourage speech but also to make the inevitable weaning process a little easier. But the peace it brings is invaluable to our sanity, so for the time being we don’t hold back on offering the pacifier.

- We’ve always let her sleep until she wakes up naturally, even if it meant she slept through a feeding. This seemed to work out well for us, but I was slightly worried about it not being enough feeding until this week, when her doctor’s appointment proved that she’s gaining weight at a healthy clip and doing well overall. She tends to prefer bigger meals spaced further apart, versus smaller frequent meals, but I don’t know if this is because we never regulated her feeding or if it’s just how she is. But either way, I’m now even more inclined to trust her signals on this; if she doesn’t get hungry as often, or sleeps through a feeding now and then, it doesn’t affect her adversely, and we get more peace.

- I don’t pressure her to breastfeed anymore. She’s still on breastmilk exclusively, but sometimes she fights nursing. For several weeks I tried to stick with it, changing up techniques to see if there was a trick that would take the problem away. I finally concluded that she gets frustrated with smaller feedings during times of the day when I’m not producing as much milk (it varies rather drastically). So I bottle-feed her and pump instead. I maintain supply by pumping extra milk in the early morning, when there’s more than enough for her. I’ve pretty much got a sixth sense about when I have enough in my breasts to satisfy her and when I don’t, so I’ve eliminated almost all fussing during feeding by anticipating when a bottle would work better.

- I can’t anticipate her needs, nor can I tell what her crying means. One of the things they told us in early-parenting class is that babies only cry as a last resort, when all their other signals have gone unanswered; so if you got attentive enough, your baby would never have to cry. For instance when they’re hungry they’ll make sucking sounds. Well, our baby constantly makes sucking sounds — she loves her pacifier and in fact usually wants to suck on it even right after a giant meal. We can tell once she’s furious whether it’s hunger, because she’ll suck on one of our fingers in a way that mimics nursing. Other than that, we just go down the (very short) list of things that could be wrong. When we’ve exhausted all the options like feeding, changing and putting her down for a nap, we just figure she’s bored or otherwise uncomfortable and try the different activities (such as they are) that she typically likes — watching her mobile, sitting in her vibrating bouncy seat, lying on the floor on a blanket, being carried around and bounced and/or sung to — until one of them calms her down. If none of them work, we go through the list again because sometimes something “takes” on the second try. Sometimes desperation breeds innovation and we come up with a new thing she likes (that’s how this list has slowly grown). But yeah, we pretty much wait for a full-on wail before we do something, because sometimes she fusses and then settles herself down, and because none of us can really anticipate her needs.

Those are all of our terrible parenting sins that I can think of. I guess overall we’re not doing too badly, but some of these things would make some mothers blanch in horror!

Finally I decided to just empty my brain a bit with some not-at-all-organized thoughts about my life with a new baby. More posts to follow, eventually, I think, with thoughts on other aspects of the whole labor-delivery-childrearing process.

The first three weeks or so were a bit nightmarish at times. I’m a fairly stable person mentally; or at least, I don’t let mental turmoil affect my day-t0-day behavior much. (I say that with a grain of salt because I haven’t had really terrible things happen to me in life, so this is based on having a fairly stable existence.) Which made me wonder how more emotionally fragile people get through early child-rearing.

You’re getting very little sleep. You’re recovering physically, whether from vaginal or cesarian childbirth. You’re seeing your space and your time being taken over by a little stranger who can’t smile, can’t talk, can barely eat or sleep. The one thing it can do is scream, mightily, to alert you to its needs. There’s a good deal of instinctual protectiveness in you, luckily, to keep you motivated, and this is true whether or not you’re the biological parent.  It keeps you from giving up, it keeps you from leaving, it keeps you from hurting the little creature when you’re at your wits’ end. (I probably shouldn’t use the universal “you,” because of course I know that sometimes this parental instinct doesn’t overcome these other urges in people. We’re lucky that it does for us.)

Sleep is nearly impossible, because even when you’re sleeping, you’re attuned to the smallest noise. When you get back into bed after settling her down, it’s with the sinking feeling that you may not be lying down for very long at all, so you never really relax. At the same time, due to the sleep deprivation and constant anxiety, your verbal skills, motor functions and even your senses are impaired. Words don’t come out right, movements are sluggish and sometimes uncertain, comprehension of what people say or do is slower.

You can hallucinate. Several times I would wake up convinced that I’d fallen asleep in bed with her, and I’d scrabble frantically through the bedclothes terrified that I’d smothered or crushed her unintentionally. Until a small noise from the bassinet would remind me that she was sleeping safely there. There were a couple nights when the only way she’d sleep was flopped belly-down on my chest and belly, so I’d sit on the couch, dozing myself, jerking myself awake every 5 minutes to make sure she was still safely nestled there.

There have been moments, small and infrequent, when I felt real anger or defeat at not being able to get her to settle down and be quiet and let me rest. Once, very early on, I felt such frustration welling up that I moved her roughly from my shoulder to cradle her in my arms. Realizing that my feelings had translated, however briefly, into physical treatment of her, I flung open the bedroom door, flipped on the ceiling lights, and handed her to the first spouse out of bed. It was a small moment but a huge wake-up call that I had to always be in control of my emotions and never let myself take any of my frustration out on her.

Those were the weeks when I felt flashes of desolation and regret, when I felt that life would never be fully carefree and enjoyable again. Even more often, though, I’d have moments of extreme possessiveness and protectiveness, panicky flares of emotion at imagining anything harming AA in the slightest. My skin would ache empathetically thinking about her feeling any pain.

Besides my own self-control, which I hope I would’ve been able to maintain no matter what else I had, my main supports were my partners sharing in the childcare and other household duties, my friends providing transportation and food (and general contact with the outside world), and reassurances from the pediatric clinic that we were doing a good job and that she was healthy.

And then, imperceptibly at first, things started to get better. AA started crying less and sleeping more, so we got a bit more sleep. Breastfeeding became easier. We became more confident and more used to our new duties, so stress levels went down. AA started showing more awareness of us and the outside world as her vision improved. Her body got sturdier so we worried less about harming her. More recently, her motor skills have started developing (she holds her head up and can control her flailing arms a little better), and she’s learning how to smile in response to our faces and voices. She’s even started emitting tiny, brief peeps that aren’t crying or grunting–the beginnings of speech. With that little bit of reciprocation from her, our love for and connection to her have expanded exponentially. Which makes everything else easier, because it seems more worth doing.

Recently, we’ve taken her out with us. We’ve even gone to a restaurant with her. We’re starting to realize that we can enjoy raising her and still have some semblance of the life we used to. That we can be good parents and still take care of our own creature comforts. That she’s no longer to fragile to be in the outside world, and so we’re not stuck inside either. All of this coinciding with spring in Minnesota makes for some real euphoric moments.

Now that we’re settling in, parenting is becoming enjoyable at times. Energy and time spent on AA is rewarding and fun, not the result of an intense fear of failing her or harming her. I’ve gone back to work part-time, but I feel like I spend half my time staring at her pictures on the wall, and they make me smile and my heart beat faster. By the end of the day I’m antsy and can’t wait to be with her again. A friend of mine once said early parenting is like having a crush on your children, and I completely agree.

Thursday, March 4, four days before my due date, I stayed up a little later than usual. My stomach felt a little off, somewhere between nausea and cramps. It was very mild but I stayed up until the feeling subsided a bit, then went to bed around 12:30 or 1 a.m.

At around 3:30 a.m. I gradually woke up, realizing that I was having contractions. My stomach muscles would tighten up and I’d have a dull cramp-like pain that started in my lower belly and spread to my pelvic area and toward my back and sides as it intensified. Then the clenched-muscle feeling would ease up along with the pain. This had happened a week or two before as well, and had lasted until I got up, at which point they faded away. These ones felt similar, but they seemed closer together than the ones I’d experienced previously. I was still half-asleep, but I started trying to time them, from beginning to beginning as instructed by my doctor, using the time on the alarm clock. Dr. O. had instructed me to call the clinic once I was getting them 5 minutes apart for over an hour.

The first set were 7 minutes apart. The next one was 3 minutes later. Then it was 7 minutes to the next, then 3, then 2. At that point I wasn’t sure what to make of it, because while they were very close together, the timing was really irregular. I decided to wake AS up and let NT sleep. Whether it was a false alarm or the real thing, it seemed like a good idea for someone to be getting as much sleep as possible. NT has to be to work much earlier and his schedule is inflexible, so AS it was.

We went into the living room. I called and left a message with my health insurance to precertify going into the hospital, which I had meant to do the day before anyway. AS started using an iPhone app she’d found for timing contractions. It was confusing though, because the app kept asking for the end of the contraction, which a) supposedly didn’t matter and b) was really hard to call, since the pain would subside gradually and the achy after-effect even more gradually. Also, sometimes I’d say “oh here comes one” or “oh this one’s over” and it would be a false alarm. We kept having to restart the app, and we were trying other tracking methods simultaneously. It was hard and we never really got a bead on the timing, but we came to the conclusion that though they were irregular, they were averaging 4.5 minutes apart. Also, I was getting “loose stools” (nice euphemism), and tiny amounts of bloody mucusy stuff on the toilet paper, two possible signs of coming labor.

At that point, probably around 5 or 5:30, as we were discussing whether this warranted a call to the doctor, NT woke up, saw the empty bed, guessed what might be happening and came out. We did decide to put in a call, so AS called my clinic while NT made some coffee and breakfast. I knew I wasn’t supposed to eat anything rich or fatty or overly high-fiber, so I had a few bites of toast with apple butter and some fresh pear.

The clinic put a call through to Dr. O, and we waited. I did deep breathing through my contractions and walked around or bounced on the exercise ball as recommended. If it was real labor, walking and bouncing were supposed to help the baby move lower. We heard back from the doctor that we should go ahead and go in to the hospital, though they might send me home if it wasn’t labor or if it wasn’t far enough along. We started calling our list of friends who had volunteered to drive us. First we tried CC but he wasn’t answering and his voicemail was full. Then we left a message with MN. They were geographically closest to us. We successfully reached our third friend, JF, who said she was able and ready to come get us. But as soon as AS hung up, MN called back, just having gotten our message. Since she lives so much closer, we asked her to come instead. JF was actually disappointed that she wasn’t needed after all!

While AS and NT packed the rest of the hospital bag and fed the cat, I lay down for a little bit. The contractions were more intense and painful, and I found it helped (if one of them was nearby) to grab onto AS or NT and hug them through the worst of it.

MN picked us up and drove us to the hospital. I think it was around 7:30 a.m. She and AS were chatting excitedly but I could only half pay attention, especially when a contraction hit. I felt I wanted to be somewhere quiet when I was in the midst of one.

We found the MAC (maternity assessment center?) pretty easily, and they got me undressed and put me on a bed, hooking me up to monitors so they could track the contractions. They also checked my cervix (the nurse seemed surprised/annoyed that my doctor hadn’t been checking it, but I don’t know why since it wouldn’t have told us anything) and found it to be about 60% effaced (shortened and thinned) and 1-2 cm dilated. To be ready to give birth you need to be 100% effaced and 10 cm dilated, so it wasn’t very much.  The contractions were still somewhat irregular. I was also oozing something sporadically; I kept thinking it was my water breaking, but they said it was just mucus.

The whole monitoring and checking process took about an hour. At one point the nurse said she’d touched my baby’s head! Luckily I always had NT or AS to hold onto during the contractions, and I was doing pretty well with my breathing. Eventually they told me to try and walk around somewhat briskly for an hour, to see if I could make any more progress, so I started walking the halls with NT while AS left to go call our jobs and  to confirm the hospital precertification with my insurance company. At that point my contractions were so painful that I found it impossible to walk through them; I’d have to stop and hug NT really hard until they subsided. It was harder and harder to breathe deeply; my body instinctively wanted me to hold my breath and/or breath in short, sharp pants when the pain got really bad.

AS hadn’t eaten breakfast so she also grabbed some McDs while she was downstairs, and she went to the MAC waiting room to eat. After I’d walked for half an hour, my contractions seemed much more frequent and painful so I thought we may have made enough progress. But when we went back to the MAC office, she brusquely told me to go finish my hour. I was kind of pissed because I would have been much more able to walk around during the hour or so they had me lying on the bed, when my pain wasn’t as intense, but as it was I wasn’t able to walk very briskly nor for very long before stopping for another contraction. (I tried to be magnanimous and told AS and NT it must be “tough love”; AS said no, it was more like “soft hate.” That cracked me up even then.)

At some point AS took over walking with me. By then I no longer wanted to be touched or near anyone during the contractions. Even light touches from their hands, and pleasant smells, like NT’s aftershave and AS’s coffee, made me feel sort of nauseous. Not exactly nauseous, but something close to it. The only bearable thing to do during the contractions was to grab onto the wall or a ledge, bend over slightly, and wait for them to pass.

I made it another 20 minutes, then said we were going back and telling the nurse I couldn’t do the whole hour. She put me back in the room and checked me; I was now dilated 2-3 cm, so some slight progress had been made. When she left the room, a series of about three huge contractions hit me, and I felt kinda like someone was scraping my guts out with a garden trowel. I begged AS to go ask them if it was too soon for an epidural. I had hoped to be much farther along in the labor, partly to make sure I didn’t slow it down and partly as some kind of macho thing, but I already couldn’t really communicate and couldn’t get my body to cooperate with deep breathing or anything else, so I didn’t see what use it would be to stay in pain if the nurses thought it was OK to get relief.

AS came back and said they were getting a delivery room set up for me and that I could have the epidural when I got there. Even just knowing that was a huge relief, but I don’t think I really showed it because at that point I was having trouble opening my eyes or focusing, let alone talking or smiling. The pain was just incredible; I had no idea it would get that intense that soon.

I think it was around 9:30 or 10 a.m. when I got my room. I went in and knelt on a chair and grabbed the back and basically wouldn’t look at or talk to anyone, which made things kind of difficult because the nurse (a different one from the brusque one, thank goodness) was asking me a long questionnaire of health information. Luckily AS knew most of the answers, and if she got one wrong I would usually summon up a voice and correct her. Mostly when I did talk it was grunting something about epidurals and how much it hurt. The nurse, a complete sweetheart, kept assuring me that the anesthesiologists were on their way.

Eventually they got there and got me to the bed, where they hooked me up to various IVs, pricked my fingers and arms with various needles (once they apologized or asked if it hurt and I remember saying that needles almost felt good compared to the other pain I was having), and talked to me about the risks and side effects. I would have agreed to it if they’d said there was a 50-50 chance of spontaneous combustion. They gave me a consent form that had several areas to read and check. I looked sideways and found AS’s eyes and she knew to come over and help me read it and check the right boxes and sign it.

Next they sat me up in bed and poked me with the shot that would numb me enough to get the epidural in (it’s a tube that goes into the spine and drips medicine continuously). Let me say that getting poked in the spine is a unique and unpleasant experience. Not horribly painful (at least not compared to labor pains) but just really…really…weird. In a bad way. Also, once they get the epi needle in, you can kind of feel the medicine sliding up and down your spine, and it’s cool. I mean temperature-wise. Yeah, cool medicine creeping into your spine. Weird, weird, weird.

Then they taped the tubes down so I wouldn’t dislodge them, and I was put on my back. I would say within 15 minutes (though time was getting weird at that point–actually, had gotten weird a while ago) my contractions were back to the intensity of when we got to the hospital. Within half an hour they were like really mild period cramps. This is weird to say, but they were…pleasant. I guess I was so relieved they weren’t agonizing anymore that I would feel good every time I got a small one. Within another half hour, I couldn’t even tell I was having contractions anymore. It was absolutely marvelous. I was happy and tired and quiet.

We started playing the music I’d chosen and it was just right. How did I predict what I would want to listen to in that situation? I also watched some episodes of Columbo and almost dozed. I felt completely blissed out to not be in pain anymore.

The nurse came in periodically and checked my progress (at one point the shift switched over, and the replacement nurse was even sweeter than the one before). I was dilating and effacing at a steady clip (the dilation was increasing about 1 cm per hour), the baby’s head was nice and low, and my water broke at one point. She predicted I’d be ready to start pushing at around 6 p.m. and might have a baby by 8 p.m. NT and AS made some calls to parents on the laptop using Skype, and NT was dying to put something on Facebook so I said OK.

The nurse called Dr. O. to let her know, but unfortunately, she was going off shift. So I’d be delivering with another doctor from the clinic. Dr. O. called when I was about 9 cm and apologized, but assured me that I would like Dr. N. Honestly, I felt so good at that point that I didn’t mind much.

The nurse checked me one more time and pronounced me 10 cm dilated and 100% effaced, so she started coaching me on how I would push. We even practiced a couple times and she felt some downward movement of the baby’s head. Pushing involved lying on my back, holding onto my thighs and pulling them toward me while pointing my elbows out, curling my head upward while keeping my back from arching, taking in a deep breath and holding it, and then bearing down with a combination of clenching my ab muscles and imitating straining for a bowel movement. It was a lot to coordinate all at once, so I was glad we were practicing. The nurse and AS and NT were supporting my legs and head. I had to wait for a feeling of pressure before I started pushing, and then I had to push three times during the contraction.

Dr. N. came in, a tall, quiet man with big eyes and low affect. I never felt like I could get a read on what he was thinking, but he seemed nice enough. We started the pushing, and he observed for awhile before going out of the room. I learned later he was monitoring progress on a machine.

They said I was making progress, and NT and AS got a peek at the baby’s head, which they said had a lot of hair! I couldn’t really tell what was happening; I was trying so hard to keep consistently doing all the different components of pushing. As I started pushing harder, I felt pressure in my eyes; it was a really bizarre feeling as if they were going to pop out of my head. The nurse tried to get me to strain my face less and push more with my muscles, but holding a big breath just caused it to happen. I tried holding less breath in, and that helped somewhat, but the sensation never went away.

At first the nurse thought it would take me less than the two hours predicted, but progress was slow. Dr. N. came in once in awhile to fine-tune my technique. I didn’t believe anything was happening and kept telling everyone so. When they assured me it was, I thought they were fibbing to keep me trying. I also was convinced I was crapping on the table, since I’d heard about that happening, and I’d had diarrhea during early labor at home, and I felt the nurse wiping me off periodically. (I found out later it was blood, but every time the nurse told me it wasn’t shit I thought she was just trying to make me feel better.) Pushing was incredibly tiring. And the bigger compliments I got from the nurse, AS and NT, the worse the after-effect would be. Whenever I pushed really well, there would be this horrible painful feeling of something huge wedged into my vagina from the inside. Which, I guess, is a pretty accurate description of what was happening. The epidural couldn’t save me from that sensation, and it got worse over time, to the point where after a round of pushing I’d start writhing, and if they tried to drop my legs I’d scream. Finally they got out stirrups so whoever was holding my legs could rest between pushes. Sometimes we skipped a contraction and rested, because the baby’s heart rate would drop and we needed it to stabilize. I kept telling everyone that it wasn’t working and I couldn’t do it anymore, knowing as I said it that it didn’t matter. I had to keep doing it anyway so I did, but I felt I might be getting weaker and not pushing as hard.

At around 8 p.m. Dr. N. came in. He said that figlet’s head was wedged behind my pubic bone, which was keeping it from moving down as fast as it should. He said even if we pushed for another hour and he used the vacuum to help pull the baby out, that it might not come out at that point. He also said that the baby’s heart rate was starting to fluctuate more with each round of pushing, which was hard on it and could become dangerous if the rate dropped precipitously. He recommended a C-section and in fact had started arranging one an hour ago because he saw this possibility starting to arise.

It was a mixture of relief and disappointment. I said if the baby was in any risk at all that of course we should do the C-section. Plus privately, I wasn’t sure where I was going to muster the strength for 10 more minutes of pushing, let alone an hour.

They wheeled me in to the operating room and moved me to another bed. I was still having the huge feeling of pressure every couple minutes, and I would bear down just to relieve it a bit (the nurse had said I could). It didn’t relieve much of the pain, and I was grunting and swearing and moaning every time it happened. Since I already had the epidural inserted, they gave me the anesthesia through that. Gradually my lower half went numb and the pressure feeling blessedly receded.

Only one family member could be in the operating room, so NT and AS discussed it. I thought for sure it was going to be AS since she’s the most able to retain visible calm during crises, but it ended up being NT. He was put in scrubs and led over to stand by my head. There was a curtain draped between me and my lower half. Once they were sure I was numb they started operating. I didn’t feel much other than some pressure and slight tugging once in a while. I wasn’t as happy as I had been when they started the epidural, but being out of pain and knowing that some real progress was happening was a huge relief, since I hadn’t believed I was doing anything during the two hours of pushing.

In what seemed like a minute or two, I heard someone on the other side of the curtain say “It’s a girl” and I heard a loud, hearty baby scream. Neil repeated “It’s a girl.” As they pulled her up and out I glimpsed the top of her head. NT and I looked at each other with our mouths dropped open. I can’t remember which of us started crying first but soon we were both pretty much bawling. I think one or both of us might have said her name: “Astrid.” I can’t remember if I said it or thought it. Later I found out she was born at 8:21 p.m. on March 5, about 17 hours after I first woke up that morning. 6 lbs. 9 oz., 19-1/4 inches.

They pulled her all the way out and took her to a table to clean and examine her. It was to my left, within my line of sight. I stared and stared, crying. She was crying too, and jerking and waving her arms and legs. Apparently she also peed on the examining table! She was so vivid and alive; I didn’t expect her to look so energetic and human, even though I knew that babies have adrenaline coursing through them right after birth, and since she had gone through most of the natural-birth process, she was no different. All I could do was cry and stare at her and long to have her in my clutches. But they of course had to take her to the nursery for further examination; with a vaginal birth you can have them on your chest right away, but not with a C-section. They picked her up and then, unexpectedly, brought her close to my face. I kissed her face, which was warm and dry and incredibly soft. Then they took her away. NT went with her; later he proudly declared that she didn’t leave his sight from the time she came out of me to the time they brought her into the recovery room.

Maybe I’ll do another post about post-birth recovery, but it was kind of draining to write this (took me several days, actually), so I’m going to take a break now.

But then she brought it up again at our next appointment, and called me later that day to say she’d already spoken to the social worker and obtained contact information for a reproductive lawyer whom she refers a lot of her surrogate parents to. The social worker told Dr. O. that she always hears positive feedback from the parents regarding his knowledgability and service.

I was very impressed with my doctor for displaying such understanding of our situation and interest in AS’s parental rights. I’ve always been open about my relationship status to my doctor, even back when AS and I dated men separately or together, in case there was ever a health issue that required her knowing this; but we never discussed it much at all. So I was surprised that she’d thought it through to this extent. It makes me even more glad that I just stuck with her for my pregnancy. It was more of a choice of convenience than really thinking about my options, but it has paid off, because having a caregiver who’s aware of and supportive of our situation makes me feel a lot more secure. I hope that AS is able to start going to her as well  under her new health insurance, since she’ll be starting to think about getting pregnant next year and I’d love to know we have that same support for AS and her (our) baby.

So I’m not sure if I’m going to call this guy before or after delivery, but I’m glad someone else did some of the footwork on at least one of my legal issues!

My office threw the third and final baby shower on Friday. I once again asked for hand-me-downs and was overwhelmed with baby clothes (most coming from one co-worker and recent mom who apparently is not saving anything for a second baby! not that I’m complaining), books and $225 in cash and gift card form (to our local eco-conscious store Twin Cities Green).

Now that the showers are over and we have everything people are going to give us, we started compiling a list of everything else we still needed. We used a book we got at our second shower, What to Expect in the First Year, as a source of what we needed. The weekend was (for us) an orgy of spending, but we’ve now got everything we need that we aren’t planning to buy at the hospital (for example, we decided to get the breast pump they recommend and also ask them for bottle/nipple recommendations and probably buy those supplies there as well.

I’ll add these to the Baby Expenses page, but here are the supplies we bought this weekend:

2/20/2010 Crib mattress ($200 pd w/ gift cert; $30 discount for water discoloration) (271.77)
2/21/2010 Sprayer for cleaning cloth diapers ($15 pd w/ gift money) (45.00)
2/21/2010 6 boxes of disposable diapers (different sizes) (incl. $10 coupon from dr. office) (52.94)
2/21/2010 2 wet bags (for holding cloth diapers while out) (13.50)
2/21/2010 Baby soap/shampoo (9.64)
2/21/2010 Bath cradle (6.64)
2/21/2010 Baby clothes hangers (2.19)
2/21/2010 Outlet covers (3.64)
2/21/2010 Baby nail clippers (2.13)
2/21/2010 Convertible carseat (56.85)
2/21/2010 Baby sunscreen (4.72)
2/21/2010 Cotton pads (for baby cleaning, etc.) (2.19)
2/21/2010 Baby liquid pain reliever (1.99)
2/21/2010 Iron supplements (5.89)
2/21/2010 Thermometer (8.54)
2/21/2010 Thermometer (3.14)
2/21/2010 Baby anti-itch cream (3.74)
2/21/2010 Baby neosporin (3.89)

Looks like a lot, and felt like a lot, but we used the $200 Twin Cities Green GC for the mattress, a $100 Target gift card for most of the smaller supplies, and $15 of gift money (plus the $30 discount we got for the slight damage to the mattress) for the diaper sprayer. So we really didn’t end up spending much at all!

So far, our out-of-pocket expenses in preparation for the baby total $2,242.82. About $1200 of that was doctor-visit expenses, which could have been less had I better understood our healthcare plan options, and $440 was prepaying the first four weeks of child care. That means we’ve spent about $600 on everything else: prenatal classes, nutritional supplements, maternity clothes and baby supplies. So I feel like we’ve been pretty smart with our spending so far. Sure, there’s still some consumer-y part of me that would’ve loved getting fresh new everything for our baby, but it’s so much nicer to have over $8000 parked in the bank for real needs and emergencies.

I predict we’ll still spend a few more hundred dollars on the last few things we’re going to get: diaper service, breast pump, bottles, a few more cloth-diaper covers, possibly burp cloths & swaddling blankets (though AS’s mom may come through on those), storage solutions (for toys and supplies; we’re getting a hand-me-down dresser that should handle clothes just fine), and a piece of hardware needed to attach the diaper sprayer to the toilet. Eventually crib sheets, but the baby will be in the bassinet for a while; and eventually more diaper liners, but for now the cleaning service will provide those.

Let’s see, anything else? I crossed a couple more things off the pre-labor checklist, including downloading a bunch of music for playing in the delivery room. Oddly enough I kept gravitating toward stuff that I listened to a long time ago but haven’t for awhile. Maybe I didn’t want any of my really old classics or my current faves to have too strong an association with labor in case it’s as hellish as I’ve heard; or maybe I wanted to feel nostalgia for certain points in my life. In any case, I look at the playlist of Indigo Girls, Diana Krall, Macy Gray, Outkast, O Brother soundtrack tunes and Basement Jaxx with some bemusement, but the gut wants what it wants.

Pregnancy symptoms haven’t changed since the last time I blogged. Still feel heavy, and weird, and sore in different places, still stuffed up and heartburny, still low-energy. The baby is still heavily favoring my right side and almost completely ignoring the left. I’ve been getting a few good nights of sleep, but I have to wake up to turn over every couple hours, and the turning must now be more gradual or else the baby seems to flop painfully to the other side with no regard for the organs it’s crushing in the process. I still feel nervous and excited, but when you’ve felt that way for nearly nine months, there’s an edge of fatigue to it. It’s weird to have such stressful emotions become so everyday that they’re almost boring. Sometimes I’ll still get a thread of fresh wonder or terror if I think of or do something new that makes the upcoming arrival seem more real; learning how to work the carseat yesterday caused one.

Counting down days of work left is also exciting. Including today, I have nine days of work, tops, before I’m off for a month!

There are several things that happen along the way to going into labor. You lose your mucus plug, which as far as I can tell is just that, a bit of mucus lodged in the cervix. Your baby drops (the consensus at my recent shower was that mine hasn’t, but I’m not sure what it’s going to look like); I believe that’s also called the “lightening” though I find it hard to imagine that’s going to make me feel lighter. Your cervix effaces (right now it’s like a tiny tunnel, but it’s going to get shorter and shorter until there basically is no tunnel anymore) and dilates (the opening starts to get bigger). Your water breaks. You get contractions (I’ve been getting the practice ones, where my stomach tightens but there’s little to no pain or discomfort; the real ones, a nurse told me, will be unmistakable because they “take your breath away”).

The last doctor’s appointment, my doctor reached up to check my cervix and couldn’t actually feel it. She said it was probably tilted up and that she could find it, but it would be painful for me and wouldn’t actually tell us anything. From what I’ve been reading on the WhattoExpect.com forums, some people set a lot of stock by how effaced or dilated their cervix is, but it actually doesn’t mean anything in terms of how fast you’re progressing or when you’ll go into labor. I think that’s why Dr. O. didn’t seem interested enough to hurt me to find out.

Most of the aforementioned symptoms don’t tell you much except that you’re pregnant and going to go into labor eventually. I haven’t had any of them yet, but it’s meaningless as to whether I’m going to deliver early, on time or late. When your water breaks, you hope to go into labor soon, because the baby shouldn’t stay there for too long without that fluid–at least that’s my understanding. And when your contractions reach 5 minutes apart from beginning to beginning, that’s a real sign that labor is starting in earnest and you need to go to the hospital. But other than that, the above stuff could pretty much happen any time in the weeks leading up to labor.

I’m never going to be able to take movies with childbirth seriously now that I know these things, because movie births are so ridiculously similar to one another – and so ridiculously far from most pregnant women’s reality. Am I jinxing myself into looking foolish by having a Hollywood-style labor? I would love that! “Ooh, my water broke!” “OK, lie down and breathe…whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo…now push!” “Waahhh!” “It’s a boy!” All in the space of 20 minutes or less. No back labor, no involuntary vomiting or shitting, no blood, no suctioning gunk out of the baby’s nose and mouth, no pointy head or coating of crazy goo. That would be beautifully wonderful, so come on ironic twist of fate, prove me wrong!

Anyway, went on a bit of a rant there. What else is new in babymaking land?

My doctor appointments are up to once a week. The max amount of days I still have to work, assuming baby doesn’t come early: 13. The list of things we need to buy for baby:  finite. Less than 10 I think. Our showers and our requests for hand-me-downs have pretty much covered what we need. We even have one more shower to go, at my job. The first two have been amazing! I’ve never had a similar party. First of all, never had everyone who came to a party bring gifts — that’s just not done nor expected at, say, adult birthday parties or even weddings. Then, to have the presents all centered around this one event, this one life transition — it’s really intense and emotional, even more than opening wedding gifts was. At the shower for friends, our hosts had people write messages to the baby in a little book, and it was just so heartwarming to read and see all the drawings and things that people put in there. I always hate having to write in things like that, like at weddings and stuff, never really knowing what to say or how much, but now I’m going to put a lot more into what I write in those books, because I know how it feels to be on the other end, reading them all together, the cumulative effect of all those thoughts.

Sometimes I worry that I haven’t built or nurtured a very strong or wide network of friends in the past few years – many of them we only see sporadically at parties; it’s not like I’m always chatting to them on the phone like I used to in school, or going out ever weekend with them like I did in my twenties. We have our two best friends that we see nearly every week, but with everyone else it’s much more spread out and casual. But seeing people pull together like they did at our shower, it made me feel like even though my network may not be as close-knit as those people who still have friends from college, or high school, or even elementary school, and who live close to relatives and so on, it’s still a really great network of good people, who would be there for me if I needed them.

OK, sentimental preggo needs to stop, or I’m going to get weepy at my desk, and that would just be sad. I’ll have to write more later; I was going to talk about something touching my doctor said at my last visit but it’ll have to wait.

The baby will hit “full term” at 37 weeks; at that point it’s considered safe for me to go into labor because the baby has essentially finished all its development. From 37 to 40 weeks it just gains a bit of weight. Most sources I’ve read say that first babies tend to come a little bit late, but anecdotally I also know several first-timers whose baby came early, so anything could happen. It feels a bit like being a kid counting down to Christmas, having people ask about the all-important date all the time, but at the same time knowing that Santa could pop up in the middle of the day a week before, or he could decide to wait until the week after Christmas to deliver my present.

Nothing too much has changed in the past week or so, except the baby may have moved a little lower, because I’m noticing less heartburn, burpiness and shortness of breath; more periody/crampy feelings and … intestinal distress. My nose is still extremely congested. I finally tried a neti pot for the first time this morning, after seeing my allergist yesterday, and it was very effective. Sort of traumatic to my nose at first, and hard to get the water to go through, but in the end, all the hard ridges and masses of dried blood and mucus were pretty much gone. (I could tell because I’ve put my fingers and tissues up my nose often enough in these past few months to tell the difference immediately. I make no apologies. Blowing was just not getting results half the time.)

I haven’t played the special songs to the baby every day like I wanted to; part forgetfulness and part AS and NT needing the computer all the time for school and work. But I’ve played them about once a week, so that’s good. Baby has had several extremely active days, Sunday and yesterday especially. I can’t tell if it’s taking a break from the head-down position, but at times I can see and feel not only the hard lump on my right side that’s usually there, but also another hard lump in the upper/center-left part of my stomach. As if it’s turned sideways, flipping over. I just hope it doesn’t suddenly discover how awesome it is to be right-side up! I already have a vertical scar running the length of my belly from an old surgery, so if I’m C-section-bound I’ll probably have a big capital L scrawled across my front. I think an upside-down cross would be way cooler, but I don’t think they cut that high up for C-sections.

Sometimes it feels like the baby is pressing down on the lower border of the uterus, putting pressure on my pubic area, as if it’s trying to get out. It makes me think about my tiny cervix and my little vagina; it seems so impossible that they’re both going to somehow dilate enough to let this relatively giant creature out. It’s still all so abstract. When I try to imagine it actually, physically happening, my imagination fuzzes out and can’t offer anything in the way of a picturable scenario.

I have this checklist of things to do before and after the labor and delivery dealie. I’ve been crossing off one or two things a week, but I’ve also been adding as many things as I cross off, so I don’t really feel like I’m making any progress. However, when I get stressed about it I remind myself that everything on the list is really just a nice-to-have-done. If we don’t get them done and have to wing it a little bit on certain things, we’ll get through it. Even when I’m in labor, I’ve got two people who don’t need to be with me every second, who can run out and get things, make phone calls, do whatever needs to be done at the time. Each thing we cross off makes the future a little easier, even if it doesn’t shrink the list any.

We went, in the space of a couple months, from not even knowing how the whole baby shower thing got going to having three showers planned for us! They’re scheduled for Feb. 10, 14 and 19. Two of them are with workplaces. We’re asking for nearly all secondhand items. I’m excited to see how much we can avoid buying new; if there are some things we don’t get that we need, I’m thinking of looking around on Craigslist, eBay and Freecycle to see if we can still find them secondhand.

OK, I’m all blabbed out for now…