Leisurely Thunderbolt: Another Birthing Story

August 18th, 2019

It's 0330, and I'm awake.

Not because of contractions, or anything like that- it's nearly two weeks to my due date, and I haven't had much in the way of Braxton-Hicks this time around.  No, no, I'm awake for your standard old middle-of-the-night-pregnancy-pee-break.

I've gotten to the point where I can more or less take care of things in a sort of half-slumber (it's great practice for when the Spawn actually comes along and needs feeding and such), but when I get back into bed I pause- does that feel... wet?  The question wakes me all the way up, and I pop back into the bathroom.

Oh.  Well would you look at that- I've lost my mucus plug!  Huh.  Didn't have that experience with TLG.  Well, no worries- mucus plugs can come out weeks before the baby.  I mean, I saw my doctor on Friday, and he seemed pretty sure there wouldn't be any action this weekend, so I clean things up and head back to bed (for real this time) worry-free.

It's Sunday, but Nathan is only playing one service this week, so I get to sleep in a bit, which means I don't get up until closer to 0800 than 0700.  Heavenly!  But then, around 0830, I spring a leak.

Huh, I think.  I... I think my water's broken?  But it's hard to tell, because it's not a gush- it's just a trickle.  And really even that trickle is hard to pin down, since I'm wearing a liner.  But eventually I do confirm it for my Self (by walking around sans pants for a while, whee!), and so I let Nathan in on The Situation.  "It's possible I'm going to need you to stay home from church," I say mildly.  Mildly, because I still haven't had even a twinge of a hint of a contraction.

Nathan looks a touch skeptical, and I can't blame him.  "Yeah?" he asks

"Well..." I hedge, "The internet says I ought to call my doctor and see what they want me to do, so we'll go with that.  You can probably head to the service- if they want me to come in I'm perfectly capable of driving myself since, you know... no pain."

"Cool," says Nathan.  "Keep me posted."

I call the doctor's office, and they tell me that they'd really like me to come in within 3-6 hours of my water breaking, regardless of whether or not I have any contractions.  The doc explains that studies have shown once you go past a certain amount of time with ruptured membranes but no contractions, the chance for C-section starts to go up, and they'd rather I not have to have a C-section.  Turns out I'd rather not that, myself, so although I grumble about induction, I tell Nathan that we'll be heading to the Birthing Center sometime after noon.

Then I call my Mom to tell her what's happening, and she just starts laughing.  See today, August 18th, is my Oma's birthday, and my Opa has been saying for nearly eight months that this baby will be born on the 18th.  I kept telling him, "No, no, that's like two weeks early... maybe the 22nd but certainly not before!"

"You tell him this is all his fault!" I growl.  But it's a loving growl.

It's a little before 1pm when we pack TLG into the car and head to BurgerVille to grab some on-the-go lunch (this isn't my first rodeo; I know they won't let me eat once things Get Started, and I also know it takes a hell of a lot of energy to birth a baby, so I'm Fueling Up, damn it).  We waltz into the Birthing Center around 1:30pm, and I am still 100% Contraction Free.

Well, it turns out that when you show up to the BC not in the throes of Hard Labor there's a lot of  testing and paperwork do be done before they'll take you to your birthing room.  I get it completed while Nathan manages to keep TLG from braining himself on hospital equipment more than, like, twice...

Eventually we make our way down to my room (I get to walk without assistance!  So novel!) where I change into a gown and they start my pitocin drip at the lowest possible setting.  It's about 3:20pm, and things are very boring, especially for a three-year-old, so I soon take pity on Nathan and TLG, and send them home.  As for me?  I work on some embroidery.  Yes, embroidery.  That's how not-having-contractions I am.

My contractions finally show up around 4:20 (after they've upped the pitocin a smidge), and for all that Common Knowledge is that "oh pitocin contractions are so much worse than natural contractions!" I am here to tell you that statement, in my personal experience, is some grade A bullshit.  They feel exactly the same level of excruciating, so I guess I'm glad I'm not one-upping the worst pain in my life?

Mom shows up not long thereafter.  This is a bit of a coup for her, having completely missed the entirety of my labor with TLG, despite flying in over a week early (her plane was literally landing as he was being born).  She and the nurse sit with me through a couple contractions, and then the nurse asks if I'm ready for my epidural.  At first I'm ready to refuse, to wait a bit longer, but then I think, "...but why tho?"  For real.  Why in heaven's name should I continue to be in pain like this?  I think back to them trying to give me an epidural through my continuous contractions.  Nope.  Far better to get it now, while there are still breaks.

It's about 6:20 when the anesthesiologist comes in to give me my epidural, and immediately I can tell he has a much better bedside manner than The Other Guy.  As a result (and possibly because I'm not forced to hold still through contractions) the process is smooth and as painless as possible (although we still have to do the roll-to-the-the-side trick).  It takes effect and the doc checks on me- I'm 100% effaced, but only 4cm dilated, so she decides I'm still a ways out, and I send Mom home to relieve Nathan on TLG duty.

As I lay there alone, calmly watching my contractions on a monitor, and listening to Little Brother's heartbeat, I muse to myself what a different experience this is from the last time, when I was pushing as soon as the epidural took effect.  The chance to just sort of... chill during labor is... a bit surreal.  But nice!

The doc checks on me again around 8:40, and declares me 7cm and fully effaced, but the baby is still stubbornly at a -1 station, which leads to her saying, "I'll come check on you in about two hours if there's been no action."

The nurses keep telling me that I should let them know if I feel an increase in pressure, and a while later I don't feel an increase, per se, but I feel a definite shifting, away from my rectum and towards my bladder.  When I mention this they hook up a catheter to empty my bladder, and that's that.  Nothing to see here, move along.  They ask me again about any increase in pressure, and I say, "I mean, I feel moderate pressure, but nothing like what I'm feeling during the actual contractions."  

And then... the quality of the pressure changes again (still not increasing, just feeling different) and I'm getting awful heartburn before each contraction, which strikes me as super weird, but I do the sensible thing and call in a nurse so I can request some heart burn relief.  And then for some reason I cannot quit understand, I reach down under the covers to feel around, and it seems to me that my labia are, like, unusually distended, and in fact it sure does feel a hell of a lot like what it felt like when they asked if I wanted to feel TLG's crowning head.

I say tentatively to the nurse, "Um, I think maybe the pressure is increasing?" even tho' it isn't- I just want her to check me, and don't want to look like an idiot if I'm wrong in my suspicions.  She glances at the monitor and sees that the baby's heartbeat has disappeared, so she goes to move the monitor- and can't find him at all.  Then she lifts up the blankets at the foot of the bed, lets out a shocked gasp along the lines of, "His head is out!", and slams a button on the wall.

Suddenly there are four or five very serious, fast-moving, efficient people in the room, swarming around me, and one of them says, "This is happening right now!" and by the time Nathan has made it the eight feet from the couch to my bed, the baby has been born!

And then the doctor walks in, looking very shocked at the situation at hand.* 

But my eyes are all for my new son, who is a dramatically darker purple than his brother was, and then they're toweling him off and putting him on my chest and he's red as a red, red rose, and softer than a moth's wing, and I coo and call him my Sweet Velvety Thing.  Later I will take note of his lovely dark hair, so like his father's, and his adorably cleft chin, so like mine, but for now all I can do is love him unreservedly.

*(Nathan later jokes that we should get a discount since we didn't have an MD do the delivery.)

6 Weeks

Yesterday marked six weeks since I gave birth, and I cannot help but acknowledge that milestone with a profound sense of gratefulness that I do not have to go back to work today.

I remember hitting this point when TLG was small (back when he was still Neeps), and thinking, "How on earth could I be expected to leave him, when he's still so small and helpless?"  Now, Little Brother is much less small than TLG was at this age (like, shockingly less small, who is feeding this child?), but still... how could I be expected to leave him?  And yet that's exactly what my Mom (and countless other mothers) had/have to do.  And it sucks.  So I just really want to appreciate the fact that I have this freedom to keep my career on track and also spend the first few months of my child's life extra-bonding with him.

The Golden Angel and the Dark

I am now the mother of two boys, both of whom, for the moment, are rather Angelic.

please disregard my inability to sketch baby heads.

I know this is not a state of affairs that is likely to last for the next 12-18 years, so I figure I'd better enjoy it while I can.

You may recall that TLG was not originally on board with getting a Little Brother, but that we eventually brought him around.  Well he has stayed around, and he is stoked as hell about LBB.  He helps me with diapers, lets me know when I need to feed Little Brother (you know- in case I hadn't noticed the grousing infant) and bestows millions of kisses upon him.  For his part, LBB is still kind of indifferent to TLG, although he did smile at an appropriately-timed moment in response to TLG tickling his feet, so who knows.  Strangers things, Horatio.

When we got the anatomy scan of LBB the tech switched it over to 3D, so we got to see LBB's facial features- and we were pretty shocked by how much he looked like TLG.  Once he made his Exterior Debut, however, two Main Differences jumped out immediately:

1) He has his father's dark hair
2) He has his mother's cleft chin

TLG was born with sort of medium-brown hair, and it shocked exactly no one when, after he rubbed that initial fuzz off, the new growth came in golden.  Blond/e babies are fairly ubiquitous in both of our families (Nathan notwithstanding), so it was more or less expected that any child of ours would follow suit.  LBB is the first grandchild on either side (that's one in fourteen, mind you) to come out with truly dark hair, and we're hopeful he'll grow up to be as black-maned as his father.

As for the chin- I'll admit, I was a bit wistful when TLG showed absolutely no evidence of my ancestral chin-dimple, and in fact I spent probably way too much time staring at the aspect in question, attempting to will an indentation into existence (and possibly also poking at it in an attempt to encourage one to develop... don't judge me...)  So when I first saw LBB from not a crown-down angle (visibility is limited for that immediate, skin-to-skin contact) I literally let out a little gasp of delight and squeaked, "He has my chin!"

See, the beautiful thing about TLG is that he blends our familial features so perfectly that it's really hard to consistently say, "Oh he looks like so-and-so!"  More often it's a certain expression he makes that has us going, "Oh yeah, he's related to Cousin _____ for sure."  But with LBB it's like he's taken specific traits that are immediately identifiable as one or the other of us, and arranged them in the best possible way.

Other differences include:

-LBB has a wider mouth (but whenever he makes a moue it looks exactly like TLG's, especially in conjunction with their identical noses)
-LBB has a wider jawline, which right now codes as a rounder face
-LBB is built on longer/narrower proportions than TLG, and in fact he may end up being a throwback to my paternal grandfather, judging by his feet

Granted it's been all of three weeks since LBB emerged, so we'll see how it all pans out.  But in the meantime- genetics, man.  Some crazy stuff.

Second Thoughts

(or, rather Thoughts on a Second)

Well here we are, less than a week from my Official Due Date, and I've got an already-week-old newborn laying next to me on the bed.

(Turns out all that week 37 nesting wasn't jumping the gun, after all.)

I'll get around to Little Brother's Birth Story in the next month or so, but in the meantime I wanted to ruminate a bit on how The Second Time Is Different (At Least for Me).

First of all, let me assure you, Gentle Readers, that I absolutely do love Little Brother as much as I love TLG; I do not see him as a threat to TLG's resources; and basically everything everyone told me about how It Was All Going to Be Okay, was totally true.

So thank goodness for that!

Now that we have that out of the way, the main thing I've noticed is how much easier it is to enjoy the newborn stage.  I'll admit: I was kind of dreading having a newborn again.  I kept repeating the phrase, "Boring torture" to describe my recollection of the experience.  Fortunately for me that's not really the case this time around- due to a combination of factors, I think.  I'm just so much more chill, because I've been here, survived that- already learned all the diapering tricks, the nursing hacks, and how to recognize the all-importance Emergence of Patterns.  So I can spend less time freaking out about The Right Way To Do Things, and more time just appreciating his ultra-soft-skin and long, mobile toes.

The other thing is that, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure I was suffering from Postpartum Anxiety with TLG.  At the time Nathan and I were on High Alert for me to develop Postpartum Depression (given my history with depression in general it didn't seem like a stretch), but I didn't even know that PPA was a thing.  I just thought all parents felt like I felt- that literally any time I didn't have eyes on my child he was probably dead and it was all my fault.  I thought that all new parents would lay in bed, terrified to move because if they got up and checked then the baby would actually be dead, and not just... probably dead.

Yeah.  I thought that malarkey was normal.  That is not normal.  And the fact that I thought it was normal just goes to show how screwed up my brain had gotten.

I do not feel that way now, thank all the stars.  I think I now have actually normal levels of anxiety- I only check to see if he's breathing like once, maybe twice a day, instead of constantly.  I can sleep at night (in two hour increments, sure, but I will take it) rather than having a hideous "my child died in his sleep" movies playing on permanent repeat in my brain.

It makes for a much more relaxing experience all-around.

Counting Down 65 Days

or: Yes!  I'm Pregnant Again!

All swanky at a Work Event.

Hey, remember how last time I was all, "turns out I'm really terrible about not mentioning the pregnancy while I blog,"?  Well that remains a true statement, hence the extremely extended silence.  But I let the fetal cat out of the social media bag this past Sunday, so here I am doing a write-up on the blog.  And it's important to me that I start blogging with regularity again, since it's so fun to look back at TLG's first year of life through my in-the-moment lens.  I'm trying not to shortchange this new one, whom we are calling Little Brother amongst our little family, but whom I'll call LBB (aka Little Baby Boy) on the blog (for now- the TLG -formerly-known-as-Neeps taught me the folly of expecting pre-birth nicknames to stick).

Now with that out of the way, let's hit the other Typical Questions

-My due date is August 30th (aka 65 days from now) but based on past experience, I'm laying money on August 24th or sooner.
-As you may have surmised, it's another boy!  We are freaking stoked, because (as I exclaimed during the anatomy scan) this means we don't have to learn a new set of genitals!  Winning.  Actually I have a funny story about this- TLG was dead set on having a little sister (he wanted to name her Rosie, of all things) so when we broke the news that Little Brother was, in fact, a little brother, he wailed, "Nooooo!"  I got it all on video- priceless.  But we talked him around by pointing out that I have a little brother (Uncle David, whom he adores) and Daddy is not just a little brother but the littlest brother, so now he's on board with the idea that little brothers can be cool, and more importantly, little brothers look up to big brothers, who get to teach them All The Things.  We'll see how long this enthusiasm lasts once the squirming larva is actually here, but for now I'll take it!
-Just like with TLG, we have no clue what LBB's Real Life name will be.  We have a list of names that we'll choose from once we actually meet him, but for now... LBB it is.
-Yes, this is the Last One.  Steps Will Be Taken to ensure it, I assure you.

There, that ought to cover it, for now.  Here's to our future adventures as a Family of Four!