The Snarky Momma occasionally (okay, sometimes) reviews products on her review blog related to parenting, domestic goddess-try, and personal care. Her opinions are honest, based on her own experiences, and will be published even if she does not find the product satisfactory. She will always disclose how she got a product and whether she was compensated to talk about it. If you want to send her a product, contact her via email at tiffany [at] snarkymomma [dot] com.
I’d rather think about fun stuff instead of making a grocery list, so I’ve been making mental wishlists.
What would you do if you got an unexpected windfall? $100? $1,000? $10,000?
Okay, assuming there are no pressing bills to be paid, with $100 I’d probably buy more diapers (maybe some fitteds), a couple more Snappis, and of course some yummy wool to make soakers with. We have enough that more aren’t a necessity, but I’d like to increase the amount of time between loads of laundry. I had no idea Em would be pissing every 15 minutes and she burns through the diaper stash like you wouldn’t believe.
A spare $1,000. Hmm. That’s a little harder. If I were completely selfless, I’d put it towards a new home computer for Scott. His PowerBook is older than our marriage (we’ve been married since 2002). Although he has enough Apple devices to keep him satiated (or should, anyway), it’d probably be a good idea to upgrade that machine before it goes kerblooey.
I’m not that selfless when it comes to stuff only one person in the house is going to use, though. More than likely I’d use the $1k to finally get the chairs I finagled from my granny reupholstered. The cats have claimed them as their own for far too long and we really could use the extra seating. I’m thinking leather.
$10,000, oh yeah, that I could really do something with. First, a cruise to Bermuda. I’ve been wanted to visit ever since I saw an episode of This Old House renovating a property there. We could cruise out of Norfolk (preferable) or Charleston and it’d cost the four of us way less than $3,000 for six days if we book in advance. Scott mentioned that he’d like to do Oasis of the Seas, but hot damn that’s way too many people on one boat for my comfort.
What’s left of the $10k would probably be used to upgrade the Honda to something…well…something else. Poor car has been hazed and abused in the past year. It’s been broken into, pelted by tree limbs, and the windshield has been mysteriously broken. If Scott’s going to drive to work every day he needs something a bit more vandal- and thief-proof. Like a tank.
What about you? What would you do with a little rainy day money?
I took Em for her one-month physical this morning. Today she’s 22 inches long and exactly 10 pounds.
That means she’s gained 2 pounds + 7 ounces and 2 1/2 inches since her first pediatrician visit at 3 days old (she had lost about 7 ounces between birth and my milk coming in).
Wow! That’s a lot of growth. No wonder she sleeps so much. If I were busy growing bone and stockpiling fat I’d probably fall asleep every chance I got, too.
In case you’re curious about percentiles, that puts her at 75 and 75. She’s slightly smaller than Rosco was at two months, but I don’t know if this growth pattern is going to hold out. She might just be making up for that last cramped month in the womb and may slow down in the next four weeks for all I know. We’ll see. Regardless, Rosco is projected to reach about 6’2”. At least if Em stays in the 75th percentile for height, when they’re teenagers and trying to beat the shit out of each other their size difference won’t be so huge. :-\
Puffy is weird lately. She’s a weird enough cat in the first place with her apparent kitty schizophrenia, but for the past several weeks she’s been stranger than usual.
When we brought Rosco home from the hospital after his birth the first thing Puffy did when we walked through the front door was approach the carrier, sniff it, and then hiss at him. From the very beginning I’ve taught Rosco to avoid Puffy (and thus her maulings) and Puffy for the most part steers clear of him.
Fast-forward 3-1/2 years. We brought Em home and the cat didn’t react at all. She didn’t sequester herself in the laundry room. She didn’t circle around and hiss. She just sort of stood off to the side and watched.
It’s been about four weeks and I’ve been carefully observing her temperament and behavior around Em because she’s acting unusually. When Em cries Puffy comes up close, waiting and watching, sometimes meowing and rubbing against me. I don’t know if she’s pissed that Em is crying and is planning to attack her for it, or if she’s trying to get my attention to tend to her.
When we’re on the floor and Em is playing (as much as a 1-month-old can play, anyway) Puffy comes up and stakes out an edge of the blanket. She just lays there. Maybe she’ll stick her head out for a rub if my hand is nearby, but that’s it. That’s really more of a behavior of the other cat—the overfed attention whore. It isn’t in Puffy’s disposition to willingly share attention with someone.
I don’t know what she’s up to, but I don’t trust her.
It may be that Em smells more like me than Rosco did (estrogen and such) and so she doesn’t find her offensive. Dunno. She’s definitely on my radar, though.
It’s pretty hard to do crafty stuff when you have a baby attached to you for much of the day, especially when those crafts have to be held close to your body to be worked. If I didn’t need to be doing crafty crap right now, I’d be spending my time on the sofa, feet up on ottoman, eating sunflower seeds, and patting Em on the head. Em needed more diaper soakers that actually fit, though (I overestimated how big she would be—she’s pretty slim around the middle), so a-knittin’ I go.
This was made from an appropriately named pattern: Frantic Mama Knitted Soaker. The wool is from Knit Picks. It was my first order from them, actually. I’d been using the Paton’s wool available at places like A.C. Moore, but their color selection always sucks so I wanted to try something else.
It’s in the sink being lanolized right now (I’ll explain what that does and how to do it at another time). By tomorrow I hope to be able to get it onto the baby. I think I like the pull-on soakers a little better than wraps right now and they cover the leg/butt transition well enough to prevent blow-outs.
We didn’t do a lot of babywearing with Rosco. He was kinda heavy and most of the time the stroller was easier to use. Every now and then we’d go somewhere that strollers were hard to navigate in, such as the pumpkin farm, and would strap him into the carrier then. He was an absolute back killer. I think part of that blame is due to contraptions like the Snugli, though. It doesn’t distribute weight all that well (at least as far as my back was concerned; Scott’s mileage may have varied).
With Em, I knew I’d need to do something different as far as carrying goes. Rosco needs pretty consistent management (‘cause he’s sneaky and kinda destructive), and I can’t set Em down somewhere without risking her being carried off by the cats. I can’t just sit here and hold her all day, as cute as she is, so if I plan on getting anything done she has to be worn some.
While I was pregnant I researched different products that would allow me to wear Em without breaking down my back, and that lead me to things like Mei Tais, ring slings, pouches, and wraps. I focused in on the Moby Wrap because it’s one-size-fits all, the amount of fabric ensures a more even weight distribution, you can breastfeed while wearing it, and because it doesn’t have any seams or fasteners. You can position your baby in several different holds and it doesn’t look completely crazy when you wear it without a kid inside.
I ordered a hot pink one and it arrived Wednesday. Yesterday I took it out of the package and washed it per the recommendation. Was a bit skeptical here - the thing is really. Really. Long. Like, longer than our station wagon long.
While Em took her afternoon nap I practiced wrapping and tying it using the handy dandy instruction booklet that came with it. It takes some doing to get it flat and snug against your body, but once you’ve done it once or twice you’ve basically got the maneuver memorized.
The hard part is getting the baby into the pockets you’ve made.
I was pleasantly surprised by how secure Em felt in it. If you load the baby in properly it’s a hands-free device. The problems I’m encountering, though, are that Em doesn’t like having her head inside the wrap and that she won’t tolerate it at ALL if her diaper is wet. And, well, she’s a non-stop pisser, so when ISN’T her diaper wet?
She did take a pretty good nap in it last night, though, so this may simply require some practice. Really she has no choice but to be worn, though. I’ve been holding her for the past two hours or so in my arms because she can’t nap and it’s taken me that long to type this post out. I can’t make lunch until I put her down (I don’t want to put her in the sling for her long nap because it’ll limit how active I can be). Hopefully she’ll take it in stride and keep her expressions of displeasure to a minimum when she has to go in this evening.
You know, I really don’t have the time in my day to be taking on non-essential projects but I’m a bit of a masochist. (I’m actually typing one-handed right now because I’m propping up a nursing baby with the other.)
Em’s crib is much shorter than the one Rosco had, so the wall behind it looks really naked. Scott thought “something” needed to go there, and I, in my copious free time, thought about what “something” could possibly be. I thought about using wood letters to spell out Em’s name (the nickname, not the “shouting name”* I think). I was pretty “eh” about that, so instead I thought about getting some sort of art print.
Problem there would be finding something that matches the paint and that doesn’t introduce a theme we’re not particularly interested in (no princesses or such like that). Then we’d have to frame it. Good frames are expensive, and I really don’t want to buy something like that to match a room she’ll only be in until 3-bedroom ranch houses are in hot demand in Durham and we can move.
So. I decided to make something to put there. Like I said: masochist.
Not done yet, but basically it’ll be four small canvases (two pink, two green) with a unified theme. Art by yours truly.
I’ll be back with photos when they’re up.
*Shouting name: A child’s full, legal name that you only use when you’re shouting out for/at them.
One of the things I’m really good at is making milk. Trust me - this was a shocking discovery for me. I just assumed that given my body composition and the way that I metabolize what I intake that I’d make just enough to keep my kid from starving.
No.
I guess this is where I haven’t evolved all that much from my stone age ancestors. Even if my diet sucks and I’m not taking in that much liquid, I still make a lot of milk. Fatty milk, too. (Bet you’re wondering how much pregnancy weight I’ve lost, huh? I won’t share that, though some of you who’ve seen me lately could probably make an educated guess.)
Women make milk at the expense of their own bodies, and my body is just particularly willing to throw me under the bus. It’s a wonder I haven’t passed out yet.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about doing some extra pumping and donating milk to the non-profit human milk bank at WakeMed. Basically they gather milk from moo-cows like me, combine it with other people’s donations, treat it for bacteria and such, and then package it for use by sick and premature babies.
Before I can even be screened to donate I have to have 150 ounces of milk stored. It would probably take most people a while to pump that much, you know? Well, I could get it together in a couple of weeks with no adverse repercussions to Em. I can have her nurse on one side in the morning and then still be able to pump another three ounces off. Yeah. Add that to the other side and I can easily get seven or eight ounces in one sitting. (I really don’t have enough free time to pump multiple times per day, though.)
After I’ve met the 150 ounce minimum I have to have my OB and Em’s pediatricians fill out some paperwork that’ll vouch for the fact that my milk is good-quality stuff. Then I have to mosey down to LabCorp and let them have some of my blood for testing. After they decide I’m sufficiently clean, then they’ll take my milk. I’d have to drive it to Raleigh (which almost certainly means I’ll get lost and spend the rest of the day pissed off).
It’s a lot of running around and I’m still kind of on the fence about it. If this had been one of my causes (and there ain’t that many of those), I’d be all gung-ho, but having to navigate miles of red tape to do something benevolent doesn’t really fit into my mommy-of-two schedule. Then, if I want to donate again after six months have passed I’d have to get screened all over again.
I need to make a decision about this soon. I have my six week OB follow-up looming in a few weeks and Em is due back at the pediatrician next Wednesday. I’d need to get on board before then so I don’t have to make separate trips out to Chapel Hill to get those forms completed.
*sigh*
Have you donated milk before? Is it worth the pain in the ass?
This is the last bleeping large-scale home improvement job we’re doing in this house before we bounce up out of here (whenever that happens). Maybe we’ll pull up the cat-pissy linoleum in the laundry room, but other than that - NO MÁS. NOOOOOOOOO MÁS!
So, here’s the Master. Sorry for all the sloppy panning and crooked shots. The size and angles of the rooms makes it hard to get floor-to-ceiling shots.
They realize they’re just CALLED pearly whites and aren’t actually pearls, right?
Scott said I should blog about this, so bada bing.
I’m not a hard woman to please. Seriously. At heart, I’m still the same country girl who grew up having to drive 25 minutes into town to go to the store, school, doctor’s office, and etc. I don’t need fancy bells and whistles as long as people know what they’re doing.
So, why is it so freaking hard for me to find a dentist office I like? There’s no dearth of them in this area like there is in Northeastern NC.
You may remember that a couple of months ago I gave my former dentist’s office da boot and went to a new one. BUT the new one wrapped me up in red tape due to being pregnant and didn’t call me back for a return appointment for two weeks. When they called me back to reschedule I gave them a certain one-finger gesture (which of course they couldn’t see with me being in my house and all). I figured I’d wait until after Em was born and then try AGAIN somewhere that didn’t annoy the shit out of me.
Well, I went somewhere on Tuesday.
Still annoyed.
Granted, I had a very thorough (though painful) exam and cleaning (gums are still impacted by preggo hormones), but I feel like they were trying to nickel and dime me. For one thing, I don’t carry money other than small pocket change (to buy yarn and candy bars) if I don’t need to. They weren’t getting a cent from me. Second, my dental insurance has this office (that shall remain nameless) on their list of preferred providers (or whatever). They’re supposed to take the insurance and not charge me anything upfront. We have full dental - no copays for prophylaxes and routine x-rays and such. Pretty much if it’s a necessary procedure, it’s covered.
Their first mistake was trying to charge me forty-something dollars due that day. I was like “For what?!” They were like “A bit of this and that.” I was like “Um, no. Is that an admin or new patient fee?” They were like, “No, it’s a little bit for the exam, a bit for the cleaning, and so on.” I was like, “Um, no. My dental insurance covers me 100%.” They were like “Okay, let me go check with the office manager.”
Yeah, they “waived” that fee.
Next they tried to send me home with an oral rinse that cost $23. For $23 there’d better be gold flecks in there, you know? Again, I was like “And, you want me to pay for that today, huh?”
And they were like, “Yeah, you really should get started on the treatment today.”
So I was like, “Yeah, well, I could come back for it later or send my husband to get it. I’m not carrying money.” (That line also works for panhandlers—remember that for the future.)
The hygienist finally told me that they could write me a prescription for it. That was preferable seeing as how I could probably get my medical insurance to pick up some of the cost.
Well, guess what? That same rinse cost $4 at the Target pharmacy.
$4. Not $23. And that’s just the “don’t need insurance because this is on our generic list” cost. (I haven’t used it yet. “FOR WOMEN: IT IS UNKNOWN IF THIS MEDICINE IS EXCRETED in breast milk.” it says. Huh.)
They’ve got me scheduled for a follow-up appointment and a consult with an oral surgeon about my remaining wisdom tooth that isn’t actually bothering me. (I don’t get why I need a surgeon for that - it’s a straight up-and-down tooth that can be extracted without sedation. The same tooth on the other side was pulled last year in one piece in about eight seconds.)
I’m kinda wanting to tell this office to bite me, too.
Look, all I want is a dentist office where I see one dentist that actually remembers me a little bit from one visit to the next. Preferably, it’d be an office where they don’t push procedures just because their corporate office tells them to. I don’t like this assembly line-style shit.
I’ve got family spread all over the country. Like, close blood relatives and not just the “second cousin twice-removed” type thing. Aunts, uncles, first cousins - you know - people that I actually resemble?
Problem is, due to a series of Jerry Springer Show-style events perpetrated by certain family members (ahem.), I wouldn’t recognize these people if I ran smack into them in public.
This annoys me for a few reasons. The first of which being that, well, I don’t have any grandparents left, so those “anchors” are all gone. I was never close to the folks on my dad’s side (refer back to previous paragraph), so my memory of my dad’s mom is really fuzzy. The last time I saw her I was maybe five or six and I don’t even remember what she looked like (I have a habit of not staring people in the face). She died three or four years ago and I didn’t even know until my dad told me recently. For a long time I assumed those folks didn’t care about us (me and my sister), but have learned otherwise recently. (ahem.)
Well, I can’t do anything to fix that now, obviously, but as an adult I can choose to build bridges and reestablish relationships with the folks who remain. Out of all those freakin’ aunts and uncles (and there’s approximately three million of them because back then, in my grandma’s words, they just “didn’t know better”), there’s got to be at least one that I’d enjoy hanging out with, right?
I do know that one aunt lives a couple of hours from here. I could easily pack the kids n the car one day and run up to say hi. But, I’d have to want to.
Do I want to?
I don’t know.
Familial relationships kind of suck for me lately. I really only stay in close contact with my one full sister. She’s the only person on the planet that understands why I’ve cut so many relationships off over the past few years. Even she has tried to get me to soften my heart (ha ha) and let things slide, but nah - I’m good where I am. Took me a long time to feel okay with being a bitch about who my kid(s) get exposed to, so I’m not going to go backwards now.
I guess this is just a lot of rambling about nothing. It’s just weird to have so much family, and to not have more of it I want to spend time with. I’m not a complete misanthrope, ya know?
Cloth diapering has turned out to be a less harrowing adventure than I expected. The first couple of days admittedly were kind of rough and had me brainstorming different systems I could use, but I made myself not give up until I did some troubleshooting on what was giving me frustration.
Turns out the problem was the fold I was using. Once I fixed that, the leaking issue all but disappeared and I stopped going through so many covers. Thanks to this site I now use the newspaper fold which is snug around the thighs and creates a bit of a gusset to catch poop. Lord knows what I was doing before.
On average I change Em’s diaper 10-12 times per day. She pees like you wouldn’t believe (which is good because it means she’s nursing effectively). That may seem like a lot, but honestly you kind of just get used to it. It doesn’t wake her up at night, so I just let her sleep through until she wakes up to nurse. I like the fact that she’s really sensitive to being wet (when she’s snoozing being the exception) since it means she’ll probably be out of diapers sooner. (Rosco couldn’t care less and would happily wallow in a dirty diaper all day.)
Right now I wash diapers and wipes (yes, wipes) every two days or so. I bought just enough to accomplish that because I didn’t want them sitting around becoming mildewy and turning into science experiments. I think I bought 25 prefolds. I give them a cold soak, then a cold wash with diaper-safe detergent (right now it’s Trader Joe’s powder), and then a run through a hot cycle with no soap. I just dump them into the washer, poop and all. For newborn age, poop is completely water-soluble so it’s no extra work for the washer (or mom). Very rarely a diaper will come out the wash a bit stained, so I put it out in the sun to bleach while it’s still wet. That usually takes care of any yellowness. Everything else goes into the dryer with no problems.
We’ve only left the house once with Em in a cloth diaper, so I’ll have to come back after a while to detail how our little field trips and errands work out without the convenience of the disposables.
Scott has yet to change a cloth diaper, so that’s a work in progress, too. It’s not because he doesn’t want to, but because we’ve been dividing duties because of all this house renovation bullshit. Again, I’ll report back on that.
I’ve been holding off on this post for a couple of days because I wanted to be as tactful as possible. I didn’t want to sit here and type out of frustration; I wanted to be as level-headed as allowable by my current hormonal state.
Answering the question “How is Rosco handling the new baby transition?” requires me to hold back on the sort of language I’d normally use. Because he’s 3. Actually, he’s actually closer to 4 than 3—he’ll be 4 in November.
Rosco is being a terror. Now, even before Em was born he was expressing his “three-ness” but now he’s escalated the behavior to something that’s sort of shocking. Fortunately, he hasn’t done anything to the baby directly, but has been taking a lot of…what’s the right word to use here…resentment?...out on Scott and me. He’s jealous and probably a little possessive. I learned this several weeks ago when his aunt sat on her mother’s (his nana’s) lap. He told his aunt, in no subtle terms, to get off his nana’s lap—that she couldn’t sit there.
I think what really annoys him is that his usual playmate, Scott, is occupied with other things right now (home improvement disasters and, of course, Baby). It’s not my habit to get down on the floor and play trains and cars with him—I leave that to Scott. Boy toys bore the life out of me. So, when Scott tells Rosco that he “can’t play right now” you better believe that within a few minutes Rosco will start acting out in some way. That may mean flogging you with his blanket (which gets taken away for the rest of the day), kicking and throwing toys, screaming, crying, and back-talk.
The back-talk is the worst part because it’s so odd to hear that kind of disrespect coming out of a child that young. It’s like he’s challenging the power structure in this house (he doesn’t realize that the decisions he’s allowed to make are because we allow him to make them).
He often won’t fulfill simple requests without threat of punishment. He makes small things difficult. He tries his damnedest to throw a monkey wrench into the routine, what little there is around here.
When we started confining him to his room the first act of retaliation was to piss himself. Now, this is a child who has been toilet-trained for close to a year. He takes himself to the bathroom. When Scott found him and asked why he did it Rosco responded “I dunno” and laughed. (Scott’s much kinder than me because my impulse would have been to give the kid a cold shower to clean it off.)
Next, he destroyed the blinds in his room. Scott’s going to replace them because they look really bad from the outside, but I think that’s probably unwise. Again, when Scott asked what he was thinking and why he broke the blinds Rosco responded “I dunno” and laughed.
The kid has absolutely no fear of consequences (other than being shut into his room, and when that happens he’ll bang and thrash on the door like a child possessed). He’s wild.
I dread Scott going back to work next week. Maybe things will be better when there aren’t two parents at home for him to play off each other. In the past Scott and I would argue (in front of Rosco) about whether or not I was being too much of a hard-ass instead of presenting some sort of united front. I think Scott sees now that I try to nip things in the bud early BECAUSE they escalate this way. He can’t always see what I see or know that I may have already dealt with a particular behavior (numerous times) while he was at work.
[Yes, I’d love to be a sweet, doting mommy for Rosco, but Rosco has sucked all the sweet right out of me as of late. There you go - that’s my weight-loss secret.]
What helps some at this point is having had other moms tell me that they have children who behaved similarly after they brought home newborns. I feel less like I (or we) did something wrong although it’s hard not to feel helpless when nothing you do is making the situation better.
I hope he just gets over it soon. Em is no threat to him. They’re far enough apart that they won’t share toys, and really it’s his schedule she’ll be a slave to for the next few years. He doesn’t even have to be a “good” big brother as long as he leaves her alone (unless there’s a fire or something, you know).
Oh well. On another note, next time I’ll talk about how the cloth diapering is going.
Sorry for the blog neglect—I’ve had my arms full. This post is long as hell and may take you a week to read. That’s fine - I might not be able to post again until, oh, who knows.
Em came home last Thursday after two nights in the hospital. (The second night was only because mom wasn’t ready.)
Okay, here’s what happened.
Monday of last week I complained about “still” being pregnant. My due date wasn’t until the 2nd, but I was so, so tired and in the back of my mind I retained some trivia that with my second kid I’d probably go into labor earlier than the first.
I spent the day frustrated, actually, because I was having pretty much non-stop Braxton-Hicks. Those don’t really hurt, but when you’re that far along they’re really uncomfortable because they squeeze you in places that are too full to be squeezed. I started thinking about crazy things like Castor Oil, but decided not to put myself through that.
Scott was working later than usual and Rosco was in bed. I remember sitting on the sofa (something I rarely do on a Monday night because there’s nothing on television) thinking “This is some bullshit.” Around 9 o’clock or so I had the realization that at some point I’d transitioned from prodomal labor (the “fake” stuff) to actual early labor. I was able to tell because I started having radiating pain circling my back and upper abdomen which worked its way down to where it counts. (No, they didn’t feel like period cramps for me. Sorry.)
I started timing them and they were pretty consistent at around eight minutes apart. Scott came home and I told him that we should probably put out the alert that I *may* go soon and that someone needed to come put an eyeball on Rosco.
After much hemming and hawing (I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a false alarm), we asked Scott’s sister to come hang out. We figured better early than late, you know? She arrived at around 2 a.m., and I showered, brushed my teeth, and tried to rest for a while.
For a little bit the contractions started getting increasingly more painful and closer together, but I was able to get a cumulative couple of hours of sleep during the period between each one. In fact, I was in bed so long (with my clothes on) that Scott’s alarm clock went off as usual that morning since we were expecting the contractor and crew.
I sat up thinking “Huh?” Contractions had stopped. Fetus was still chilling, poking around as always. She didn’t really feel any lower, and I certainly didn’t feel like I had a new gaping hole where my cervix had been.
Anyway, Scott went to take a shower and I decided to lay down for just a few more minutes before making coffee.
Coffee never happened. (Avert your eyes if you’ve never given birth before. Don’t want to scare you.)
What did happen was stabby-stabby pains in the general vicinity of down-there. They just started LIKE THAT. That rest I got? It was the calm before the storm. It was the kind of pain that makes you freeze in place and toes curl into the hardwood floors—that kind. It kind of felt like someone was blowing up a balloon in my lower abdomen every three minutes or so just to the point of being almost overstretched, and then letting some of the air loose.
At that point I didn’t care how far apart they were. After two of those things I wanted to go to the flippin’ hospital. Scott still had to get Rosco dressed, the cats fed (they were in the garage), and the contractor briefed. It was probably half an hour, but it felt like for.ev.er. I feared I would lose control of my bodily functions at any moment.
UNC Women’s Hospital is about 15 minutes away from here assuming there’s no traffic, and since it’s summer and most of Chapel Hill’s transient population is out of town at the moment, there wasn’t a heap of traffic in that direction (thank goodness). It was still a miserable drive. Imagine - you’re strapped to a car seat and all you can do to comfort yourself is dig your nails into the car door.
We got there, tossed the car at the valets, and I somehow managed to get into a wheelchair. Even that was hard. I was contracting so frequently and they were lasting so long that it was hard to move. One of the curbside dudes (are they porters? security?) pushed me up to the L&D floor where they very s.l.o.w.l.y checked me in. I think I was ready to claw the reception lady’s eyes out when she asked “So, why are you here today?”
I got carted to triage where I promptly ran to the bathroom to pee. The nurse handed me a gown to put on, but I decided to go throw up instead. When she asked me how far apart my contractions were and when they started I couldn’t answer her because, well, I was having a contraction. A couple of minutes later I pulled myself together enough to get undressed, and then an O.B. came in to check me.
It turned out that I was already five to six centimeters dilated, which caused the doctor to tell me “Good job!”
Yay, me.
So, of course they admitted me. The nurse asked if I wanted to get some pain relief (epidural) and I responded “Absolutely.” I know I said I was going to try to go without it, but the contractions were so close together that it was like riding a non-stop wave of pain. No way was I going to sacrifice myself on the drug-free altar. It was traumatic enough as it was. (Again, if you’ve never given birth - stop reading here.)
From there I went to the birthing room and they got all the requisite pokes and sticks done. I got some I.V. fluids since I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since the night before and then they drew about a liter (exaggeration) of blood for various tests.
The anesthesiologist showed up and asked a bunch of questions before getting me my stuff (had to wait on lab results anyway), and I was really wishing I’d just pass out at that point. (I told you to stop reading.) I was dilating so fast that in addition to the pain, the pressure build-up was massive.
By the time they showed up with my drugs they had to administer it with me on my side because I couldn’t sit on my ass anymore [the usual posture is for you to sit up and arch forward so they can see the spaces in your spine]. I suspect that if they had been five minutes later I wouldn’t have been able to get it. I was nine centimeters by the time they got it in.
While that was kicking in (took a long-ass 15-20 minutes) my water broke. Spontaneously. Big ol’ gush. Scott could actually hear it (which many of you may know is a feat). Prior to it breaking I could feel the pressure building up and I honestly was afraid I was going to explode. But at the same time, I wanted it to break so that the pressure would go away. (Well, it went away for about two minutes and then pressure from baby head replaced it.)
The nurse checked me, determined I had a bit of cervical lip left on the right side, and helped me roll onto the side to put some pressure on it. That worked so well that my body started laboring down. Oh. My God. I felt out of control. Eventually I just went with it and pushed along when it happened, without the nurse’s input naturally (I don’t think they like you trying to deliver a kid without a doctor there to catch the head).
When it became obvious that Em’s head was down low the O.B. came in and from there it was all pretty fast. (Let’s fast-forward through the part where I lay on my back whimpering “It hurts! It’s tearing!” and refusing to push any more, shall we?) Basically, my body expelled her. Even after I stopped pushing, my uterus decided to pick up the slack and squeeze her out.
Em was born at 11:10 a.m., so just a little more than a couple of hours after we arrived at the hospital. Scott cut the cord and I laid back and thought “Oh man, we’re not having any more kids after this.” 8 pounds 4 ounces. 19 1/2 inches long. (So, she’s average-height at the moment…which still projects to be way taller than me.)
I got a few stitches for my first degree tear (which isn’t bad at all considering I felt like I was being turned inside out), and bequeathed the placenta and cord to the local public cord blood bank. When Em was sorta-kinda cleaned up the nurses brought her over and plopped her on my chest for some skin-to-skin contact. It’s so sweet to watch a baby that young try to snuggle up to you and root around for a first meal. It’s a fantastic bonding experience. If your hospital lets you do it before whisking your kid off to who-knows-where, do it.
UNC encourages breastfeeding and rooming in, so Em was with me the entire time we were there minus the hour they took her for a bath and her hearing test. Because of this, she didn’t get any formula or sugar water in the nursery like Rosco did (he was a squawker), and she was at breast a lot since she was right there.
We could have gone home on Wednesday but I could barely walk and my abs were a mess. I knew I’d have issues getting up and down so I stayed the extra day as allowed by my insurance. I regretted that we rushed home so quickly when Rosco was born. In hindsight, I needed that extra day then, too.
[Rosco is coping by acting out in various ways, but I won’t get into that right here. I’ll just say that he’s not acting out directly towards Em, but instead towards Scott and I.]
Em is one week old today. If I had to speculate, I think she’s a different kind of personality from her brother. Rosco was intense from birth. If you looked him in the eyes you felt like he was trying to hypnotize you. Em has a presence that’s a lot more relaxed, so I think she might be a smiley baby. She definitely has a calming effect on me, whereas being around Rosco is like being too close to electricity. (Maybe that means he’s destined to be a celebrity?) Em’s pretty easy to figure out and her needs are simple: eat, diaper, sleep.
It starts to get pretty wearying at this point, you know? Especially with the realization that I could easily go another week or more.
I’m just tired at this point. I’m tired of waiting for strangers to come in and dirty up my house. I’m tired of staying out of the way so they can go back and forth through my front room all day. I’m tired of not being able to do anything on my own schedule. I’m tired of escorting Rosco to the bathroom every time he needs to go in order to make sure he doesn’t step on stray nails or that he doesn’t pee with the door wide open. I’m tired of having to relay messages from the contractor to Scott (and vice versa). I’m tired of not having clean laundry because I don’t know where the hell to put it (we have no closet right now).
I’m tired of not sleeping well. I think that’s the worst part. The sleep you get when you have a newborn in the house isn’t all that awesome because it’s so broken up, but at least it’s comfortable sleep. Right now, I wake up probably every hour or so to roll over because of the pain I get in my abdominal muscles from having all that weight stretch out the side I’m laying on.
I am one cranky witch right now. Truly. Especially with all the heat. Fortunately, Rosco self-entertains for the most part, so whenever possible I grant myself some space. I’m sure he’d love to do something outside this house, though, but logistically it’s hard to manage right now. I’m hoping I can get the DVDs Rosco and I checked out of the library back today before 6. Would hate to pay late fees on Thomas the Tank Engine movies (now in CGI!!!!!).
Anyway. I think the baby dropped sometime in the past couple of days, which explains why my maternity shirts are suddenly too short. Supposedly, in second (and subsequent) pregnancies, once the baby positions him/herself over the birth canal you’re supposed to go into labor relatively soon after. Like, within a couple of days. yeahright. Problem is she’s not really making sustained impact (probably doesn’t have room to), so there’s no force there to cause contractions. The contractions I have are basically fluff at this point, but they’re happening more and more frequently and covering more territory (that’ll make sense to some of you).
Well. I guess I’ll go sanitize some pacifiers or something.
I’m not much of a talker. I’m a sitter-and-listener. It’s not that I have any particular aversion to communication, but I just hate expending the physical energy required to “shoot the shit.”
Rosco, on the other hand, will talk you right to insanity. This is why I spend most of my day at least 25 paces away from him. No kidding. If I’m in his line of sight, he feels the uncontrollable urge to narrate everything going on around him. (He doesn’t do this to Scott for some reason.) Here’s an example:
”Dinosaur Train is coming up next, Momma. I love Dinosaur Train. Do you like Dinosaur Train, Momma? Look, Momma, this is an orange block. I’m going to make a fire with my orange block. Look, Momma. Momma, are you typing? You’re using a computer, Momma. Do you like using the computer, Momma? Dinosaur Train is coming up next, Momma. Momma, I’m going to take a nap on the sofa. I need my blanket, Momma. *lays on sofa for 15 seconds and then jumps up* Momma, do you like the kitty cats, Momma? I like Bodie. She’s a good cat. Is Bodie a good cat, Momma? Cats shouldn’t pee on the floor, but our cats pee on the laundry room floor. *Dinosaur Train comes on, kid starts making pterodactyl noises* Momma, I love you. *jumps on me, makes me go “oof!”* Is Daddy coming home soon, Momma? I want to play with his iPad. I like the memory game on his iPad.”
And so on for as long as he can see me. For a person like me who appreciates stillness and quiet, this sort of interaction can explode a brain. He won’t move on until you at least acknowledge him with a “Mm hmm” or some other sound. Nap-taking? Not going to happen.
