Two Weeks

The thing about maternity leave is that it’s this vague sort of thing. My mom never really had it, since she was a stay-at-home mom with lots of kids. And even in some ways, I’m not confident I’m experiencing maternity leave, since I teach and don’t have responsibilities for that job again until mid-August (when I’ll back back like everyone else). In theory, I suppose I should have put an auto-reply on my email and should be ignoring my school email account, but that would mean ignoring AP US History message board things that I want to see, and let’s face it, there aren’t that many emails coming to me at this time of year anyway.

My conception of “maternity leave,” then, was that it would be this very undefined period of time in which all I would do would be take care of the baby. I knew this would involve feeding the baby and cleaning the baby and spending time with the baby, but the big unknown in that equation was always…the baby. Some babies are fussy. Some babies are not. Some are in between. I remember several of my siblings tending toward the fussy side of the equation, so in my imagination, my summer looked like this: blank.

For the first time in years, I made no plans. I made no assumptions about any ability to get anything “real” done. I figured it would be me, baby, and dog trying to survive each day, surrounded by piles of messy dishes and baby detritus and lucky if I even put my contacts in each day. I pictured myself feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and alone, with The Spouse off at work at all hours.

So far, it’s not quite like that – to my relief. The baby is a good baby, by which I mean he’s content to eat or sleep or just hang out. He doesn’t have to be held all the time, but he’s also happy being held, too – he’s a “go with the flow” kinda guy right now. In the past few days, he’s started noticing the Winnie-the-Pooh decal on the wall by his changing table, and he’s working hard on his neverending array of funny facial expressions. He continues to be obsessed with his hands: ever the optimist, he’s convinced that he’ll get food out of them someday. (I’ve told him to wait until he starts eating “real” food – THEN the fingers will get tasty.)

I am tired, yes. I am adjusting to working around a baby, since I can’t just sit and do my own thing for hours at a time. (However, The Dog had gotten me a little into that vein, as he has spent years interrupting my work in sundry ways.) But my house is not a disaster area, and I’m even developing a routine for myself of getting little things done in between bigger things.

I like it, so far. More than anything, I’m trying to take things day by day; I suspect that the rest of the summer will find me bored at times and my house better organized than it has been in months (I call this good karma to make up for the pregnancy exhaustion and inability to get things done). But really – who knows? And who cares?

After all, it’s only been 2 weeks. We have a lot more ahead.

It’s been one week since you looked at me

I’m not sure if reaching one week old is a huge milestone, but right now, it’s the one we’re celebrating. It’s not really that hard to believe that it’s been a whole week, although it doesn’t FEEL like a real week since we only came home last Friday afternoon.

i like to think the adjustments are going pretty well in this first week of A’s life, but I also know that Week 1 is only the tip of the iceberg – changes will come frequently in the days and weeks ahead. Here’s where we are now, a full week later:

1. The dog is doing well. The first couple of nights were hard; the second night, The Spouse kept the dog in our bedroom (I’ve been in baby’s room and the living room, in general) because the dog had been too overbearing the first night. Now, however, dog has settled down and spends the nights out with me and baby. This has a nice benefit of making me a little more alert, while also exhausting the dog. Clearly, it IS an adjustment for him, though – I can tell he’d like to be out walking with me right now, for instance, rather than waiting until later in the afternoon.

2. The baby is doing well. He’s getting better at breastfeeding, but also had a growth spurt over the last day, I think – lots of clusterfeeding yesterday. His current trend, however, includes sleeping in the mornings, which gives me a little downtime to not feel like all I do is hold and feed a newborn.

3. The Spouse is doing well; he loves being a dad, but wishes he could do more to help (challenging, since I’m the food provider at the moment). He’s worked half-days this week and will go back full-time next week.

4. I’m recovering well physically, I think. I’m adjusting to the ever-changing sleep schedules, but all in all it’s not too bad. I have my moments when I get super-frustrated, but for right now, things are working. Mostly, I’m trying to mentally navigate the whole “what should I be doing each day?” thing. Yes, that should be “taking care of baby” and myself, I know. That doesn’t mean it’s not something I have to figure out.

All in all, it’s been a good first week. I don’t think any of us feel like we’re merely in survival mode, which is good. I think we feel content and enjoying the time we have together right now, so we’ll try to keep it that way.

The Real Deal

For background, you can read about what happened Monday the 27th when I spent a few hours in the hospital for observation, thinking that my water had broken. The docs told me it hadn’t, so we went on our way. We resume our story the next day, May 28th…

The First Sleepless Night (and Daytime)

When we got home Monday night, the goal was pretty much to go straight to bed to get as much sleep as possible. That was a great notion, but I continued to feel not so hot. Beside the usual pelvic pain I’d been feeling for weeks (and the 30 pounds on my midsection, which made rolling over in bed reallly difficult), I continued to have the same sensations that had led me to believe my water had broken that afternoon in the first place. By 4:30 I’d had enough, so I got up and rested in an upright position on the couch before heading to school. Fortunately, it was a really light day – only 2 meetings, then a huge gap of time before my regular appointment with my doctor. Still, it kept feeling like my water had broken and was continuing to break – not fun. I was getting pretty frustrated, if this was the way I’d be feeling for the rest of the pregnancy, however long that might be.

The Doctor’s Appointment

I got about 60 pages into my book while waiting for my appointment, then went back for the usual song and dance. Weight was down about half a pound, which was a little surprising to me (since supposedly, my water had NOT broken). When my doctor heard about the night before, she ran another test to see whether my water had broken or not. Test indicated that it had NOT broken, but that I might have a slight infection, so she wrote me a prescription and was about to send me on my way.

Then she decided we should do a quick ultrasound just to double check fluid levels around the baby. The night before, the resident at the hospital calculated that my amniotic fluid levels were at 11 (she said between 5 and 25 would be okay).

My doctor calculated that the amniotic fluid levels were now 3.8. “What are your plans for today? Ready to have this baby?” She told me I should go ahead and go to the hospital. “Is it okay if I run home, let the dog out, and let my husband meet me to drive over?” Sure, no problem. Long story short: even though the tests hadn’t indicated I was leaking amniotic fluid, it looked pretty certain that the tests were wrong. That can happen.

I got in the car and called The Spouse from the parking lot. “So, I need you to meet me at home to take me to the hospital.” I filled him in, and he agreed to meet me at home, where we figured we’d take the dog for a quick walk, grab our stuff, then grab some food on our way to the hospital.

In which we apparently freak the doc out…

When I’d asked my doctor if I could go home to let the dog out first and meet up with The Spouse, I really did think we’d be at the hospital within 2 hours. Somehow, that turned into about 3 hours; I left her office at 4 and checked in at the hospital at 7. We were calm, cool and collected – the visit the night before had given us a sense of what to expect, so we felt good.

It wasn’t until Thursday that my doctor told me that she had been freaking out a little bit because it took me so long to get to the hospital. “Where is she? Doesn’t she understand there’s no fluid around her baby?” Doc hadn’t wanted to freak us out….so we hadn’t. In hindsight, it all worked out well. I absolutely would’ve gotten there sooner if we’d had any indication, but I think being calm in the process worked to our advantage, too.

The Second Sleepless Night

My goal for many months had been as natural (or as intervention-free) of a birth experience as possible. Mostly, this meant that I was going to try to get through labor without an epidural or narcotics. On the one hand, I have a really high pain tolerance. On the other, I’ve had many surgeries, and I know how my body feels under anesthetic. I kinda got attached to the idea of trying to work through the pain and feel everything as it came and went, to keep a good sense of what my body was doing.

Ultimately, however, I wanted him to arrive in the best shape possible. Elective induction? That didn’t interest me. But medically necessary induction due to lack of amniotic fluid? No problem. Hook me up to the pitocin!

All in all, I spent 13 hours in labor. I was having contractions when I arrived at the hospital, but I didn’t register them as contractions. They were either not as clockwork as you’d expect, or they were – generally speaking – too mild. They stayed this way until midnight (about 3 hours after the pitocin got started). Frankly, if labor had progressed at home, I never would have recognized any of these as contractions.

A little after midnight, the contractions changed and became more intense (and more regular). “THAT is what a contraction feels like!” I remarked to The Spouse at one point. But by 3:30 a.m., things really hadn’t progressed much, except in the pain department. I’d come into the hospital at 2 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced; at 3:30 in the morning, I was 3 centimeters and perhaps 90% effaced.

Through it all, The Spouse was great. I spent some time rocking in bed from side to side to try to deal with pain; I spent maybe an hour on the birth ball before realizing I was too exhausted to keep myself upright. And after the first few painful contractions, we both realized that I needed space, not hands-on support. From then on, The Spouse played coach from his resting spot on the couch, reminding me to breathe as I worked through each contraction. Honestly, that worked really, really well. I just needed space and breathing room (literally) – and his presence in the background.

By 5 a.m., things were REALLY intense, and I could tell that the contractions were changing – the baby had clearly gotten a lot lower and I presumed we were much closer to delivery. Of course, feeling the urge to push every time I got a contraction also underscored that theory.

At this point, the only meds I’d had were penicillin and pitocin, plus something for nausea. I remember thinking with each contraction, “What if I got an epidural? Should I do that?” And then I’d remind myself that I was getting closer and closer to delivery and I could wait.

By 6 or 6:30 in the morning, they were ready to check my progress. Honestly, if things hadn’t changed at that point, I probably would have requested the epidural; I was feeling exhausted and the pain was getting very, very intense. The nurse took a look, though, and was shocked: I’d gone from 3 centimeters at 3:30 a.m. to a “conservative” 8.5 to 9 centimeters. It was pretty clear why I was feeling the urge to push.

At 7, a new team of nurses came in, and they told me the doctor was on her way. For the next half-hour or so, everyone got very focused on trying to help me fight the urge to push. That was getting harder and harder with every contraction and I had a bad feeling this baby was just going to push himself out before the doctor could even arrive.

The Arrival

Happily, the doctor (one of my physician’s partners in the practice) arrived in time. They raised the bed up, put things in position, and everything really got rolling. I had no idea how much equipment would end up in a labor/delivery room – instruments everywhere, huge table full of things, you name it! It seemed funny, too, to have the bed elevated up so high.

But let me tell you in no uncertain terms: there is NOTHING funny about pushing, or the intense pain that comes with it. I wasn’t sure what to expect – I’d heard about the “ring of fire” just before the head emerges, but it was not as short-lived a sensation as I would have thought (or hoped). I also didn’t know how LONG to expect; the night before, our first nurse had indicated doctor doesn’t usually show up until an hour and a half into pushing, so I figured it would be awhile.

I got lucky: I pushed for 26 minutes before the baby was born. All told, I spent 13 hours in labor from start to finish, and made it through without the epidural or narcotics. (We watched the video of the baby’s birth yesterday; the nurses and doctor were so impressed at the non-epidural birth. The doctor even said, “You kinda make me want to become a hippie midwife!”)

But you don’t care about that. What YOU want to know is all about Andrew.

Andrew formally arrived at 8:04 a.m. on Wednesday, May 29th. Totally healthy and doing well all around.

He spent his first 45 minutes or so bonding with Dad while the doctor finished working with me; this seems to have worked to great advantage, as Andrew loves the feel of Dad’s fleece pullover and it was a lifesaver in the middle of the first night at home yesterday.

Our two days in the hospital went smoothly, but we were thrilled to get home yesterday. Since then, we’ve learned that the dog is not only okay with the baby….but somehow feels that baby is HIS baby to take care of (and he seems to worry that we humans aren’t taking care of baby properly).

We’ve only just begun the Summer of Andrew. More stories to come.

Dry Run

At 39 weeks, 1 day, that What to Expect App is getting suspect again. It still tells me baby is the size of a “watermelon,” but now estimates weight somewhere between 6 and 9 pounds. Well, as long as I get my money’s worth, right?

We marked the 39-week milestone yesterday with a visit to the hospital. Over the course of the afternoon, I suspected my water might be leaking. I know that’s something you shouldn’t mess around with, so I left a message with my doctor’s office (and of course, they told me to go in to the hospital if I even suspected my water had broken at all). As we prepared to leave the house, I felt not quite that “gush” of fluid that people talk about with water breaking, but something pretty substantial. In other words, if I’d had any doubts about whether amniotic fluids were leaking, I thought that was resolved.

Not quite.

We made it through an intense rain storm and into the hospital. It wasn’t crowded at the maternal health center, so we got right in and up to a room….only to spend the next two and a half hours waiting. The Spouse calmed his nerves by watching River Monsters on the Discovery Channel; I reclined in the bed hooked up to some external monitors and a blood pressure cuff.

Ultimately, the conclusion was that my water had NOT broken, so I got to have dinner out before returning home to my comfy bed and my dog. Sure, it would’ve been great to actually leave the hospital with a baby, but I’m not in a rush (give me a week; I’m sure I’ll be antsy soon enough). On the plus side, we also learned a few things during our dry run:

1. The Spouse will be a bundle of nerves, but he’ll get over it. Distract him with something shiny, like fun nature shows on his favorite channel.

2. Speaking of things to distract The Spouse, let him discover and figure out how to interpret the monitors. We had a lot of fun with that; my blood pressure is usually great, but because it was pretty elevated upon arrival, I wound up getting some blood drawn and spending a good hour with periodic blood pressure checks automatically. For me, it became a game to see how much my blood pressure could lower (I totally won!) – and then I started trying to figure out which part of the monitor might show contractions. Once The Spouse got involved, he was happily occupied and had plenty of great questions for the nurse.

3. Baby is healthy and well by all accounts. Plenty of amniotic fluid, moving regularly, great heart rate, etc. If nothing else, this is good to know (not that I was worried).

4. The whole excursion DID give us something to do. I was a little bored and hadn’t felt like reading or watching anything in particular.

5. Which reminds me: even though I know that next time will probably involve painful contractions, I simply need to bring a book. Me without a book and time to kill is not a pretty sight.

So, hold your horses people. And for goodness’ sake, don’t remind the very pregnant woman that babies tend to come after their due dates. I know this, but I don’t need to hear it (and you don’t need to hear me go all psycho with end-of-pregnancy hormones!).

Reaching the final milestones

At 37 weeks (and counting), now it’s all about achieving those final milestones. First, the goal was to hit 36 weeks (because while obviously 40 weeks is the goal, I knew that any time after 36 weeks he would be in better shape than if he came earlier in the pregnancy).

The second goal was to make it through Mother’s Day weekend, since missing out on the new Great Gatsby movie was NOT an option. Mission accomplished; I saw (and loved) the film, relaxed, and enjoyed what will likely be the only quiet Mother’s Day I’ll know for many years.

On Monday, I hit 37 weeks and my “What to Expect” app became boring since it still says baby is the size of a watermelon. Not helpful OR interesting, so I think I’m done with that.

Today is Milestone #2, my students’ AP US History exam (currently in progress). I told them in January that realistically, baby shouldn’t get in the way of the exam, but I’m excited to see this goal realized. I don’t think THEY care, but I do. Really, though, this is sort of an intermediate milestone: I’d say the next big one is more accurately this Sunday – getting through the school’s graduation ceremony (which faculty attend).

Ultimately, though, the Big Milestone is Friday, May 24. That morning, I proctor the last of my students’ final exams. Everything else should be graded going into this exam, so once the exam is done and I’ve calculated their final grade, we’re good to go. I’ve long felt that he wouldn’t come before next Friday, but when I tell people that he won’t be born before the 24th they generally laugh at me and cite the whole idea that babies do whatever they want.

And of course they do, but this is my sense of things, and I think it will all stay like that. Physically, my body is making progress toward labor, but nothing drastic or indicative that he’ll try to come in the Very Near Future.

May is treating us well, then. I’m a little bit more tired and waddling even more than ever, but things are going well and I’m accomplishing the things that need to be done. Like reading books and watching final season episodes of TV shows – you know, the Vitally Important Things. In just a few short weeks, the school year will end, the baby will arrive, and life as we know it will no longer exist.

Bring it, kid! (After the 24th, of course)

35 weeks: Cantaloupe or Bowling Ball?

Pregnancy and work swallowed me whole in April, and apparently, I swallowed either a large cantaloupe or a small bowling ball at the same time.

The Apps say that at 35 weeks of pregnancy, baby is approximately 6 pounds. They equate this to a “large cantaloupe,” which might sound tasty but is utterly false by the looks of my abdomen. Bowling ball, people – I say bowling ball. Let’s cut the cute-sounding fruit parallels and get honest here.

Besides, I’d love to go bowling – if I wouldn’t get confused with the ball.

In other news, Braxton Hicks types of things started about 2 weeks ago, not long after returning from a day with my family to celebrate baby and my sister’s upcoming birthday. Mostly, they just come and go randomly. I’ve had a couple of days where they seemed strong, like yesterday, but they’re really more of a bother than anything else.

My sister-in-law threw me an amazing baby shower a week ago, full of lots of love and well wishing and great opportunities to reconnect with old friends. It came on the heels of an exhausting weekend and really made my day and my week. At this point, then, we’re mostly ready for baby. We have a car seat and diapers and clothing and crib sheets.

I’d say we’re just missing the baby, but to be honest the nursery is still a mess, what with gifts floating here and there, clothes and sheets to wash, and other things to put away.

T minus (approximately) 5 weeks now.

In the meantime, there’s that household stuff to do, classes to finish teaching in the next three weeks, movies to see, and books to read.

I’d say that I’m shocked we’ve made it to this point, but let’s be honest: I’m quite ready to lose the big belly and replace it with the baby. Even if he does decide to cry all the time.

30 weeks and counting

All of a sudden, it’s the last “real” day of spring break. I’d wonder where it all went, but I know the answer to that question. It hit me this morning that this is the last time I’ll have spring break all to myself (but then, of course, I just remembered that this is why daycare exists, so that next year I can have a little free time anyway).

I didn’t quite panic at the thought that this is the end of an era, but I almost kinda did.

I officially reached 30 weeks pregnant last Monday, which means that we’re inching ever closer to the baby’s arrival. From one perspective, looking ahead to at least 10 more weeks seems like a long time, but from another angle, once you realize that I have events going on almost every weekend in April, it becomes clear that it’s not that much more time.

It’s convenient, too, that my due date coincides just after the end of the school year. Gives me and the students both something to look forward to. Anytime they wonder how many weeks we have left until school ends, I can give them the most accurate answer they’ll get.

This week’s big realization has been one that’s actually been in the works for awhile. If I look back over the past 30 weeks, it’s obvious how my body’s changed, but it’s all happened gradually. It’s not like I woke up one morning and all of a sudden had this big belly; it’s been growing steadily. Some days, you just realize it more than others. This gradual change that sneaks up on you means that it’s easy to forget things, like the fact that you really can’t just squeeze through tightly-spaced chairs in a restaurant, or that you have to allow more space between your car and the trash bins in the garage.

Or that you might have to be a little more careful when it comes to house cleaning. Suffice to say, I did a little more than I should have on Tuesday. This is the part, I think, where people start telling you that you need to rely on others more, and when you’re used to being very self-sufficient, it kinda sucks. Rather, I have no problems at all with the idea of having people help me, but I guess I envisioned that more for after the baby’s born (if I’m lucky; mostly, I presume I’m on my own this summer).

This week, then, my pregnancy support belt has been a lifesaver, and the wee one’s been moving up a storm. The house also looks great, I’ve gotten more sleep than I’ll probably get in the next 18 years combined, and I’ve had some quality time with the pup (despite the unexpected foot of snow that nobody wanted to see in late March).

Here’s to April, then, the “cruellest month,” tempting me with baby around the corner, cold and warm days, and the need for just a little more patience.

T3

The truth about pregnancy is – well, actually, it’s nothing to do with pregnancy: the truth is, I’ve been really busy at work the last few weeks in the lead-up to spring break. I was also a little more tired as I began the third trimester of this pregnancy a few weeks ago, so put those together (along with the fact that I’d rather blog on my laptop than my iPad and I’d rather leave my laptop at work during the week)….and you get silence. Unless we’re friends on Facebook, where you’ll get my periodic attempts at humor and brevity.

Conveniently, the school year at my institution is broken into trimesters, which we refer to in shorthand as T1, T2, or T3 (hence the title of this post). I haven’t been RIGHT on track with the school trimesters, but I’ve been pretty darn close this year, so as T2 of the school year came to an end, I knew I was ever-so-close to the long-awaited T3 of not just school, but also of being pregnant.

In the past month, we’ve embarked on the adventure of childbirth classes (a six-week series at the hospital at which we plan to deliver) and I’ve entered an endless read-a-thon of pregnancy and childbirth books along the way. I started seeing a chiropractor who specializes in prenatal care – and you probably wouldn’t be surprised that I, of all people, WOULD be the one to find a chiropractor with a lending library. It’s just so appropriate for who I am. (To date, I’ve checked out and read four books from her office.)

The downsides of pregnancy at this point – aside from the fact that my stomach bears the obvious “OMG! LOOK HOW KNOCKED UP I AM!” bigness of almost-30-weeks of baby growing – is that it’s harder to move. If I sit for too long, my joints around my pelvis get stiff, and getting off the couch is harder than I would ever have imagined. Mostly, I’ve taken to sitting on an exercise ball, although I still can’t bring myself to read on one (yet). When I return to school in two weeks, I also plan to take an exercise ball as a temporary replacement to my desk chair, which is no longer working for me.

The upside of pregnancy at this point is watching the belly move. We all know I’m easily amused, but seriously, this is a blast! Whether I’m in the tub, in bed, or sitting on the couch, when this kid gets active, I get the biggest kick out of watching him kick and punch and roll around. (It definitely looks like I’m growing an alien life form at this point. I haven’t developed a craving for Reese’s Pieces yet, though, so I’m fairly certain it’s not ET’s spawn. This is probably good, although in my creative moments I think that’s a little too bad.)

So welcome to my third trimester. Since I’m on spring break through April 1, I hope to write more here and post more pictures, since obligatory baby bump photos are apparently always fun. And coming soon: the latest thoughts on childbirth plans…if it’s even possible to have those. Ha!

Moments

During the first trimester and first few weeks of the second, pregnancy seemed to consume every waking moment by the sheer virtue of feeling ill. I wasn’t really showing yet, but I could feel that I was pregnant every moment of the day when I was queasy (or more than queasy) or experienced those nasty food aversions or just couldn’t figure out if I would be able to eat anything that day.

In a welcome contrast, I’d say that the second trimester has been largely uneventful. The Kid is growing, which means that my body is growing, but even that’s something that’s easily forgettable when I’m not looking in the mirror or trying to squeeze through a narrow space. Sometimes, I look down and have to take a moment to realize “Oh yes! That’s right, I have a belly there now.” Sometimes, though, it’s easy to remember, like when I’m trying to climb the stairs at school while carrying my bag of school stuff, or when I get out of bed in the morning and feel The Kid’s weight at the start of the day.

I don’t mind the uneventfulness. There are times when 15 more weeks seems interminable, but then I remember that it all coincides with the end of the school year and I realize I have plenty of things to keep me busy until then – and I’m looking forward to the rest of the school year and not particularly in a rush to see it fade away too quickly.

What I really love the most, however, are the little moments.

Like all the moments when The Kid starts dancing around and kicking, often when I least expect it (in a meeting, in the car, during lunch, while I’m teaching, while I’m watching TV). He moves a lot, but it’s still so much of a novelty (even after six or seven weeks) that I have to pause and realize it’s not my body going crazy – it’s my son making his presence known.

Or my favorite moments, when The Spouse starts to read aloud to me and The Kid at bedtime. Those are the relaxing family moments when it’s just the two of us and the growing one (and sometimes puppy when he deigns to grace us with his presence). In the last week or two, The Kid’s gotten particularly excited any time his dad shows up.

At story time, he moves like crazy.

A few nights ago, The Spouse put his hand on my stomach as he fell asleep in bed while I was reading; The Kid moved and kicked the entire time his dad’s hand remained there.

And Saturday night, while I was resting on the couch, The Spouse came in to the living room and started reading aloud. The Kid started dancing for the first time in hours.

These are the moments I love right now.

Lesson 1

Dear Kid,

We like to start education young in this family. For your first lesson in appropriate behavior, let’s talk about the following:

Do not jump on:

1. Your bed
2. Your parents’ bed3. The sofa
4. The dog
5. Your mother’s bladder.

Seriously, that #5 is no fun.