6 months and counting

So, welcome back, those that are around.  I know it’s been a long time, and we have some catching up to do.  I apologize, but man, who knew that an infant could be so much work, and totally sap my will to do anything productive.  Also, I’ve still been in school part time, and of course working.   I made some creative resolutions for this year though, and as part of one of those, I need to start writing more again.  I’ll keep you up to date.

First, let’s go over the first 6 months.  I’m going to gloss over this for the most part.  A lot obviously happened, and there will be time to revisit some of those things later on.  I left off with going home from the hospital. So things we dealt with.  First time parent jitters and not knowing exactly what to do with her when we got home.  Adjusting to being woken up a million times a night.  Realizing that she didn’t need to be in our room, we could hear her (even without a monitor) just fine in the next room, with all the random baby noises she made.  My wife realizing she was dealing with post-partum depression, and how to deal with that as a family (She has stated that she would like to write something about it eventually.  I hope she does.  One of the things that was hardest was just how little discussion there is out there about it, which made finding peer support very hard). Then there is the fact that our daughter wouldn’t sleep without being swaddled, and now we can’t get her to stop.  It’s slowly getting to the point where she doesn’t need it, but she hasn’t fully realized it yet.  There was a couple months where every day on the way home from her Nana and Papa’s house she decided that screaming was the thing to do.  For 30-40 minutes straight.  We tried a lot of different things to help alleviate that, and she finally realized that she could just sleep the entire way home.   Makes for a much nicer commute on the way home.   She had pooping issues for a while where she was constipated.  She also was diagnosed with acid reflux, which she has seemingly outgrown (The doctor thinks that the car screaming may have been tied to this, as the acid build up by the end of the day was just painful for her.)  She’s now off her meds (fingers crossed) for that.   We’ve dealt with the mass exodus of friends that occurs when you have a kid.  You definitely learn very quickly who your friends are once you have kids.  The ones willing to still make an effort to hang out, even when you can’t make the effort are the ones you know you should keep around.  What’s been most funny to me is the amount of single or childless male friends who didn’t disappear.   Needless to say, it’s been a very interesting 6 months.  There are probably a billion other things I could talk about, and I’m sure they might come up sometime, but let’s move on.

Our daughter is now 6 ½ months old.  Just this week she finally figured out that even though she can’t crawl yet (although, she is just now starting to get those knees up and then push herself backward) that she can spin around on her stomach.  She also hasn’t figured out how to roll from her stomach to her back, although she now flips over and occasionally will sleep on her stomach.   Then she wakes up, and wakes us up, because she can’t flip herself back over.  She gets close, but she just doesn’t know what to do with one arm and it keeps her from flipping back over.   She has started to get better at mimicking noises, and has added “hi” to her repertoire.  Obviously, we don’t consider it her first word, since I highly doubt she understands what it means yet, but it’s funny to hear thrown into otherwise unintelligible baby babble.  Which, while we’re on the topic, is hilarious. What’s even better, is that when she’d be tired, or overly-tired, she’d scream and cry. Now, she babbles even more than usual, and giggles a lot. We always know when she’s tired, and she seems to think it’s the funniest thing on earth.  She has also figured out that whenever someone has a camera (or phone pointed at her to take pictures) she should smile.  She loves to ham it up for the camera.  Tomorrow, she starts baby swim classes.   I’m actually pretty excited about that.  I can’t wait to take pictures and video of that.  I think I have an addiction to those things with her. 

I think that should do it for now.  I’m working out how I’m going to schedule posting. I’m aiming for once or twice a week. What do the 14 of you followers think?

our stay at the hospital

Before I continue from yesterday, I just want to toss in some stuff about yesterday.  Our daughter is now 4 weeks old, almost 5.  She’s been going through the whole evening witching hour thing that seems to be common with all babies.   The last two nights I’ve been able to get her to calm down, and then place her in her crib.  The first night, she sat and chattered and cooed to the solid side of her crib, which we have now named “Crib Wall” or CW for short.   She is fascinated with it.  She’s also fascinated with the window shade in the living room, or just “Shade”.  I’m pretty sure she likes them both more than me.  Or at least likes to look at them more than me.  She is enthralled by them. Weirdo.  It’s these stories I’m keeping for Prom night and her Wedding.  Anyway, back to the story…

So, once they stitched up my wife, she joined us in the recovery room.  She had some major shakes which wouldn’t shop, so they gave her something for that, and it stopped pretty quickly.  Until they stopped, I was still scared to death.  I know they weren’t a big deal, but like I said before, my biggest fear was something was going to happen to my wife. Irrational fear I’m sure, but you know, it’s that whole “I love her with all my heart, and I married her for that reason, and plan on growing old and gray and senile with her” thing.  So, all through this, our daughter never really slept. She just sort of looked around and was taking it all in. No crying, no fussing, just adjusting to being in the world and looking around.  They moved us up to our recovery room, and we sat and rested.  Family members came by, met our baby girl, and she was very photogenic and had pictures taken of her with various family members.  My wife needed rest though, so everyone left, and I’ll venture a guess that we watched some Friends. I could be wrong. Could have just been regular TV.  At this point, my wife’s vitals were still all over the place, and her body wasn’t able to regulate itself very well. Probably not an uncommon thing a few hours after surgery.  So, she started in with attempting to breast feed.  That sort of worked, as it does with a brand new baby trying to figure out how to latch.  We made it through the first night in recovery, and they would bring the baby in every 2 hours to eat.  In the morning, my wife still isn’t regulating her heart rate and blood pressure very well.  She’s having a hard time with things all day, and ends up with a catheter.  The feeding is coming along, and the lactation person and nurses help us figure out how to get the baby to latch properly, and eat.  So that’s going fairly well.  We make the call early in the day though that she needs as much rest as possible, so no visitors that day.

By that evening, we still aren’t seeing any improvement in my wife, and in fact, some of her vitals are looking worse.  She’s feeling worse, and, it makes me shake to even write this, and it’s hard to convey the actual emotions, and how physically drained she was. I hope she’ll tell her side someday. But she looked at me, in all seriousness, and said she felt like her body was shutting down.  The weight of this statement doesn’t come across very well on paper, nor does the gravity of the situation.  We’d been trying to let her rest as much as possible, but things just weren’t going in her favor.  And with that, we had to make a decision that wasn’t one we wanted to make at all.  Her body needed rest.  I wasn’t willing to let her risk her own health and life anymore, so we discussed sending the baby to the nursery for the night.  Which means feedings would have to be from formula that night.   So we did.  My wife was able to sleep through the night, and we saw a vast improvement the next morning.  She opted to start pumping for breast milk, and did that for the rest of the stay in the hospital, to make sure that her milk would come in.  However, once we got home, things were once again not going well in the recovery, and we again had to make one of the hardest decisions we had to make as parents.  We switched fully to formula.  If you know us at all, you know that wasn’t even something that we had contemplated. Ever. We were firm believers in “breast is best”.  I didn’t even want to think about formula.  I’m pretty sure my wife had never considered it either.  It just didn’t fit into our beliefs for how to feed and raise a child.  But once we were put into a situation where it became detrimental to the health of my wife, it wasn’t hard to make that decision at all.  There’s no question in my mind that we made the right decision for us.  Because my fear was that if we continued down that road, there wouldn’t be an us.  Now, that’s not to say that it wasn’t tough. Like I said, we firmly believed that breast feeding was the way to go. But it was taken off the table for us realistically.  And adjusting to that reality wasn’t easy. There have been issues with finding the right formula, and baby constipation, not feeling bonded with baby etc.  But we still have my wife. And the baby needs her mother.  It’s funny, I still feel like I have to defend our decision.  It’s kind of a reaction to the militant “Breast is Best” people, but it’s also a constant reminder to us.  Those first few weeks are a blur, and we forget sometimes just how serious things were, and could have been.

(IF YOU ARE SQEAMISH, SKIP THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH) Back to the hospital though. So, after my wife’s first good evening of sleep, they wanted her to get up and try to go to the bathroom on her own. Well, the one thing no one really talks about is the bleeding after giving birth.  I mean, the told us in the hospital, and I  saw the pad they put on her, but NO ONE mentioned just how much.  So, my wife, for the first time in a couple days, got up out of bed. We maneuvered her IV and her to the bathroom, and before I could help her onto the toilet, blood started pouring down her leg.  Literally, pouring. I about lost my shit.  She started to also. We both thought she was hemorrhaging out, that maybe something was wrong with her internal healing stitches.  I pulled the emergency cord. And when they didn’t come running, I hollered out of the door to get people in there now.  Well, they came running then, and when they got there, looked at me funny, even though there was a pool of blood on the floor.  Turns out, everything was “fairly” normal.  I wish they would have mentioned that to us prior, that after two days of sitting, that the blood was going to pool, and once it had a chance to get out, it would, and it would be normal.  So, that gave both of us a near heart attack.   This was probably the first major thing we realized that no one talks about when they talk about giving birth.

It’s hard to really remember much of the rest of the stay. It’s really pretty much a blur after that, because things sort of became normal after that.  I did help my wife with things I never thought I’d help her with, so I guess there’s that.  People came to visit, we fed the baby, she pooped on the pediatrician, and then me.  The only other thing that really sticks out in my mind after all of that is going home. Being so very nervous to take her home.  No nurses, no doctors, just us and the baby.  Also, I had to stop and have someone make sure I put the baby into the carseat correctly. We had gone through a car seat clinic before the baby was born, but there is definitely a difference with putting a doll in and adjusting to the right tightness, and a real life baby.  So, she made sure everything looked ok, and helped make a couple minor adjustments, and then we went home.  And I’ll continue that story another time.

The Birth (and a return to the blog!)

The Birth

First of all, I want to apologize for not writing this sooner. Those of you with children though will probably understand just how crazy this first month has been.  So, I’m not actually sure how apologetic I really am. I’m more tired than anything.  Now that I have that out of the way, I think I’ll outline my plan of attack to catch you up on things. I’m going to try and condense some things, and some I’ll skip over. I’d like to get caught up and have this at least be a multiple post a week blog now that our daughter is here.  Things certainly haven’t been easy, and I’ll start that entry in a minute.  My wife and I have also discussed her doing some more guest blogs and I really hope that she can. I feel that even though there are a billion mom blogs out there, she has something important and pertinent to say regarding our experiences so far.  So today, I’m going to start specifically with our first week: from labor to going home.  Also, please forgive me those that remember the facts better or differently than I do (Mom, Mom in Law, Wife, etc), I’ll try my best, but that whole not sleeping thing, coupled with my horrible memory anyway may leave some holes.

Labor started easy enough.  We had been out for a friend’s going away party on a Friday night, got home, watched some TV, and then BOOM. Contractions.  I got out a pen and paper and started timing them for my wife.  We attempted to go to bed, but sometime in the middle of the night, they became more intense, and my wife told me it was time to go.  We called into the baby line, they talked to my wife, determined that it was probably go time, and we should come. I want to say this all started around 3am, but who knows.  We went to the hospital, and they monitored them for a while.  The contractions weren’t getting closer together, and after a few hours of monitoring, checking, walking around to get things going, they opted to send us home.  However, they asked that we come back that evening and due to the complications with my wife’s low platelets, they wanted to induce her that evening.  We went home, and tried to rest.

Saturday evening after dinner, we headed back to the hospital.  They started the inducement (induction? To induce? I’m really never sure how to state that).  We sat around, and like much of the first week, we watched Friends on DVD (an aside, I’m fairly certain our daughter is going to grow up somehow knowing what “WE WERE ON A BREAK” means, without ever actively having watched the show.).  Once again, about midway through the night (and by midway, I mean 2 or 3am (I’m using a lot of parenthetical asides (isn’t this fun?))) it was determined that things were progressing now, and they would take out the stuff they used to induce my wife, and let things go on their own.  So, real, painful, focus on your breathing labor was going on now.  I called my Mother in Law, as she was requested by my wife to be another in the room also, and we labored.  This went on for, and I’m only guessing here, 5-6 hours of contractions, before we got to the pushing.  I’m not even sure anymore.  Anyway, things sort of got hung up again, and they opted to break her bag of waters (Now that I type that, I’m fairly certain that actually happened, but sometimes it seems like I imagined it. I’m not sure.). So water broke, mom dilated, it was go time.  So she started pushing. And pushing. And pushing.  For two hours, my wife pushed, and pushed and pushed.  And she hadn’t slept really since Thursday night.  They rotated her every which way they could. I helped push against her back, held her leg(s), got cold wash clothes. Basically whatever I could do. And I still felt helpless to move this baby along.  So, we got to about 11:30 am (once again, only a guess. But it sounds right.)  And the doctors gave a few options. Basically, my wife could continue to try and push for another half hour, but it was likely that the baby wasn’t coming that way, or we could opt for the C-section now, without the additional pushing.  Since my wife was so far past sheer exhaustion, we opted for the c-section without the additional pushing. They didn’t feel it was likely she was coming that way, but they knew that we had wanted a natural child birth.  By the way, my wife did all the above up to that point, with no drugs. They had given her Fentinol (sp?) at one time, but that didn’t do anything but make her tired.  She was (and still is) amazing.

So, our baby is stuck, and needs a c-section.  We’re obviously tired, and emotionally drained, and now scared.  The baby was doing fine, heart rate, etc was good.  But I was scared for my wife. I don’t know that she saw it. I tried to be brave.  One of my greatest fears is losing her.  I was especially concerned then since her platelets are low, and now they’re sending her to surgery.  Once again, brave face.  They prep her, and the OR.  They give me scrubs and I get ready to go in.  Also, this should be an aside, but I feel that I’m overusing them, so here’s an aside mid paragraph to annoy English majors the world over.  I thought I looked pretty good in scrubs. Who knew?  Back to the story at hand.  They walked me into the OR, and sat me by my wife’s head. I can’t remember anything we said up until when they told me to get the camera ready.  The pulled our daughter out, and brought her around to see.  I then got to go watch her be weighed, measured, had her footprints done, and I got to cut the umbilical cord.  I brought her back around to meet her Mommy.  I may have cried a little. We got to sit for a few minutes, and then the baby and I went back around to get her a shot, and put some goop on her eyes, etc, and then we went to go meet Nanna (Nana, ? I should figure that out) while they finished up with mom.   And that is the very short version of how our daughter was born.

I will save the rest of the story for tomorrow. I know I said I’d do the whole week, but that is just going to get really long, more than anyone would want to read from a blog.  We’ll pick up from this point tomorrow.

Guest Blogger: My wife!

I decided the other day that I wanted to guest blog on here as you have all gotten to know my husband's point of view of things, but have never gotten to hear mine! As my due date approaches I have been filled with all kinds of mixed feelings. Of course I am overwhelmed with excitement to finally meet this little being that I have been growing in my body for the past 9 months. With each new kick, jab and hiccup I begin to wonder what kind of person she will be. I can only imagine that with two crazy parents like my husband and I, she will surely have a good sense of humor. I know it will be a little while, but I can't wait to see her smile and hear her laugh at all the small things in life that you and I might take for granted now. That is probably one of the things I am looking forward to the most; seeing her experience things for the first time. The first time she goes to the zoo and sees a bear, the first time her little feet touch the grass or the first time she gets to run through a sprinkler on a hot summer day. To me there is nothing more beautiful that seeing the pure, unspoiled innocence of a child and remembering what it was like to not have a care in the world.

But of course there is the anxiety of this being our first baby. As some of you know, this has not been the easiest pregnancy for me. Being sick day and night from weeks 6-17 there was a time when I thought I would never feel like a normal human being again. But as quickly as the nausea came, it suddenly disappeared overnight and I was finally able to enjoy the fact that I was pregnant. Since then there have been many ups and downs so I can't help but be a little nervous about her actual arrival. My husband and I have prepared as best as we can by reading books, taking classes and of course getting all kinds of advice from friends and family. But can you really ever be prepared to bring a child in to this world? Probably not. I mean, I know labor is going to be painful...but what kind of pain? I would like to try to go as natural as possible, but will I be able to handle it? How will I deal with so much sleep deprivation? What kind of mother will I be? All of these questions swirl around in my mind as her due date gets closer and closer.

The thing I do know for certain is that my husband and I are going to love and support this little girl with every ounce of our being. She hasn't even made her debut in the world and I find myself already extremely protective of her. I know that I have the best possible role model as a mother that I could ever have. Her strength throughout the years has never ceased to amaze me and she will be there to guide me in the right direction.  And I know that my husband is going to be the most unbelievable father. I know this because of how he takes care of me and how he took care of his two little sisters when he was growing up. I could not have asked for a more loving and caring partner in life. Each and every day my love grows stronger  for him and I still cannot believe that I was so lucky in life to have found him not only once, but twice.

So stay tuned! Hopefully only a few more weeks left and we will get to introduce you to our little peanut! :)

36 Weeks

Tuesday marked the day my wife hit 36 weeks complete.  The baby is due just 26 days from now.  Obviously we know that she will make her debut whenever she really wants to, so we’re trying to prepare as best we can before that. Our bags are basically packed (except mine.  I really need to remember to do that!)  and we have all the immediate things we need.   I feel like we’re prepared about as much as we can be, but how prepared can you ever really be?

I try to keep the really detailed stuff off of this blog, and maybe that’s been to the detriment of me being able to keep this up to date on a weekly basis. Part of it is Op Sec. I’m starting to come around to keeping as much personal detail off of here as possible.  There seem to be more and more studies too about how it’s unhealthy for your child’s development when so many personal details about them appear online, especially via Facebook.  As much as we want to share the joy in our lives with people, it’s teaching our children that they can post anything about their lives online.  I also recently read an opinion piece about how Facebook is ruining humanity as a whole, but totally flipping the way we perceive ourselves. Instead of our real world personas dictating how we present ourselves online, our real life personas are actually being decided and mirroring our online personas. I know it doesn’t sound that scary for some people, but considering how many internet dicks there are out there, entire generations are their online personas. And if you’ve ever played Call of Duty online, that should scare the hell out of you.  It’s almost enough to make me want to quit Facebook.  I’ve thought about it before, or at least to severely limit my interactions there.  I’ve tried to really, and will probably pull myself out of that muck even farther once the baby is born. Personal, face to face interactions are best, and that’s what I want to teach my child.  In fact, now that I’m writing about that, I suppose I should really talk to my wife about a strategy for just how much we’ll share online about our child. So honey, when you read this, let’s remember to talk about that, ok?

On that note, but trying to keep a certain level of privacy, we were informed a couple weeks ago that we were no longer able to use a midwife, and will have to switch to a doctor.  I’m bummed out a little about that, and I know my wife is too. Even though where we’re having the baby has a rotation of midwives, and we weren’t guaranteed we’d get ours, I still prefer the midwife experience over the doctor.  I’m hoping that could change yet again, but I have no idea.  I just know that we were more comfortable with a midwife.  To me, that was a big deal.  I’m sure a doctor will deliver the baby just fine, but I have visions of myself having to yell at a doctor.  If you’ve ever seen me yell, a) you are in a very small club, b) you know that me actually angry enough to yell is not a good thing, and c) I’m sorry.  I’m very protective of my family though.  Like I said, I’m sure things will be fine, but I liked the comfort and familiarity we’ve built up with our midwife, and I felt that even if she didn’t make the delivery, that the others would at least be on the same of very similar page. Doctors (to me) don’t seem to have that same rapport, or convey the same sort of feelings. They make it seem very clinical and surgical, instead of natural. 

Anyway, that’s enough rambling on today.

Gardening

This past weekend my brother in law and his girlfriend came over to help get the garden started.  With the wife in her last month of pregnancy, and me with a gimpy foot, it’s been hard to get yard work done on my own.  The BIL’s girlfriend also wanted a place to garden, as they don’t have one, and I gladly would share our space to help alleviate some of the work.  With the baby almost here, I know my available time for yard work is going to go way down. 

So, yesterday we tilled (manually...ugh) half the garden.  A little back story on the garden first though.  When we bought our house last year, the garden hadn’t been touched in years.  It was full of weeds that were well over 6 and 7 feet tall, some of them very woody.  Last year I killed them off, and chopped them down.  This spring I tarped the rest of the garden over to try and kill off whatever was left and attempting to grow. Luckily, we got most of it.  So, back to the tilling.  Luckily, my lazy streak, foot pain, and slight ability to think logically all came together, and instead of tilling all 10x20 some feet of garden, we decided to only do half.  Smart move, considering the soil was basically clay and had been extremely compacted. We hadn’t bought a ton of vegetables, so there was really no need to break our backs doing the whole garden.  After finally getting our roughly 10x 10 (maybe 10x 12?) section tilled, we mixed in 200 lbs of compost and added 400 lbs of top soil.  It barely made a dent in raising the level as high as I would like it, but this is going to be a multi year process.  We planted some zucchini , a couple different varieties of tomatoes, straighneck squash, and finally some red, green, poblano and cayenne peppers.  We then re-tarped the other half of the garden for now. It’s possible that I may till and get it ready for a late summer/fall crop, but I’m not worried about it right now. If that doesn’t happen, there is always next year. 

We also planted some deck boxes of herbs.  Thyme, Dill, Basil (in it's own pot), oregano, rosemary and parsley.  I’m hoping they get enough light sitting where they are, I’ll have to keep an eye on them. Herbs and deck boxes are new to me, so we’ll have to see.

I also planted a spearmint plant along the back of the house. The previous owners were absolutely horrible at landscaping, and taking care of the yard in general. So, the bed that is along the house is half full of rocks, and weeds.  I will clean the rest of the bed out, and I plan on putting in a root barrier and letting the mint proliferate all throughout the beds along the house as decorative plants/ground cover. Mint is obviously also good for cooking, and making Mojitos.

We also have two apple trees in back that my dad and I have been trying to rehabilitate them, as they were never pruned or taking care of.  Hopefully, they’ll produce again, and we can harvest some apples this year. They did produce last year, and since we’re getting them back into shape, I hope we can get some better fruit this year.  In the future, I’d like that add a couple more beds for berries. Raspberries and strawberries for sure, and maybe we’ll attempt something else too. 

All of this work will hopefully pay off.  I’d really like to have the garden, and the rest of the yard producing for when the baby starts growing up.  It’d be nice to have fresh veggies and fruit for her, and also to teach her how to garden, and about self sufficiency.  Plus, it’s another great way to make sure we’re outside, enjoying fresh air, and not watching TV. 

Week 32

Well, we’re winding down.   Just over 8 weeks left.   We’ve started our childbirth prep classes.   We have a breastfeeding class tonight.  That should be interested. They invited us male partners to it. I’m not sure exactly what my role will be for that, aside from generally being supportive.  I suppose that’s what the class is for though, right?  Next week newborn care starts. Pretty excited for that actually. As these ramp up, it means we’re getting that much closer!

We have most of the stuff for the baby’s room now.  Just waiting for the chair to arrive at the store so I can pick it up.  We also need to go get the mattress.  But then I think we should be good. Then it’s on to all the other fun stuff.  

Speaking of which, my wife’s first shower is this weekend.  I’m pretty excited about that, even though I won’t be there. I know that she doesn’t love being the center of attention, but she definitely deserves to be this one time.  You only get one First Baby Shower.  I hope it goes extremely well, and she has fun.  It is all about her and the baby!  I won’t lie, I’m excited to see what stuff we need that we registered for is received.  I mean, that sounds sort of horrible, but really, it’s the only part of this that I get to be involved with (you know, hauling gifts in from the car, putting stuff away, haha!).  Plus we did some pretty in depth research on the stuff we registered for to make sure that it was BPA free, PVC free, etc.   Plus I shouldn’t be allowed to shop for baby stuff.  I roll my eyes when my wife always makes a B line for the baby clothes at Target, but it takes all my strength and effort to not give in to the urges, and go on a baby shopping spree.  It’s probably a really good thing that places like Pacifier, Baby Grand, and Peapods are nowhere close to our house or my work!

Until next week…