Better late than never….

On second thought, I decided to wait to start the Wednesday Confessional until the blog goes live on the St. Joseph News-Press Web site. Gotta save some of the good stuff. I will be doing it! And I’d love some participation!

Aside from that, I wanted to ponder an interesting “Mom” topic here. I think every Mom struggles with the idea of adding to her family. When you love something as much as you love your first-born, it’s hard to imagine voluntarily doing something that takes you away from spending time with your “baby.” But, at the same time, most Moms want their children to have siblings and (in our case, definitely) want them to be close enough in age to be able to relate to each other.

I do admit that there have been times in the past two months that I have missed J — even when he’s standing right in front of me. I don’t get to spend nearly as much time with him as I did before. And often, instead of watching and enjoying his reaction to the new games we invent, I’m observing from afar as I nurse my daughter.

Speaking of that…gotta go nurse the babe…more on this later…

Nearly a month…

I can’t believe it’s been nearly a month since I’ve written here. Life has been beyond hectic. But rest assured, new posts will be coming.

This blog will soon be making a move. I will be writing a column on parenting for the St. Joseph News-Press, a newspaper based out of St. Joseph, Mo. And accompanying that print column, I will also be blogging for their parenting Web site.

The content and topics will stay the same — I just hope that more people will follow and participate.

To begin with, I plan to start (TOMORROW!) a weekly post called “The Wednesday Confessional.”  This weekly post will, as the name suggests, be a Mom confession. It might be something I wish I hadn’t done or something that surprised me. Sometimes it will be funny and other times I hope will strike a cord.

I really want other Moms to post their confessions as well. I’m hoping that this weekly post will be a place that Moms can go to be themselves. And to realize that other Moms aren’t perfect either. We all make mistakes…and we can learn and grow from them together.

See you tomorrow! I hope you join me!

Awww, man…

I finally had a second to look in the mirror today. I don’t mean a quick, put-my-hair-up glance — I mean a full once over.

And I have to say, I want my old boobs back.

I had read that the second pregnancy brings with it even bigger bodily changes than the first. And I guess I didn’t believe it. After all, I gained less weight and am overall much healthier. I’m even closing in on my pre-pregnancy weight

But my boobs..well that’s a different story.

They are looking a little ‘National Geographic’ these days — hanging irritatingly close to my navel. Damn.

My hubby says he loves them. That they are sexy because they nurtured our children. I say that’s a bunch of bullshit.

My birthday

Now I’ve known for awhile now that birthdays just go downhill after age 21. There just isn’t that much to look forward to….but I had no idea just how low the hill plummets.

Today was my birthday and it also happened to be E’s worst colicky day yet.

Here how it started:

E woke up in a foul mood, but I was able to calm her by putting her in the Moby wrap. I decided to take J and E to the park before it became too warm outside to carry her in the wrap. I called a friend of mine and she met me at a local park. E cried the entire drive — which was not a surprise.

When we arrived, I thought she’d calm down when placed back in the wrap. No dice. And despite nursing her, changing her diaper and trying several different positions, she just wouldn’t calm down. Eventually, I decided we just needed to leave.

About halfway back to the car, J took a bad spill on the pavement….so then I had two screaming kids. I stopped at a picnic bench to finish comforting J and to nurse E one more time before getting in the car. I suppose I must’ve pushed her diaper and onesie aside while getting her position to nurse because all of a sudden I felt a little slimy mess on her thigh.

Great, I thought. A diaper explosion.

Oh, yes. But the diaper itself was clean….the poop wound up in my lap. The yellow, seedy poop of a breastfed baby was all over my shorts. She’d pooped right in my crotch area, completely through to the other side. It looked like I’d eaten too many pieces of pumpkin pie and then had an unfortunate incident.

I called over my friend, who was also just leaving the park, because I thought if I didn’t have someone to laugh about it with — I just might cry. So we laughed. A lot.

That was hour three of the screaming.

E cried from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and then again from about 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. She would only quiet while breastfeeding. At 4 p.m., she stopped crying while in the wrap and then fell asleep for awhile. Then she screamed some more….

The bad news: My birthday pretty much sucked.

The good news: I didn’t shed one tear. I laughed quite a bit. And, because she usually goes in day-long  cycles, tomorrow should be a better day.

Maybe I’ll pretend that tomorrow is my birthday.

Baby Weight

Having a newborn introduces a million difficulties into daily life.

Who hasn’t gotten completely ready to leave the house, only to have the newest member of the family poop through their outfit and all over the car seat? Or looked up at the clock to the shock that the entire evening has been sucked into a colicky bout of crying? And every new parent has experienced the 10-fold increase in laundry that comes with addition of a 8-pound bundle of joy.

I have been known to say to friends and family that I’d be happy to skip the first few months. You’re typically so sleep-deprived that you don’t really remember them anyway. So let’s just fast-forward to the period where babies actually interact with you. They laugh and chatter and provide some type of reward for meeting their endless demands.

But now, as I’m in this quickly waning time frame, I remember why people treasure the newborn period so much.

It’s the baby weight.

The weight of your tiny child laying, helplessly vulnerable on your chest. The body of a newborn is delicious in its heaviness.

When E lays her head on my chest and I stretch out her body over my ribcage, I have an unparalleled sense of peace. I feel her diaphragm press against mine with every breath. Her tiny hands, resting under her chin, prop up her head just enough that I can kiss her forehead with just the slightest movement. I can hear every exhale and every little coo. I can smell her every time I inhale.

In these moments, she comforts me.

It recreates the most amazing sensation that accompanies pregnancy — being one with another human being. There is nothing more intimate.

When J was quickly leaving the newborn phase, I remember trying desperately to cement the overall sensation of his weight on my chest in my mind. I wanted to recall every little piece of it — how he smelled, how his weight made it just slightly more difficult to raise my chest, how his little snores made me smile.

But full memory eludes me.

And I’m trying again, even as I type this, to capture how it makes me feel to have E lay with me. I’m trying to do it justice.

But I know I can’t. I won’t fully remember. And in my postpartum, hormone-driven state — it makes me cry.

So bring on the poop and the spitup. I’ll do the laundry. And I’ll accept the fact that my social life — at least for the next few months — will cease to exist.

Just let me keep my baby weight.

‘Colic’

It was Wednesday. My daughter, E, woke up screaming. She screamed through breakfast, the morning, during J’s date with Sesame Street, our lunchtime, a doctor’s appointment for her and J’s quiet time.

Then she napped on M’s chest.

She woke up screaming.

You get the idea. Basically, if she wasn’t nursing, she was screaming — all day long. And by screaming, let me assure you, I mean SCREAMING. The little one has an amazingly loud, high-pitched yell that curdles the blood of a non-mother, makes a childless husband swear he’ll never reproduce and has parents everywhere clucking in sympathy.

We think our daughter has ‘colic.’ Though this word is basically synonymous with “We don’t know what’s wrong with her”–  it still the only word we have. There is no diagnosis. No definite signs that point to acid reflux or even gas problems.

I used to think that having a baby naturally, at home would be the achievement that I would be most proud of in life…now I think that (if this type of screaming continues for several months — as we’re warned ‘colic’ can do) surviving this period of my life with my sanity intact with surpass it.

It sounds dramatic, but to any new Mom it would make perfect sense.

As a new mom, I’m hormonally compelled to meet my child’s needs. When she cries, my milk starts to leak and my sweat glands go into overdrive. My heart starts racing and my head throbs. My body is telling me — COMFORT, CUDDLE, NURSE — to fix the problem. And when, after hours, I’m unable to do so, the sense of defeat and failure is overwhelming. Combine that with the guilt of watching my two-year-old retreat from me, because I’m largely unavailable to him, and you’ve got the recipe for totally losing it.

I’m lucky that I have help. Thursday was a good day for our whole family. My Mom, who has been a tremendous help to us, came to our house for the afternoon. She is wonderful in that she doesn’t come to hold the baby. When E was crying, my Mom held her. When she wasn’t, she handed her to me so I could enjoy my newborn a bit. And while I cuddled the baby, she entertained J.

I ended the day feeling refreshed and ready to handle more crying….

I can’t imagine the women who do it without help. They are truly my heroes.

Home birth: Pros and Cons

A lot of my friends and family have had questions about the home birth experience. And while I think it was definitely the way to go for our family, there are definitely pros and cons. It’s not all roses. This list is by no means comprehensive, but I think it covers the main points to consider when thinking about home birth.

Pros:

- You, as birthing parents, are the ones in control. You call the shots. You decide when to call the midwife, if you want a water delivery or if you want to deliver in bed. You decide if your partner/husband will be the one ‘catching’ the baby. For us, this control was priceless. When J was born, I felt like I handed over complete control to the doctors and nurses the minute we walked in the door. We even had a nurse in the NICU tell us that we shouldn’t touch or caress our son because it “stressed him out.” In fact, she said, sometimes it was best for the babies if the parents don’t visit at all. That lack of control led to a very rocky start to our parenting venture. We felt like we weren’t even good enough to touch our  son — so how could we care for him? With this birth, we were able to decline shots, decide who would attend the birth and even have a partial lotus birth…meaning that we waited to cut her cord for about an hour after her delivery. This allowed all of the blood from her placenta to make its way into her body — instead of severing her cord immediately and depriving her of up to 30% of her blood volume. Having control was the reason we decided on home birth in the first place.

- Birthing, in my opinion, should be an intimate experience. It should be a gathering of people who can love and support the mother and the baby. Home birthing is the only way to fully achieve this. The parents get to decide who attends the birth — there no nurses rushing in and out while the mother is laboring or, as with J’s birth, talking about their weekend plans while suctioning out his nose and rubbing him off after he emerged. It is only people who care about both parties.

- You have the comfort of home. Relaxing in my own bed after delivery was priceless. Being in my living room while in labor made me feel more safe and less inhibited. And I think if my labor had been more drawn out, it would have been great to eat and drink foods that I enjoyed.  I’ve never understood why hospitals don’t let perfectly healthy women eat while they labor. I was in labor for 36 hours with J and wasn’t allowed to eat anything besides a little Sprite. You can bet by the end of that I was starving and feeling pretty weak — and that’s when I had to start working hard to push him out.

- Drugs aren’t an option. I wanted a natural delivery because I wanted my child to be born free of drugs. While many of the medications and pain-control methods used during delivery are thought to be safe, experts admit that they still don’t know the long-term side effects because they haven’t been used for that long. And it is rare that hospitals allow a woman to labor without interventions like Pitocin to speed things along. New research is starting to suggest that Pitocin might be linked to neurological disorders like autism, ADD and ADHD. The point is this: We don’t REALLY know what these drugs do to the baby, so why risk it?

- You are part of your delivery. I think too often, because of drugs, interventions and pushy hospital staff, the beauty and challenge of childbirth is taken away from couples. M and I did something very difficult — together. And I managed the most pain I’ve ever experienced, in order to give birth to a little girl that didn’t have any drugs in her system. Right after her delivery, I felt enlightened. It was this deep primal connection to what is most basic — giving birth, life, to another human being. In the hospital environment with an epidural, I didn’t experience anything close to that kind of joy, pride and satisfaction.

-Bonding. Though M and I are CRAZY about J and feel very connected to him now, the days after his arrival were tough. I did feel an animal urge to protect him, but I can’t say that I felt love. I think I didn’t really feel that I loved him until several weeks after he came home. I was just too worried with his health and concerned that I wasn’t doing things the “right” way. Part of that I’m sure is because he was our first. With E’s birth, we both felt connected to her immediately. Research indicates that natural birth causes the release of hormones in the mother and baby that insure bonding….I believe it.

Cons:

- Drugs aren’t an option. I’m not talking about during delivery — though that is certainly a con for many people. I’m talking about AFTER delivery. There was no kind nurse handing me some nice little white pills that would help me relax and get some sleep. Instead, I coped with severe contractions after birth, cramping, muscle soreness and the pain of having a stitches “down there” with a little Motrin. It didn’t really take the edge off. My priority was to make sure that my daughter was born without drugs in her system. I WANTED drugs in my system after she arrived!

- No postpartum nursing staff. When you’re at home, if you spill a glass of water you have to clean it up. Even if you just pushed a baby out of your vagina. You and your husband still have to prepare food, tidy the house for visitors and care for your toddler. No one brings you your meals on a nice, tidy little white tray. It makes recovery from childbirth longer and more difficult.

- Visitors and well-wishers come to your house. While this is nice in theory, it’s a bit stressful when you wake up after having a baby and your house is a mess. The morning after E was born, my Mom entertained J, I nursed E while M vacuumed our house. We really should’ve been relaxing and resting. Plus, when visitors come to your house — they stay for awhile. No one would hang out in your hospital room for several hours…but because you’re at home, it is a  lot more comfortable for people to settle in for awhile. This makes it hard for you to rest and nurse the babe. And you have the awkward task of kicking people out. If you’re in a hospital, you can ask a nurse to do it for you.

- Worry. If you have a propensity for worrying, like I do, home birth can really bring that out. For example, E wasn’t tested for jaundice because she as born at home. When I attended a breastfeeding support group meeting, the nurses pointed out that she was yellowish and said that we needed to get her in immediately. It turns out that everything was fine — she has a mild case of jaundice that should clear up without treatment — but it didn’t stop me from feeling worried until we had confirmation from the pediatrician that all was well. The biggest thing you have to think about with home birth is this: if something goes wrong and something bad happens to your baby or you, what will you think about home birth at that point? Will you be able to live with the guilt? In our case, the answer was no — we wouldn’t be able to live with it. But we felt comfortable with our nurse-midwife and we trusted that she would get us to a hospital in time if it was necessary. And because she was a nurse who had ICU experience, we felt safe knowing that if the baby needed medical care immediatley — she could stabilize the baby until EMTs arrived. Thank goodness none of that was necessary, but it gaves us the peace of mind.

After the birth

I’ll continue my little birth story:

After our little girl was placed on my chest, we got to have a long look at her. Even immediately after birth, she was just so beautiful. Because of the quick delivery, she was spared the head molding that so many babies experience. J had a cone head for about the first week of life.

She didn’t open her eyes, but laid there calmly on my chest. I will forever remember how she looked laying there — her head on my breast. She was a gorgeous pink — with a full head of dark hair — and her lips were pursed into a slight pout. She cried just a bit, enough to let us know that she was healthy, but generally seemed content to just rest on her Mama’s body.

After a little while, everyone helped me stand up and get out of the bathtub. I stood for a second to deliver the placenta and then we moved into our bed. Our midwife and doula had gotten all ready for us. We had just a lamp on so the bright lights wouldn’t scare the baby. M and I laid down and enjoyed our newborn.

I’ll cherish these moments for the rest of my life. We just relaxed in our own bed and stared in awe at our new little one. After the rush and chaos of delivery, it seemed like time finally slowed down enough for us to take it all in. Our little girl was quiet and calm, though her eyes were too swollen to fully open. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy being held and caressed. She latched on easily and nursed well.

After about an hour, our midwife came back in to weigh the baby and take her footprints. Our little one turned out to be a big girl — weighing in at 8 lbs., 5 ounces.

Our midwife also needed to check me and stitch up a good-sized tear. It’s funny — when I worried about the pain of delivery, it was the pain associated with tearing that scared me the most. With J, I handled pitocin-induced contractions well for about 24 hours…so I thought I’d be okay to handle them with this delivery. But with his birth, I had an epidural by the time I had to push. So I didn’t feel the third-degree tear I received while pushing him out. I thought it would hurt tremendously to have that skin rip. But for me, the burning of her head emerging was more of an intense sensation than a pain. And the relief associated with pushing far exceeded the pain of tearing flesh. In fact, I wasn’t sure that I had a tear until our midwife examined me.

After some stitching and a shower, the midwife and doula left us to enjoy our baby. We talked for hours about everything that had happened, all while holding and staring at our new little girl. I couldn’t sleep. Part of it was excitement and part of it was pain. I also periodically had strong tremors and chills.

With J, I didn’t nurse him until he was about three days old because he was in the neonatal intensive care unit. So I didn’t experience the after-pains — or contractions — brought on by nursing. Apparently, they get worse with each delivery. For me, these contractions were as bad as many I felt during the most intense periods of labor. These pains continued for three days after delivery. Though they hurt like hell, they are actually very good for the body. They help the uterus return to normal size and greatly reduce the risk of postpartum hemorrhage.

Finally the Motrin I took kicked in and we were able to sleep from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m.

It was so, so surreal to wake up in our own bed the next morning, with our new baby between us. As I shook off sleep, it took me a few seconds to recall that I was not still pregnant. There she was, wrapped in a blanket, in her little co-sleeper, eyes closed. It was such an image because it was both miraculous and ordinary.

Here were our sheets, our mismatched pillows, the sweatshirt I’d tossed beside the bed — all surrounding this amazing creature who just hours earlier had emerged from my body. She astounded me.

And the most surreal part of the experience was that just 30 minutes after we woke up, J was awake…ready to begin his day…with no idea that things had just changed dramatically while he slept.

More on J and the new baby later.

Our birth story…the ‘quick’ version

Our little one arrived Saturday, June 6. Warning — I’m not leaving out many details but I’m not going to go on and on about how it felt. I’ll let that for a later post.

Here’s how it went down:

We woke up Saturday morning with tentative plans to head down to the farmer’s market in the wonderful City Market area. We were awaiting to see if J still had a fever.

He didn’t. So after a lazy, slow morning, we packed a lunch and drove downtown. On the way there, I started having some contractions. This was par for the course, so I thought nothing of it.

It was the perfect beginning to the final day of our life as a threesome. We ate lunch on a park bench, listened to music, walked around together, bought fruit and veggies and shared a delicious cookie from these amazing Amish bakers.

Throughout I was still having contractions, just nothing major. When J went down for his nap, M and I rested together and watched a movie. The contractions stopped and I assumed it was just another round of false labor.

J awoke around 5ish. We ate a great dinner of chicken salads and fruit. Then we took him outside to play in the water. As we ate and ran around together, the contractions returned. I didn’t feel that they were intense enough to stop playing…

Then we decided to go on a walk to see if the contractions would go away or increase in intensity. I helped J get on his shoes and found a watch to start timing contractions. As we walked, I became unable to completely disregard the contractions, but they still weren’t too bad.

The catch? They were only three to four minutes apart.

Foolishly, we continued our walk. We helped J find pine cones. Soon, I told M that we better at least call my mom, who would be watching J for us during labor to give her a heads up. We walked home, arriving around 8:15.

While M bathed J, I laid down and the contractions slowed down but didn’t go away.

Again, I thought…gotta be false labor.

I rocked J to sleep and then started pacing. After deciding that I was definitely in labor, we finally called our midwife at 9 p.m.

M and I tidied the house. I cleaned the bathroom.

By 9:20, I could no longer walk through the contractions. I sat or laid my chest on the birthing ball while rocking slowly back and forth. M worked to get the birthing tub set up.

While he did, I warned him that I would soon need his help to cope.

Then things went crazy.

Our midwife arrived at 9:50 and she took one look at me and announced that we were minutes from having a baby. By that time I was on my hands and knees in my living room moaning through contractions that were mere seconds apart. M was still trying to get the tub ready. I felt alone and somewhat irritated that he wasn’t able to help me, but I wasn’t scared.

Then M and our midwife realized that we had no hose available to fill the tub. We thought our midwife was bringing it. She thought we had it. That’s when I started swearing. I think I dropped about ten f-bombs in a row. My irritation became fear.

I still didn’t think I was THAT close to delivery. I had just desperately wanted the pain relief that the water offered. While I labored I told myself over and over again that I just had to make it on my own until the tub was set up. Then, I’d feel some relief and M would be able to help me cope.

At that point, I lost my focus and my ability to relax during contractions. The pain increased exponentially.

Our midwife spread a tablecloth out on the floor and suggested that I deliver in the living room. Then she asked whether I wanted to be there or in bed.

Panting, I begged to deliver in the bathtub.

It was a race to get the tub filled up because babies born in water must be completely submerged. M turned on the water, I walked myself to the tub and our midwife filled pots of water in the sink — dumping them into the tub. I could tell she was a bit frazzled because when M said that the water was too hot, she filled an entire basin with cold water and dumped it on my chest.

I had the “urge” to push immediately upon entering the tub. But to call it an “urge” is a completely misnomer in my case. For me, it was a compulsion. My body was pushing this baby out whether I liked it or not. It was sort of like vomiting, except tremendously more powerful and all-consuming.

It completely took me over. My back arched and I screamed through two long contractions.

When I resisted the urge — because I was afraid and lacked focus –  the pain was incredible. But when I gave in, concentrated and pushed along with each contraction, I felt in control and powerful, womanly and animal.

My mom arrived when I was fighting the contractions. She just suddenly appeared by my head. It felt so good to have her there.

I gave in and within three contractions/pushes, our baby’s head crowned. One more and the head was halfway out.

This was an overwhelming sensation. I couldn’t stop pushing because I didn’t want her head to slide back in…but the burning was incredible.

With the next contraction, our baby’s head emerged. M guided the head out and was the first person to touch our little one.

He placed the baby on my chest. At first, all I could say was “oh, oh, oh.” There was relief, amazement, excitement.

I asked M if it was a boy or a girl. He responded by saying, “I don’t even know.”

“Look!” Our midwife urged us.

“It’s a girl!” M said

Our little girl, E, arrived at 10:09 p.m. Just an hour and a half after we’d put our son to bed. Just one hour after we called our midwife. And just 20 minutes after our midwife arrived at the house.

More on the birth later. I’ve got a baby to feed.

That look

While playing at the park yesterday, J was pretending to kick a soccer ball into the net. After the kick, he’d raise his hands above his head and we’d all shout “GOAL!” During one kick, M and I paused to say something to each other…so when J turned around for the big reaction, it wasn’t there. 

That’s when we got the look. 

It’s this naked, pleading, open-eyed glance that knocks my heart around in my chest. He always bears a grin when it blankets his face, but his eyes say something else. 

His eyes are searching — it’s something different than just wanting the attention. There is an extra depth to this look, a deep vulnerability. It’s a moment when his self-esteem could be leveled. 

Do you love me? Do you like me? Are you proud of me?

It bowls me over because it doesn’t happen often. J receives a lot of praise. We try to go overboard rewarding good behavior, so we can minimize the need for tough discipline. And when he gives us that look, he’s literally slathered with praise, positive affirmations and affection. 

Yesterday, I realized that this look gets me because so many children out there who don’t receive the reaction that J gets. They raise their eyes to their parent or caregiver and they get nothing, or worse, criticism, in return. 

Right now, when J gives us that look he’s trying to figure out how he fits into this world. He wants to know if he’s valuable. But I think it is a look that children give their parents hundreds of thousands of times…even into adulthood. 

From birth, parents are the people we look to for our sense of self worth. When I cry because I’m hungry, am I picked up and fed? Am I hugged and kissed after a bad fall? Do I receive praise when I accomplish a task? 

And then the relationship becomes more complicated, but the basic premise remains the same. Are you proud of my grades? Do you like my hairstyle, even though you’d rather be dead that sport it yourself? Are you proud of the way I parent my own children? 

The thought that any young child doesn’t get that needed boost makes me sick inside. It makes me want to take action. I want to adopt, start foundations, mentor. 

But like everyone else, I have excuses. Time limitations. Money limitations. Energy limitations. 

So, for now, at least, I’ll just continue to give my kid everything I’ve got. I’ll hope that I’m not spoiling him and I’ll continue to give kisses, tell him daily how happy he makes me and shout “GOAL!” whenever necessary.