The weekends seem to wreak havoc on our house. We can spend Sunday afternoon trying to whip it back into shape and grumping all over each other. Or we can drive 20 minutes to the water, going from 90 degree weather at our house to a cool 60 degrees by the bay. We can picnic and play on the playground while the sun disappears and the wind blows and our noses chill.

And on the way home, we can stop home for ice-cream with sprinkles so that we arrive home exactly one minute before bedtime.

Two coleman picnic blankets - $24.50*

Picnic food from the nearest supermarket deli - $18.95*

First ride on a swing - Priceless

*******

Here is his oldest sister’s first swing ride (or at least one of the first). Family resemblance, no?

She’s a few months older than her brother is in the picture. We had to prop him up with a blanket in the swing because he’s not sitting up by himself yet.

*I totally made up those prices for dramatic effect.

I’m starting to realize why I didn’t start blogging until my girls were sleeping through the night. It’s not that I have nothing to write about. It’s just that I’m DONE by the end of the day.

However, I cannot bear to have that intense labor post sticking up on top of my blog. So, here’s a quick update.

1) THE BABY:
The baby will be five months old in about a week and is a total cutie pie. He’s s very mellow dude and pretty much hangs out. He hasn’t even learned to cry convincingly when he needs something. He just sort of cry-cackles when he’s hungry. When he’s grumpy, which is usually in late afternoon, he’s fine as long as you plop him on your knee while you eat or play with the girls. He smiles often. When he smiles is mouth is wide open he often has a look of sparkly wonder in his eyes. He also belly laughs. He does this every single time I raise his arms above his head and say, “Wheeeeeeeeee.” He first tooth broke through tonight. He was pulling on his ear a bit, so I decided to check his gums and pop. He laughed right after I did it in a relieved kind of way. (Update: it’s the next morning and I think having a tooth makes this little bugger a little more opinionated.) He doesn’t seem particularly advanced in terms of movement (yippee). He rolls over front to back once in a blue moon and hasn’t flipped from back to front yet. Hannah crawled at six months and I’m definitely not wishing on that again. I totally missed out on the blissful sitting-up-and-going-nowhere phase with her.

2) THE GIRLS:
The girls have just recovered from bad colds. Last week they were pretty miserable to be around. Now my husband and I have the cold and are no more fun to hang out with than they were, no doubt. They seem to be enjoying school a lot. Hannah is one of the leaders, age-wise, in her class this year. She’s been nurturing the little ones a lot and talks excitedly about it after school. This is great for her, since she’s in middle-child no-man’sland at home. Too old to be the baby, but still bossed around by the big sister. At home, Hannah has been attempting to express her feelings of jealousy lately. No, she’s not jealous of the baby. She’s frustrated that her older sister hogs the baby. I’m trying to help carve out some time for her to play with him alone, but also am trying to impress upon her that if she didn’t stick her face right on top of the baby’s face (and sometimes even sneak a lick!), her play sessions might last longer. We are also trying to impress upon Rachel how damaging it is to Hannah’s sense of self when she continually bosses Hannah and corrects everything that comes of out of her mouth. Of course, when you are seven it makes perfect sense and not mean at all to tell your four-year old sister that she is making no sense. So we, her parents (both youngest siblings and admittedly biased), are feeling a bit helpless training Rachel to talk to her younger sister in a more positive way, while WE OURSELVES are correcting Rachel in a negative way. Briliant child that she is, that irony is NOT lost on Rachel. (I have started homeschooling myself in the art of positive discipline. I’m a slow learner.) And of course, I must end this discussion by stating that on all other accounts Rachel is a most beautiful big sister. In fact, it is Rachel that will search for Hannah’s blanket three or more times a day while Hannah is having a meltdown at the loss of her dearest blankie and Mom and Dad are throwing their hands up in frustration at the crying.

Did I mention that the scariest movie that Hannah has ever seen is the one where Elmo loses his blanket?

Also, I told Rachel she could read the Harry Potter books, but only after she’s read the whole Little House series. Now she’s burning through the life and times of Laura. I think I’ve officially become a control freak.

I think I’m going to stop on that note. As I mentioned before, I have the girls’ cold now and am pretty miserable. I think I’ve distracted you all from the previous discussion of body fluids. My job is done.

Quick review: 10 days before my due date, my mucus plug pops out and contractions start. Since it was my third baby and my others came quickly, I assumed it was time to have the baby and made arrangements to have the girls picked up from school by friends. We went to the hospital and got all hooked up to the moniter. My contractions were pretty regular. The doctor said, “Looks like we’re going to have a baby” and we were off. Before the doctor left I mentioned that for Hannah’s labor I was in the same situation (mucus plug gone, light, regular contractions) and the doctor broke my water to get things going. Hannah came two hours later. My new doctor told me that he wouldn’t do that for me. When I mentioned that the baby was measuring very big, he took a look at me and said, “It doesn’t look that big to me.”

Let me give some background on the doctor situation. For my first two kids, I went to a doctor that had his own small practice, with no other doctors. His office was very efficient and so were the labors. Although I find out now that he had a reputation for having too many c-sections, he was very good about listening to what I wanted. When my water broke for the first baby and labor didn’t start, he let me wait an extra 12 hours before starting labor and let a hormonal gel sit on my cervix overnight. In the end, I think that’s the only thing that kept me and my stubborn cervix from getting a c-section. For my second labor, the nurses were about to send me home, but they let me wait for my doctor, and he came in like a knight in shining armor and agreed to break my water. But I decided to change doctors for the third because I actually didn’t feel very comfortable with doctor #1, who wore a gold chain around his neck, drove a Harley and porsche and made me feel self-conscious about my weght gain. And, he was a little rough with me during Hannah’s labor. Besides, I wanted to try a female OB.

I changed to a much larger practice which had many women OBs. All of the doctors have wonderful bedside manners. The problem was that it is a huge practice. My doctor tended to run about an hour late for appointments, and in order to get appointments at times convenient for me (in between school pick-ups and with plenty of leeway for the lateness factor) I had to see many different doctors. They all were great. The problem was that by the end of my pregnancy, I had only seen my real doctor, a wonderful salt-of-the-earth woman who makes you feel like she has all the time in the world to talk to you, twice. Everyone was telling me the baby was measuring three weeks larger than normal. At about 33 and 23 weeks, two of the doctors suggested that they may try getting things going a week early.

The problem is that when my labor actually started by itself a week and a half early, no-one was willing to help it along. I understand the reasoning. There are liabilities involved when you induce a pregnancy more than a week early. Also, with hindsight, I can guess thateven at 10 days early, the baby was already probably about 10 pounds and I might have needed a c-section even then.

But let’s get back to the labor story. I was at the hospital for about 7 or 8 hours. We took a three mile hike to get things going. My cervix wasn’t progressing beyond a centimeter, so they sent me home. In tears. Our girls were at their friends house for a sleep over and we decided to leave them there in case I needed to go back. My contractions were still going.

At midnight we get a call. Rachel was throwing up. We made the decision not to put our friends through that and picked her up. It was a good decision because she continued to throw up every 45 minutes or a good 12 hours. Rodney’s wonderful cousin showed up the next morning and stayed with us until we went back into the hospital in the late afternoon.

Same deal. We were there for about 7-8 hours. Contractions regular, but not progressing. They sent me home in tears and gave me Ambien to help me sleep through contractions. I had a wild sleep and in the middle of the night threw up on the way to the bathroom. Then in the morning, my contractions stopped. The storm had passed.

It was a good thing, too, because a day later, Hannah got sick. Then I had a week to recover from the whole ordeal and do some more nesting.

I had a doctor’s appointment the day before my due date. We scheduled an induction for 6:00 the next morning. And here is where it gets difficult to tell the story in a linear way. I lose my sense of time at this point in the story.

We got to the hospital by 6:00. I don’t think the pitocin was administered by 8:00 or 9:00. Then we waited a couple of hours before the doctor - my salt-of-the-earth doctor was the doctor on call - came to break my water. Not much changed after the breaking of the water. The nurse questioned whether the water had actually been broken, but nobody took it seriously.

We had regular and very manageable contractions for quite a while. I don’t know when they started getting intense enough that I had to use my deep breathing. Not for a few hours I know. However, very early on I felt the contractions in the back. Several time I pointed to my back and told the nurse I was feeling a pressure there. It didn’t really hurt very much.

By late afternoon, the contractions were getting more intense. I don’t now where I was in terms of my cervix. Perhaps 4 or 5 cm? The baby still hadn’t come down low enough. Still, the staff was convinced that the baby would be soon, so they set all the instruments out and notified the doctor.

And then at some point things got a little crazy. I started getting this pressure with each contraction. It was as if I was getting slammed against a cement ocean wall with powerful waves, except all of the slamming was happening from the inside. Literally, with each contraction my body was slamming up against something - a wall, the bed, a nearby body. It was the feeling I had with my first labor right before they discovered that Rachel’s head was coming through. Except this time, the baby hadn’t even dropped completely and I was only at like 7 centimeters.

I also had this urge to go to the bathroom. All I wanted to do was sit on the toilet and try to go. And I would do that and each time I got up from the potty, I’d get the sensation again and have to sit down, or a contraction would come and I’d be slammed up against the bathroom wall.

And I had this sweet nurse, that was very much like a midwife, that kept saying, “That’s great. That’s perfect. A toilet is a perfect place to labor.”

By now, my doctor was there, right with me for the long haul. This was pretty amazing considering that most doctors are only there to catch the baby.

At one point, from my spot on the toilet, I could hear her answering my husbands questions. She was explaining what “sunny-side up” meant and how they were going to have to try to turn the baby around.

I moved back to the hospital bed. They tried me in all sorts of positions: on my side, on my hands and knees. And sometimes in those positions, during the slamming contractions, with someone’s HAND UP ME trying to turn the baby. And all through it they are telling me to relax so the baby can turn.

Uh-huh. No comment.

After about an hour of this, I found time during a break between contractions to ask, “what’s the alternative?”

Well, you can have an epidural so you can relax and try to turn the baby.

So, I did. It was either that or spend a few more hours getting slammed up against that cement wall and frankly, the baby wasn’t turning.

Getting an epidural while you are getting rammed in the back is frightening. This is where my husband pulled off his heroics.

But man, that epidural helped. All that pressure away.

Afterwards, my water REALLY broke. We are talking major gushing of fluid. The nurse said she had never seen a bed so soaked.

And then I rested, while my fluids kept gushing and gushing with each contraction. I had enoughrelief to figure out what the story was. And I have to tell you, that gushing of liquids gave me such relief. And after nine months of pregnancy, I actually LOVED the cathetor.

For some reason, the baby was not dropping. The theory was that it was either too big or that an umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck.

She did not suggest a c-section, but did make clear while I was asking my questions that I wasn’t going to be allowed to push this baby out until they turned it.

After I rested, they tried turning. It would not turn.

I rested again. I saw, as I was lying there with my eyes closed, my husband fretting over the monitor of the baby’s heart beat.

I didn’t want a c-section because I didn’t want to have a long recovery….because I didn’t want to freak my other kids out.

And then I thought about how hard my recovery was when I gave birth to 9 pound Hannah, naturally. And I thought about the possibiity of recovering from a night of pushing and a subsequent c-section.

So, I finally asked them to tell me everything about a c-section and what it entails. So, they did.

And I made the decision to have one. It just didn’t seem worth it to risk everything just to have a natural birth.

Immediately, they brought me to the room and started prepping me. I was shaking by then. I don’t know if it was from the epidural or the intensity of my labor. Someone had to hold my hands down cause I couldn’t get them to stop shaking. I also felt incredibly cold.

Everything was sort of fuzzy, but I remember it completely. I just don’t remember every little detail. I remember waiting intently after the pull to hear a cry and what he/she was. I don’t remember the order of when it all happened. It/he was a boy. He was big. They didn’t know how big yet. Everyone was laughing. “You gave birth to a toddler,” one of the doctors said.

And then they gave him to me and of course, he was beautiful. I looked at him for a good while, but was still shivering. They took him, cleaned him, weighed him. They wheeled me into another room while the doctor sat near me typing the info into her computer and the nurse sat next to me. My husband brought the baby back to me. He didn’t have a name yet. He took to the breast right away. In fact, it was a little comical. The second time we put him on, he actually lifted his head up and plopped it on my breast, looking for the nipple. This was at only a few hours old.

Oh, I forgot to say. He was born at a little before 9 PM.

My husband stayed with us a few hours and then went home to the girls. Grandma was with them.

Of course, I was on my baby high. I was ecstatic to have the baby. Ecstatic to not be pregnant. But the drugs did have an effect. I was very itchy and had this kink in my neck, perhaps from the epidural. I recovered well from the c-section drugs, though. I could feel my toes within a few hours and was walking the next day.

The biggest annoyance was not being able to shower for another day or two and not being able to eat, after a whole day of not eating, I had to go another day without food. And all that sweat of labor. That was rough. And the drugs made me swell up a bit.

The best advice my doctor gave me was to get off the narcotics as soon as I could. I only took half my dose of vicodin in the hospital and then was off it at home within a day.

I have to say, though, recovery is hard when you have small kids. It was hard having them visit me in the hospital. It was hard having ANYBODY visit me in the hospital. The baby was huge and my milk hadn’t come in yet, so he was ON me for the first five days. It was like having a cute little slug attached to me. He wouldn’t go in his bassinet. So we hung out in my hospital bed for three days together. This with the sharp pain from the surgery. A happy, but not an easy time. What I would have liked is to have had time stop while I was recovering in the hospital. In this scenario, the kids wouldn’t miss me. No one but the hubs would visit me for weeks, and I’d be waited on by nurses.

In contrast, when I got home, Hannah’s elbows and knees seemed to fly to my incision like metal to a magnet. Rachel would lean all over the baby’s head when I was trying to brave my way through the painful early days of breastfeeding.

Some tears were shed. I hate being predictable, but my low came just at the textbook time - 4-5 days after labor.

The first night home was awful. I was sore. The baby would not go down for more than 10 minutes without crying. The dog was freaking out. Everytime the baby cried, she would look at me like “do something.” I kicked her. Yes, I kicked my poor Charlie. Not hard, but a kick. And it took Charlie and I about two months to get over that night. I took my frustration out on her for a while (not with kicks, but with annoyance) and she was wounded from that and being kicked off our bed. We’re friends again.

The second night, something hit me and I decided this baby was going to learn to sleep in his crib. I had slept with him in my arms for four nights. It was enough. I wanted to sleep on my stomach and I wanted to cuddle with my husband. I kept bringing him back to his crib, until finally he would go down for an hour or two at a time. That was when I started counting small victories. And within a day or two, my milk was fully in and he had mellowed into the laid back baby that he is.

And I think the rest of the story was picked up later on my blog.

And we are, the family, all adjusted. I’m settled but often tired.

And that, my friends, is the story. I embrace it for what it was. It was no less of an experience because he wasn’t born vaginally. It was what it was and I remember it with fondness. I am glad I know what a c-section is like. It adds to my arsenal of experience.

The baby is waking up from his nap. Perfect timing. At four months, he is quite a character.

I will tell you more about that soon.