Waking Up the Blog

I thought I'd wake up the blog before the baby wakes up again. . .

I will dare to write a blog with a baby sleeping on my chest. I will dare to tell you that these days are the best of my life. They're the messiest and the loudest; full of the most interruptions; the sleepiest and the most energized; the calmest and the busiest; the least structured and the most routine all at the same time.

I'm not pregnant anymore. I'm on the other side. The side with lots of squishy stuff around my middle (and arms and legs and all the rest, too, but who's counting). The side with a cute squishy baby to hold and make all the squishy pounds left on me worth it. Pregnancy is no joke. The newborn phase has its own difficulties, but it's not pregnancy. So I'm glad to be here, HCG free, sleeping in 3-4 hour chunks at night, nursing lots and lots, and snuggling a cutie pie. Speaking of nursing: it is a biological marvel to me that we are fully equipped to feed our babies from the time they are born. They call it liquid gold. And whether the nursing relationship lasts a few hours, a few days, or a couple of years, it is a wonderful and worthwhile relationship. I continue to be in sheer amazement over this God-designed ability I have to make my baby fatter and to give him antibodies. Antibodies! It's amazing. And I'm also glad for the added bonus of major caloric burn for me, thanks to nursing. Who needs exercise? Just make milk.  It can be a tough road at first but given a few days and sometimes weeks, it usually all gets better, at least it has for me (the first couple of weeks can be very hard). I'm thankful for websites like www.kellymom.com and La Leche League.

And so ends the nursing advocacy section of this blog post.

I'm also glad my two other cuties are madly in love with their new friend and brother. As far as I remember there hasn't been a jealousy phase either time I've brought home a newborn. The thing I faced last time that I also face this time is that "G" word everyone talks about: GUILT! Last time I felt a barrage of mom guilt when I brought baby A home and I realized C was not getting the attention he was used to. I felt torn, helpless, and like someone who was not enough. There was not enough of me to go around. My failure to multi-task well was finally coming back to bite me in a way that really mattered. It all got better eventually and I realized better how to include C in life with A. I also realized it was okay that A, in her newborn state, demanded more of me than C did as a two year old. Seasons exist. Seasons change. This is good.

So now my guilt is of a different nature. I went from being a mom whose physical affection quotient was as deep as the ocean to a mom who is slightly claustrophobic during a hug. Imagine the baby sleeping on my chest and two children whose cumulative weight is in excess of 65 pounds. Now imagine those two children with their faces as close as can be to me and to the newborn on my chest. It's in that moment that I think, "I'm the devil. I'm qualifying for some kind of Bad Mom award. All this love is so beautiful, but honestly I'm getting really hot under here, y'all." So I admitted it out loud: I'm a little claustrophobic. My hormones make me hot all the time. And it's okay. Because not a day goes by that I don't love these three people with a shower of affection. Not a day goes by that I don't hug and kiss them. But sometimes I need a little air and that's okay (I hope).

As for my littlest, he's a gem. He sleeps well, he eats well, he needs his diaper changed a lot. Rinse and repeat. He loves to be held and often needs this in order to sleep.  I love it because this was true of my other two also and it gives me lots of time to just stare at the new sweet face that I had wondered about all those months. I find myself having withdrawal symptoms when I'm a new mom. I simply can't stand to be apart from the baby for more than a few minutes. I guess it's normal after you carry someone around for 9 months, right? I love him.

His name means firm, permanent, enduring. Psalm 89 is his Psalm. He was supposedly a cymbal player in David's court and his wisdom is compared to that of Solomon's. His middle name is my maiden name. He was born five days early, just as his siblings were. My body must really like consistency! My doctor said she couldn't believe I predicted my own due date. I thought to myself, "Well, I trust my intuition  - almost to a fault."

A few things about E's birth before I one day get around to a full birth story.

1. "In 20 years I've never seen an epidural space so shallow," says the CRNA upon poking me.

2. "I've never had anyone predict their due date," says my OB.

3. "I've never had anyone have a reaction to these kinds of sutures!" says my OB upon informing me that my sutures this time will definitely be different from last time (so as to avoid a reaction).

4. Conclusion: I'm either a freak of nature or a medical marvel. You can be the judge.

5. A wet tap is, according to my understanding, when they tap your spinal fluid while trying to get the epidural catheter in. It means they've caused a leak in the spinal fluid which means therefore your brain (which sits inside a bag of fluid) will "sag" a little because some of that fluid is lost. This causes a possible spinal headache the next day, or a few hours after labor. The kind of headache that is "not like anything you've ever experienced before" says the anesthesiologist. So the CRNA starts telling me she's given me what's a called a wet tap and then starts telling me what this means. And I proceed to inform her "I'm going to be sick." And there drops my blood pressure and down I go on to the pillow and on goes the oxygen mask and when I finally feel normal again I feel like I should explain to them that I've always been "a fainter" and that apparently even the idea of upcoming pain is enough to make me woozy.

6. Josh later told me he prayed very hard for me to avoid such a headache. His prayers were answered.

7. In each pregnancy, I've been torn between fear of epidural complications and fear of excruciating labor pains. I know myself very well when it comes to pain tolerance. I still believe I might be one of those people who would tend toward hysteria if I were to refuse pain management during the final stage of labor. I guess I'll never know for sure so I could be wrong. But I can't imagine hysteria is good for a mom in labor so I have eventually opted for an epidural in all three births, although with the last two births, I waited for a different level of pain before I cried mercy, rather than crying for it when I was just hurting a lot. Epidurals for me are not pain eliminators. They are pain managers. So I figure if that's my story WITH an epidural, I'm probably not cut out for the non-epidural route. I believe you need to be 100% committed to that route if you are going to do it though. And I just never got to that 100% place. I'll always look at those people who went that route with profound respect and awe. But everyone has to do what is right for them and what they believe is best. God is in the results no matter what you choose and his grace brought you through no matter how tough you were . . .or were not.

8. I do not like to be asked if I "went natural." I believe what I did was very natural. All those contractions felt raw and natural. I pushed the baby out. It was work. It hurt! But it happened with pain management in a serious way! So I prefer to say I gave birth "with medication" since the antonym of this category is "without medication." This is a better option to me than the word "natural" whose antonym is "unnatural."

9. Did I really just touch on the subject of nursing and the use of medication during childbirth in one blog post? Uh oh.

10. Thankfulness is pressing in at all sides. We have been showered with love, gifts, blessings, time, words, and acts of service. In my need to balance the scales, I find myself wanting to repay all these people. But they've given me grace and it's beautiful to receive it. I can't pay it all back and exact the measurements. I guess that's why they say pay it forward!