This is the poem "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon:
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon was one of the first poets I read when I started to like poetry. Her poems are often simple and memorable. She died of cancer, and this poem, I think, speaks to her battle with her disease, but it is also bigger than that.
I've always liked this poem, yet I've always been a bit perplexed by its simplicity. Today, though, as I nursed, sang to, and rocked Amelia, as I changed her diaper and nursed, sang and rocked again, I had its refrain in my head. I felt like I came to a new understanding of the poem.
These days of babytending are bittersweet: difficult, perplexing, but also filled with odd moments of surprise, delight, and joy. The time since Amelia was born has had the odd quality of seeming to pass both very slowly and incredible quickly. She will be one month old tomorrow. One day it will be otherwise.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Question.
Or, Questionair returns to its roots.
For all you other mommies out there: how much did your new babies cry? (I am starting to feel like Amelia cries all the time!!! This is an exageration, of course, but she does cry a lot. I am starting to wonder what is normal.)
You can post your answer in the comments box... thank you!
For all you other mommies out there: how much did your new babies cry? (I am starting to feel like Amelia cries all the time!!! This is an exageration, of course, but she does cry a lot. I am starting to wonder what is normal.)
You can post your answer in the comments box... thank you!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
"Good times, bad times...
you know we've had our sha-ar-re..."
These lyrics have been in my head recently. (Is the real song in first person singular? Hmm.) Anyway, these lines describe our last few weeks very well. A few weeks before Amelia was born, I was talking to my friend Corrie on the phone, telling her about my mood swings: sometimes I was very happy, sometimes in bleak despair. She said she thought maybe that was what having kids was like in general, some really good times, some really bad ones. Based on four weeks with Amelia, I'd say that sounds about right. Sometimes I am incredibly delighted by her; other times, such as when she has been screaming for an hour, I look at her and think, "What have we done?"I guess this is normal. In general, it's a good spiritual lesson for me about living in the moment, enjoying the good times and breathing though the bad times.
I've always been a worrier, and recently I've been remembering something I used to do when I was a little girl. I would create a mental checklist of all the different categories of my life: school, home, friends. I would think through all of the recent events in these categories and consider whether they were all problem-free. If they were, I could relax and be happy. If they weren't, I would worry until whatever wasn't "perfect" was fixed. For example, one Christmas vacation--I think it was in third grade--I had an overdue library book. Actually the librarian said it was overdue; I thought I had turned it in. So I thought maybe it was lost. I hemmed and hawed in my mind about the book all of Christmas break. Even as I opened presents, the book was in the back of my mind. When I went back to school, the book had turned up. So all the worry was for naught.
Obviously there is a lesson here. I am getting a little better about saying, this too shall pass, as opposed to being constantly worried about the next crying fit or how much Amelia will sleep during the coming night. Currently Amelia is sleeping in the carrier and Suki is on my lap. I'll see how far I can use this quiet time to write about our last couple of weeks!
So yesterday, Amelia began wearing her cloth diapers:
We thought they were too big but Dean decided just to put one on her and they actually fit pretty well! She seems to like them. They are much softer than the disposable ones. We are figuring out our system of rinsing and storing them until they are washed. The hose that attaches to the toilet is key in this process. There has only been a little random spraying of freezing cold water.
As we tried out the diapers, Suki discovered the diaper drawer:
Second, yesterday was of course Halloween. Amelia wore her Halloween pajamas that Bubbles sent her. She loved them.
We were going to take her trick or treating, but she decided to be a colicky baby for Halloween. (It was a good choice: that is, obviously, the scariest thing she could possibly be.) She cried from about 5-8 last night. I think it was because we took her on a long walk right before 5 and it messed up her normal nap schedule. By 5:30, she was clearly very tired but wouldn't let herself drop off to sleep. We rocked, swaddled, and sang, but she didn't settle down till after 8pm, when I tried to feed her again. She nursed furiously for about 3 minutes and fell asleep. Luckily she then slept well for the rest of the night, waking up as usual every 3 hours or so to eat but going back to sleep soon after.
We plan to be more careful about her afternoon nap today.
Also, Amelia likes to read:
She is quite a thinker.
In general, Dean and I have just been hanging out and getting to know our baby. We are excited about the coming weeks, in which she might smile at us! Also, the baby week-by-week books says she might sleep for 6 hours at a time...
Before Amelia's birth, I kept thinking about the metaphor of the roller coaster. Now that she is here, I realize we are still on the ride--and for better and for worse, we are never getting off! For now, we are all gradually settling in to our new family and learning how to enjoy the ride.
These lyrics have been in my head recently. (Is the real song in first person singular? Hmm.) Anyway, these lines describe our last few weeks very well. A few weeks before Amelia was born, I was talking to my friend Corrie on the phone, telling her about my mood swings: sometimes I was very happy, sometimes in bleak despair. She said she thought maybe that was what having kids was like in general, some really good times, some really bad ones. Based on four weeks with Amelia, I'd say that sounds about right. Sometimes I am incredibly delighted by her; other times, such as when she has been screaming for an hour, I look at her and think, "What have we done?"I guess this is normal. In general, it's a good spiritual lesson for me about living in the moment, enjoying the good times and breathing though the bad times.
I've always been a worrier, and recently I've been remembering something I used to do when I was a little girl. I would create a mental checklist of all the different categories of my life: school, home, friends. I would think through all of the recent events in these categories and consider whether they were all problem-free. If they were, I could relax and be happy. If they weren't, I would worry until whatever wasn't "perfect" was fixed. For example, one Christmas vacation--I think it was in third grade--I had an overdue library book. Actually the librarian said it was overdue; I thought I had turned it in. So I thought maybe it was lost. I hemmed and hawed in my mind about the book all of Christmas break. Even as I opened presents, the book was in the back of my mind. When I went back to school, the book had turned up. So all the worry was for naught.
Obviously there is a lesson here. I am getting a little better about saying, this too shall pass, as opposed to being constantly worried about the next crying fit or how much Amelia will sleep during the coming night. Currently Amelia is sleeping in the carrier and Suki is on my lap. I'll see how far I can use this quiet time to write about our last couple of weeks!
So yesterday, Amelia began wearing her cloth diapers:
We thought they were too big but Dean decided just to put one on her and they actually fit pretty well! She seems to like them. They are much softer than the disposable ones. We are figuring out our system of rinsing and storing them until they are washed. The hose that attaches to the toilet is key in this process. There has only been a little random spraying of freezing cold water.
As we tried out the diapers, Suki discovered the diaper drawer:
Second, yesterday was of course Halloween. Amelia wore her Halloween pajamas that Bubbles sent her. She loved them.
We were going to take her trick or treating, but she decided to be a colicky baby for Halloween. (It was a good choice: that is, obviously, the scariest thing she could possibly be.) She cried from about 5-8 last night. I think it was because we took her on a long walk right before 5 and it messed up her normal nap schedule. By 5:30, she was clearly very tired but wouldn't let herself drop off to sleep. We rocked, swaddled, and sang, but she didn't settle down till after 8pm, when I tried to feed her again. She nursed furiously for about 3 minutes and fell asleep. Luckily she then slept well for the rest of the night, waking up as usual every 3 hours or so to eat but going back to sleep soon after.
We plan to be more careful about her afternoon nap today.
Also, Amelia likes to read:
She is quite a thinker.
In general, Dean and I have just been hanging out and getting to know our baby. We are excited about the coming weeks, in which she might smile at us! Also, the baby week-by-week books says she might sleep for 6 hours at a time...
Before Amelia's birth, I kept thinking about the metaphor of the roller coaster. Now that she is here, I realize we are still on the ride--and for better and for worse, we are never getting off! For now, we are all gradually settling in to our new family and learning how to enjoy the ride.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Baby Story, Part 3
While I was pregnant, when we talked about when the baby would come, Dean would often ask how long we would stay in the hospital. I would say, "I think you stay two days." Neither one of us thought the hospital sounded like a fun place to stay, and we would wonder if we could get out in less time. Then REAL life happened.
Sometime soon after I had been wheeled into the delivery room, Dr. Footer told me after the birth I would be moved to the "High Risk Maternity Ward." This was because the magnesium, he said, "might make you a little out of it."
Once Amelia was born and had nursed a tiny bit, the nurses started asking if we wanted them to take her to the nursery so we could rest. Beforehand, I had thought I would never let them take my baby away from me right after she was born. But strapped to three IV tubes and a blood pressure cuff, totally exhausted, I was suggestible. Everyone seemed to think it would be best to let her go, and they promised to bring her back when she was ready to nurse again. In the meantime Dr. Footer decided he didn't want me moved and told them to leave me in the delivery room till the morning.
Thus began the very, very uncomfortable night in the delivery room. The bed I was on folded in the middle so you could sit up in it and have a baby, plus the end of the bed was detachable, so it had a lot of places to fall into. I am a bit of a princess and the pea sleeper as it is, and since I had just had a baby, I was all the more, shall we say, tender. Dean didn't have a great time on his narrow, vinyl couch. About 4am, they brought Amelia back to nurse. Someone came to help me. I don't think it went well, but I really don't remember. I do know that sitting up and trying to nurse her made my blood pressure reach an alarmingly high number. They left the baby with us for awhile. Dean held her the whole time, sitting up on his couch. Eventually they came and got her again. About 6am, Dr. Footer came back to check on me. It was suggested, by him or a nurse, that I should let her eat formula for a day so my blood pressure would stabilize. Someone said something like, "It's better to give her a little formula than to not be here for her later" or something similarly alarming.
Thus began Amelia's brief but intense addiction to Similac.
In the meantime, a nurse gave me a sponge bath while I mourned all the things I had thought were going to happen after my baby was born, like getting to hold her a lot right away, getting to walk around after the delivery, and getting to take a shower, that obviously were not. When they came to move me to the new room, they wheeled the whole bed down to the delivery room and had me slide onto it. There was no sitting up involved. That's when I really began to worry that something was very wrong with me. Apparently others, like my mom and Dean, were pretty worried too. I guess in the end all of it was pretty normal. No one had expected it, though. Preeclampsia is, ironically, one of the few scenarios I had not read much about, worried about in advance, and made some kind of action plan for.
So I spent the day after Amelia was born in high risk maternity in a magnesium haze. I didn't see her all day--or maybe they brought her to me once, but if they did I don't remember. The "mag," as they call it, blurred my vision and apparently made me somewhat incoherent (although I thought I was being pretty lucid, all things considered). It really must work in chilling you out, because I remember being only vaguely worried about my lonely formula baby in the nursery.
All this time, I was hooked up to an automatic blood pressure cuff that took a reading every 30 minutes. If the reading was too high, it beeped insistently until a nurse or someone came to turn it off. It beeped every single time. I couldn't reach the button to turn it off, so Dean was getting up every half an hour to turn it off, all day and night.
About 1:30 am of the next morning, I got to "get off the mag." At the same time, I took a blood pressure-lowering medicine that made my pulse go up a lot. Coming off the mag and taking the new medicine at the same time created a strange mental state in which I felt very awake but also very detached from where I was. When I closed my eyes I could see intricate colored patterns, sort of like water being rippled by hundreds of very tiny stones. I felt that I could write a beautiful, piercing account of Amelia's birth if I only had light, paper and the ability to sit up. Sadly, whatever I was composing disappeared with the end of the night and the rest of the mag.
The next day, I felt a lot better. My mom and Heather stayed with Dean and me while we waited for the baby to be brought to us for good. By the time they brought her, along with a lactation consultant for a nursing lesson, it looked like I would be going home the next day. So mom and Heather said good-bye, leaving me, Dean and Amelia to go home by ourselves the way we had professed we wanted to.
Chaos ensued. The lactation nurse was in the middle of shoving my nipple in Amelia's mouth when another nurse burst into the room and announced, "Dr. Nugent is ready to check the baby." I had no idea who Dr. Nugent was, and I was trying to learn to feed my child. I told the nurse this. She sighed and seemed put off but eventually checked with Dr. Nugent, who agreed to wait 15 minutes. In case you ever need to know, 15 minutes is not enough time to learn to breastfeed a newborn. Basically they took Amelia away hungry and unsatisfied. I was in tears. But we would try again later.
Which we did. The problem was I had no idea what I was doing. It's actually very hard to learn to hold a baby correctly for breastfeeding. The head has to be back and the neck can't be turned. The baby's body is supposed to be tight against the mother's. Then the baby has to latch on correctly. It's complicated and NOT all that instinctual.
So we had a rough evening. At the end of it (at which point they were finally moving me to the regular maternity ward, which they had been saying they were about to do all day) I was calling my mom in tears while Dean fed Amelia a bottle of Similac. At one point he put her down on the bed, and I looked at her and thought, "She's smaller than a breadbox, but everyone would miss her if she was gone. We have to keep her!"
Anyway, we eventually got in our new room. I undressed Amelia down to her diaper, took off my hospital gown, and we spent the whole night skin-to-skin. She finally latched on, the lying down position worked for both of us, and she had several 30-45 minute nursing sessions. It was a huge relief.
The next morning they brought us breakfast, and the nurse offered us The Washington Post. Dean took it, but we looked at each other in amazement at the reminder of the existence of the rest of the world.
We stayed for 2 more nights in the new room. I had a reaction to the first blood pressure medicine, which involved a fun hour of about 10 doctors and nurses running in and out and doing an EKG. It took awhile for Dr. Footer to be satisfied that he had found a good new medicine. The only up side to staying--and this is really a GOOD up side--was that the last day we were there, I had the best nurse ever, an excellent, wonderful, kind nurse named Sarah, who came in and out again and again to help me with nursing. She made me try to sit up and nurse, and that combined with Dean discovering and teaching me the "cross cradle hold" allowed Amelia to begin to turn into the champion nurser she is today. Also, the last night, Dr. Footer apparently ordered special breastfeeding help for me. I guess he wanted to make sure it was going well before he let me go home. So after the blessing of Sarah, we got to spend a lot of the night with Irene, who helped me fine tune our technique while she took my blood pressure and stroked Amelia's head, crooning, "Keep eating, baby." (Dean and I still say this to Amelia in Irene's singsong way. I don't think I'll ever forget the way she sounded.)
The last day we were in the hospital was stressful and drawn out. My blood pressure was higher than everyone wanted it to be, and it was questionable whether or not I would actually get out. This story has gone on long enough, though, so I'll cut to the end and say we FINALLY got to leave at about 6:00 pm. They wheeled me down to the exit, and I sat and waited to Dean to get the car. It was a beautiful fall evening. Between Amelia and me and the rest of the world were the two glass walls of the hospital entrance. Outside the leaves on the trees, bright yellow and the pale green of early autumn, were turning and shivering in the breeze.
Sometime soon after I had been wheeled into the delivery room, Dr. Footer told me after the birth I would be moved to the "High Risk Maternity Ward." This was because the magnesium, he said, "might make you a little out of it."
Once Amelia was born and had nursed a tiny bit, the nurses started asking if we wanted them to take her to the nursery so we could rest. Beforehand, I had thought I would never let them take my baby away from me right after she was born. But strapped to three IV tubes and a blood pressure cuff, totally exhausted, I was suggestible. Everyone seemed to think it would be best to let her go, and they promised to bring her back when she was ready to nurse again. In the meantime Dr. Footer decided he didn't want me moved and told them to leave me in the delivery room till the morning.
Thus began the very, very uncomfortable night in the delivery room. The bed I was on folded in the middle so you could sit up in it and have a baby, plus the end of the bed was detachable, so it had a lot of places to fall into. I am a bit of a princess and the pea sleeper as it is, and since I had just had a baby, I was all the more, shall we say, tender. Dean didn't have a great time on his narrow, vinyl couch. About 4am, they brought Amelia back to nurse. Someone came to help me. I don't think it went well, but I really don't remember. I do know that sitting up and trying to nurse her made my blood pressure reach an alarmingly high number. They left the baby with us for awhile. Dean held her the whole time, sitting up on his couch. Eventually they came and got her again. About 6am, Dr. Footer came back to check on me. It was suggested, by him or a nurse, that I should let her eat formula for a day so my blood pressure would stabilize. Someone said something like, "It's better to give her a little formula than to not be here for her later" or something similarly alarming.
Thus began Amelia's brief but intense addiction to Similac.
In the meantime, a nurse gave me a sponge bath while I mourned all the things I had thought were going to happen after my baby was born, like getting to hold her a lot right away, getting to walk around after the delivery, and getting to take a shower, that obviously were not. When they came to move me to the new room, they wheeled the whole bed down to the delivery room and had me slide onto it. There was no sitting up involved. That's when I really began to worry that something was very wrong with me. Apparently others, like my mom and Dean, were pretty worried too. I guess in the end all of it was pretty normal. No one had expected it, though. Preeclampsia is, ironically, one of the few scenarios I had not read much about, worried about in advance, and made some kind of action plan for.
So I spent the day after Amelia was born in high risk maternity in a magnesium haze. I didn't see her all day--or maybe they brought her to me once, but if they did I don't remember. The "mag," as they call it, blurred my vision and apparently made me somewhat incoherent (although I thought I was being pretty lucid, all things considered). It really must work in chilling you out, because I remember being only vaguely worried about my lonely formula baby in the nursery.
All this time, I was hooked up to an automatic blood pressure cuff that took a reading every 30 minutes. If the reading was too high, it beeped insistently until a nurse or someone came to turn it off. It beeped every single time. I couldn't reach the button to turn it off, so Dean was getting up every half an hour to turn it off, all day and night.
About 1:30 am of the next morning, I got to "get off the mag." At the same time, I took a blood pressure-lowering medicine that made my pulse go up a lot. Coming off the mag and taking the new medicine at the same time created a strange mental state in which I felt very awake but also very detached from where I was. When I closed my eyes I could see intricate colored patterns, sort of like water being rippled by hundreds of very tiny stones. I felt that I could write a beautiful, piercing account of Amelia's birth if I only had light, paper and the ability to sit up. Sadly, whatever I was composing disappeared with the end of the night and the rest of the mag.
The next day, I felt a lot better. My mom and Heather stayed with Dean and me while we waited for the baby to be brought to us for good. By the time they brought her, along with a lactation consultant for a nursing lesson, it looked like I would be going home the next day. So mom and Heather said good-bye, leaving me, Dean and Amelia to go home by ourselves the way we had professed we wanted to.
Chaos ensued. The lactation nurse was in the middle of shoving my nipple in Amelia's mouth when another nurse burst into the room and announced, "Dr. Nugent is ready to check the baby." I had no idea who Dr. Nugent was, and I was trying to learn to feed my child. I told the nurse this. She sighed and seemed put off but eventually checked with Dr. Nugent, who agreed to wait 15 minutes. In case you ever need to know, 15 minutes is not enough time to learn to breastfeed a newborn. Basically they took Amelia away hungry and unsatisfied. I was in tears. But we would try again later.
Which we did. The problem was I had no idea what I was doing. It's actually very hard to learn to hold a baby correctly for breastfeeding. The head has to be back and the neck can't be turned. The baby's body is supposed to be tight against the mother's. Then the baby has to latch on correctly. It's complicated and NOT all that instinctual.
So we had a rough evening. At the end of it (at which point they were finally moving me to the regular maternity ward, which they had been saying they were about to do all day) I was calling my mom in tears while Dean fed Amelia a bottle of Similac. At one point he put her down on the bed, and I looked at her and thought, "She's smaller than a breadbox, but everyone would miss her if she was gone. We have to keep her!"
Anyway, we eventually got in our new room. I undressed Amelia down to her diaper, took off my hospital gown, and we spent the whole night skin-to-skin. She finally latched on, the lying down position worked for both of us, and she had several 30-45 minute nursing sessions. It was a huge relief.
The next morning they brought us breakfast, and the nurse offered us The Washington Post. Dean took it, but we looked at each other in amazement at the reminder of the existence of the rest of the world.
We stayed for 2 more nights in the new room. I had a reaction to the first blood pressure medicine, which involved a fun hour of about 10 doctors and nurses running in and out and doing an EKG. It took awhile for Dr. Footer to be satisfied that he had found a good new medicine. The only up side to staying--and this is really a GOOD up side--was that the last day we were there, I had the best nurse ever, an excellent, wonderful, kind nurse named Sarah, who came in and out again and again to help me with nursing. She made me try to sit up and nurse, and that combined with Dean discovering and teaching me the "cross cradle hold" allowed Amelia to begin to turn into the champion nurser she is today. Also, the last night, Dr. Footer apparently ordered special breastfeeding help for me. I guess he wanted to make sure it was going well before he let me go home. So after the blessing of Sarah, we got to spend a lot of the night with Irene, who helped me fine tune our technique while she took my blood pressure and stroked Amelia's head, crooning, "Keep eating, baby." (Dean and I still say this to Amelia in Irene's singsong way. I don't think I'll ever forget the way she sounded.)
The last day we were in the hospital was stressful and drawn out. My blood pressure was higher than everyone wanted it to be, and it was questionable whether or not I would actually get out. This story has gone on long enough, though, so I'll cut to the end and say we FINALLY got to leave at about 6:00 pm. They wheeled me down to the exit, and I sat and waited to Dean to get the car. It was a beautiful fall evening. Between Amelia and me and the rest of the world were the two glass walls of the hospital entrance. Outside the leaves on the trees, bright yellow and the pale green of early autumn, were turning and shivering in the breeze.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
On Sleeping
Amelia is almost 3 weeks old! She is currently stirring in her pack-n-play bassinet. I just fed her, but she will want to eat again soon. For the last few days, she has been on something of a schedule: hungry, cheery and bright-eyed in the mornings, eating every half hour or so, then one longish afternoon nap, and a L-O-N-G nap from about 5:00 to 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening. The evening nap makes us nervous that she won't sleep at night, but after 8:00 she is up--and somewhat fussy--till about 10:00 or so, and goes to sleep for the "night" around 10:00 pm. She sleeps till about 1:00 am, eats for awhile, and what with the nursing, burping and diaper change I usually get in her back in the co-sleeper in about an hour. Then she wakes up to eat again in another 2 or, if we are lucky, 3 hours, and sleeps again till about 6:30 or so.
At night, I feed her in bed lying down, and I have been falling asleep as she eats. Some of the books recommend this method as a way for the mother to get more rest, and others caution not to have the baby in bed with you so you don't accidentally smother her in your sleep. While I was pregnant, I thought I would NEVER have her in bed with me--I thought I would be too scared. But lying in bed skin-to-skin with her, staying awake pretty much the entire night and feeding her on demand, was how I finally got her to start breastfeeding in the hospital. Then when we got home, for a few nights I thought she was too lonely in the co-sleeper, and I worried about her, so I just kept her near me. When I sleep with her, though, I don't move AT ALL, and I wake up very stiff and sore, plus I sleep very lightly. So now I do put in her in the co-sleeper after she eats and stops being squirmy. Sometimes I have to hold her so she's belly down on my chest for her to burp and get calm. But when I do put her in the co=sleeper, I don't worry so much anymore. I am just glad to get to really sleep for awhile.
All this just goes to show how little you can plan. Dean and I ALSO thought we wanted to bring her home by ourselves for the first week, but we changed our tune about an hour after my mother left the hospital. The next day we were placing urgent calls to the grandmothers, asking when they could come back up and how long they could stay!
I had to take a break from writing to feed Amelia and she is currently half-asleep, half-sucking at my breast, as I type with the computer way down at my knees. (We are on the couch, using a lot of pillows for support. Dean is at the grocery store.) All in all, I think we are doing very well. Amelia seems mostly to be a very cheerful and calm baby. I still get nervous around 5 each evening--the "witching hour"--but as I said she usually goes to sleep for a long nap around that time. We would much rather have her sleep then than cry inconsolably!
At night, I feed her in bed lying down, and I have been falling asleep as she eats. Some of the books recommend this method as a way for the mother to get more rest, and others caution not to have the baby in bed with you so you don't accidentally smother her in your sleep. While I was pregnant, I thought I would NEVER have her in bed with me--I thought I would be too scared. But lying in bed skin-to-skin with her, staying awake pretty much the entire night and feeding her on demand, was how I finally got her to start breastfeeding in the hospital. Then when we got home, for a few nights I thought she was too lonely in the co-sleeper, and I worried about her, so I just kept her near me. When I sleep with her, though, I don't move AT ALL, and I wake up very stiff and sore, plus I sleep very lightly. So now I do put in her in the co-sleeper after she eats and stops being squirmy. Sometimes I have to hold her so she's belly down on my chest for her to burp and get calm. But when I do put her in the co=sleeper, I don't worry so much anymore. I am just glad to get to really sleep for awhile.
All this just goes to show how little you can plan. Dean and I ALSO thought we wanted to bring her home by ourselves for the first week, but we changed our tune about an hour after my mother left the hospital. The next day we were placing urgent calls to the grandmothers, asking when they could come back up and how long they could stay!
I had to take a break from writing to feed Amelia and she is currently half-asleep, half-sucking at my breast, as I type with the computer way down at my knees. (We are on the couch, using a lot of pillows for support. Dean is at the grocery store.) All in all, I think we are doing very well. Amelia seems mostly to be a very cheerful and calm baby. I still get nervous around 5 each evening--the "witching hour"--but as I said she usually goes to sleep for a long nap around that time. We would much rather have her sleep then than cry inconsolably!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A Baby Story, Part 2
Amelia is in her Ergo carrier, grunting and sucking the side of her hand, as I write. We'll see how long this lasts.
So, we got to the hospital. Dean parked in the circle in front of the hospital. He kept moving the car. Finally we got out and walked to the elevators they had told us about on the tour. The front desk called Dean over, though, to get a visitor's pass. They said I didn't need one (haha--I was not in the mood to joke.) I was not in terrible pain but I wasn't feeling great, either. When we got up to the maternity floor we had to wait in line behind another pregnant woman to check in. In the meantime 3 or 4 more pregnant women came in right behind me. The day before had been a full moon so maybe that had something to do with it? It was interesting, despite the contractions I was having, to see the different pregnant women as we waited to go back to triage. One woman was sitting calmly in a wheelchair--NOT something I felt like doing. I was standing up and occasionally squatting or leaning over this little end table near these people who were, I assume, waiting on someone they knew to have a baby. They were not smiley or friendly to me, which I thought was very rude. Then one woman came in crying, with a friend who called out, "She's seven and a half months and in a lot of pain!" I worried for her. I thought they should let her go in before me, but soon I was called back.
They put me in a little curtained area. I could hear someone throwing up. It was very surreal at that point. I got changed into the hospital gown and on the table. I just wanted someone to check me and tell me I was 8 cm dilated so I could go have the baby.
But first, they took my blood pressure.
The nurse said, "Your blood pressure is really high!" and walked out of the room.
I was unconcerned by that, as I was preoccupied with when they were going to check my dilation. But Dean said that announcement really scared him. The nurse came back and took my blood pressure several more times. (Eventually she did check--I was 5 cm dilated.) Dr. Footer, my doctor, was called. The nurse put a saline IV in, explaining that they would probably put me on magnesium sulfate. I sort of argued that maybe didn't need the IV but she would have none of it. Eventually they wheeled me back to the delivery room.
Things get sort of fuzzy in my memory, timewise, but the gist of it is I had preeclampsia. This is after nine months of totally normal blood pressure. Sadly, I learned I not only had to be hooked up to the IV for the whole labor, but that I couldn't move around at all, due to the blood pressure issue. So I got in the bed.
Eventually Dr. Footer came in. He explained a bit more about the medicine, the magnesium sulfate or "mag," as they call it. It does not lower your blood pressure but prevents the side effects of high BP, such as seizures. (Fun!) He said it might make me "a little out of it." (Ha! The next day I could barely see. But more on that later.) In the meantime he said he knew he wasn't supposed to ask about pain medication but... maybe I wanted an epidural? I remember saying it was okay if he asked, as my birth plan was pretty much a piece of humor writing by then. I asked when would be too late to get the epidural, and he said he had given them up to 9 cm. So I decided to wait and see how it went.
Thus began (or continued, I guess) the endurance test that is labor. I was hooked up to a fetal monitor, which allowed everyone else (Dean, the nurses, the doctor) to see when a contraction was coming. I of course could feel them coming but a few times they could tell before I did, which got on my nerves. Every time one came Dean would remind me to breathe and as they got more painful, I started turning to the side and gripping the handle on the bed. Also Dean's hand and arm. (I thought he would be bruised but he wasn't.) I did the huff-puff fast breathing through the worst parts. The hardest thing was not pushing during the most intense part of the last contrations. I wanted to push but wasn't dilated enough.
The labor is hard to write about because my memory of it is almost totally visceral. It was very, very intense. The height of the contractions were very painful. It's hard to describe, though. It was kind of like being washed up in ocean waves. Something way more powerful than yourself taking over your body. There was little thinking (if I had been thinking, I probably would have asked for an epidural.) It was a very "being" experience.
The worst part was definitely the end of the contractions right before they told me I could push. Pushing was a huge relief. At this point they kept saying the baby was almost there. Apparently they told my mom and Luli (who kept sneaking back to the delivery room and getting kicked out by the nurse) it would only be 20 more minutes once I began pushing.
It was not to be. I think I started pushing at 7:30 and Amelia was born at 10:16 PM. It was tiring. They kept telling me to push 3 times with each contraction, but by the 3rd push I was out of energy. I think I would have done better with one long push, and my birth plan DID say I wanted to push on my own, but at that point I was just doing what they told me to do. After awhile I got worried Dr. Footer was only going to let this go on for so long. In fact, the contraction before Amelia came, he said we would need to consider an episiotomy if she didn't come soon. But I pushed hard with the next one and she came. I think he would have tried the episiotomoy, then soon wanted to do a c-section. But luckily, we didn't have to worry about that! She came in the nick of the time. And mom and Luli had sent Heather back to spy at that point, so she got to hear Amelia being born.
Once she came out it happened very fast. It was like her head came out and then the rest of her body just slipped out so easily. Dean said "Look!" (I had my eyes closed. At one point they gave me a mirror but I could see so little of her head that I did not find it encouraging at all.) I opened my eyes and there she was! They put her on my belly for just a second. Dean and I stared at each other in a kind of shock. I touched her and got the vernix all over my hand. Then they whisked Amelia away.
In the meantime I delivered the placenta, which was very easy. They threw it away before I could see it--Dean said it was not worth seeing but I had wanted to see it. Then I got some stitches while they did the usual baby things to Amelia (her Apgar score was 9.9). They did that kneading thing to my belly, which was uncomfortable, but not as bad as I'd dreaded. Finally they brought Amelia back to me, someone showed me how to nurse, and she was sucking away as Jim and Luli and mom and Heather came back to meet their new granddaughter/niece.
My baby has been very patient, and I am going to let her out of her carrier now. Soon we'll get part 3, the story of our FOUR NIGHT STAY at the hospital.
So, we got to the hospital. Dean parked in the circle in front of the hospital. He kept moving the car. Finally we got out and walked to the elevators they had told us about on the tour. The front desk called Dean over, though, to get a visitor's pass. They said I didn't need one (haha--I was not in the mood to joke.) I was not in terrible pain but I wasn't feeling great, either. When we got up to the maternity floor we had to wait in line behind another pregnant woman to check in. In the meantime 3 or 4 more pregnant women came in right behind me. The day before had been a full moon so maybe that had something to do with it? It was interesting, despite the contractions I was having, to see the different pregnant women as we waited to go back to triage. One woman was sitting calmly in a wheelchair--NOT something I felt like doing. I was standing up and occasionally squatting or leaning over this little end table near these people who were, I assume, waiting on someone they knew to have a baby. They were not smiley or friendly to me, which I thought was very rude. Then one woman came in crying, with a friend who called out, "She's seven and a half months and in a lot of pain!" I worried for her. I thought they should let her go in before me, but soon I was called back.
They put me in a little curtained area. I could hear someone throwing up. It was very surreal at that point. I got changed into the hospital gown and on the table. I just wanted someone to check me and tell me I was 8 cm dilated so I could go have the baby.
But first, they took my blood pressure.
The nurse said, "Your blood pressure is really high!" and walked out of the room.
I was unconcerned by that, as I was preoccupied with when they were going to check my dilation. But Dean said that announcement really scared him. The nurse came back and took my blood pressure several more times. (Eventually she did check--I was 5 cm dilated.) Dr. Footer, my doctor, was called. The nurse put a saline IV in, explaining that they would probably put me on magnesium sulfate. I sort of argued that maybe didn't need the IV but she would have none of it. Eventually they wheeled me back to the delivery room.
Things get sort of fuzzy in my memory, timewise, but the gist of it is I had preeclampsia. This is after nine months of totally normal blood pressure. Sadly, I learned I not only had to be hooked up to the IV for the whole labor, but that I couldn't move around at all, due to the blood pressure issue. So I got in the bed.
Eventually Dr. Footer came in. He explained a bit more about the medicine, the magnesium sulfate or "mag," as they call it. It does not lower your blood pressure but prevents the side effects of high BP, such as seizures. (Fun!) He said it might make me "a little out of it." (Ha! The next day I could barely see. But more on that later.) In the meantime he said he knew he wasn't supposed to ask about pain medication but... maybe I wanted an epidural? I remember saying it was okay if he asked, as my birth plan was pretty much a piece of humor writing by then. I asked when would be too late to get the epidural, and he said he had given them up to 9 cm. So I decided to wait and see how it went.
Thus began (or continued, I guess) the endurance test that is labor. I was hooked up to a fetal monitor, which allowed everyone else (Dean, the nurses, the doctor) to see when a contraction was coming. I of course could feel them coming but a few times they could tell before I did, which got on my nerves. Every time one came Dean would remind me to breathe and as they got more painful, I started turning to the side and gripping the handle on the bed. Also Dean's hand and arm. (I thought he would be bruised but he wasn't.) I did the huff-puff fast breathing through the worst parts. The hardest thing was not pushing during the most intense part of the last contrations. I wanted to push but wasn't dilated enough.
The labor is hard to write about because my memory of it is almost totally visceral. It was very, very intense. The height of the contractions were very painful. It's hard to describe, though. It was kind of like being washed up in ocean waves. Something way more powerful than yourself taking over your body. There was little thinking (if I had been thinking, I probably would have asked for an epidural.) It was a very "being" experience.
The worst part was definitely the end of the contractions right before they told me I could push. Pushing was a huge relief. At this point they kept saying the baby was almost there. Apparently they told my mom and Luli (who kept sneaking back to the delivery room and getting kicked out by the nurse) it would only be 20 more minutes once I began pushing.
It was not to be. I think I started pushing at 7:30 and Amelia was born at 10:16 PM. It was tiring. They kept telling me to push 3 times with each contraction, but by the 3rd push I was out of energy. I think I would have done better with one long push, and my birth plan DID say I wanted to push on my own, but at that point I was just doing what they told me to do. After awhile I got worried Dr. Footer was only going to let this go on for so long. In fact, the contraction before Amelia came, he said we would need to consider an episiotomy if she didn't come soon. But I pushed hard with the next one and she came. I think he would have tried the episiotomoy, then soon wanted to do a c-section. But luckily, we didn't have to worry about that! She came in the nick of the time. And mom and Luli had sent Heather back to spy at that point, so she got to hear Amelia being born.
Once she came out it happened very fast. It was like her head came out and then the rest of her body just slipped out so easily. Dean said "Look!" (I had my eyes closed. At one point they gave me a mirror but I could see so little of her head that I did not find it encouraging at all.) I opened my eyes and there she was! They put her on my belly for just a second. Dean and I stared at each other in a kind of shock. I touched her and got the vernix all over my hand. Then they whisked Amelia away.
In the meantime I delivered the placenta, which was very easy. They threw it away before I could see it--Dean said it was not worth seeing but I had wanted to see it. Then I got some stitches while they did the usual baby things to Amelia (her Apgar score was 9.9). They did that kneading thing to my belly, which was uncomfortable, but not as bad as I'd dreaded. Finally they brought Amelia back to me, someone showed me how to nurse, and she was sucking away as Jim and Luli and mom and Heather came back to meet their new granddaughter/niece.
My baby has been very patient, and I am going to let her out of her carrier now. Soon we'll get part 3, the story of our FOUR NIGHT STAY at the hospital.
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