Friday, November 25, 2011

Could It Be? Celery?!

Twice this week I had a meal that included a LOT of celery. Normally I am not a fan and so I avoid it, but this meal was prepared by someone else and brought to us and it sure tasted good, so twice this week I had a LOT of celery. The other "twice" we experience this week involved a certain little baby who would not (could not?) sleep at night. She was nursing like crazy but not drifting off like normal and was basically just WIDE EYED for hours on end in the middle of the night (morning?). Twice. The second time was even worse because we could hear Harrison just across the hall also not sleeping, making noise any time someone in our room made a sound. Needless to say, my Thanksgiving included a much needed coffee to recover from the long and exhausting nights that, of course, were followed by much too early mornings.

So what do you think? Could there be a connection? I would much rather like to think that it was just a food aversion and not a sign of things to come. Yesterday was a day without celery and our night was back to "normal" where at least Raegan would go back to sleep, even if she didn't stay that way for as long as we would like (or as long as she does during the day). This makes me hopeful that the dreaded C-word isn't the culprit. I am not sure I could survive if I had to handle a high energy toddler (and his baby sister) all day and then go all night too with a colicky baby.  Again - fingers crossed for the celery!

Thank goodness that on such a tiring week Ben only had school two days. And thank goodness that we have wonderful families who agreed to our invitation to come celebrate the holiday with us even if we weren't going to do a big traditional meal. Yesterday's soups, breads, and munchies with Ben's family turned out great. Tomorrow my parents will help us with (OK - they will probably do most of) a turkey meal. And because we didn't have to do any traveling, we can focus on the two most important things in our lives - Harrison and Raegan - and getting them the rest and attention they both need as we continue to learn what life together is like. Yeppers. There is much to be thankful for, even in the midst of (possibly driven by celery) sleep deprivation.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Observations

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, but it's funny how life with a newborn and a toddler can fill up your days (and nights) and not leave much time for blogging. But now I have a couple days with just the newborn as the toddler is off to stay with grandparents, and magically it seems like I have so much more time to do a few things for myself (like be online and more importantly - sleep!). Rather than write a big long narrative, I wanted to make a list of sorts of observations from the last 12 days just so I can look back and remember what this time was like.

*Raegan is a doll. She has me up a couple times each night to nurse & usually each session takes an hour. Sometimes this makes me incredibly cranky because I don't want to leave the cozy bed to sit in the rocking chair. But then she sleep grins at me and I melt into a pile of mama mush, so happy and so proud to have her in my life.

*She is a sleepy nurser. We have to strip her down and change diapers throughout every feeding because she only stays on so long before drifting off and no amount of burping or chin/cheek tickling can seem to wake her.

*She doesn't cry much (she does more a short squawk/squeak when she wants attention), but when she does, holy wow, the girl has lungs! 

*For the first 9 days, Harrison was enthralled with his sister. While he still says, "She's cute" in a high squeaky baby talk voice and still wants to give her kisses on the top of her head all day long, he is no longer being gentle with her. In fact, at times, he is the exact opposite which has been quite stressful for me. I try to keep telling myself that his world has been rocked completely and that I need to be patient with him, but that isn't easy when he suddenly unloads and lashes out at her (or me). I can only hope this is a phase that passes quickly or I may not make it on my own with the two of them, day in and day out.

*I thought HD would cling to me after I got home from the hospital, but for the first week or so he was pretty much snubbing me. He wanted anyone else - Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa...but not Mama. There were a few hormonal days where that really hurt and made me a weepy mess, but now he seems excited to see me again when he returns to the house after an outing.

*I keep wondering what I thought I was so stressed about when I just had one baby. What did I do with all that time when the baby was sleeping?! Now it seems that Raegan gets me up for an early morning feeding and just as she finishes up and I could crawl back into bed, Harrison is stirring in the next room and so the day begins. & then, thanks to the crib-to-bed switching debacle, afternoon naps haven't been happening, so I am tired, tired, tired all the time. I know, I know. I should be sleeping now. But again - I know I have all day tomorrow to nurse and snooze with Little Girl, so I will catch up then.

*I went to Walmart the other night (after Harrison had gone to bed and Raegan had just nursed) to get groceries and other various baby items. I felt like I had lost a limb as I walked around in public by myself. I guess I'm just not used to doing that anymore because I almost always had HD with me in the past. I even flipped out the little child seat on the cart one my way into the store - twice!  I can't imagine how long it will be before I'm brave (or naive) enough to take both kids shopping...years perhaps?

*It really is fun to shop for little girl clothing.

*Somehow we have made it 12 days with no spit up. I shouldn't even say that out loud & you can guarantee that I just knocked on wood after typing that, but it's true. Raegan has yet to urp on me. Unbelievable & yes, probably TMI for some of you. :)

I know I had better details and more specific moments that I wanted to record, but many of those thoughts are escaping my fuzzy, sleepy brain at the moment. I'll try to keep writing about what life is like as a family of four. For now I know that it is beautiful, challenging, overwhelming, and such a blessing.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Missing Our Sleep

One thing that sends our happy little home into a tailspin is lack of sleep. Ben and I can function at an OK level on less sleep, but what we have noticed with Harrison is that sleep is crucial. If he doesn't get enough sleep, we all feel it in his behavior and actions. And while HD has been a great night sleeper since the age of 7 months or so, naps have always been a challenge. Now that we have switched from a crib to a toddler bed, the magnitude and impact of that challenge are astounding.

We toyed with the idea of changing his bed back in September. Now I'm wishing we had, but instead we opted to keep the crib for the sake of keeping at least one place in the house where he could be contained. Well, containment goes right out the window when your two-year-old learns to instantly, silently, and constantly escape from his crib. Then the crib rails just become a hazard.

Ben is taking two days off this week to be home with us and I was so looking forward to our little four day weekend as a family of four. While some parts of the weekend have been great and others just fine, the afternoons have been beyond trying and exhausting. We all need sleep. I'm tired from being up nursing during the night and Ben is feeling this too as Raegan is in our room and he helps with the diaper changes that are required to keep her awake and nursing. We would both love an afternoon nap. But Harrison has had other ideas and on Saturday Ben had to spend an hour putting HD back in his crib every 30 seconds because that is how fast he was flipping out. Once he stayed put he never did sleep. Later that day we converted the crib to the toddler bed and thought we were in good shape when Harrison went to bed and stayed put right out of the gate.

Actually, the last two nights of going to bed have been fine. He has woken up once each night and started crying, sounding very scared in his room, so Ben has gone in (both times I've been nursing) and put him back down for the rest of the night. I worry a little bit that this will turn into a game or ploy to get one of us in there for mid-night attention, but for now I feel like he needs that reassurance and comfort. The real issue, at this point, is the total lack of naps.

Yesterday Harrison spent his entire "nap" time banging on the door to his room and hollering. Today started much the same and just when we thought the quiet and sleep had come, he started making noise and crying because he had a dirty diaper. So here we sit, again, listening to him bang around in his room.

Nap cannot disappear. It just can't. That used to be my only time during the day for myself and now it is my only time during the day to focus on just one kiddo. Plus Harrison's behavior and attitude are way better when his day includes some day sleep. We have done more time outs in the lat 48 hrs. than you might think possible and I know lack of sleep is a big part of this. So what do we do? Our tired and foggy brains are at a loss. Everyone keeps telling me that this too shall pass, but right now I'm not so sure that my sanity won't just go with it.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A Tale of Two Labors (Part Two)

And I quote: "Today has been pretty calm and while I'm having some regular pain as I type this, I am not even going to bother calling them contractions or waste my time thinking I might be in labor because clearly I do not know what is going on with my body right now." I don't know if I have ever uttered words more true than these last I wrote Thursday evening. Not 15 minutes after posting my last blog entry, my "regular pains" jumped from every 15 minutes down to 12, 8, 7, and 6 minutes, just like that. By 9:00 we had our standbys at the house/on the road and we were once again pulling up to the hospital. What a difference 24 hours can make!

I will admit, I was a little gun shy when we got there. In the short car ride from our house, I didn't really feel too bad and I couldn't help but think, OH. NO. Not again! So I actually made Ben sit in the car with me in the parking lot until another contraction came because I was NOT about to go into the ER for the second night in a row only to be turned away for another labor false alarm. When that crucial contraction came, though, and hurt like crazy, I knew we were in business.

For the sake of discretion and those of you who would rather not know the whole truth, I won't go into all the lovely details of what transpired over the next four hours. I'll give the edited version instead, but be warned....if you don't like birth stories, the following may be too much for you!

In some ways, our time in the labor and delivery room went very quickly. They had me do a little walking, but mostly that was leaning against the railings in the hall, rocking and swaying my way through each contraction. Thankfully I had a good team working with me and they respected my wishes not to have an IV and let me try various positions as I worked my way to being fully dilated. Unfortunately, that process seemed to take a bit longer than I would have liked. I spent a good 2.5 hours going from 6 to 8 to 9 and then to 9.75 cm, all without my water breaking. Around midnight or so, I started telling the nurse that I wanted the doctor called because I wanted to push, but she wanted to wait until I was a full 10 or my water broke. As much as I loved my L&D nurse, I wish she would have listened to me!

Last time, my doctor had to break my water and from there things went fast, fast, fast. Well, this time, my water broke on its own just as I was fully dilating and once again, things wanted to go fast, fast, fast. But, since the doctor hadn't been called in yet, they told me not to push. WHAT?! Are you kidding me?! Thank God I live in a small city because it only took, according to Ben, 10 minutes for the doctor to arrive and join us. To me, though, those 10 minutes felt like 60 and I kept yelling at people telling them that I just wanted to push. They kept yelling back at me (OK, they were not yelling, but they were very, very insistent) that I needed to blow through them. With my breath. Like a puffer fish. If you like, and if you knew me way back when I didn't have kids but had a great big potty mouth instead, you can insert your expletive of choice at this point in the story!

But I did it. I listened and I held on to Ben's hand and the railing of the bed for dear life until the doctor got there, threw on her garb and gave me the green light to push. Actually, I wanted to start the minute she walked in the door, but instead I had to keep puffing like the @*#$ blow fish just a little bit longer.

The good thing about being determined and stubborn and very, very aware of my body thanks to not having an epidural is that when she said go, I did. 10 minutes later I had my reward - Raegan Leigh Welsch was placed on my tummy at 1:11 a.m. and I was beyond shocked and elated to have my girl. She is a miracle in so many ways. And we are lucky in so many ways because she held on to her home  in my tummy as much as she could on her way out. Her cord was looped around her so I had to push not only the head and the shoulders but also the torso and even her legs and feet to get her all the way out. Thankfully she showed absolutely no signs of detriment from this and was deemed "perfect" by her doctor during our stay in the hospital. We would have to agree.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

A Tale of Two Labors (Part One)

Let me begin by clarifying that this is called Part One because I know, without a doubt, that there will be a Part Two. At some point this baby in my belly will quit teasing all of us which will mean that I have to finish his/her birth story. But for now, I am stuck in labor limbo where all I can do is scratch my head and wonder how on earth my children can already be so different.

With Harrison, I did not even know I was in labor, in part because I was still 12 days out from my due date. I thought I had the stomach flu most of that morning, but by the afternoon we realized something BIG was happening. From there things went super fast; so fast that I had people tell me I was lucky I didn't deliver at home. And so fast that my doctor even made a comment in the delivery room that when I had my next one, I would have to get to the hospital right away because it would come even faster. There were no false starts whatsoever. Based on all of this, not only did I believe Baby No.2 would be earlier than HD, but I also thought labor and delivery would be nothing more than a few hours.

At this point, I feel like we're going on weeks of being in labor! I've now had one false alarm afternoon of contractions a couple weeks ago that caused me to call the doctor and one full day of contractions that resulted in us actually going to the hospital last night, only to be sent home 3.5 hours later because they weren't going anywhere. Seriously? How does that even happen?! They called my contractions "irritable" which, at 40 weeks and 3 days pregnant, I found oddly funny in a very twisted humor sort of way. Today has been pretty calm and while I'm having some regular pain as I type this, I am not even going to bother calling them contractions or waste my time thinking I might be in labor because clearly I do not know what is going on with my body right now.

The wonderful news (besides the RN who predicted that I would have another 7 lber!!), in all of this, is that the baby is doing really, really well. The monitor feed from last night showed a very active kiddo who also appears to be quite content in Mama's belly. The other good news is that my doctor is not rushing me to induce. She is letting me go as long as I want, so long as the baby continues to show no signs of stress. If need be, we'll do an ultrasound Monday and then go from there with the waiting game. Of course I hope labor kicks in again before then, but it is a huge blessing to have some of that "hurry up & have that baby!!" pressure removed.

Now I understand why parenting books say you shouldn't compare your children to one another. Every pregnancy, every birth, and every child are completely different. It seems that even from the womb, this baby has declared an independent approach than that of big brother Harrison. And while I'd very much like to be done with labor and delivery, I can appreciate the fact that this baby has its own timeline and agenda. All I can do is sit back and do my best to be patient as I wait to meet this unique little love.