Mid-night Insomnia

Ever since we brought Lincoln home from the hospital, he has slept three-four (and sometimes five or even six) hours at a stretch during the night. We go to bed around 10 or 10:30 and then he typically has me up once between 2 and 3 and not again until the big kids are getting up for the day at 6 or 6:30.  I've had babies that have done far less sleeping, so really, I've been OK with LT's self-proscribed sleep schedule.

Lately it is my own sleep that has been causing me fits, and not just fits, but Royal Hissy Fits which is another expression from my dear father. I'm not struggling so much to start the night...usually I fall asleep with no problems after Lincoln's final feeding for the day. What's been getting me, however, is the going back to bed after the middle of the night nursing session. I am sucking at that. It seems like some cruel ironic twist that someone as tired as myself could ever have problems sleeping, but really, the last several nights have had me up from 2-4 or even 5 a.m. because I just can't shut it off and go back to bed once I get Little Dude back in his cosleeper.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I have never, for the life of me and my sweet babes, been able to nurse in bed. I physically have to drag my bum to the rocking chair because I just can't get comfortable when I try to nurse horizontally (which might explain why I am such a nutter for collector of rocking chairs). Maybe the whole getting up is really just too much of actual getting up and therefore makes it hard to go back down?

Perhaps another part is that Lincoln is not a quiet sleeper. We've always had our babies in our room for their first five-six months and I remember all of them making noise, but LT seems to be an especially loud roommate. He grunts and shuffles and grunts and wiggles and grunts some more, all without ever really squawking. Actually, it is just these movements that eventually wake me up and get me to nurse him at all during the night; he has yet to start crying enough to get me up and in the chair for him, but he doesn't need to because the rest of it is plenty loud. So last night, for example, each time I was about to fall back asleep, Lincoln would make one of his many sounds and I'd be wide awake once again.

Or perhaps the real problem is that my mind spins in the middle of the night and keeps me up because I know that all too soon, I will be doing this day-in-day-out with three little Littles all on my own. Ben starts back to school at the end of this week and I'll be honest - I'm quaking in my boots. When I think about the daunting task of aligning all of their schedules and meeting all of their needs not to mention functioning as capable adult human myself, I get a wee bit overwhelmed. I know I've got family and friends that will lend helping hands when they can, but still...my life as a mama of three is about to get Real. So it is unfortunate that I feel like I'm about to enter the dark and scary way-too-tired place because this is the time when I need to be rested and ready to face each day with enthusiasm, not dread and dragging feet. And since I'm still avoiding caffeine and would like to continue to do so, I'm really going to have to dig deep to get the energy and motivation I need to get from getting through to actually living the days and weeks to come.

So how do I do it? How do I shut off my head and get back to bed so I can get the rest I very much need to be the mama I very much want to be?  

On Loving Lincoln (and literary comparisons)

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in one of my many rocking chairs, holding Lincoln and thinking, "I wish I could just stay like this forever." But then I thought of the 1,000,001 things I'd like to organize or clean in my house and I thought, "I'd love to split myself in two and be able to do both at the same time. That would be perfect." Of course, right after that I remembered that I have two older, totally adorable and worthy-of-spending-time-and-snuggles-with children AND a kind husband and thought, "Crap. More splits." And then I remembered what it was like BC (before children) when I had Saturdays to do whatever I darn well pleased and thought, "Yep, I'm pretty cool, too. It'd be nice to have a self just for myself." All of this, added to the fact, which you already know, that I'm an English major and bookworm of course had me thinking next that I needed horcruxes. If you don't know HP, I'm sorry for the strange reference, and if you do know HP, I'm sorry for the strange reference because I'm sure you are thinking it odd that I am comparing motherhood to soul splitting. I sure thought it was odd, and what I realized about ten seconds after the horcrux line of thought was that what I really need is probably just more sleep, but the more I think about it, splitting oneself and being a mama aren't really that different. Just hear me out...

In the last month, my heart and my body have been put to the test as we've welcomed our newest little person to our family. For the vast majority of that month, we've been great. My body aches some days because we've been sleep-deprived at times, you bet, but overall it's been a pretty smooth transition. I attribute much of that to summer vacation and the fact that Ben and I make one heck of a team. We have taken this family growth business on as a united front and what a difference that makes, even when you go in knowing you are out-numbered by the littles all driving their own buses (an expression my dad has always used - accurately! - to describe the reality of life with small children). Even on the days after nights when I don't sleep well (like the last few nights - oof.), I know I'll be OK because I have Ben's help to get through all the nursing sessions and meals and play time and chores each new day brings.

But change is hard, maybe even impossible, I think, without some growing pains, so of course there have been tears (both mine and the children's) and tantrums (both mine and the children's!) along the way. It takes time to get to know each other again after you add a new person to your family, so as a result, my heart has been growing and stretching like crazy since 6:45 p.m. on July 4th. At times it aches for the reasons mentioned above - so many different desires and people needing attention, all pulling me at once. And at other times, my heart has been fit to burst with joy because I stop to think about how we have been so blessed by the care (and food! and time!) of friends and family, not to mention just how amazing it is to have three healthy and (relatively) happy little babies in our house.

I'm still not sure that The Reality of Three has sunk in yet, but here's what I have learned about Mr. Lincoln: he is a love. SUCH a love. He's been my smushy face, sweet boy, curled up in a ball on my chest or in my arms little snuggler from day one and if I could, I probably would hold him all day. As noted by others who have held him, he's also a strong little wiggler who will do a back dive off your shoulder if you don't use two hands to hold him up there. He's a handsy guy which he can get away with because he's a month old, but even (especially!) his Mama is looking forward to correcting such behavior because, quite honestly, it is hard to nurse the Little Dude when his hands are constantly flying in the way! He gets away with this, however, because, again, he is so darn sweet. "SO sweet!" is what we hear from others, including strangers, whenever they see him.

And it's true. He may have been born on the Fourth of July, but Lincoln is no firecracker. He's actually pretty chill and seems to be ready to just roll with it, which is great (and which also makes him a good listener because that is exactly what I lectured him about when he was in my belly!). Even when you think he's going to wind up and squawk like a banshee, he calms down just as quickly and drifts back to dreamland (knock on wood that this continues!). Perhaps, when you are the third baby in a house full of busy babies, you need to let out the occasional squawk just to remind everyone you're there?? But really. Just look at those beautiful dark blue eyes. How could we ever forget he is a part of us?

Which brings be me back to splitting. All of these people, these pieces, are me. I've already been split by the arrival of each of them, including Ben, but not one has been a split that divides. What's that quote about true love only multiplies, not divides? What a Truth that is. My body, my heart, my soul, and my life have all expanded with each new addition, for which I'll be forever grateful. [Granted, I may lose my dang mind in the weeks to come when Ben goes back to school, but at the center of it all, the blessings and gratitude will remain, as I know my friends and family will help me remember!] So perhaps the literary comparison I need to make here is not to HP but the Grinch instead. One month ago, today, my heart grew ten sizes, all thanks to Lincoln, and what a gift he has continued to be ever since.

The others seem to agree:

Summer SoDak Trip 2013

After a flurry of posts in the first three weeks of July, the blog has been pretty quite for the last week. The thing is, when you embark on a grand adventure that involves crossing state lines with three small children, there just doesn't seem to be much time for blogging. The good news is, if you survive such an adventure, there are plenty of stories to tell upon returning home which is exactly what we managed to do yesterday morning.

If you've seen the photos on Facebook, you already know that we took a trip to visit my family in South Dakota. You'll also know already that the kids had a blast playing at various parks and the hotel pool and had a great time just being their normal balls-of-energy-and-cute-rolled-into-one selves with everyone we saw along the way. The overall consensus after we got back to Hastings? Our first vacation as a family of five was a HUGE success, but let's break it down in Maiasaura (the good, the mother, the lizard) pieces.

Since you already know that the trip was an overall Win, let's start with the trip's Lizard Story. Thankfully it did not involve any real lizards (or creatures of any sort). It involved, of course, the unexpected. Ben and I planned this excursion as carefully as we could knowing full well that traveling with a 4-yr-old, and 1 1/2-yr-old, and a 3-wk-old would pretty much leave everything out of our control, but hey, it's what we do. And thanks to my awesome packing skills and our basic acceptance of our early risers, we were able to break our travel portions into 4 mornings of driving for about 4-4 1/2 hours each, including time for a nursing stop; this got us to my parents' and then my grandpa's and then back again. I did all of the driving because I did not want to deal with the gymnastics/yoga required for the job of Person Stuck in Passenger Seat, Responsible for Handing ALL Snacks and Books to Children (Including and Mostly Meaning the Shrieking Toddler Who Keeps Dropping EVERYTHING). Seriously. The children were remarkable travelers overall, but I heard Raegan shriek the words, "BOOK!" and "SNACK!" and "CUP" at numbers and volumes I'd rather soon forget. But as the driver, at least all I had to do was listen to it...

Shrieking aside, it was our second morning of travel (on a day that started at 4:40 a.m., which is ungodly early, even for my kids) that gave us our low point of the whole trip. Because of the extremely early start time, we were headed down the road shortly after 6:00 and at our first pit stop, a Cabela's in Mitchell, SD, before the store even opened! Ben took the older kids and I stayed with Lincoln in the van to nurse. Even though I was exhausted, I was proud of us and thinking we were pretty awesome because we were doing this and we weren't even freaking out and we were going to get to Pierre so early and all would be well!!

Flash forward about 30 minutes, past the nursing and diaper changes and bathroom stops and Cabela's purchase of a new hoodie for Mama (it was unseasonably cool during our stay!), and we were all back in the van, ready to go. Except the van was not because our battery was dead. Now, in high school, I had an album by the band Live and it included a song called "Shit Town". Long story short, because folks from Yankton aren't real fond of Mitchell, my friends and I took to calling Mitchell "Shit Town". Guess what lyrics jumped into my head the minute I realized the van was not going to turn over and that my parents (who were also headed to Pierre that day) were still at the farm, too far away to be of any immediate help to us?!

But then Mitchell redeemed itself because a nice man from Cabela's came out to try to jump our van with their little box thingy and when that didn't work, he retrieved his own vehicle to do the trick instead which thankfully did work. And all together, the whole hiccup really only took about 35 minutes which was unfortunate for LT's nursing schedule and RL's napping schedule, but ultimately was not the end of the world.

As for the Mother Story of the trip, I'll go with a Kids Say the Darndest Things shorty because part of being a mother, I've learned, is being mortified by what can come out of your child's mouth at any given moment. On our first night away we were spending time at my parent's house, Harrison and Raegan were playing and I think maybe we were trying to get them to start getting ready for bed. My memory of the lead in is foggy because the actual words were so distracting and memory-burning. Totally excited, HD ran for the stairs, shouting "C'mon, Everybody! Let's all get naked!!" And the way he said it and the way my parents both raised their eyebrows as they tried really hard not to laugh made it all seem like he was repeating something he'd heard often. I assure you, it is NOT!

The Good Story from Summer SoDak Trip 2013 came from how our children slept like rock stars in the hotel. Actually, they were the opposite of rock stars in that they actually slept and didn't tear the room apart, but that is beside the point. Even Lincoln, who nursed like a maniac both evenings, went for 7+ hours of straight through sleep both nights we stayed in Pierre. Unbelievable and oh-so-very nice. Honestly, if it meant I'd get that much sleep every night, I probably wouldn't mind if most of my evenings were spent cluster feeding him!

Of course the other Good that came from the trip was seeing family. We got to introduce Lincoln to some very special family members over the course of the weekend, and all of us got to help my grandpa (and namesake) celebrate his 85th birthday. Raegan started saying the words "Grandpa" and "Grandma" by the end of the trip and Harrison got some extended birthday love and presents which is always fun. Thanks to helping hands with all three kids, Ben and I did not run ourselves totally ragged, and got to have some time in the evenings having adult conversations. Like I said, HUGE success!

Success aside, it will probably be some time before we take another grand adventure such as this. The van, I think, is content to be a snack and book free zone again and even though we certainly conquered this road trip, we're not going to get overly-confident or cocky and suddenly start zig-zagging cross country in an RV. No, sir. Homebodies we shall be - myself, my hubby, and our babies, three.

Behind the Scenes

So often in these days of social media, people complain of sugar coating and highlight reels when it comes to what folks are willing to post and share online. It's easy to beat yourself up if you look at all the picture perfect moments of others because, let's be honest, life is far from perfect. In the spirit of reality, let me peel back the filter and show you the picture I included in Harrison's fourth birthday party album on Facebook: 

That's right: Raegan is a mini-mama with hands on her hips, I am clearly less than thrilled with the situation, (the cookie looks delicious), and the birthday boy is face down on the floor, crying. That, my friends, was our reality smack dab in the middle of HD's party this morning. 

So why the long faces? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but it could be my fault. Even though I was awake in bed for well over an hour after nursing Lincoln last night, thinking about today, I forgot my one main job: bring candles and a lighter to adorn Harrison's giant cookie at his party. Perhaps the lack of sleep is to blame. I woke up more tired and with less time to rest this morning than I've had since Lincoln was born and clearly my frazzled state didn't help matters. Or perhaps it has just been a wild and crazy couple of weeks with all the commotion (new brother, visitors, day camps, playdates, etc.), and having so much attention as we tried to get a picture so we could sing "Happy Birthday" (sans candles) got to an already spent Harrison. I really don't know. But somehow, in less time than perhaps I even realized, we got to this: 

HD crawled in my lap, held on to my arm, and let his party goers serenade him. I started the singing but barely got through one "Happy Birthday to you" before I started to get choked up. I whispered the next line, but then I just had to bury my face in my little man's neck and hold him while the others finished the song. Again, I'm not entirely sure why this happened. It could have been the lack of candles. I knew I would start crying at some point the minute I realized my specially selected to match the Bad Piggies green candles were still on the counter at home and that there wasn't enough time to run out for a replacement (Hello, we had a room of three, four, and five year olds; no one was going to wait much longer for their cookie!). Perhaps the postpartum hormones were the culprit. I mean, I know I'm an emotional girl, but typically this kind of thing would make me cuss, not cry. Or perhaps the enormity of how quickly my babies are growing just did me in and made me weepy. Either way, I stood up from the song and spent the next few minutes wiping my eyes on the sidelines while Ben dished out the goodies. To the extreme credit of our gathered family and friends, no one asked me what was wrong or if I was OK (those questions always make it so much worse for me when I'm upset). Maybe the whole just-had-a-baby thing gave me a free pass to be weepy? Again, I don't know, but I'll take it.

I'll also take the words of my dear friend D who assured me that in the grand scheme of things, Harrison won't remember the fact that I forgot his candles at his fourth birthday party. Well, actually, he might because I swear he has the memory of an elephant, but she is right that it won't be the detail that defines the day for him or our relationship as child/parent. I'm pretty certain he knows how much I adore him even if I did forget the flipping green candles. And besides, the beauty of an Eileen's cookie is that they really are so big, you sometimes have enough leftovers to get a second chance:

Enter Harrison's afternoon snack: the final piggy with the four gloriously green candles. To continue in the spirit of reality, however, allow me to pull back the filter once again...we had another little meltdown before this singing/snacking/photo taking session. As you may remember, I once scarred (emotionally, not physically) my child with birthday candles and celebrations and that he has not forgotten. So it took some coaxing and "Use your words"ing to get to the point where Daddy's arm could serve as a protective barrier and HD could blow out the flames, but we got there.

And that's the moral of my story: we may not understand and we may shed some tears (happy and sad), but we always get there and we do it together.

Life as Five

Somehow it has already been two whole weeks since Lincoln arrived on the scene and turned us into a family of five. In recent days I've heard both Ben and I myself tell friends that it feels like we've always had three kids, which I guess is a sign that life, in general, is pretty good and things are going well. And it is - they are.

Lincoln's nursing like a champ (five ounces above birth weight already!) and sleeping pretty well, too (3-4 hours at night, most nights). And because Ben and I are both still home, we're dividing and conquering as best we can even though our man-to-man parenting moments only come now if some little one is gone to an activity or napping.

Because of all the dividing and conquering, though, I feel like the last two weeks have been a bit of a blur. Somedays I feel like I've hardly seen Harrison or held Raegan and then I get all overloaded and weepy on postnatal hormones which is fun. And as much as I'm trying to make time in each day for each of my kids, I'm also trying to take care of myself which means not always getting up with them in the morning or not running around the backyard with them in the afternoon. I mean, seriously. Mama's gotta rest! I don't know why I expected to be feeling better by now, but I am still in the exhausted newborn fog. I guess I thought life would be quiet in the weeks after Lincoln's birth but really?! We have three small children (and they have lots of noisy toys). Life is far from quiet! So I'm tired, and still emotional to the extremes, both high (fit to burst with pride and love for my family!) and low (pulling my hair out because no one ever listens!). But I think at two weeks as a family of five, this is probably pretty normal.

I must also take into consideration the fact that I was full of crap when I said I could let all the house stuff go after Baby came. You know, not worry about the laundry or the dishes, etc. or leave it up to someone else. Well, Ben's busy chasing the older two and I'm busy nursing the newest one and we're both caught up in trying to get through the I-think-our-white-board-exploded list of "things" going on in our world each day, so unless House Elves really exist and someone can hook me up (I promise, I'll give them socks and let them come and go as they please), the laundry and the dishes still exist. And since no one else is doing them, they remain my responsibility. Trust me, this is no soapbox. If you could see my living room right now, you would not exactly equate the word "clean" with my house, but I am tending to the basics because that's what needs to be done. Much as I might like to, I can't nap all day or sit 24/7 in the rocker with Lincoln in my arms; he's vital to this family but so is everyone else. Their laundry and their dishes and all the other little needs matter. My attention to their care, and my own, matters, and slowly, as we wade through this transition, we are learning what it is like to be five Welschies strong. It takes all of us.

Take this morning, when LT wanted to nurse just after 6 and RL was waking up at the same time (she slept until 7 on Monday; every day since has been 6. Boo!), I had Ben get both older kids and bring them into our room while I sat in the corner rocking chair with Lincoln. Ben and HD read together while RL sat on our bed with a board book on her lap, flipping pages. When Lincoln finished nursing, I handed him off to Ben and all five of us cozied up on the bed to read and sing "Snuggle Puppy" by Sandra Boynton (with Ben's arms blocking the baby from being smothered in love from Big Brother and Big Sister, of course). It was perfect, even if it lasted for just a few minutes.

Now I have those few minutes stored away in my memory so I can return to them when I start to lose my cool because someone's yogurt goes flying across the table, or because three musical toys are playing at once, or because I'm so, so tired and there's no time during the day to catch a nap. Because those minutes warm my heart. They also tell me that in two weeks we've made some big strides in figuring out life as five, and even through the mess and white board chaos, we're definitely doing something right.

Sweet Shorties

A random collection of observations, quotes, photos and mini-stories:

1) Raegan's Cuddle Bear, one of her two sleep friends, made his way downstairs the other day and she decided that CB had to join LT for tummy time. When we later tried to hand the bear back to her, she got very serious, shook her head while saying "No!" and pushed it back to Lincoln. It has yet to return to her bed!

2) For the love of Pete. I thought Link (Linc? - seriously, someone tell me what to do w/ this) was a questionable nickname. But now Harrison has taken to calling the baby "Linky" in this very high pitched way and wow, I am not a fan. Please! Do not encourage this nickname! I will take back my reservations about the previous one (even if I don't know how to spell it) if we can make this one go away!!!

3) I love having babies in Hastings. I mean love, love, love it. I have had three wonderful experiences at Mary Lanning both during delivery (OK, pufferfish still takes the cake on "Are you kidding me?!" but I'm over it. Maybe.) and after. I really, really like my OB and I've always had fabulous nurses all around to take care of me and each new babe. I think they like me, too, because the last two times (after LT and RL), the nurse who accompanied us to the vehicle hugged me and said, "See you next time!" :) Anyway, I've always wanted to do something to thank them for being, well, them, and after three beautiful babies born there, I finally made a Thank You gift for the nurses' station. We took it up a week after coming home from Lincoln's birth - a basket full of goodies for the general station and an extra little gift/card for my two favorites from labor and post-care with Lincoln. They all totally deserve some love for all the love they give and help bring into this world.

4) I bow down to the superiority of my husband's diapering skills. Yep. He's kicking my butt. Friday, when I did 4 or 5 of Lincoln's diapers in a row, I got peed on 4 or 5 times in a row after the fact. Well, leaked on, but same difference when it requires a full wardrobe change for the baby and a new shirt for me every single time. Ben does the diapers and we don't have those issues. I guess this means he's not getting fired from that job any time soon!
*Update: since first writing this, one of Ben's diapering jobs leaked & two of mine did not! I'm still not firing him.

5) Parenting Fail: it took us a week to let the older two children hold Lincoln. Whoops. I don't even know how that happened except that we got home and every day was sort of a whirlwind of survival and visits and activities for HD & RL and nursing and naps and yeah. We just didn't get around to it until Lincoln was a whole week old. Harrison's reaction when we asked if he'd like to hold Lincoln on the Boppy on the couch? "Finally!!!" Apparently the umpteen kisses to the top of the head and waves of hello to the sleepy babe in the swing that he and Raegan had been doing just weren't cutting it. He really was pumped to hold his baby brother and Sister loved it, too.

6) Newborns get the hiccups. I know this. In the past, a hiccuping newborn has never bothered me. But there's something about little Lincoln's chest when he hiccups that freaks out his mama. It looks SO violent when his diaphragm sucks in that I now cringe whenever he starts up a round of hiccups. Did I not see my other two naked when they had them or something? Why is this suddenly so disturbing?!

7) Harrison has decided that we must change Lincoln's name to Exeter because the baby needs to be named after a town (Harrison and "Ragan" Nebraska both exist). Exeter is a tiny town on Highway 6 that we drive through on the way to Grandpa & Grandma Welsch's house. When he first said this I laughed at his town of choice and then thought to myself, Ooooh. Poor LT. No town. Then my obviously less tired husband chimed in and said, "Hmmm...Lincoln in Nebraska. I think we're covered for having a town to go with the name." Face Palm, my friends. Total Face Palm. At least I didn't say it out loud!

8) Lincoln has the most adorable and most unique extra wrinkle of cartilage in his tiny and precious little ears. I have no idea where this comes from but they are totally matched and totally wonderful. Relatives, don't be surprised if you find me scoping out your ears in my attempts to discover where this originates.

Lincoln Thomas

In high school my friends and I watched a lot of TLC's A Dating Story and A Wedding Story episodes, especially during our senior year open campus lunch. What I could never get into, though, was A Baby Story; I could not handle watching the cameras follow a couple to the hospital to go through the whole birth process with them. I mention this only because now, as a grown mama, sharing birth stories is one of my favorite things to do. I've found that doing so is an instant way to bond with another mama, even one you just met. I love to hear the experiences of my friends and I love to share the stories of my babies' arrivals, which is what I'm doing here for Mr. Lincoln...

For someone who happens to be very, very theme-oriented, it did not occur to me until the evening of July 3rd that it would be pretty darn awesome if we had our next Presidentially named baby on July 4th. Chalk it up to mama brain or something, but it wasn't until I had semi-real contractions for three hours that night that I realized, fireworks angst aside, I would really like to have a Fourth of July baby. But then we went to bed and the contractions stopped, so I knew if an Independence Baby was coming, it wouldn't be in the wee early hours of the day. I had hope the next morning when I woke up that it could still happen, but then that had been my mindset pretty much every day starting from 36 1/2 weeks. You might think I'm crazy for having such expectations, but my first two babies came under such different circumstances (one out of the blue, one with several false starts) and at such different points in their gestation (one twelve days early, one five days late) that I really had no frame of reference for what No.3 might do. So why not the 4th, eh?

After a morning nap (for me, not Raeagn) and some festive cookies (boo for Elieen's being closed that day), Ben and the kids and I got ready to meet up with my MOPS group at 11:00 for the YWCA Kiddie Parade around Fisher Fountain that is just a handful of blocks from our house. We got on our red, white, and blue, loaded HD & RL in the sit-and-stand stroller, and took off. It was hot but not unbearable as we walked and part of me was hoping/thinking that maybe the exercise would get the previous night's contractions going again. And even though it took all through decorating, lining up for the route, and standing in the now hot sun to work, just as we started "marching", I had one heck of a contraction. One that felt more real than anything else thus far and caused me to comment to a friend that "Ooo! That one hurt!" But again, that was it.

We walked the parade route one and a half times and then walked straight home to get a very sleepy Raegan fed and down for a snooze. HD & I ate lunch together and just after 12:30 we plopped down on couches in the living room to chill for a bit. That's when I felt another contraction. It hurt enough to have me to tell Ben he might want to start timing them to see what was happening, so he started a list. The first hour was every 20 minutes. The second was every 15. And from there things got crazy. They went from 10 to 8 to 5 to 7 to 4 to 7 and all over the place, but they all hurt and so part of me started to think we might be in business. We started making calls to our parents saying they might want to think about heading this way and at 3:00 I hopped in the shower. By then I was pretty sure we were going to the hospital sooner than later and I did not want to go into labor a sweaty mess from the parade earlier (as if labor itself isn't a sweaty marathon of mess!).

Even though things were progressing quickly and the pain was pretty intense, I stayed fairly calm until about 3:30. At that point Ben's mom still hadn't left for her hour and a half drive to get here to be with the kids and my parents were still at their farm, too, over three and a half hours away, and I didn't think we had that much time before we need to go. What with the holiday and all, we were also having a hard time reaching any of our friends who had offered to be our back up should we need to hurry up and get to the hospital. Honestly, by 4:00, I was beginning to think that the kid might just fall out in our kitchen and we still didn't have a game plan of what to do with Harrison and Raegan! To add to the chaos, my little mimic, Raegan, started copying my "Oooohs" and deep exhalations that I had to use to get through the contractions, and while I knew she wasn't actually mocking me, it became pretty clear to me that I did NOT want to have the baby at our house!

Well, thank goodness for good neighbors! Our neighbors to the north were spending the day at home and they were more than happy to have the kids come over to hang out and have hot dogs with them, so that's what we did. We ditched the kids next door until Grandma Deb could get there to put them to bed and we hightailed the whopping five or six blocks that it takes to get to the hospital, checking in just after 4:30 when my contractions were about four or five minutes apart.

From there it took about an hour to get up to the room, checked, and through all of the questions, set up, etc. I was so relieved when the nurse said I was at 5 cm and used the words "The Real Deal" because all along I had been worried that they'd send me home like they did with Raegan the first time we went in. In fact, I was so relieved that my contractions slowed down again to 8-10 minutes; I think my body was just happy to know I wasn't going to have to deliver unassisted at home! In hindsight, I'm glad I had a little rest that hour because from there things got very intense very quickly.

Because of the holiday, my regular OB was not available. As in, out of town, no way of making it back in time for one of my uber fast deliveries, not available. That freaked me out a bit because she's always been so good about supporting my all natural approach, but then the on-call doc agreed to let me skip the IV and I thought, OK. This is going to be OK. Full Disclosure: I think a primary reason I go the natural route is because I absolutely hate the idea of having an IV stuck in my hand or an epidural stuck in my back. I would rather push a baby out and feel it than deal with those needles!

So anyway, after checking in and getting situated, they sent me walking the halls to get those contractions going again. At first the walking was easy but after a few laps, I had to slow way down and stop to just breathe through them. Each time I put one hand on the bottom of my belly and one on the wall and thought, Alright, one step closer to Baby. After 20 minutes of this, the nurse called to me that the doctor was there and I thought, Great! He's going to check me and see how I'm progressing. But before I could get another thought in or word out, she told me, "He's going to break your water."

Huh?! Just like that? I know I've had stubborn water breaking issues in the past, but without even checking me or asking me?!

Part of my heart sank, because I was worried that this intervention, small as it may be in the minds of some but the biggest I've ever had, might lead to other complications or interventions or whatever. I just didn't know what to think. And while I'm sure I could have protested or flat out said, "No", the other part of my heart really wanted to meet this baby and know that everything was in fact OK. So I went back to the labor and delivery room to have the on-call doctor check me (7 cm) and break my water.

That all happened at 6:00. In the 40 minutes following, I went from 7 to just under 10 and I wanted to push. Real bad. The doc gave me the go-ahead and with my amazing husband on one side and an amazing labor and delivery nurse (I always love my L&D nurses!) on the other, I got after it. Four minutes later, at 6:45, Lincoln Thomas Welsch was born. Yes, four minutes. I was in so much pain (worse than I remembered with the others) and so desperate to get that baby out, I just kept pushing and pushing, pausing maybe twice to catch my breath.

In no way do I mean to diminish Lincoln's arrival (I mean, look at him - he's perfect!) or my strengths as a mama, but it wasn't exactly my best - what? performance?? - in the delivery room. The word that comes to mind again and again is intense. That last hour was so intense on various levels that I think I rushed things a bit which might also explain why it was so very painful. I wasn't exactly calm and connecting my breath to my pushes. But so be it. It was hard but it was quick and when it was all said and done, I ended up with the most amazing little baby boy on my chest. I don't think he, or anyone else for that matter, is going to hold my rushing to meet him against me.

So, in seven hours from start to finish on the good old Fourth of July, we officially became a family of five. Talk about fireworks!