Twas Brillig

Five years ago today, my handsome little Bubba was born. Last year, for all of my children’s birthdays, I shared their “birth story.” Blake’s is here.  It’s about as dramatic as a Soap Opera Sunday, so if you’re into birth stories, his is definitely one to read.

This year, I’m going to post some of my favorite pics of each kid on their birthday. Alas, with the move, and the other move, and the preparing to move yet again, most of my pics are unaccessible. So Bubba gets the raw end of this deal. Fortunately, though, Bubba was such a gorgeous baby (if I may brag thusly) that pretty much ANY picture I find of him will be beautiful. Oh, how I love this little boy. I’m so grateful that he’s mine. Happy Birthday, dude.

So sweet and tiny!

 His eyes are truly the bluest blue I’ve ever seen.

 Umm… decorating?  Or Terrorizing?

Shouldn’t he be on a Duran Duran album cover from the eighties or something?  Seriously.  He’s SO John Taylor here.

So grown up!

(Okay, so we obviously missed a few years in there—we kinda skipped from age 1 to age 4…—but you get the point. He’s frickin’ darling. And I’m the proudest mama ever.)

Six years ago, I was massively pregnant. And I mean MASSIVELY PREGNANT. I was 19 days—almost three full weeks!—past my due date.

It was the middle of the night, but because sleeping had become… well… impossible, I had given up. I filled the bathtub with hot water and got out a book that I’d been meaning to read. About 300 pages into it, I noticed that I was having contractions. Soon they got closer together and more and more uncomfortable. At about 6:00 a.m., I got out of the bath (a feat in and of itself when you’re that pregnant) and woke hubby up. This was it! I was in labor!

Brian called our fantastic team of midwives (one of whom was my beloved sister!) and they soon arrived, setting up the birthing tub and unpacking and arranging supplies, turning my living room into a birthing center. I was checked and told that I was dilated to 9 cm. This baby was going to be born any second. I settled into the birthing tub and began wrapping my brain around the fact that I was about to be a mommy for the first time!

But seconds turned into minutes, which turned into hours. 13 hours, to be precise, that I was stuck at 9 cm. Heavy, painful, but unproductive contractions came in relentless waves. The problem was that the baby hadn’t dropped yet. Even when I finally had them break my water, nothing was happening.

Finally, some time on a birthing stool gave the baby the room she needed, and it was time to get our show on the road. I jumped back into the birthing tub (and hubby jumped in with me!) and pushed… for 3 hours. I had never known such agony, nor such empowerment. This amazing combination was exhausting and exhilarating.

After a very long day, and a very VERY long pregnancy, my beautiful princess came roaring into the world.

Immediately after she was born, I began hemorrhaging severely. I had to get out of the tub quickly and lie down on the plastic-lined floor while my fantastic midwives poked, prodded, pushed, pulled, and saved me. In the meantime, Hubby took his brand new baby girl for a walk through the hallways. I could see them walking back and forth through the doorway. He was gently rocking her, staring at her with pure fascination and adoration, and softly singing “Getting to Know You.” I was overwhelmed with this rush of joy and love. Nothing in my life had ever been so powerful as watching the man I loved, loving his baby.

Fluffy has turned into an amazingly strong, intelligent, funny, and beautiful young lady and I just love her more and more. On this, her sixth birthday, I celebrate all the entertainment, hilarity, joy, wonder, and love that she has brought to my world.

Happy Birthday, Princess Fluffy!

A little over a year ago, I was hugely pregnant…

(It’s a birth story, Gentle Readers, as is my tradition.)

One year ago, I was in the hospital, hooked up to IV’s and a pitocin drip and all sorts of fetal monitors.  This may sound like a normal birth story to you, but it was extreme for me.

I’m a homebirther.  My oldest three children were all born at home, under water.  I’m not a hippy.  I wear make-up and I shave my legs and I wear sassy high heels.  I also believe that every woman is entitled to give birth where she feels the most comfortable.  For you, that may be in a hospital with monitors and such a strong epidural that someone has to tell you to push, because you can’t feel it yourself.  For me, it’s at home, in a warm, deep birthing tub, completely in tune with my body–mastering it, and surrounded by my outstanding midwife and my loved ones.

But towards the beginning of this pregnancy, something in my gut felt unsettled about homebirth.  I was never really sure why–just sure that this time it wasn’t for me.  So I looked for someone who could give me a similarly natural experience, but from a hospital bed.  I found a wonderful group of Certified Nurse Midwives (CNM) who worked out of a little local hospital where each room had a jacuzzi for labor and other natural birth-friendly amenities.  They knew of my commitment to going naturally and they were there to support me in that.

But as I was sitting in the Akron, OH airport on my way home from my Grandma’s funeral, I looked down at my feet and noticed that they were gigantic. My normally loose-fitting flip-flops were digging into my flesh. My ankles looked like those of an elephant.

Well, pregnant women get swollen, right? I tried to pass it off as just being due to the stress of the last few days, plus all the airplane riding. Still, this was alarming in its swollenness.  I was wearing glasses, and I realized that they felt particularly uncomfortable–pinching my nose. I finally excused myself and looked in a mirror–and was greeted by the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.

When I got home from my trip, I stopped by the grocery store to take my blood pressure on one of their fancy machines. My results were astronomical.

I was sick.

I was put on bed-rest and spent lots of time under observation in the hospital.  (By the way, “bed-rest” is a joke when you have three tiny children at home and no one to help you take care of them.  Just so we’re all clear on that…)  No one had actually diagnosed me with anything because, even though I was alarmingly swollen and had tremendously high blood pressure, my lab results kept coming back fine.  So… bed-rest.

One day, things were particularly bad. I was seeing stars, my head was throbbing, and I felt faint. It was Bubba and Fluffy’s first day of preschool, so I was going to drop them off and run to the hospital for some tests and then go back and pick them up. My sister-in-law was home from work that day and would help me by taking Scooby.

When I got to the hospital, the on-call doctor did a thorough examination and pronounced, once and for all, that I did indeed have pre-eclampsia.   I was only 37 weeks along, which is still considered “full term” but for someone like me, who normally delivers between 42 and 43 weeks, it was very early.  They would have to induce me.  Immediately.  After many frantic phonecalls, Brian was on his way, and his sister would pick up the other kids and keep them all at her house overnight.

When my CNM arrived, I just looked at her and said, “so, basically, I take this beautiful birth plan that I wrote out, about wanting to be able to walk around and find positions comfortable for me and labor in the water, and I shred it and throw it in the garbage.”

“Yep.  Pretty much.”

I was still determined not to have any pain medication, even though I would have pitocin flowing through my veins–a drug that forces hard and painful contractions–more hard and more painful than the already almost unbearable pain of regular labor.  But I still wanted to be able to work with my body, not ignore it.

I confess that I was scared to death.  I would be forced to sit almost completely still, strapped to all sorts of beeping monitors, with IV’s of antibiotics (I was also beta strep positive) and an IV of pitocin.  I had no idea how to labor under those conditions.

As it turned out, my body was NOT ready to go into labor.  It took 13 hours of the strongest available dose of pitocin being pumped into me before I was even considered “in labor.”  13 hours of that hideous bed and those wicked monitors.  13 hours of watching Brian sleep comfortably (and snore loudly) in his own hospital bed.

When I did finally go into labor, I was all alone. Brian was fast asleep, the nurses had forgotten I existed, and I was in hardcore pitocin labor.  I became my own doula, reminding myself to drop my jaw, unclench my fists, work with the contraction.  This went on for three hours.  Somewhere in here, my sister Laura showed up and I told her that if I hadn’t made significant progress, I was going to give up.  I wasn’t yet at my breaking point, but I was about to be.  I would need some help with the pain if this labor was going to go on much longer.  She assured me that that was okay–that I wasn’t a failure.  So I called in the CNM and told her what was going on.  She decided to check me before we really talked about my pain options.

“This baby will be here in less than an hour.”

Suddenly, people were breaking down my bed and I was allowed to stand up!  Ahhhhh!  Such a relief!  I walked around, I swayed, I squatted.  I was in my element.  And I. could. do this.

By the time I sat down again, I was ready to push, with Laura holding one leg and Brian holding the other.  Four minutes later, my beloved baby was born.

It’s as though a piece of my soul was finally found that day.  This little baby is the joy of my life.  I don’t know how I ever survived without him.

That’s not to say he’s been an easy baby–oh no!!!  From jaundice to RSV to not being able to breastfeed, he has been an extremely difficult baby.  Perhaps it’s the pain and the sacrifices and the tears I’ve shed that make him so very special to me.

I can’t believe a whole year has gone by.  How is that possible?

Happy, Happy Birthday, Dear Fuzzles.  I love you more than I could ever possibly express.

(And here are a couple of pics that make me laugh…)

It’s Flashback Friday and Scooby’s birthday!!

When I was ten days past my due date, I’d had it. This was the longest pregancy ever.

For the first six months of the pregnancy, I puked every single day, multiple times a day. And on top of all the puking, I was spotting. Since I’d already had a handful of miscarriages by this point, I was freaking out. Both the severe dehydration and the bleeding sent me to the Emergency Room on various occasions. And you may have gathered by now that emergency rooms and I don’t exactly get along…

But the hardest part was being so sick while taking care of two very energetic toddlers. Fluffy and Bubba were 3 and almost 2 and were next to impossible. I was almost too sick to keep up with them, which meant that they were causing even more trouble than they would had I been well enough to be more diligent.

And on top of all of that, Hubby was not only working full time, but feverishly working on his Masters Degree. He was gone all day long and well into the night almost every single day.

I was sick, exhausted, hormonal, lonely, and extremely overwhelmed.

So making it to my due date and then going beyond it seemed so completely unfair.

We had decided not to find out the baby’s gender. We already had a boy and a girl, so we were prepared for either one. Still, Hubby and I were both convinced that it was a girl. Her name would be Sophia. I couldn’t wait to cuddle my little girl in my arms.

And so, on this day ten days past my due date, as I was on my way to my prenatal appointment, I decided that I would ask my midwife to break my water. This was a huge thing to me, since I was so completely devoted letting nature take its course…

But, SURPRISE! My water broke on its own on my way to my appointment! There I was, on the freeway in my minivan with Fluffy and Bubba, gushing amniotic fluid. Upon arriving at my midwife’s and looking like I’d been peeing myself, she checked me and announced that I was already dilated to a 7. Since my last labor had only lasted four hours, we expected that this baby would come any second. So I jumped back into my van with my kiddos and my midwife loaded her car with all of her supplies and followed me home, each of us gripping our cell phones, just in case it became necessary to deliver the baby on the side of the road!

Fortunately, we made it all the way to my house and even had time to get the birth tub set up, at which point I sat. And waited. And waited. The house slowly filled up with people–Hubby, my midwife, her two assistants, my mother-in-law, and then randomly two of my sisters-in-law and all of a sudden my FATHER-in-law (who stayed in the kitchen where he couldn’t, um, see stuff…) AND my two children: Fluffy who watched in awe, and Bubba who wanted to get in the birthing tub with me and took off all of his clothes and screamed and screamed and SCREAMED and NO ONE WOULD TAKE CARE OF HIM, though they scolded me when I tried, saying, “oh, don’t worry about him right now! We’re here to take care of him!” And yet… they didn’t. (He wasn’t even supposed to be there, by the way. Babysitter had bailed last minute.) And there I was, post-transition and well into the pushing stage with mass chaos around me. It was so completely nuts. My quiet, tranquil homebirth had turned into a circus. However, I was way too focused to even be bothered about the circus. I had a big job ahead of me, after all.

I pushed for two hours. It was agonizing. I’d been through natural childbirth a couple of times, and it’s NEVER easy, but this was different.

Finally the baby was born.

A boy.

It was Hubby’s job to announce the gender. I nearly died when he said “boy.” I had to look for myself, and then look again!

And, posterior. The last time I’d been checked, he was anterior. Somewhere in there he flipped and came out backwards. Hence the longer-than-expected labor and, well, the AGONY of the delivery!

But oh! how I loved him. Adored him. From the instant he was in my arms, he was the joy of my life–the piece of my soul that had been missing.

He didn’t have a name–he wouldn’t have a name for a couple more weeks! We couldn’t exactly name him Sophia, after all…

After much war with Hubby over names, we finally settled on one. The PERFECT one. (And no, it’s not “Scooby”–that’s a nickname that Fluffy came up with during the nameless-interum.)

And now he’s turning two! He’s rambunctious and hilarious and darling. He’s a little more crazy than his siblings, as evidenced in various trips for emergency x-rays and the like. Still, he keeps me laughing all day long. He’s a middle child, but he never gets lost in the mix. He’s so vibrant and colorful and delightful!

And so, on this very special day, I wish him a happy, HAPPY Birthday!!!!!!