bearing blog

I am so out of practice.

Typing one handed that is.

The first night wasn't too bad.  I'm very sore but I managed to nurse Leo on one side, falll asleep nursing, wake up when he fussed, shove him upright and drape him over my hip to burp (that maneuver came right back to me though I had forgotten it), and gingerly roll over to plop him on the other side to nurse again.  I didn't have to wake Mark except twice so he could hold Leo while I hobbled to the bathroom. 

(If I could give one bit of advice to my ten-years-younger, pre-child self, it would be:  get over any idea that it's not "fair" for him to get more sleep than you.  With a new baby to care for, it is a whole lot more sensible to keep at least one person functioning adequately.  I am sure there is an extended metaphor there worthy of a whole blog post but I will leave it as an exercise for the reader.)

So that first long night I slept pretty well, and so did Mark, even though eventuyally I did reach the point where I had to wake him up to beg for my breakfast.

The second night the milk started to come in, and Leo started to pee,and things got a little complicated.  I just couldn't move very fast, and it seems he is the sort of baby who doesn't like to feel damp.  HELLO.  CAN I GET SOME SERVICE HERE.  He's sleeping naked on a pad of cloth diapers on the same disposable underpads that are under me.  When he peed he fussed noisily and kicked his blankets off, got chilly and wailed louder, I rolled about confusedly, an inverted turtle, groping around fordry things but finding all of them just a little damp.  How do I do this again?  Can't sit up, tailbone hurts.  Can't reach the fresh underpads.  Out of diapers already.  Sheet wet up by my head, how'd that happen?  Baby wants blanket, it's wet, can't reach dry ones, uhhhh...

Then the baby's crying woke Mark, who had gotten all caught up on sleep the night before and so he could lift Leo up out of the puddle and smile and cuddle him till the crying stopped.  My head cleared and I remembered what I needed.  I know where it all is, Mark doesn't.  It's about time I tried walking a bit anyway.  I got to my feet, told Mark to stay put and keep Leo cozy, and shuffled down the hall to gather the nighttime supplies for baby pee, which I'd set aside weeks ago: a big piece of polar fleece (mental note:  need more), a stack of large (not newborn) cloth diapers, and the small, plastic, one-handled mixing bowl I use as a baby potty when I can  sit up some. 

I shuffled back to the bedroom.  Mark scooted over and I leaned over the bed, cleared away the wet and bloodied things.  Decided the damp spot on the sheet was probably milk and not big enough to worry about.  With one-handed help from Mark I spread the polar fleece on the sheet, across the full width of the bed.  Put a disposable underpad on top of that (when I stop bleeding I'll replace that with soft absorbent wool), and finally a couple of large cloth diapers.  Mark swaddled Leo loosely in the flannel and nestled him next to me on the diaper pad as I crawled stiffly into bed.  Leo started and fussed a little -- he reacts to every little movement and touch -- but quickly quieted and latched on, and we slept.

One more change in the night went more smoothly, and then it was morning.

A few more to tide you over

till I can do a little cropping and pixellating on the birth photos.

 


  
 
 

Straight from my webcam

Finally here.

Leo Andrew arrived at home this morning at 3:50 AM after about 6 hours active labor.  (He turned in the labor tub).  He had some stuck shoulders there at the end requiring some wrangling, but otherwise a very satisfactory labor.  I only have one tiny little tear and it's not worth even bothering about.

8 lb 8 oz (tiny!)  and perfect.  I'm doing great.   You'll have to wait a couple days for details.

New and extra-spooky, probably pregnancy-induced dream.

I sat in a living room conversing with two characters, teenage boys, from books I have read but cannot recall.

"Do you remember the flood?" said one to the other. 

 "Yes, I remember it well."

*******

I walked in the streets of my neighborhood, and though the day was clear, foamy brown stormwater spurted from the piercings in the manhole covers, rattled them in their sockets and escaped in sheets of spray from the edges.

*******

I stood in my sunny second-floor bedroom and looked down from the curtained front windows at a dozen small children playing in the street.  The stormwater rolled down the street in a wave, flowed around the children's tricycle wheels and ankles.  They began to run, and a larger wave rolled after them, sweeping them away.  A mother ran from the house next door towards her own struggling little girl. 

 I bent down and picked up Mary Jane and cradled her in my arms and turned her face toward the window.  "Look, Mary Jane," I told her firmly.  "The water is taking all the children away."  Her face contorted in fear and she wept.  I carried her away from the window and lied, "They'll all be okay."

"For our light days, we have iPhones. For our heavy days, we have the iPad."

From Althouse, the best way of phrasing what I (and many others) thought on first hearing the name of the new Apple tablet device.  Did Apple have any women on its Name-That-Device committee?

A few quick and not-so-quick takes.

<-----Due date's tomorrow.   Am I awe-inspiring, or what?

I'm glad I have the blog.  Because I'm showing them off, I've taken soooo many more pregnancy photos than I did in pregnancies before I had the blog.  I will be glad to look at this later.

***

At coffee-and-doughnuts after Mass -- I am convinced, by the way, that despite energetic catechesis to the contrary, my kids believe that  "doughnuts after Mass" is the eighth sacrament of the Church -- a male parishioner came up to me and said, "You know, from behind you, I would never have thought that you were pregnant."

What a nice thing to say to a huge, under-five-foot-tall, lumbering pregnant woman! I thanked him.

My husband had a different take on the comment when I told him about it later.  He laughed.  "I could interpret that on a lot of levels," Mark told me, "but the simplest interpretation was that he was looking at your butt."

I don't care.  It was still nice to hear.  Even if the proper translation is Wow!  I was ogling your backside and then you turned around and you were, like, all MATERNAL and everything!  Kind of like "The Crying Game" only marginally less emasculating.

* * *

Me, last night:

"Argh!  These on-and-off false-labor contractions are weighing very heavily on my... my... my psyche, my id... what is it you call the part of yourself that needs to, you know, plan for stuff and know what's going on?"

Mark:

"What, you mean 'the core of your very being?'"

***

Resolved:  I will not get depressed about "not getting much schoolwork done" and will instead make the kids watch a lot of nature movies and other pseudo-educational DVDs from the library.  Right now they are working their way through four episodes of Popular Mechanics For Kids:  The Science of Extreme Sports.  Up next:  a movie about Rembrandt (I am pretty sure it is the artist, not the toothpaste) and then one about anatomy and genetics.  If I run out of stuff like that, there's always the graphic underground childbirth tape.

***

The more-senior of my two midwives attended 2 births in the 24 hours before my appointment yesterday, so she cancelled it.  I expect she needs some sleep.   So I spent yesterday evening on and off the phone with my other midwife -- I am sooooo thankful I was able to have two for this pregnancy -- being reassured that I was still having "turning contractions" and that I would, in fact, know when I go into labor.  This whole posterior-baby thing feels so different from my three previous pregnancies that it's really throwing me off.  

I'm kind of glad I had a chance to talk at length to the second midwife last night, even if I was a little alarmed at the two other births happening so close to mine (I didn't think she had any more January babies -- the February ones must have showed up early).  The second midwife was apprentice to the first midwife when I gave birth to Milo and to MJ, and it is hard for me not to think of her as "the apprentice" or "the assistant" any more, even though she has been practicing on her own for three years now.   I have tended to think of the senior midwife, who attended all three of my other births (the first with her longtime partner who is now deceased), as the "main" midwife and the younger one as the "back-up" or "assistant" midwife, hired because she lives a lot closer to me and I wasn't comfortable with the risk of delivering unassisted should the perfect storm arise the day I go into labor.  But this is not really fair to her; she is very capable and professional.  (Maybe it's just that she's about my own age, with children close in age to mine!)  I feel much more confident and pleased about having her around to support me now that I've had a chance to lean on her a little bit.    More like that's a positive, good thing, as opposed to something chosen simply because I was fearful that the senior midwife wouldn't arrive on time to help us (it happens...)

Home birth forces the parents to accept the responsibility of birth, and the nature of birth as it is, I think.  But (unless you go the unassisted route, a choice which I do not condemn) there is still a complex interplay of trust between the parents and other support persons.  The mother can trust too much, for sure, become too dependent on external support, external information, and lose that sense of ownership and responsibility.  On the other hand, there must be some level of trust and willingness to depend on the people who are around you.  If that trust can't be mustered, then there's probably something wrong and maybe that person shouldn't be at your birth.  It's such a vulnerable time, even though it is a strong time too.

I have a hypothesis that, as a survival mechanism, a laboring woman instinctively reaches out to use all the resources at her disposal, to use them to their fullest in coping with and surrendering to labor; and instinctively loses her desire for anything she cannot obtain.  What good is pining for people and things you can't have?  

In retrospect, it has seemed that every person who was there during my births was absolutely essential to my well-being.  The labor tub I had in my first birth was absolutely necessary.  In my second birth, when I didn't have it, I didn't need it, didn't even want it.  I think this is part of the reason why, even when they respecting each other's choices, women who have used and enjoyed (say) epidural anesthesia, and women who have never even considered it, have trouble understanding each other.   If I can place medical pain relief physically or mentally out of reach, I literally do not want it.  But it makes sense to me that if it is an option, I might desire it.

This is how strength and vulnerability co-exist:   a perfect, instinctive balance between perception of wants/needs, and the real resources available.  At least that's how I've experienced it.  At few other times in my life have I wanted exactly what I was rightly able to have, no more and no less.

This is possibly the funniest thing I have seen on the web this year.

What happens when a wife transcribes the bizarre, Tourette-like, badger- and lentil-hating nocturnal utterances of her sleeping husband, and blogs it?  

Sleep-Talkin' Man.

I almost don't believe this isn't a hoax.  Contains lots of profanity, but since the speaker was asleep at the time it's OK to read it and laugh at it.  I wouldn't show it to your young kids, though.  Or to any badgers.

Posterior.

I made the mistake yesterday of googling "posterior labor" and scared myself.  So.  As long as I'm still waiting to go into labor, I figured I might use the time trying to spin the baby around from posterior to anterior.  

Let me digress with a quick review of fetal positioning for anyone who isn't familiar with the terminology, since not a few of the folks I've mentioned this to have thought I meant the baby was breech when I described him as posterior.  Skip this if you know all that.

• "Breech" would mean the baby was head-up, feet- or butt-down, and that is potentially a more serious malpositioning which frequently requires cesarean section and almost always is delivered by c-section these days whether necessary or not.
• "Vertex" is the opposite of breech:  head down, ready to be born headfirst.  You can see why we don't refer to babies as right-side-up and upside-down.  Too ambiguous.   Even when the baby's definitely not breech, he can assume a variety of positions; here is a good diagram showing the possibilities and the abbreviations.  
• "Posterior"  means that the baby is facing the mother's front, not her back.  Yes, posterior means "back."  It's short for "occiput posterior" (sometimes "occipital posterior") which translates roughly to "the back of the baby's head is towards the mother's back.")  Sometimes this is called "sunny-side-up" which, I assume, refers to the way the posterior baby would face at birth if the mother were in the obstetrical semi-sit or on-her-back delivery position, either of which would be a pretty crappy way to deliver a posterior baby.  
• "Anterior," really occiput anterior, is the opposite of posterior:   baby faces the mother's spine, back of the baby's head to the mother's front.

The usual manner of birth is vertex and anterior.  My baby is vertex but posterior.  Most of the time posterior babies turn during labor at some point, though often not until after many hours.  If they don't turn, they do come out that way, but it's more difficult -- labor tends to start later and take longer and be more uncomfortable, or at least that's what they say.  

I'm a little anxious about it.  

So I spent some time yesterday crawling around on hands and knees, feeling like I ought to say "Moo" every now and again.  Originally I thought I might use the time constructively by scrubbing the floor or something (it needs it; Mary Jane dumped a box of baking soda on the floor last week and tried to clean it up herself, with a wet mop, before she was discovered), but the hard floor hurt my knees, so I settled for circling the armchair on the area rug.

It's hard not to blame myself for the malpositioning.  I have spent too much time in front of the computer and leaning back in rocking chairs.  I am now sitting in front of the computer perched on the front of a rocking chair to tilt it as far forward as I can without sliding off.  Last night I arranged all the pillows I could find (Mark had to wad a blanket under his head) so I could sleep all night on my left side with my belly button pointed down, or at least as down as I could point it without cutting off anybody's oxygen.  Before that, while Mark was reading stories to MJ and Milo, I spent some more time doing pelvic rocks on hands and knees. 

Oscar, who's nine, peeked around the door with an alarmed look on his face.  "Is the baby coming out?"  I suppose I looked a lot like some of the pictures in the birth books.  I said no and he said "Are you sure?" 

I assured him that, if the baby were in fact coming out, I would know before he would.  After he went back to his bedroom, Mark laughed at me, or maybe at him, and told me I needed to get in the habit of closing the door all the way.   Which is true.

I woke up very achy from sleeping on the same side all night.  

 I guess I can turn my impatience to have the baby into thankfulness that, since he's not quite engaged yet, there's still room for him to turn around.  Think rotational thoughts.  

Apple spice bourbon muffins.

I more-or-less invented these this morning, basing it on Mark Bittman's "Sweet and Rich Muffins" recipe and inspired by the apple spice cake I made for Milo's sixth birthday, but with extra bourbon.   I'm really proud of how they turned out.

These are sort of halfway between a cupcake and a muffin in sweetness, but with enough good-for-you stuff that they totally qualify for breakfast.  The glaze is optional.  I think raisins would also be a nice addition.  They are a little more work than regular muffins because of the creaming-the-butter step; if you keep your stand mixer on the counter, you could use it and speed the process up; but if it's trouble to get your mixer out, as it is for me, you can totally do this with forks and whisks and such.

Apple spice bourbon muffins (makes one dozen standard muffins)

• 6 Tbsp room-temperature butter
• 4 Tbsp brown sugar 
• 6 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce plus more if necessary
• 4 tsp bourbon whisky (technically this is optional; you could use 2 tsp vanilla instead)
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup chopped firm apple
• 1/2 tsp salt (unless the butter's salted, as mine was; I left the extra salt out)

Glaze (sorry about measurements, I eyeballed them -- but it's hard to screw this stuff up)

• About 2 Tbsp cream cheese, room temperature
• About 2 Tbsp butter, room temperature
• About 6 Tbsp powdered sugar

Cream butter and both sugars with a fork in a large mixing bowl.  Whisk in eggs, 1/2 c applesauce, and bourbon.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt if using, and spices.  Stir dry ingredients gently into egg mixture; add more applesauce if it is too dry.  Stir in chopped apples.  

Spoon batter into greased 12-cup muffin tin and bake 20-25 minutes until toothpick comes clean.  Allow to cool 5 minutes before glazing.

For glaze:  Cream ingredients together with a fork and spread a small amount over the top of the warm muffins.  These are for breakfast, so just a little bit is enough.