bearing blog

Three first-day pics, and the name.

Under that hat, he has a Mark-shaped head and hairline.

I fear that "Simon" will be a popular name in his cohort, and unfortunately it sounds a lot like one of H.'s kids' names, but when we got a good look at him next to our short list he just looked like a Simon and not like the other names. I think it will sound just right next to his neighboring brother Leo, and I like the "n" sound next to our family name's beginning "arrrr." He'll share that with his sister.

"Felix" because some of us need to be reminded of all the reasons to be happy sometimes. Now I need to decide which one of the sixty-some St. Felixes he should get to find his name day. I suppose I should pick one not so close to Christmas. But now that I think of it, the feast day of Sts. (Simon) Peter and Paul is June 29th, which is pretty darn close to little Simon's half birthday, so that will do.

I am still calling him "Baby." He and I will grow into the name.

Posted with Blogsy

Baby's here.

Simon Felix was born at home, 1 pm today, 7 lbs even and about 3 weeks early. We are both doing fine. Details later.

Posted with Blogsy

Explaining the HMMMMM; link for discussion.

A couple of days ago, I thought I might be going into labor and we would have a Christmas baby.

(I will link to a certain commenter who drew that number before me, just as soon as her blog gets updated.)

(....and it's up. Congratulations to Darwin and MrsDarwin!)

Everything at our house ground to a halt and now we are staying home waiting. Could be a day, could be three weeks.

+ + +

So, instead of baby news, here is a link to a piece about paternity leave by Ta-Nehisi Coates, with the provocative title "Why I'm Against 'Daddy Days.'" See what you think. I'm always struck by the quality of Coates' writing, and he usually brings a new-to-me POV whether I wind up agreeing with him or not.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Hmmmmmmm.

....she said, significantly.

Posted with Blogsy

Losing sleep.

Last night I was up on and off with contractions that started out annoying and escalated to downright painful. It was not fun.  It is too early; although I could be off by a week or so, my best estimate is that I am 35 weeks tomorrow.  

And so I had to "try to relax" at the same time as I counted them and fretted.  Ten in an hour from 11:10 p.m. to 12:10 a.m., but intermittent (five minutes apart, then 12, then seven, that sort of thing).  I took a hot bath, drank a lot of water with cranberry juice splashed in it, asked Mark to lay out clothes and shoes for the kids just in case we had to pull them out of their beds for a hospital run.  

Plus, the three-year-old had turned off the heat and the house had gone down to 65.  We found the problem and turned it back on before bedtime, but it was still chilly.  I was shivering with cold, but even though I knew that the temperature was the most likely cause of the shivering, I kept worrying that it was a sign of preterm labor.

We called the midwife and reported the contraction pattern, and she judged it not regular enough to warrant intervention ("but I should call if it gets more intense.")

Why does this kind of thing always happen in the wee hours?  Everything is dark and surreal, and the idea of bundling four children into the snowy night peculiarly unpleasant, and it is so much harder to calm down.  I eventually fell asleep around 12:30, but woke again at 2:00 a.m. with more contractions and a sense of things having shifted around in my pelvis, creating an unfamiliar pressure that worried me more.  I checked the clock, fretted, and then decided to get up.  

"You okay?" said Mark sleepily?

"Yeah... I'm having some more.  I think I'm going to get up and walk around a little."

Downstairs in the dark house I wandered around with a glass of water, and finally decided that half the problem was that I was so anxious about the contractions, so I sat down in front of the computer and started surfing Reddit to get my mind off of them.  It worked wonderfully; I kept having contractions, but they stopped hurting, so I stayed where I was.

About 4 a.m. Mark came down to check on me, and after we talked a little while I agreed to go back to bed.  And I fell asleep and didn't wake up till nine.  And now they are gone, leaving nothing but the sense of having lost sleep.

I have a theory that the baby dropped some last night, which of course I've been hoping for and looking forward to, and the scary pelvic pressure is just the sensation of my uterus stretching where it hadn't stretched before, and the contractions were there to drop the baby (or in response to him dropping, whatever).  It still wasn't fun.  

I hope I can get a nap this afternoon.  Chances are good, I think.

But first to Mass and then to brunch out with my family to celebrate our anniversary.

Six weeks or so.

One of my midwives came to my house for a prenatal today. Mark wasn't able to come to the last couple of them, so he made sure to come home from work for this one, which was nice.

Things are looking very good. My blood pressure is great, something that I am trying not to take for granted. The baby is head down and has got his body out of the posterior position; he still hasn't rotated his head properly or tucked his chin yet, so he hasn't descended much. Accordingly I am measuring a precocious 40 cm.

(H. and me on Monday, matching.)

I described having difficulty sleeping and was advised to drink tea made from hops. ("Wouldn't a nice IPA work?" I asked. Indeed it will, but I guess it is more advisable to binge on hops via a herbal infusion.) I described having difficulty consuming green vegetables and was advised to blend extra spinach into my V-8. "A pregnancy speedball," says Mark. "You could put hops and liverwurst in it too."

All I want to eat are liverwurst sandwiches and ice-cold grapes and apples. And ice cream.

+ + +

While we were going over the birth supply list it occurred to me what we home birthers should be saying to the hospital birthers that is the equivalent of "But if you give birth at home, who cleans up the mess?"

It is this:

"But if you give birth in the hospital, who will make all the frozen herbal compresses?"

+ + +

I had a lot of anxiety prior to my last two births, throughout the whole of the pregnancies. I have not had much this time around, but I can't escape it entirely. Now that we are coming down to the last six weeks or so, the "I am going to have to do this thing again and it might really suck" is starting to throb in the back of my mind.

The midwife says cheerfully, "Well, you are committed, and it's going to happen and you're going to do it, so you might as well not worry about it now."

Mark says, "Wait till after Christmas to think about it. It will still be there to think about after the holiday is over."

Then I start worrying about when I am going to find time to put up a Christmas tree.

+ + +

I am grateful to my oldest child for having basically figured out how to keep up with his schoolwork with only minimal interaction from me. I am grateful to my second child for making bread, shoveling snow, and cleaning the kitchen as well as having an insatiable appetite for science and history documentaries. I am grateful to my third child for being able to read well enough that she can do lots of math independently via khanacademy.org and lots of other studying via Quizlet. I am grateful to my fourth child for entertaining himself happily with Legos and toy cars and blocks for hours on end.

Sometimes it all comes together really well, and when that happens, I get to take naps. This has been a slow season for schoolwork. Mark sternly instructed me to prioritize gestating over formal schooling, and i have obediently focused on eating, sleeping, and pelvic exercises while letting a lot of other things slide. I think we are hitting the minimum, though, and I am really pleased by how well my eldest has stepped up to the plate and independently kept up with his subjects. It maybe will turn out to be a good dry run for the start of high school work next year.

Posted with Blogsy

Coschooling news.

I frequently write about our adventures in coschooling with H's family and M's. To recap, we have been

• spending the whole day together,
• in various combinations,
• once or twice a week,
• alternating at each other's houses,
• with all the children,
• for about thirteen years.

We have been doing it since before it was coschooling, because before anybody was doing school. It's pretty much our way of life now.

+ + +

So, ever since back in April or May or whatever when I told H. I was pregnant and due in January, I we have been expecting a speed bump in this school year.

At first it seemed a minor one to start with. I am responsible for teaching the three teens geometry, and supervising their self-teaching of history, and somewhere in between teaching and supervising Spanish and Latin. I also teach history and Latin to the elementary school aged kids. That is a lot, but we thought maybe it would not be too big of a deal to take off, say, three weeks, right around when the baby is born, with H. continuing to teach most of her subjects (English and language arts) to everyone, concentrating on the teens. Then, we figured, I would take another couple of weeks to phase back in all the stuff I do. I have done this before, four years ago, and that is about how it went last time; Six weeks or so post baby, I was mostly back up to speed.

We figured that if any extra challenges popped up, such as if my baby were to have health problems or my delivery were to have complications necessitating longer recovery, we'd cross that bridge when we came to it.

+ + +

What I haven't told you yet here on the blog, but I have known for a few months now, is that only a little while after I announced my pregnancy to H. and to M....

...it was H's turn to announce her pregnancy to the rest of us. O happy news! Soon our long-term school plans started to extend far into the future. These two little ones will be buddies, we said. And what a wonderful coincidence, since we had not each told the other that we were TTC.

We are due about six or seven weeks apart, which we decided would probably work out just fine. The tough part of pregnancy would just be beginning for H. when I would have my baby and we would take a break from school. And after my delivery, I would have time to get back up to speed before H.'s baby would be born, and hopefully be well enough to help out during her recovery.

"We'll have a crazy spring!" we told each other cheerfully, "but then we'll pull it together by early summer and things will be back to normal by fall."

And then... this past week... after some delays caused by a job change and insurance paperwork... H. got around (at 26 weeks) to having her first ultrasound, the kind most people get around 20 weeks. I drove over to her house Monday morning hoping H. would have found out if she was having a boy or a girl and that if she did, she would let me in on the secret, so I could know whether to give her all my stored baby girl clothes or whether to pass them on to someone else.

+ + +

I wonder if any of you have guessed where this is going yet.

+ + +

Oh yes. There will be no "getting back to normal" for our co-school, definitely not by early summer. I never did find out whether I should get rid of the baby-girl clothes or not.

But I did find out that she will be needing enough clothes for two babies!

Yep. She is having twins.

+ + +

"Fourteen kids in twenty-fourteen!" our children are exulting, counting all of them, H.'s and M.'s and mine. When spring comes, their ages will be 16, 14, 13, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9, 7, 6, 4... and newborn, newborn, newborn. And we'll all be together, twice a week!

+ + +

It has not escaped our notice that there will be three babies and three teenagers. Perhaps a major part of the high school curriculum will be "studying with a baby on your lap."

+ + +

Anyway, I am so happy for H. (and her husband, who later that same evening received from Mark a gift of a box of good beer and also some Red Bull). I really can't think of anyone else about whom I can say so confidently, "If anybody can do this and maintain her strength under pressure, she can." There is no question of quitting the work we do together; like I said before, this co-schooling thing is a way of life, and we will figure it out and help each other and keep going.

But I imagine it will be a bumpy ride for now!

If you are so inclined, please pray for all of us, but of course especially for H., who now has not a very long time to scramble together the information (and STUFF! And support! And backup plans and and and....) that she needs to get ready for the birth of twins. Healthy pregnancy and delivery and a smooth start to breastfeeding and all that good stuff.

You know the drill.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Home birth FAQ answer list.

1. The midwife cleans up the mess.

(End of list)

 

Posted with Blogsy

Advent is on.

Just in time for the start of the Season of Joyful Expectation, I have now entered the part of pregnancy that I refer to as the "what was I thinking?!?" stage. It arrives when my energy levels start to drop at the same time that my to-do list suddenly lengthens. I am doing a lot of pre-emptive resting, and that is definitely good for me physically, but often I lie there in my nest of pillows fretting about the things I am not getting done.

Sunday afternoons are the worst. Probably because they are the best time to lie down and rest a lot, since Mark is home and no one has to go anywhere. But I am always thinking of the things I could do to get ready for Monday. Ergo, more time to rest equals more time to fret.

This pregnancy has really forced me to accept that the world will not stop turning if I don't get it all done. Whatever "it all" is.

+ + +

I did pull together all the Advent stuff on time. (What's this? Is she actually getting a sense of proportion and perspective? Figuring out what the important things are and what things are small stuff not worth sweating?)

It helped that we had a four-day weekend right before the first Sunday of Advent, and also two-day free shipping.

My kids' chocolate-filled Advent calendars arrived on time, for example.

And! I got a belated birthday present of cash with strict instructions to spend it on something I wanted, just as I was wishing we had a proper nativity set; so I put the money toward a Holy Family and three kings and a shepherd and a flock of sheep. Porcelain would have been nice, but I trust I can upgrade from the Handpainted Unbreakable Polymer when there are not quite so many little people around. Anyway, now I can look forward to adding a figure or two each year for a while, which should be fun.

Also, Simcha Fisher posted her Advent Chains activity and I got it all printed out, on purple and pink paper even! Totally recommend this one as it is nearly no work to set up, and if you print it on white paper instead you can even use it to do the Jesse Tree thing as it gives you a little coloring-page ornament every day. And the Advent wreath is operational too.

+ + +

Our Advent wreath is Scandinavian-style, made of wrought iron with glass cups to hold ball candles. I bought it in our first year of marriage; at the time it seemed an extravagant purchase for an item that is meant to beused one month out of the year, but by now I am very glad of it. I like it because it is not very large, and the center of it comes up in a decorative handle so it can be easily moved without tipping it or accidentally taking hold of the loose glass holders. Both features are important in our compact house, since we have to use our dining table and countertops all day long as a work surface and can't have any sort of centerpiece that just sits there and looks pretty.

I cleared off a shelf above the computer and that is where it resides during the day (along with the aforementioned Nativity figures); in the evening after the dinner dishes are cleared away, I grab the wreath by its handy handle and set it on the table, and right before bedtime snack we gather around it for our Advent ritual.

+ + +

That ritual, we keep fairly simple, and always the same. First, one child lights the candle(s); they take turns each day. Next, Mark leads us in a short prayer -- a different one each week -- that I downloaded from somewhere. My daughter has the privilege of taking a loop off Simcha's Advent chain and reading the scripture verse aloud. Then we sing a verse or two or seven of an Advent hymn -- sometimes "People Look East" or "O Come Divine Messiah," because those are so much fun, but the kids are convinced that "O Come O Come Emmanuel" is proper. I have the verses printed out in Latin and in English this year. Finally the three-year-old gets to blow out the candles, his privilege as the youngest. The reason for that privilege should be obvious.

+ + +

My daughter, and not any of the boys, gets to read all the scripture verses for a less obvious but quite specific reason. The parish we attend reserves altar service to boys, and I want her to have some roles that she can keep for herself.

This is not a form of protest. I support a return to the "altar boy" tradition, for a number of reasons both practical and theological. But I am sympathetic to my seven-year-old's annoyance that there's this thing her brothers are invited to do that she isn't. The reasons, compelling as they are to me as an adult, are not all that accessible to seven-year-olds.

(Especially when the seven-year-old in question frequently goes to Mass at other parishes and notices that 90 percent of the altar servers at the other parishes are girls.)

Ours isn't a faith that operates one hundred percent at the "accessible to seven-year-olds" level, so I don't necessarily see this as a problem; but I have taken pains to point out to her that women and teenage girls have visible and important roles at Mass too. When the boys were younger, we treated it as a matter of simple expectation that when they were old enough they would serve at the altar, learning how to reverently handle the patens and candles and such and how to walk just so and how to pay attention during Mass. Similarly, we treat it as a matter of fact that when my daughter gets old enough she will serve too, probably as a lector. She has to wait longer (in our parish, teenage boys and girls can read the readings at Mass after confirmation, whereas the youngest altar boys are only ten), but she is looking forward to it.

Anyway, that is why it is always her privilege to read aloud any scripture passage that is part of a family devotion. She is practicing to be a lector.

+ + +

As for the chocolate Advent wreaths, I only have one thing to say: Once you get your kids the kind with chocolates behind every door, you will not be going back to the plain paper kind. So don't try it unless you are committed to keep it up for the rest of your years as a parent.

Kids love ritual. It is amazing how quickly a single year's activity can become "but that is the way we have done it for as long as I remember and so we have to do it every year." I suppose it is less amazing when it involves eating chocolate before breakfast.

Posted with Blogsy

Pregnancy update power. Form of: Quick Takes.

1. I have written a few blog posts but not finished any of them because my powers of concentration and attention span are seriously attenuated. Hence, this.

I have a post about Elisabeth Leseur and I have a post about natural childbirth. Neither is done, I really want to finish both of them, and that desire is clogging up the queue. This tendency is my blogging kryptonite.

+ + +

2. My energy levels are overall pretty good, considering, but plummet to near-zero at unpredictable times. I have embarked on a program of eating lots of iron-rich food, which means that by now I could probably write an entire cookbook's worth of recipes for different liverwurst sandwiches.

Tomato and liverwurst on pumpernickel rye flatbread crackers, with just a little salt and pepper, is pretty good. This morning it was liverwurst, onion-chive cream cheese, leftover vinegar-sugar coleslaw, and sriracha on a toasted English muffin. I think sometime this week I may make banh mi.

+ + +

3. "So, how are you feeling?" has a split answer.

All the soft stuff feels pretty good for seven months pregnant. Decent energy (as long as I get periodic naps and infusions of liverwurst), good appetite and digestion, not a single leg cramp, circulation is great, no heartburn, no nausea.

The skeleton and associated attachments, are way out of whack. The drunk staggering for the first ten steps after I get up out of bed or a chair, I could overlook or pretend is normal. But I have noticed a disturbing tendency to walk with my feet rolled out, on the outer edges of the soles, which is something I Do. Not. Do. in ordinary life and have never noticed before in pregnancy either. Something's up. Also, the other day I tried the psoas release position (scroll down) on SpinningBabies, and I could not believe the intensity of the sensation in my back and hips.

I think it is about time I embark reluctantly on a daily program of things like brisk walks and pelvic tilt exercises and squats and sitting on the exercise ball (which at least has the advantage of keeping the children from throwing it at each other).

+ + +

4. For the first time, we aren't traveling to Ohio for Thanksgiving, and we don't have plans to get together with anyone else either. This seems very weird. We waffled about it for a while but in the end decided it wouldn't be all that good for me to travel or to commit to anything big, so the nuclear-family Thanksgiving it is. Mark promised to deal with Thanksgiving dinner for me. I said I would do the grocery shopping and help where I could. This will be new.

+ + +

5. Till last night, I had not had any Weird Pregnancy Dreams. No Dropping Dreams, no Misplacing The Baby dreams, no Giving Birth To Nonhuman Animals Dreams either.

Last night I had the first weird pregnancy dream, in the category of Labor And Delivery Fantasy, in which I looked down in bed to discover to my surprise that there were feet emerging from my body. I gave them a yank and out came a perfectly healthy, normal-sized human baby. I wrapped the baby up and held her in my arms (in the dream it was a girl, although I am carrying a boy), and the baby looked up at me in the way that newborns do as soon as all the drama is over and the lights are dimmed.

And that was that, except for the vague feeling of disappointment on awakening and discovering that I still have eight weeks and a non-fantasy childbirth between my arms and #5.

Posted with Blogsy