First Words

Thanks everyone for your kind words about Walker. No official cause of death yet; we're still waiting for the lab results to come back. Anne, I'm so sorry you lost your cat too. They really do become a part of the family. I still miss him every day.

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On Tuesday, Sawyer said his first words. He looked me right in the eye and said, "Ga ba, ga bee, ggggg [spit bubble, gurgle]." OK, so those aren't technically real words, but still, I was so proud of him! This morning he woke up and immediately started babbling and cooing at the ceiling, kicking his legs and grinning from ear to ear. It was so cute that I didn't even mind that it was 5:45. He's also recently discovered his hands, so he combines these two interests by holding his hands close to his face and talking to them, then shoving them into his mouth.

I had a discussion with my sister Megan the other day about first words. She said that her mother-in-law insists that her son's first word was "basketball." Apparently he watched his dad play so much that he picked up on that before anything else. Suddenly I feel like I have to be careful what I expose Sawyer to. How embarrassing would it be if his first words were "Ryan Seacrest" or "Extreme Makeover"? Or what if it's something vulgar I say to Eric, trying to be funny? (Has anyone seen Meet the Fockers?) When my baby sister (now 11, but still very much the baby of the family) was three she went through a phase where she would watch The Princess Bride every day. She probably had the whole thing memorized, but the one line she would repeat was from the scene where Inigo Montoya finally gets his revenge on the Six-Fingered Man: "I want my father back, you son of a bitch!" complete with a Spanish accent and a menacing grimace. It was pretty entertaining to see her say that in front of guests, especially if they were coming to see my dad for a temple recommend interview. Hmm...maybe I should enjoy the pre-verbal stage while it lasts. But I can't wait to hear what Sawyer is going to say.

For Walker

It's been a rough couple of days. Yesterday morning my cat Walker suddenly and unexpectedly died. He was only a year old and apparently in excellent health. I'd had a long night with Sawyer so I stayed home from church by myself to try and get some rest. Walker had been playful and frisky all morning, attacking my feet as usual and playing with his favorite toy. He followed me upstairs when I went to go lie down. As soon as I had crawled into bed I heard Walker in my closet, meowing very low and quiet. I called him and he didn't answer me or come so I knew something was wrong. I jumped up and ran to the closet where I found him collapsed on the floor, not breathing and with no pulse. For several minutes I tried to resuscitate him, but he was already gone.

Today I drove out to the state lab to have a necropsy performed. The vet who did the examination couldn't find anything wrong, apart from him being a little on the heavy side (I'm sure all that butter was to blame for that). We'll get the lab results back in a couple of weeks but for the moment his sudden passing is a complete mystery.

I miss him so much. We got him right before starting IVF and I totally believe that I owe my ability to deal emotionally with that whole process in large part to him. The day after transfer when I was on bedrest he spent the whole time cuddled up next to me in bed. He had such a fun, quirky personality. I didn't realize before how involved he was in my daily routine, but now that he's gone I notice a huge absence. He would be underfoot while I cooked, he curled up on the side of the tub when I read in the bath, every time I went up or downstairs he would run next to me (several times I nearly fell down the stairs because of him), and he was always there by the door to greet me when I would come home after being out. At night when my foot dangled over the edge of the bed he would sneak up on it and attack. I would yell and he'd scramble off, highly pleased with himself. Funny how now I miss that.

I had a conversation with a friend a while back who had called me shortly after her dog had died. I tried to console her by saying that she would see her dog again in the next life. She immediately disagreed with me and said that her pastor had told her that there are no animals in heaven. I feel intuitively that this can't be right. Why would God create such a variety of life just to have it all cease to exist? Isn't everything God does eternal? When I later went to the scriptures I was comforted to find that Doctrine and Covenants 77 backs me up on this.

2: in...heaven, the paradise of God, the happiness of man, and of beasts, and of creeping things, and of the fowls of the air; that which is spiritual being in the likeness of that which is temporal; and that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual; the spirit of man in the likeness of his person, as also the spirit of the beast, and every other creature which God has created.

Following verses go on to describe resurrected creatures living "in the enjoyment of their eternal felicity" and "full of knowledge" with "power to move, to act." I doubt it's part of our official doctrine, but I believe in my heart that the relationships we form in this life with our pets will continue in the next. And I believe that includes my Walker. I hope when I pass over to the other side that he's one of the first waiting to greet me, just like he used to wait by the door for me to get home every day.

I'll be seeing you, my friend.

Mean Grandma

I've been back from the family reunion at the beach for a week now and I'm just starting to recover. Well, not really. But doesn't it seem like you're more tired when you get back from a vacation than you were before you left? Maybe it's just me. It was actually a lot of fun. I'm glad I went. It was great to see my aunt and uncles and cousins. It's the first year I can remember where there wasn't a major family altercation, so that's always a plus. We normally stay for a full week, and this time we were only there for 5 days. My new theory is that 5 days is the limit on how long we can stand each other; any more than that and watch out! It was fun seeing my extended family interact with Sawyer. He's the first baby in the new generation, so he got plenty of attention.

The one amusing anecdote I can report happened on the way down to North Carolina (although amusing may not be the best word for it since I'm still pissed off about it). I was caravaning with my parents and sisters and like every year we stopped over in Williamsburg to visit my grandmother. We have a nickname for her but for the purposes of this blog I'll call her Mean Grandma. (Those of you who have been reading for a while might remember that last year she told me I had gotten fat within 10 minutes of our arrival.) This year was even worse because her, shall we say, unpleasantness was directed towards my baby. The evening we arrived we were sitting in her living room and my mom and sisters were taking turns holding Sawyer. Keep in mind that they live in Utah and rarely get to see him. Mean Grandma came into the room with a blanket and told my mom to put the baby on the floor because we were holding him too much and he was going to get spoiled! That is so wrong to me on so many levels. I mean, he's not even 3 months old, he can't sit up or crawl or even flip himself over, so what's he going to do on the floor?? And how on earth is he going to get spoiled by being held by his grandma, who he almost never sees?? My mom politely declined and said "Thanks, but I like holding him." Mean Grandma scowled and put the blanket away. The real shock came later, when she got her panties in a twist because I held Sawyer during dinner. She glared at me during the whole meal. The way she was acting you would have thought I'd brought my pet python to the table. I mean honestly, he's a baby! Note to self: next year skip the trip to Mean Grandma's! She doesn't like me, I don't like her, and I doubt that's going to change in this life. Yeah, it's sad, but I feel like it's not worth the effort to try to get her to like me. Is that wrong? When she starts being mean to my child, that's pretty much the end of the line for me. I don't want him exposed to that crap. Needless to say, I was extremely proud of him when he let out a huge fart during dessert. Way to go, son!

Off to Carolina

I want to give a shout out to Kristine of BCC, who gave me some of the wisest advice I've received yet.

Be patient with yourself and exult in what your body can *do*--creating and sustaining an entire new being is nothing to sneeze at!--and try hard to worry less about how your body looks.

Thanks Kristine for giving me a better perspective on this! I'm going to make an effort to focus on that from now on - especially as I'm sitting on the beach in a bathing suit next week (gasp!)

As of tomorrow I'm going to disappear for a while because once again it's time for the annual family reunion at the Outer Banks. My family is flying here from Utah and I'm really excited to see them. My parents are both a lot happier since my dad's judgeship was confirmed! Last year was kind of a nightmare because he was so stressed. I'll be back with hilarious anecdotes about my dysfunctional extended family, as always.

Visits

I've been MIA lately, once again. It seems that once I get out of the habit of blogging every couple of days I forget to post for weeks on end. This time it was started by a trip out of town. Eric had to go to Las Vegas for Cisco's Networkers conference, so I booked a flight and took Sawyer to Utah to visit my family. My younger sisters who live there had never met him before so it was a great opportunity to spend some time together. It was a wonderful trip. Sawyer was terrific on the plane - I just kept him in his sling and he was content almost the entire time. The whole time we were in Utah my family fought over who got to hold Sawyer - I had to practically pry him away from my sisters in order to feed him. And my mom was equally enamored with him. I'd get up with him at 6:00 a.m. only for my mom to get up, take him away from me and tell me to go back to sleep. Talk about a nice break! My parents also invited a bunch of old friends over for a barbeque, which was a blast. Leave it to my mom to volunteer to make hamburgers, potato salad, and homemade ice cream for 25+ people! I also had lunch with my online buddy group from Fertility Friend. Several of them had had their babies recently and it was so much fun to see them all.

The day after I got back, ADQ and Sara came into town so they could scope out apartments. We hung out for an afternoon and it made me so excited for them to move here.

Other than that I've just been mothering 24/7. I love it so much. I can't believe I haven't always been a mom. It has been a challenge to try to get anything done around the house though. One night Eric sat me down and asked me if we could work out a new system of dividing the housework, because the current system (i.e. me doing everything) obviously was not working. I just laughed, because only a few hours before I had been thinking to myself "wow, I'm really staying on top of things!" My feelings were hurt for a while, but it turned into a good thing, because I got organized and made a chore list that actually included Eric. He'll rue the day he complained!

Baby Laughs, Star Wars, and Scrubs

In the spirit of OSC's great column at hatrack.com, I thought I'd start blogging about my opinions of books, movies and various products. Not that I'm an expert on any of those things, but if you're reading my blog you might care what I think, right? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Books

Since I'm a new mom, I've naturally been doing a lot of reading about babies. It was around my seventh month of pregnancy that I realized that I knew quite a bit about being pregnant - I had Dr. Sears' The Pregnancy Book and What to Expect When You're Expecting practically memorized (I loved the first, hated the second) - but I had absolutely no idea what to do with a baby once it was outside of me. So I started reading up and haven't stopped since. I picked up a copy of Baby Laughs by Jenny McCarthy (the former host of the dating show "Singled Out" on MTV) because several new moms had recommended it to me. Now that I've read it, I really wonder why. As it turns out, Jenny McCarthy isn't a very good writer. (I know, what a shock.) At the turn of every page I kept thinking, "I could have done better than this!" Not only is the writing bad, but she is seriously un- or misinformed about nearly every subject she addresses. She talks about the fact that breastfeeding can cause saggy breasts and how she decided not to breastfeed so hers still look fine. Guess what, Jenny? It's not bottle feeding that's keeping your ladies perky; it's the GIANT IMPLANTS inside of them. She mentions her implants several times elsewhere in the book, so it shouldn't have been hard for her to put two and two together. I guess hosting an MTV dating show doesn't make you a parenting expert. Anyway, maybe this is snobby of me, but I generally like to have the illusion preserved that the author whose book I'm reading is smarter than I am. So if you're looking for a book about being a new mom, skip Baby Laughs.

A great alternative is Vicki Iovine's The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood. It's well written, very funny, and even has a lot of useful information. It's also unique in that it mainly addresses how to take care of yourself during the first year rather than how to take care of your baby. Iovine has written a whole series of "Girlfriends'" books, including The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy (Everything Your Doctor Won't Tell You) and The Girlfriends' Guide to Getting Your Groove Back, and they are all equally funny and informative.

Movies

As I mentioned in a previous post, Eric, Sawyer and I went to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith a few weeks ago. Like so many others, we've been Star Wars fans since we can remember - literally, since we were born the year after A New Hope was released.(By the way, did you know that A New Hope's original title was Adventures of the Starkiller? True story.)And also like many others, we were disappointed in Episodes I and II. We both liked Sith a lot more. Finally, some character development! Yeah, OK, the script was still awful, but I felt like the story was good enough that even the worst lines were forgivable. By the end I felt empathy for Anakin/Darth, which I wouldn't have thought possible before. He faced the ultimate ethical dilemma: will you do the right thing even if it means losing the person you love the most? Watching him make the wrong choice was absolutely heartbreaking. Eric was depressed for the rest of the evening - I think the whole wife-dying-in-childbirth thing hit a little too close to home. Speaking of the childbirth scene, is it just me or did Padmé look about 4 months pregnant while she was in labor? I laughed when they held up two chubby 8 pound babies. Where was she keeping them?

On DVD

For the past week I've been watching the first season of Scrubs, which recently came out on DVD. I spend so much time nursing these days that I set up the glider in front of the TV and now as soon as I'm set up I just hit play and watch an episode at a time. I'm convinced that Scrubs is one of the most underrated shows ever. The writing is clever and funny in a quirky way you don't often see in a 30 minute show. It has Zach Braff. And it often gets musical! Here are a few of my favorite clips.

If You Want My Body, And You Think I'm Sexy, Come on Baby, Let Me Know... What...no one?

So I'm having some body issues. While I was pregnant I felt fine, because pregnant women are supposed to look huge and bloated. Now that I've been unpregnant for over a month, I'm getting impatient for things to get back to normal. I gained 30 lbs during the pregnancy, and I've lost 20 so far. Sounds great, right? Well yeah, until you know that I started out the pregnancy about 20 lbs heavier than I should have been. So, 20 lbs lost, 30 to go. Man, that's almost as depressing as already having my period back (oh yeah, I saw the doctor today, and everything is fine; she is 99% sure the bleeding is in fact a period. I have 30 day cycles, and the bleeding started exactly 30 days after delivery. Apparently I'm the queen of period regularity. YAY.) I've had a slight weight issue since I got married. I know, go ahead, point and laugh at the girl who got married and got fat. It's embarrassing because it's such a cliche!

Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn't getting married that did it to me. I didn't really start to gain weight until we had been married for a year and I graduated from BYU. During college I was very active. I walked several miles a day getting to and from classes, and I usually had one or two dance or PE classes that kept me moving. After graduating, I didn't have to walk anywhere and I didn't have classes to make me get off my butt, and basically I got lazy. Add to the mix the stress of infertility, moving to a place where I didn't have any friends, and a post-graduate identity crisis and it's pretty obvious that I was set up to get a permanent case of the munchies.

I'm ready for a change now. It's time to get serious and get moving, because if I don't lose it before the next pregnancy, it's a slippery slope to becoming Fat Mormon Lady.

On the brighter side, here's a new picture of my little boy. He makes getting fat TOTALLY worth it!

Hallelujah! And Ugh.

The most amazing thing has occurred. For two nights in a row, Sawyer has slept for six hours straight! Without waking up for a feeding! And without waking me up at all! I can't even describe how good I felt this morning after having that much uninterrupted sleep. In my former life, six hours would have been a terrible night and I would have been grumpy for the rest of the day, but now that same amount of sleep is like manna from heaven. I'm not counting on this becoming a regular occurrence yet since he's still so little, but I'll take what I can get!

On the down side, I have to go to my doctor to get checked out tomorrow. After tapering off last week, my postpartum bleeding has returned (I know, ew) and it's a lot heavier than it should be (double ew). The nurse I spoke to on the phone today said she thought either I have been overexerting myself, or my period has already come back. Good heavens. I hope it's the former, because having Aunt Flo show up again this early when I'm exclusively breastfeeding would be too depressing for words.

Firsts

Sawyer is one month old today. I can't believe it's already been that long! He's already growing and changing so much. Here are some of his firsts:

1) His first bottle. I am something of a purist when it comes to breastfeeding and I was reluctant to introduce the bottle too soon for fear that it would cause nipple confusion (that sounds like the title of a risqué film, but I promise it's not) and make breastfeeding more difficult. But reality soon set in that if we never gave him a bottle, Eric would never be able to help with feeding him. Since Sawyer is one of those babies who wants to eat all the time, I get burned out on nursing pretty quickly, especially after a night where he's on a feeding marathon from 12 to 6 a.m. It turns out my fears were completely unfounded: Sawyer is a pro at both breast and bottle. I guess he likes food enough to get it any way he can. So the plan is for me to pump a few ounces a day so Eric can give him a bottle in the evening.

2) His first movie. When he was three weeks old we braved the theater and took him to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. We'll make him a sci-fi geek if it's the last thing we do! He did great and slept almost the whole time, except for once when he woke up hungry and I fed him right in my seat without having to get up. I would have felt weird about that except that it was a Wednesday and no one was sitting near us.

3) His first smile. He's smiled in his sleep ever since he was born, but he's just now starting to smile socially. When he looks at me and gives me a goofy, lopsided grin it makes my whole day worthwhile. We'll do pretty much anything to see that smile.

4) His first social outing. A group of women in my ward have a playgroup on Wednesdays and I took him this week. "Playgroup" is sort of a misnomer, since the other kids are all between 6 months and 1 year old; it's really for the moms. I like the women in my ward. Everyone is friendly and open and not at all clique-y. And it was nice to get out for a while and have some adult conversation, even if all we talked about was our babies.

5) His first bath. We gave him his first bath at a week old, right after his umbilical cord stump had fallen off. I take a bath every night to help me unwind (and also to make my Lovenox shot hurt less - I'm still taking those) and Eric brings him up to me and plunks him in. He loves it. No matter how fussy he is, he quiets right down as soon as he's in the water and screams when he's taken out. We have a little fishy on our hands.

Stuff I'm Learning

Our good friends Aaron and Katy recently sent us a really cool gift. It's a book called The New Parents' Book of Firsts: The Seemingly Insignificant but Truly Astounding Accomplishments of Mom and Dad. Instead of being about baby's first steps or first projectile vomiting incident, it has pages to record the things mom and dad do along the way, like "The First Time You Used Your Own Saliva To Clean Your Baby's Face." There really is a lot of stuff you learn from the birth experience and the early weeks of caring for a new baby. Here's some of what I've picked up so far.

1) Labor really does hurt. A lot. Sorry Elaine, but it's true! I can't lie to you. I was expecting it to be painful, but nothing could have prepared me for what it was actually like - and I thought my pain threshold was pretty high considering that I have endometriosis and suffer through terrible cramps every month. It really is true though that as soon as it's over you know it's more than worth it because the reward at the end is so great. I was ready to do it all again the next day. And this may be my hormones talking, but I am so grateful that I got to experience that pain. It's totally empowering to go through what millions of women have gone through and to know that I survived it! (at least for those six hours before I caved in and begged for drugs.) And it also makes me really really really grateful for whoever invented the epidural.

2) Sleep deprivation is a really big deal. I have to admit I severely underestimated how this would affect me. I thought, "OK, so I'll be a little tired for a while." It never occurred to me that there's a good reason they use sleep deprivation to torture prisoners of war. In reality, I'm walking around like a zombie most of the time. It affects every aspect of life, from my ability to think logically to my fantasies. All of my daydreaming now consists of visions of being tucked up in bed and sleeping for eight hours straight. Which leads to my next observation.

3) 2 hours + 2 hours + 2 hours does NOT = 6 hours of sleep. There's a scientific explanation for this, involving the importance of REM and deep sleep cycles, but my head is much too muddled to sort through it right now.

4) I love breastfeeding. I always planned on breastfeeding Sawyer, but I had no idea how much I would enjoy it, or how easy it would be. I guess I'd heard so many horror stories from my mom friends that I was prepared for it to be difficult and painful to master. So it totally surprised me that aside from one day of engorgement, it's been a breeze. It helps that Sawyer is a voracious eater and has had great latching-on skills from the start. Given our love of food, I should have known we'd have a gourmet on our hands. Breastfeeding produces some funny stories too. A couple of days after my milk came in I was feeding Sawyer and not really paying attention to him because I was reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at the same time. I suddenly noticed he was making a sputtering sound, and I looked down to see that he had let go of my nipple and milk was spraying all over him - on top of his head, in his eyes, everywhere. Poor little guy.

5) I love having Sawyer sleep in our room. I remember when Eric and I were engaged and we were visiting an old mission companion of Eric's who is married and has a little boy. The friend mentioned that their son (who was almost 2 at the time) sleeps in their bed with them. Eric and I looked at each other and later both agreed that we thought it was weird and maybe even a little creepy. Now it's not at all weird to me and feels like the most natural thing in the world - which it actually is. Our culture is unique in the world when it comes to putting babies to sleep in a separate room from their mothers. We have a great little bed for him called the Arm's Reach Co-sleeper (endorsed by Dr. Sears, author of many informative and only slightly self-righteous parenting books.) It attaches to the side of our bed so when Sawyer wakes up at night I can roll over and pick him up to feed him or comfort him. I love that he is right next to us and I can always open my eyes and make sure he's OK. Plus I can feed him as soon as he wakes up and starts grunting, but before he gets hysterical crying, so he goes back to sleep easily. We'll see what happens when it comes time to move him to his own room, but for now this is working really well for us.

And I'm sure I'll have a lot more to share soon! For now I'll be sitting slack-jawed on the couch in the same clothes I wore yesterday, waiting for Eric to get home so I can take a shower.

Pictures

Sawyer's Birth Story

It started on Wednesday, May 4. I had a midwife appointment that morning and after my internal exam (where I'm pretty sure she stripped my membranes) I had lots of cramping throughout the day. I also had some leaking that I thought might be amniotic fluid, but I wasn’t sure because there was such a tiny amount of it. But I definitely felt like something was different, so that night I decided to skip my Lovenox shot just in case. It’s a good thing I did, because at 2:30 a.m. my water broke. I had just made a trip to the bathroom and as I got back into bed I sat up partway to adjust myself and get comfortable. All of a sudden I felt a gush of warm water. It took me about 5 seconds to register what had just happened. I woke Eric up and said “My water just broke!” and jumped out of bed. When he asked “Are you sure?” I just laughed because at that point I was standing in a puddle. There was no mistaking what had happened! We called Margie, the midwife on call and she told us to come to the hospital so they could check me. Eric took a quick shower and I got dressed. I was still leaking a ton of fluid so I wore a short dress with a towel stuffed between my legs. I was glad it was in the middle of the night so none of the neighbors could see me waddling out of the house in that condition. Before we left, Eric gave me a blessing that I would be able to cope with the pain and that everything would go smoothly, and that was very comforting.

I started having contractions on the way to the hospital. They were mild and about 4-5 minutes apart, so I had no problem breathing through them, although some of the bumps we hit didn’t feel very good. Mostly I was excited to get my baby here and I wasn’t thinking too much about the pain. When we arrived at the hospital at 3:00 a.m. they had us sign some forms and put us in a labor and delivery room. They checked with a pH strip and confirmed that my water had broken. I was less than a centimeter dilated, 50% effaced and my contractions were still very mild. Margie and Dr. Giamittorio discussed sending me home to wait for things to get into gear, but since there was a possibility that my water may have been leaking since earlier in the day they decided to keep me and get things moving - the risk of infection increases greatly if the baby isn’t delivered within 24 hours of the membranes rupturing.

While Lynn, my labor and delivery nurse started my IV, Margie put some prostaglandin gel on my cervix to ripen it, with the plan of starting pitocin a few hours later. The pitocin turned out to be unnecessary though, because within 10 minutes of the gel being applied my body went into high gear. The contractions were instantly extremely strong and less than 2 minutes apart. I managed the pain by walking around the room and holding on to Eric while I swayed my hips back and forth. Lynn was incredible and talked me through the difficult contractions, held my hand and rubbed my back. I was having back labor and the pain was quickly getting hard for me to manage, even with so much support from Eric and my nurse. After about 4 hours I was desperate for relief. I asked for an epidural, but Margie and the doctor both felt it was too early, so instead they gave me a shot of Nubain to help me get through for a little longer. Lynn put some in my IV and injected some in my hip. It helped a lot at first. The contractions were just as painful as before, but I was able to relax between them which I hadn’t been able to do previously. The downside was that I had to stay in bed and I wasn’t able to move around like I had done before; in hindsight, this took away a lot of my ability to cope with the contractions.

About 45 minutes later the Nubain wore off and they gave me another dose. This time it was completely ineffectual. I felt dizzy and disoriented with no relief. It was around this point that I felt like I was losing control. I asked for an epidural again, so Margie came in to check me and see what kind of progress had been made in the last 5 hours. Given the strength of my contractions and the pain I was in I was shocked to hear that I was still only one centimeter dilated! My cervix hadn’t budged. Margie told me to hang in there for a few more hours and they would think about an epidural. She was worried having one this early would stall my labor. At this point I was feeling completely desperate and the thought of going through this for hours more sounded like a death sentence. Lynn was quite upset that my doctor wouldn’t let me have the epidural because she could see how much pain I was in. She said “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I know when someone needs an epidural; you need one.” I was so tense from the pain that I couldn’t let my body relax and do its job. After another half hour of screaming and gripping the sides of the bed (I was squeezing so hard that my blood started flowing backwards in the IV) Lynn called Margie in to sit with me for a while. After a few minutes she left, and came back to say that they had called for the anesthesiologist.

At a little after 9:00 he arrived. I’ve never been so glad to see a huge needle in my life! He worked very quickly and I wanted to kiss him and name my child after him. (Unfortunately I was too disoriented to remember his name; in fact I have no idea what he even looked like.) At about 9:10 I told Lynn, “Either I just wet the bed or amniotic fluid is gushing out.” She said “It’s fluid, because right now you’re at the peak of a huge contraction.” If I had been able to I would have jumped up and done a happy dance. The pain was completely gone! I was able to feel and move my legs and I could feel pressure from the contractions, but they didn’t hurt at all. Eric said he had never seen such a transformation in his life. A few minutes later I was eating a popsicle and chatting with my mom on my cell phone. I was even able to doze off a bit, but I was way too excited to actually sleep. In a way it was completely weird to have no unpleasant sensations, and yet be very aware that my body was doing some really hard work. My contractions didn’t slow down one bit but continued exactly the way they had before, strong and fast. Eric and I talked, he played with my hair and rubbed my back and the time passed very pleasantly. It was so nice to have those quiet moments together before our son was born.

At around 1:00 p.m., Margie checked me again. I was dilated to 5 centimeters! Things kept moving along at a moderate pace, about a centimeter an hour. The baby’s heart rate started to decelerate too much when I was on my left side, so they had my lie on my right side for the rest of the labor. At about 6:00 I started feeling a lot of pelvic pressure and I could tell the baby’s head was moving down. Margie had left and Karen was the midwife who took her place. I had a new nurse too, Rachel, who had a quirky sense of humor and kept making us laugh. At 6:40 the pressure became more intense (but hallelujah, still no pain!) and when Karen checked I was fully dilated and ready to push. They figured it would take a while since this was my first delivery, so Rachel said “Let’s try pushing and see how it goes.” Eric held one of my legs and Rachel held the other. We waited for a contraction, and on my first push the nurse announced “He’s a blondie!” His head was already visible and it was clear that it wasn’t going to take that long for him to be born. They called Karen back in and set up a mirror so I could see. It was so amazing to watch! I pushed for 20 more minutes. It was hard work, but felt so empowering; in sharp contrast to just dealing with the pain, I was DOING something and I could see that it was productive.

Karen was suddenly called out on an emergency, so I got my third midwife, Sue. We had a bit of a scare when the baby was close to crowning and his heart rate suddenly decelerated. Sue decided he needed to come out as quickly as possible, so she had a nurse apply fundal pressure, which basically means this lady put all her weight on my stomach with her elbows to push the baby out from above. It hurt a lot and I could barely breathe, but I pushed as hard as I could and within a couple of pushes his head was out. He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, which explained the decelerations. His shoulders came out easily, and Sue helped me reach down and pull his body out and pull him up onto my chest. It was the most indescribably amazing moment I’ve ever experienced. I cried and laughed at the same time and Eric couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. Little Sawyer didn’t cry at all, just whimpered a few times, and then looked around the room completely alert like he was just taking it all in.

He weighed 6 lbs 5 oz and was 17 ½ inches long – well over a pound smaller than the lowest ultrasound estimate. His Apgar scores were 9 and 9. I held him and nursed him for about an hour before they took him to the nursery for a bath. I was (and still am) completely overwhelmed with love for him. I was in awe of how perfect and tiny he was and that he was mine.

My mom came into town the next day - she had been planning on coming out for the birth, but Sawyer’s early arrival took us all by surprise. On Saturday they let us go home from the hospital and we’ve been getting settled in ever since, getting to know Sawyer and learning to how care for him.

My birth experience was wonderful and I feel like I could do it ten more times! (You should see the look on Eric’s face when I say that, it’s really funny.) Now that we have Sawyer home I am growing more and more in love with him every day. Eric and I feel closer than ever before and we can’t wait to see who this precious little person grows up to be.

Welcome Home, Sawyer

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days - but I've had a really good excuse. Our baby is here!

William Sawyer Watts was born at 7:06 p.m. on Thursday May 5th (his great-grandpa William's birthday!) weighing 6 lbs 5 oz, 17 1/2 inches long. Labor and delivery went very smoothly and we are both exhausted but doing great. I'll post the whole birth story later; right now I have a baby at my breast and I'm not very good at typing with one hand. Sawyer is already the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. I can't believe how precious he is and how much I already love him.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Great News

I've known this for a while, but I'm just now free to share it with the world at large. My sister Megan is pregnant! She's about 9 weeks along and is due in late November/early December. We've become really close since we live so near each other and I'm so excited for us to have babies together!

Time to Suck It Up

I saw Melinda the midwife again this morning. And my cervix is being a little bastard. Despite all the evening primrose oil and raspberry leaf tea I've been taking, I'm only 50% effaced and 1 cm dilated. My midwife told me to increase the EPO to 1500 mg three times a day (total of 4500) and have lots and lots of sex. Yay. I told her we haven't been doing it much because it's so uncomfortable for both of us and she said, "Girl, this isn't about pleasure! This is business! Suck it up and get the job done!" Hmm, where did I ever get the whacky idea that sex was supposed to feel good?

The original plan was to wait until next Wednesday to check me again, but I whined pathetically enough that she took pity on me and had me schedule a quick appointment for Friday. She also poked around a bit more than usual during my internal check, and I'm pretty sure she stripped my membranes (it was rough enough that I yelled "Ow!"). So we'll see if anything happens in the next little while. I've been feeling really crampy for the last couple of days, like when my period's about to start so hopefully that means something is going on in there.

Here's a picture from last week (37 weeks) to prove to you how huge I'm getting. First is my 32 week picture so you can compare. Yowza!

He's Put On a Few

About a week ago Safeway was having a sale on Thomas bagels where if you bought one bag you got two free. Eric and I both love bagels and I'm a sucker for a good deal, so naturally I stocked up. E had one for breakfast with butter and jam one day and decided to leave a stick of butter on a plate out on the counter so the next time he wanted butter for his bagel it would be nice and soft and spreadable. Throughout the week I noticed the butter quickly disappearing. "Wow," I thought, "Eric's really on a bagels-with-butter kick." I'm a cream cheese freak myself so I wasn't using any of it. What struck me as odd, besides how fast it was going, is that it was being cut from the top instead of the ends. I had never noticed my husband's butter spreading habits before, so I figured it must just be his own quirky way of doing things.

Fast forward to Friday evening as Eric and I were eating dinner. We heard our cat Walker jumping up on the kitchen counter. He's not allowed up there and knows it but we've been completely ineffectual in training him not to jump up. I went into the kitchen, but by the time I got there he had jumped down and run into the basement. E came in behind me armed with the spray bottle, looked at the counter and a got a weird look on his face. The butter was completely gone and the plate was licked clean. "Honey?" he said. "Have you been eating the butter?" I told him no, I thought he had. He hadn't used it all week since that first bagel. He didn't want to say anything to me about it because I'm so sensitive about gaining pregnancy weight and he didn't want to hurt my feelings by implying that he was concerned that I was eating large amounts of butter on a daily basis.

No wonder the cat has been looking a bit chunky.

Come On, Cervix!

It looks like I may be saved from waiting too much longer. At my appointment this week, my perinatologist suggested that I be induced at 39 weeks. I asked my OB about this and he agreed. The reason they would be willing to do this is that I'm currently taking Lovenox injections every day to manage my blood clotting disorder. It's not a good thing to have a shot of Lovenox right before going into labor for a couple of reasons. First, since it's a blood thinner it could cause me to bleed too much during delivery. And second, I can't get an epidural within 24 hours of having a shot. The medication does something to the spinal space that can cause blood clots to form if spinal anesthesia is administered, and that can cause paralysis for life. Obviously, they don't want to mess around with that. So if I had just given myself an injection of Lovenox and went into labor in the next couple of hours, chances are I would not have the option of having an epidural. With an induction, they can schedule me to stop the Lovenox exactly 24 hours before starting labor so my options would be open.

Wednesday I have another NST and they will do an internal exam to see if my cervix is "favorable" for induction. They want it to be dilated and effaced to a certain point. If my cervix is unfavorable, it's a no go because my chances of winding up with a C-section would be too high. If it's favorable, they'll schedule me for an induction the next week, sometime around the 10th.

So of course, I'm doing everything I can to make my cervix "favorable". Enter herbal remedies. I'm using evening primrose oil capsules and drinking raspberry leaf tea. My midwife also suggests having intercourse every day (I'm sorry, but all I can do when I think about that is laugh.)

The bottom line is, we may be less than two weeks from D-Day. Send favorable cervix vibes my way!

Would You Like Some Cheese With That Whine?

(Ooh, yes please, especially if it's chèvre with Herbes de Provence spread on a warm baguette. YUM.)

Warning: Here comes another post about how hard it is to be pregnant. Feel free to skip it if that bugs you! And keep in mind that I am still very, very grateful to be experiencing all of this. Seriously. I guess it's just that I see whining about pregnancy as part of the whole experience. So even though it was so hard for us to conceive and I could not be happier to be at this stage, I reserve the right to whine about the parts of it that suck!

I haven't posted for a week now because I have been feeling absolutely awful. Last weekend I came down with a bad cold that a few days later became a nasty sinus infection. Along with all the late term pregnancy stuff I've got going on, it's really knocked me over. All I want to do is lie around and watch TLC with a hot washcloth on my aching head.

A couple of days ago I took a mental inventory of how my whole body was feeling. Starting from the top:

1) Head - Hurts from my sinus infection.
2) Upper back and shoulders - Hurt from the weight of my bazongas. My shoulders have started falling asleep at night too for some reason.
3) Breasts - Hurt from being so big and they're tender.
4) Belly - Itchy from my skin being stretched out so much, and I'm having lots of Braxton-Hicks contractions, which despite what all the pregnancy books say, are NOT painless.
5) Hips - Feel like they're being pulled apart every time I change positions and when I'm walking.
6) Lower back - Hurts thanks to the weight of my ginormous front.
7) Pelvic area - Feels like I'm carrying a bowling ball between my legs because the baby's head is so low.
8) Thighs - Sore from my Lovenox injections and the subsequent bruises.
9) Knees - Hurt because I'm carrying around 30 extra pounds.
10) Calves and feet - Sore from the swelling I get all the time. The same thing happens in my hands, when I get up in the morning I can barely make a fist.

So looking on the bright side, my elbows feel great.

I've always heard pregnant women complain a ton near the end of their pregnancies but I never knew why. For me it didn't get really uncomfortable until the baby dropped. Up until then I felt fabulous. A little heavy and awkward yes, but nothing like how I feel now. My mom told me that this is nature's way of helping you get through labor; she said by the end of her pregnancies she would have been willing to cut herself open with a kitchen knife just not to be pregnant anymore. I haven't quite reached that stage of desperation, but I can definitely understand how one could get to that point.

Just a few more weeks to go.

Darn You, Céline Dion!

You know that song "A New Day" by Céline Dion where she sings about having her baby? Who coincidentally was an IVF baby and a boy? Well it just came up in my music rotation I have playing and wouldn't you know - I completely lost it. I had to listen to "Drop It Like It's Hot" three times just to be able to stop crying.

Be warned: pregnancy hormones and Céline Dion do not mix!!!

More NST Drama

Yesterday I had a routine midwife appointment with a non-stress test. Since I've had like a zillion of them by now I'm getting pretty good at interpreting the test results, so I wasn't too surprised when the midwife Melinda told me I'd have to go over to the hospital to Labor and Delivery for more testing. Again. This time I took my time getting there and went to eat lunch first so I wouldn't have to have hospital food for as long as possible. I also called Eric and asked him to bring me some pillows from home just in case I had to stay the night again so this time I'd be more comfortable. (See, I've learned some things!) Luckily all the preparations turned out to be unnecessary. They ran another NST and this one was picture perfect, for the first time ever! I'm convinced it was the double cheeseburger I ate immediately beforehand. I always eat before having an NST but now I know I have to really stuff myself! Not a problem.

Also, I learned at my appointment that the baby has definitely dropped. Melinda could feel his head right against my cervix. And I'm one centimeter dilated. Which doesn't really mean anything, but it still makes me excited. Things are happening!