I haven’t had the opportunity to do much walking lately, so I’ve had to take my inspiration from closer to home. This fragrant-flowered bush grows in my backyard. I hope you like the picture because it cost me three mosquito bites!
My best guess at the identity of this plant is in the comments.
The other day I received a box of baby gifts from my coworkers. I am overwhelmed by the generosity they and others have shown us. I don’t deserve it, but I hope I can raise my son to be the type of man who does and who pays it forward.
As I mentioned in the post called “Manic Monday,” Peeps disappeared into the dark woods one night. We thought she was gone for good, but I went out looking for her every few hours the next day. I didn’t think I’d find her, but I had to try. Late that night, I went out one last time. I turned on the lights outside and there on the front lawn, at the very edge of the pool of light, was some sort of animal. I walked toward it slowly, not sure it was Peeps until I got right up to it and it peeped. Our Peeps was back!
Her night alone in the woods seems to have done her some good. She’s much friendlier now and maybe even a bit cuter. Here she is, our other little baby, happy to be home again.
Now that the weather has finally turned warm, we have begun to use the ceiling fans in the bedrooms of our new house. It should come as no surprise to us, given the house’s previous owners, that the fans are all wired a little differently. The one in our bedroom is operated by remote only. There is a wall switch right next to the door that ought to control it but doesn’t. In fact, the switch doesn’t control anything. In my office, the wall switch controls the fan light, but not the fan itself, which is controlled by a pull. In the nursery, neither fan nor light will work if the wall switch is in the off position, but each is individually controlled with its own pull. This house is full of inconsistencies!
Baby loves the fan in our bedroom, perhaps because we often keep its upper light on at night. This is how it looks (photo courtesy of my husband, who was up late one night and had nothing better to do).
My husband wonders if this shape will imprint itself on our baby’s brain. Will he have a “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” reaction to it when he’s older, seeing the shape in his mind and thinking “What does it mean?”?
Everybody has something to say about taking care of a baby.
A sneeze is as good as a burp.—Hospital Nurse
According to the hospital nurse, a sneeze brings up air. I think she was full of hot air herself. Based on the amount of spit-up I’ve seen, I’d say only a burp is as good as a burp.
The first two weeks are hard but you’ll soar through the third and then you’ll be fine.—Doctor’s-Office Nurse
I believed this and it was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Then our doctor told us Thursday that we can now expect the baby to cry vigorously for three hours a day for absolutely no reason. That’s not what I’d call “fine”!
Sleep when the baby sleeps.—Friend’s Mother
Good advice that’s more easily said than done. My body knows the difference between day and night and it doesn’t believe in sleeping during the afternoon.
Let a sleeping baby lie.—Faithful Reader
I don’t know where Faithful Reader got this saying from. It’s probably good advice, except when your baby is jaundiced, in which case you had better do everything within your power to wake him up and get some food into him.
Just when you get to the point when breastfeeding seems intolerable, it gets better.—Childbirth-Class Teacher
The jury is still out on this one. I hope it’s not another false “light at the end of the tunnel” tale!
Wait until the baby is done pooping.—Friend
This advice on diaper changes may well be the best advice we’ve gotten. We have tried to follow it, too, but babies are downright mischievous with their bowel movements. Just when you think they can’t poop any more, they do.
It’s almost embarrassing how few books I have read this year and even worse that I haven’t found the time to mention the few that I have. Let me rectify that situation now, at least in part.
Chasing Cézanne by Peter Mayle
Grade: B
Andre the photographer witnesses what he thinks may be the robbery of a Cezanne painting, but to find the truth, he’ll need the help of his pretty agent and a kindly old art expert.
I bought this book because I enjoyed A Year in Provence by the same author. This book is quite different. I was surprised by the smug urbanite tone of the narration and it was a big turn-off initially. As the book moved along, it suckered me in a bit more, but I never fell in love with it, hence the B.
The Princess & the Goblin by George MacDonald
Grade: B+
This is a story of a young princess who lives in a countryside filled with goblins.
As you know, I struggled to read during my pregnancy. It was partly about being tired and unable to focus, but the main problem was that I couldn’t “fall into” books and forget that I was reading. With this book, I came close, so it is possible that it deserves a slightly higher grade. I think I’m going to hang on to it, even though it didn’t get an A-level grade, because it’s a fairy tale and it might be fun to read to children.
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding
Grade: B
Olivia Joules is a journalist who is always imagining that things are more exciting than they are. Until now. Now her suspicions turn out to be spot-on, and that’s why this book falls short of my expectations. As a tale of an overactive imagination and the consequences of her crazy notions, this could have been a funny book. But a rather foolish journalist turning into an ace spy, that just doesn’t fly. There were also scenes of the book where I had a hard time understanding exactly what was going on. That’s unusual and it left me with the feeling that the author should have spent a little more time with this one.
Wake up. Feed Baby. Change his diaper. Uh-oh. He pees just as I finish cleaning him up, ruining diaper and soaking his outfit. Find fresh outfit for him and fix changing station. Dress him and put him down to rest again.
Run downstairs. Throw load of laundry into wash. Grab lunch and heat it in the microwave.
Spill coffee all over self and floor while heading back to bedroom. Change clothes. Clean up mess. Calm Baby down again. Eat partial breakfast.
Feed Baby.
Drink coffee. Finish breakfast. Watch “Reading Rainbow” for 15 minutes. Get into shower. Bliss. Shower cut short by crying baby. No time for conditioner. Hair is tangly mess.
Baby’s diaper has leaked. Diaper, clothes, swaddle, and sheet all soaked. Thank God it’s only pee. Change Baby’s diaper. Oh, yuck. Umbilical cord leftovers look pussy. Clean with alcohol wipe. Whew. Not pussy, just gross. Find fresh outfit, swaddle, and sheet for Baby.
Baby still crying. Close to feeding time, so feed again. Notice his face scratched all over. Will have to file his nails today.
Run downstairs. Grab snack. Bring up yesterday’s laundry. Pet cats. Have now petted all three within 24 hours. Sadly, that’s the best I’ve done for them in past couple of weeks. Attempt to file Baby’s sharp little nails, but only wake him. Feed to mollify. Change his diaper. Oh, no. Stealth pee. He shoots, he scores. Clean up mess. Find fresh outfit for him. Am forced to resort to sleeveless, orange garment with picture of a frog prince. His fault.
Oh, yuck. Realize have not yet brushed teeth. Brush. Run downstairs and throw laundry in dryer.
Baby still awake, now crying. Sing to him a song inspired by his outfit.
Baby’s a pumpkin.
Sweetie little pumpkin.
Orange pumpkin.
Sweetie little pumpkin.
He’s a frog prince.
Sweetie little pumpkin.
I love my pumpkin boy.
Baby quiets for a few minutes, but clearly not impressed. He’s mouthing again. Can it be time to feed him again? It can. Ugh. Realize the time. Have missed business hours and cannot get any other tasks done today. Double ugh.
Feed baby. Manage to file nails on one hand. Diaper leaks while feeding. His outfit is wet. And so am I.
Run downstairs to get laundry. Baby already crying again. I can hear him from downstairs, but there is water all over the dryer, even in the dryer, from the tub leak above. Wipe it up and run upstairs with fresh laundry. Put on clean gown (only one I have now!) and try to calm Baby. It doesn’t last. He cries and cries and I feel a sense of desperation. I can tune him out, something I’ve learned to do but which makes me feel bad, or I can put him to the breast. It has been over an hour since feeding, so he could actually be hungry. Give in. Feed baby.
Baby stays quiet for five minutes, but then freaks. Diaper has leaked again. What the Hell!
Baby still crying. Husband makes food for me, thank God. He calms Baby but it doesn’t last. It is almost 8:00. Prime-time crying time.
I rock, I walk, I sing him into quiescence again and again, but it never lasts. Only the breast satisfies. Feed Baby.
Try to file nails on his other hand after feeding. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. The sound of poo. Time for a diaper change. He pees on outfit again. Will have to strip him at changing time from now on.
Baby still crying on and off, but at least now Hubby is here to help calm him down. Fold and put away both loads of laundry. Relax for a whopping five minutes. Feed Baby.
Feed Baby
Feed Baby
Change diaper.
More crying.
Let husband take over. Almost asleep…
Hubby calls to me. Our cat Peeps has run outside and is now lost in the woods. We call to her, shake a bag of treats, search with flashlights…
No good.
Cat is gone.
What a day.
I was right. I was in labor. Later that morning, after the pain had become unbearable and I finally managed to get my sleepy husband out of bed, we went back to the hospital. Our son was born on that Thursday afternoon, which may have been the only sunny day in June.
When I look back on the labor and delivery, I feel like crying. It wasn’t the spiritual experience that some people claim to have had. It was an intensely painful physical experience. Everyone in the delivery room was nice, but I wanted to scream at them. If I could have articulated my feelings, this is what I would have shouted.
“How the effing hell am I supposed to take a deep breath while you’re shoving my knees back into my chest?”
I won’t tell you the rest of the gory details, which you probably don’t want to know, but I will share some positives with you. My Faithful Reader was there with me. The doctor on call was one we had met before and one with whom we were comfortable (truth be told, we preferred him to my regular doctor). Most importantly, our baby was born healthy.
I am in labor. Or at least I am having regular, very painful contractions. We didn’t go to the hospital until they got regular and painful, but they still weren’t enough to impress the people at the hospital, and three centimeters just don’t cut it. We were given two choices: walk around the hospital for a few hours and then get rechecked or just go home. We opted to go home.
So here I am at 4:30 in the morning, unable to sleep and feeling quite crappy, wondering if I should have graded the pain higher. The nurse asked me to rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 10 and I left some room at the top for greater pain than I’ve ever felt before, giving the contractions a 5 rating, later a 6. If I had said 8 or 9, perhaps they would have kept me around. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s possible the contractions are getting farther apart now. Perhaps they will come to an end. That could be good or bad. On the good side, if they stopped I could get some sleep and it would make coming home the definite right choice. On the bad side, if they stopped it would mean that I’d have to go through this whole process again. Not fun!
I only stopped by here for the novelty of posting while in labor. Done. Time to go try to relax…
Everyone probably thought the baby would have arrived by now, but here I am past 39 weeks and no baby yet. One of the things that strikes me at this point is how easily I’ve gotten used to the changes in my life. You get used to waking up several times each night to pee, to not always being able to get back to sleep, to swollen hands and feet, and most of all, to uncertainty. I have no idea what kind of child I’m going to have, except that medical science has led me to believe it’s a boy. Everything from size to hair color to mental capacity is a complete mystery to us. He’s going to be the ultimate surprise gift.
His ETA is also still totally up in the air, though I thought for a while last weekend that he was finally going to join us. Around 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning, I was awakened by a strong contraction. I got up, drank some water, and went back to bed, where I drifted in and out of sleep between contractions for several hours. They seemed to be coming regularly, but eventually they began to fade away, and by 9:30 I knew the baby was not on his way quite yet, which was just as well, really. I had plans for 11:00 to see my friend K—, who was up from D.C.
K— and I had a nice lunch, though the servers at the restaurant seemed fascinated by my pregnancy. One of them took one look at my belly and said, “Whoa! Can’t hide that!” Perhaps they were worried I’d pop while eating. K— thinks that’s crazy, but my mom says that once she got past 8 months, she definitely got the feeling that people worried she’d give birth in front of them. I don’t know if people really do think like that, or if I just think they do because of my own concerns about the impending event. I try to live a normal life, leaving the house when I have errands to run or fun to pursue, but it does make me nervous sometimes.
Even though she’d already given us gifts for the baby shower, K— brought another bag of goodies for the baby. I had a lot of fun opening up all the little tissue-wrapped packets of clothes. The clothing designs were more modern, less cutesy, with images of things like rabid pillows and klutzy monument-destroying monsters. Faithful Reader and I both got a kick out of them. Then, after giving us so many nice things, she apologized for the extra laundry. She needn’t worry. I’ve already accepted that laundry will be a daily chore for a while.
I was sad to see K— go so soon, but she had to drive up to Vermont that evening. After she left, I mentally gave the baby permission to arrive if he was ready, but he declined the invite. I had contractions on and off all weekend, but now I’m pretty much back to where I was before, just more fatigued and unwieldy. I slept late today, which left me feeling groggy, but I’m glad for the extra hours of shut-eye. I need to take them where I can get them.
We have plans for every day this week. I wonder if Baby will let us do them all. I’ll keep you posted.
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