How Does This Happen?

Somehow, today, I find myself the mother of a 9 month old.  Who is quickly morphing from a baby into a toddler.  She's not technically toddling yet, but she looks less and less like a baby with every passing day.

7 MONTHS

9 MONTHS

I don't know if the difference is as obvious to you as it is to me, but my baby is disappearing before my eyes.  She's a funny little duck, too.  She's got four teeth now, and they are so sharp it's unreasonable.  She loves to eat food, and is eating more and more of it every day.  She will take only a tiny bite of any new food that she doesn't recognize in order to check it out before she commits.  She never spits it out, but if she doesn't like it, she won't eat anymore.  The one food that she never, ever likes is cheese.  It's so bizarre to me, as a dedicated lover of cheese, that we have a child who does not like cheese.

And this child fights sleep as if her survival depends on staying awake.  The acrobatics that she engages in when I'm nursing her at night are impressive.  She has, on more than one occasion, nursed while maintaining an excellent Downward Facing Dog in order to avoid laying down and possibly falling asleep.

Her stranger danger is activated, as well as a new, more intense attachment to me.  Today, for the first time, she cried when I told her goodbye and left for work.  She has been much more attached to me and won't even go to Margo half the time.

She is intensely physically active, and has the lean physique to show for it.  She never stops moving when she is awake, and has been more and more frustrated by diaper changes because they require her to stay still for more than ten seconds.  She is now crawling primarily as a way to get from one place to stand and furniture surf to another.  She's standing on her own for a few seconds at a time when she isn't paying attention. 

We went on a road trip to Montana for a couple of weeks recently, and she was a total champ.  She continues to be a remarkably adaptable, good-natured child, and we are so appreciative of that.  She was, however, absolutely delighted to be home again and see my mom.  She giggled for the first hour and a half solid after we got home. 

She also experiences her emotions intensely.  Her delight and joy are irrepressible and uncontainable.  She sometimes becomes so overwhelmed with excitement that her entire body just vibrates and she is rendered momentarily speechless.  She frequently experiences and expresses frustration in a very similar way.  She is so curious and intensely determined.  Watching her unfold continues to be a privilege that brings us so much joy and wonder.

The Fastest Four Months of My Life

It blows my mind to think that this little lady is four months old already.

It's amazing to think back to where I was a year ago.  A year ago, I had only known that I was pregnant for twenty days.  My only symptoms were some slight queasiness and breast tenderness.  It didn't seem real at all that parenthood was coming around the corner.  Now I can barely remember what it was like before she was born, before I was a mother.  It's easy to think of these milestones as just hers, but this also marks four months of being a mother, and four months of parenting with my amazing wife.  I like to think that I've gotten better at it and it's getting easier in many ways.

 This kid has so much personality and she's learned so many new things in just the past few weeks.  She's rolling over like a champ, any which way she likes.  She's grabbing everything she can reach and putting it in her mouth.  She's trying desperately to scoot, and she can move herself a few inches backwards.  When she's at home with her people, she hardly ever stops babbling or moving.  When we're out in the world, in new settings and with new people, she gets very quiet and watches everything with wide, thoughtful eyes.

 She's got a smile that will just melt you.  I'm working two days a week these days, and as hard as it is to leave her on those two days, the smile I get when I come home is the best thing in the world.  She has just figured out how to suck her thumb in the last four days.  It's the funniest thing because she puts her thumb in her mouth and the rest of her fingers are just splayed out over her face rather than in a fist.  She's also just starting to laugh.  She'd done it a couple of isolated times before today, but today she did it over and over again with Margo tonight.

 She had her first real trip last week, when we went to Chicago so that Margo could present at a conference sponsored by her agency.  I was so nervous about the air travel and staying in a hotel with a  baby, but she was amazing.  This in spite of having a terrible cold and fever for the first couple of days we were there.  She is so great at rolling with the punches, waking up somewhere different from where she went to sleep, and meeting new people.  She's so funny too, because when a new person holds her, she looks at Margo or I to make sure that it's okay, and if we smile at her, she's totally cool.  I don't know yet what she'd do if she didn't get that smile from one of us, but I suspect it wouldn't be pretty.

 We've also been going to story time at our local library on Friday mornings.  She's the youngest kid there by at least four months, but she loves watching the other kids and all of the games and songs.  One of her favorite things in the world is to be sung to by Margo or Grandma or me.  When she's fussy and nothing else will calm her down, singing to her almost always works.  We try to listen to a lot of music with her.

She's the coolest kid, and I'm so excited to see what she's got in store for us.  It's the most amazing thing in the world to have created this little person and watch her unfold into herself right in front of us.  I like to think that her happy, chill demeanor means that we're doing something right, although I think it's also just her natural temperament.

Sometimes Things Look Worse on Paper (or how my worst birth nightmare was actually an awesome experience)

You might have heard that I had a baby a couple of months ago (I can't believe it's already been a couple of months!!!!!!!!!!).  I've been meaning to write something about my pregnancy and birth experiences but just keep never getting around to it.  Looks like I'm finally getting around to it.

For many, many reason, our original plan was to have an out-of-hospital birth at our awesome midwife's office.  Among those reasons were my desire to avoid any unnecessary interventions and to avoid a Cesarean birth.  Things were going along swimmingly with that plan until I was seven months pregnant, when my midwife did a routine consultation with an OB at my HMO.  In spite of the fact that I did not have gestational diabetes or any other high risk conditions and my blood pressure had been awesome, my HMO decided that I was too high risk to have an out-of-hospital birth based solely on my BMI.  I was told that I would have to transfer to the care of an OB at my HMO and have the baby at their hospital.  After two visits with an absolutely terrible OB who clearly did not have any interest in anything I had to say, they decided that I was too high risk to give birth at their hospital, again solely because of my BMI.  The OB actually told me that the toilets might not be able to hold me!  Which is ridiculous.  I've never had a toilet collapse under me in any setting.  My HMO transferred my care to the university hospital here when I was 35 weeks pregnant.  35 weeks!  Essentially giving me 5 weeks to establish care with the people who would then be responsible for helping me give birth!

Ultimately, I was very pleased with the OB to whose care I happened to be assigned.  She was great and was largely unconcerned with my weight.  The monitoring that I received for the rest of my pregnancy was more intensive than I would have preferred, but I never felt that I was being pushed into something I wasn't comfortable with.

My due date was November 9, and that date came and went with no indication of labor.  Right before my due date, my OB and I discussed what to do if I went past my due date and how long she felt comfortable with me continuing past that date.  We agreed that if I had not gone into labor by November 20, I would be scheduled for an induction that day.

I started having relatively painful contractions at around 5AM on November 19.  Since I had an appointment scheduled that day anyway, we went to the hospital and I got checked out.  Since my contractions weren't progressing and I was only 2cm dilated, they sent me home.  My contractions continued to be painful and regular, but without increasing in frequency or intensity for the rest of the day.  That night, they started to increase somewhat in frequency and intensity, and neither Margo nor I got any sleep.  I was scheduled to go into the hospital for an induction at around noon on November 20.  When I checked into the hospital, my contractions were five minutes apart and I was already 5cm dilated.  They proceeded to give me pitocin as planned, although it was now considered augmentation rather than induction, as my labor had clearly already started and no longer needed to be induced.

We had put together a birth plan ahead of time, key elements of which included the desire to avoid the induction or augmentation of labor, the desire to avoid the use of pain medications or anesthesia, the desire not to have my membranes ruptured and the desire to birth my baby vaginally.  Each of the nurses that was assigned to us (we had four shifts of nurses over the course of my labor) had clearly read our birth plan and was extraordinarily supportive and advocated with the doctors on our behalf when necessary.  I labored until well after midnight, walking around the unit, getting in and out of the tub, dancing and having my head rubbed for hours.  I had been at 8-9cm for several hours when I allowed them to rupture my membranes in the hopes that that would help me dilate completely.

By around 5AM on November 21, I had finally dilated all the way to 10cm.  At 5:30AM, they let me start pushing.  I pushed for three hours in varying positions, including squatting.  Of note, the epidural rate in this hospital is more than 90%, so the nurses had to scramble to accommodate my mobility.  At one point, I was pushing while squatting next to the bed, and my fantastic nurse was under the bed, holding the fetal heart rate monitor in position on my belly while I pushed.  I got the baby far enough down the birth canal that the other people in the room could see hair when I was pushing.  After three hours of pushing, however, the baby was not moving any further down the birth canal and the baby's heart rate was starting to drop.  The doctors came in to talk to me and suggested that it might be time to consider a Cesarean birth.  After talking it over with Margo, my mom and my younger sister, we all agreed that a Cesarean birth was the best decision at that point.

The next 30 minutes were absolutely the worst part of the entire experience, as I was experiencing the literally irresistible urge to push but was being asked not to push.  It was so unbearable to be fighting my body's chemically enhanced and overwhelming urge while I waited for them to get the OR ready and all of the staff in place.  In the months leading up to giving birth, I stated numerous times that I could not imagine pain that would be bad enough for me to allow someone to stick a needle in my spinal column.  I have never been as physically happy as I was when they gave me the spinal anesthetic for the Cesarean and the urge to push disappeared.

I was so delirious from not having slept in two days and the narcotic in the spinal that I do not recall much of the Cesarean procedure.  The most bizarre part of that procedure was that, while I felt no pain, I could still feel pressure.  As a result, I could feel them cutting and pulling and moving my internal organs around while they got the baby out.  I could similarly feel them putting things back and stitching things up.  I think that, if I had not been delirious, it would have freaked me out more than I could tolerate.  So at 9:35AM on November 21, 2013, Adelaide Marie made a dramatic entrance into the world, weighing 9 pounds, 7 ounces and measuring 20.5 inches long.

While the bare facts of my labor and birth sound terrible (in labor for two days, pushed for three hours, then wound up having a c-section), and exactly what I would have told you was my worst nightmare beforehand, I actually had an amazing experience.  One of the questions that I had about myself before I gave birth was whether I was strong enough to endure labor, particularly without pain medication.  This was something that was both very important to me, and something I was very unsure about.  I answered that question, and I amazed myself with what my body was capable of doing, and with what I was capable of coping on very little sleep and food.  My mom told me later that she didn't know I had that in me, and to be frank, I didn't know I had it in me either.  I also got such incredible care from the labor and delivery nurses that were assigned to us.  They were unbelievably supportive, helpful, encouraging and protective of us.  Having worked professionally with some really terrible nurses, I had been really worried about how I would cope with possibly being assigned to a nurse that was not a good fit.  I needn't have worried.  In reality, we got such wonderful and affirming care from everyone at the hospital, and I felt very strongly that everyone who worked with us did everything in their power to help us have the birth experience that we wanted.  And ultimately, although the facts of the situation would lead you to believe otherwise, I had an amazing birth experience.  And we've got this amazing baby.  But more on that later...  I promise.