The Postpartum ABC's

Twenty-six features of postpartum-hood. (Those who haven't been through it might want to glance at "T" first)

A is for Adorable - N. is. He and his sister together make it exponential.

B is for Boobies - they run my life. I woke in the middle of the night last night with my T-shirt soaked through. I thought I was having sudden hot-flash sweats. It took me till morning to deduce it was just milk.

C is for Cookies - Walnut chocolate chip specifically, homemade by our good friends. My assault on the baby weight will have to wait till that tupperware is empty.

D is for Diapers - which are failing me completely. He's pooped on me 6 times today. SIX.

E is for Engorgement. For those who have not experienced this unique affliction, take two large honeydew melons, fill with a high concentration of your most sensitive nerve endings, then pummel repeatedly with phone books, while inserting hot needles.

F is for Feeding -which is constant. See entries "B" "N" and "P."

G is for Grandparents - What a great invention! They come when needed, offer love, food, hands, gifts, and mountains of support. Their grandchildren adore them as much as they adore them. And for those few days we're in their presence, we have the option of being adults or momentarily, children (to them) again ourselves.

H is for Help. Not only does it take the proverbial village to raise a child, ideally it takes one to birth and recover too. N needed every person around him during his birth - Grandpa P to look after little T, Grandma L and Daddy to support mama, mama to birth him, and midwives Marla and Sandi to make sure it all went smoothly. Since then I've been a lump on the bed needing to be waited on hand and foot - something my folks and then B have obliged to do. T helps with cuddles, kisses, and running mama and N little house errands. B now has the veritable workload of cooking, cleaning, taking care of T full time, AND running around attending to my needs (water, food, more water, cookies...). I don't know what N and I would do without them.

I is for Ironic - Alanis could have made a whole sequel on the spit-up that comes right after you get that awkward long sleeve onesie on, the poop explosion that waits until just after the fresh diaper has been tucked into clean pants, or the phone that rings once sleepy eyes finally close.

J is for Jen - the person I was, the person I will be once again! After most of A-Z subside...

K - there's got to be one letter I can't answer ;-)

L is for Leaking - gives Wet T-shirt Contest a new and entirely unattractive connotation.

M is for Mama - which I love being enough to not mind A-Z.

N is for Nipples - sore, cracked, bleeding, leaking...

O is for Other Sensitive Areas - same.

P is for Poop. It rules my life. Yellow, sticky, prolific, but sweet-smelling (thank goodness!). That's his. Mine, let's not go there.

Q is for Quiet Time - which I have surprisingly a lot of. When B is with T at music group, preschool, playdates or the playground it's just N & I for hours, hanging out in the poop, pee & milk soaked paraphernalia of our bedroom (items I do try to get from the bed into the dirty clothes bin I should mention). Then there's the baby crying, T climbing over me to comfort him, general mayhem times. It seems to only ever be one or the other.

R is for Rest - Specifically bedrest for 15 days on midwife's orders. In turns it has been both welcome and ridiculously boring. But my midwife has assured me that like a 2 yr old that's just devoured your chocolate chip cookies, if I stray the evidence will out me!

S is for Stitches. Which is what happens when a 14" head is the second largest diameter you birth.

T is for TMI - because nearly everything about labor, birth and postpartum is TMI.

U is for Undergarments - suddenly my intimate attire has taken on the attributes of those of an incontinent geriatric. B has promised Santa will take this into consideration (hopefully he frequents Victoria's Secret & Patagonia? :)

V is for Vital Records - the place we need to get N's birth certificate before we can get his passport to fly to Canada next week. I'd been obsessing about this hurdle for weeks, so as soon as we woke up on Friday morning, I called. I don't think they were used to hearing "Hi, I just gave birth a few hours ago..." and while the offer of brownies was made (to which I got a polite "I'm sorry, we're not allowed to accept bribes ma'am"), the supervisor was sufficiently sympathetic enough to get us in at the first cancellation.

W is for Waking Baby - the ultimate no-no. Only exceptions: 1) to extract him from the middle of a poop explosion. 2) the house is burning down.

X is for X's - on his little puckered baby lips. Sweeter than any first crush kiss.

Y is for You did it. After T's birth I went from wanting to try a natural birth and a homebirth and even a hypnobabies birth with N, all without really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. It's nice to look down at him, recall my labor and his arrival without the disappointment and uncertainty we had through much of T's and allow myself a little "you did it!"

Z is for Zzzz's - namely, what I should be doing now instead of writing blog posts!

Noah's Arrival

He's (finally) here!!!

The short version:

After the aforementioned waiting game, I finally

went into labor around/after dinner on Thursday night, labored at home with B, my mom and two midwives for support and gave birth to Noah at 3:57 a.m. in an almost water birth ;-) He clocked in at 8 lbs. 4 oz and was a whopping 21" long.

The full version:

Happily, all it seemed to take to get him to come was a good dose of maternal despair :)

Aprox. 24 hrs after writing my last post I was in my other (hospital) midwife's office hearing that I was now 3 cm dilated, 80% effaced and could go anytime! Woo hoo! Sure enough, a 1.5 hr walk with B, and some Olive Garden for dinner had me wondering if the odd mixture of intermittent tightening/gas pains/menstrual-like cramps I was feeling was finally N conceding to come (I'd

never been to Olive Garden, maybe this was a typical reaction!).

Not wanting to get anyone's hopes up I didn't say much about it. T went for a sleepover at the grandparents' hotel as planned and B and I headed home to watch some T.V. before an "early" night. Half way through our second program I realized that I was needing B to rub my lower back in order to concentrate - not exactly gas pains anymore! I began timing the pressure waves (aka contractions) on a handy phone app, while B started rushing around preparing the tub, supplies and calling our home birth midwives. I started listening to my Hypnobabies tracks but had to keep stopping to time my surges which were about a 1-1.5 min long and coming 3-5 min apart.

Mom came over after a call at midnight and the midwives arrived around 1 a.m. The one thing I dreaded after T - back labor - had returned with N, but while it prevented me from having a completely comfortable birth, the hypnobabies training meant that instead of being a screaming banshee like I was with T, I was able to make it through active labor with only "Shhh"-ing sounds during pressure waves, and B or mom rubbing my back. For transition (considered the hardest part of labor) I changed to low moans and "Ahhh"-ing and was able to cope in the tub pretty well. Hooray for hypnobabies! :)

Pushing, however, was a different matter! I'll spare you the details, except to say he was born half on the caul (very rare and supposedly good luck), but with shoulder dystocia. So while things got a bit hairy for a couple minutes as/after he was born, I actually didn't know how hairy until debriefing with the midwife today. Save to say, we had an incredibly experienced midwife team, Noah is a little fighter and things worked out fine.

Now that he's here I can say he's beautiful (in one mama's humble, unbiased opinion), a great nurser (maybe a little too great at times...), and has spent his first 36 hrs of life dedicatedly nursing, sleeping, pooping and when he's not snoozing, gazing around and being cuddled by his big sister.

She's taken to him with unbridled enthusiasm, though it's been a challenge to explain all the new limitations of having a little, live baby to receive her love, who's decidedly less robust than her resilient (plastic) baby doll.

It's been great reading the well-wishes and love pouring in over e-mail, text, phone and facebook. I've been urged to stay home for a few days (not how I normally roll as many readers know) but we're looking forward to a few visitors over the coming days/week and hopefully, a short-notice apt. at the office of vital records so N, T, B & I can make our flights to Canada next week! We look forward to as many of you as possible meeting him then, if not sooner.