Why We Need Daddy

Day two juggling three kids by myself... not quite as smooth as day one.  After yesterday, I was feeling very mommy confident so I attempted some errands this morning. Um, bad idea.

I'll spare you the gruesome details, but the end result was Anneliese crying on a store floor next to a broken ottoman, while Nathan was in distress because I was spraying (yes, spraying) Charlotte with breastmilk in my panicked inability to keep her latched on correctly while also tending to Anneliese. Ever seen four people crying simultaneously in a very public place?  Today, we were That Family.

We ate some lunch, got it (mostly) together, and it only took a few tearful attempts to get everyone to sleep.  But Charlotte will be up soon, and I'm exhausted, and I'm so missing this:

Mark has been a rock star over the last month. Soothing Charlotte when my attempts failed.  Calming big-sister tantrums. Lots of midnight diaper changes (and midday ones too). Providing extra hands and diversions and attention anywhere needed. I got used to having him around all day and all night, every day and every night.  And with mornings like the one I just had, I really want him back.

Someone please remind me that I'll get used to this, and that most days won't feel this eventful.  A "new normal" is coming... soon... right?

Real Life with Three Kids... Day One

Today is Mark's first day back at work after a month off.  Which means real life with three kiddies just smacked me in the face when I woke up today.

But... it didn't smack too hard, actually.  Charlotte went right back to sleep after both her 5am and 7am nursings. Nathan ate breakfast and then played quietly by himself until close to 8.  And Anneliese slept past 9.  (I know.)  Definitely a good start.

And it stayed okay from there.  We all got dressed.  We played a little.  I got lots of stuff done around the house, and my life feels like it's taking on some sort of order again.  Both big-kid poops landed in the potty.  The three children co-existed (mostly) peacefully while I prepared three meals.  (Full disclosure: I didn't have to cook anything, just heat stuff up and whatnot.)  We all ate when we were supposed to and napped when we were supposed to and besides a few spells when Charlotte got fussy, when Anneliese tried fix it by feeding her friend cars (yes, we knew it would happen and it finally did), and when Mommy's internet temporarily broke, there weren't even any tears.

Thanks in no small part to our baby swing.  Which Charlotte has been all about (finally!) in the last week or so. Whoever first invented these things is my new favorite person in the history of babies and pendulation.

Comfy, Charlotte?

Yeah. We're definitely calling today a win.

Morning Playtime

This corner of the internet has been pretty Charlotte-heavy of late, hasn't it?  So here's something about the rest of the family.  You know, the people who continue to exist and do stuff even when Charlotte and I are holed up in my bedroom, nursing and snuggling (read: trying to sleep like it's our job).

It's funny, the things I find when I get around to dumping pictures off our camera onto the computer.  Whatever has happened while I'm away still sleeping, I might never hear about (remember, Mark's notsomuch a talker).  But then I find pictures.  And oh they say so much.

Like this one.  Mark (apparently) took it on August 23, at 8:16am. 

After a quick calendar consult, it looks like I was hahahaha yeah right like I have a full calendar these days! For sure I was still sleeping.

Anyway.

Even though I wasn't around and didn't hear about it, I know exactly what was going on.  Let me set the scene:

Nathan and Anneliese, building a tower.  (Everything is "a tower" even when it's clearly a tunnel.  Or something else.)  Make no mistake, Anneliese was not allowed to help.  She's lucky if she got to drive one of those trains on one of those bridges.  That tower is all Nathan.

But the tower isn't enough to hold his attention.  He's off-and-on still pretending to be interested in the Thomas dvd playing over his shoulder.  He's bleary-eyed from having gotten up several hours earlier, under cover of darkness, and creeping down to the bonus room to watch it.  (Oh, the annoyingness we ignore for the sake of keeping him quiet while we sleep a little more.)
Anneliese is still tired because Nathan got bored about fifteen minutes into said Thomas viewing, and went upstairs to wake her up to play.  It was probably still dark when that happened.

No one is dressed.  Not because it's "only" 8am, but because we've all been in a maternity-leave mentality for weeks, and we don't get dressed anymore unless people are coming over or we have to leave the house.  (Ok that's a lie.  We don't even get fully dressed for company or for every errand. The only surefire way to get the PJs off is to get us in the pool.)

Mark seems to have climbed up onto something (the keyboard bench?) to take this picture.  He's somewhat bleary-eyed himself, because I'm sure he hauled butt out of bed as soon as he heard that Anneliese had been released from her room, and without supervision, things like books and legos and diapers and Hattie end up in places like the potty. He's exhausted because he was up for at least one diaper change, and likely more, the night before.  He's not dressed either; this picture was almost definitely taken in his underwear. 

He's either holding Charlotte in one arm, trying to get her to sleep... or constantly hushing Nathan and Anneliese to keep the decibels relatively low so Charlotte and I) can sleep in the other room.  Seeing as he's been at this for two hours already, he's likely on the verge of no longer caring if it works.

What you don't see in this picture is how happy Nathan and Anneliese are to play together in the mornings.  The absolute glee from Nathan's corner when someone affirms he doesn't have to get dressed (for someone who's so picky about his clothes, he also loves any excuse not to put them on).  The giggles from Anneliese when she climbs up into Mark's lap and he shows her home videos on the computer.  I'm not around for that stuff either, but I'm dozing contentedly in another room while I hear the muffled sounds of it all.

(Marky, do you remember taking this picture?  Did I get it all right?)

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Restaurant Appearances

Well this has been about the most unremarkable week of "remarkable" weather we've had in Raleigh in a long time.  Technically my kiddos just survived both their first earthquake and first hurricane.  But, um... yeah.  Neither one was particularly impressive here.

The earthquake was centered about three hours north of us, but we definitely felt it here.  For someone like me who's never experienced an earthquake before, feeling the ground shaking underneath me was a bit disconcerting.  For someone like Mark, who's actually been through a real earthquake (he lived in California as a child), I had trouble convincing him that what we felt wasn't just more street construction.  The fact that it's even possible to confuse our little quake with street construction shows exactly how not earth-shattering it really was.

Hurricane Irene caused a bit more trouble.  It rained for a long day and got really windy (duh), which caused lots of trees and limbs and power lines to be down.  Which meant that tens of thousands of people were without power.  But... not us.  Ours was only out for a few minutes.  The damage to homes and buildings and roads just an hour east of us (we live about two hours from the coast) was much more substantial, and it made me glad that this particular hurricane was mostly a non-event for us.  It was almost... boring.

Okay, it was totally boring.  The most interesting thing that happened was an adventure through a packed-out mall parking deck, a rude pickup truck driver who stole the one and only space left, even though he saw we were there first, all to get into the movie theater and find out the one thing we wanted to see was sold out.  Clearly what people do here during boring hurricanes is go to movies at three in the afternoon.

Irene in NC (NOAA NWS Nat'l Hurricane Center)

Unremarkable weird weather aside, something legitimately impressive did happen this weekend: we took all three kids to eat in a restaurant.  In public.  Twice. And we all survived!  Behaved, even!  See?  Impressive. (Both times we had Another Nathan with us, so we were never actually outnumbered by little ones.  But it still counts, right?)

So now the sun is shining, the air is a bit cooler, and aside from all the post-Irene debris scattered everywhere, it's pretty much gorgeous outside.  Which means... bye I'm going swimming now.

Newborn Charlotte

Charlotte at five days old...

It makes me smile and cry at the same time.  She already looks so different than when these pictures were taken just a couple weeks ago.  She's changing way too fast.  So much for keeping this one a baby forever...

Tongue Tie

Well, it took two weeks but we finally figured out what was going on with Charlotte's latch that was making nursing so painful -- she was tongue-tied.

Mark suspected something weird was going on with her tongue almost a week ago when he noticed he couldn't see it at all when she took a bottle (which has a clear nipple... he should be able to see it).  Once he pointed that out, I realized I never saw it when she was nursing either (and I usually could, a little, with Nathan and Anneliese).

And although the nursing pain had abated a good bit, it was still there... and when it went to both sides instead of just on the right, I started researching.  Turns out there were a bunch more indications that's what it could be, so we asked about it at her checkup earlier this week.  Our doctor took a look and he agreed she was indeed a little tongue-tied.

Not Charlotte.  A different tongue-tied baby.

(Tongue-tie, by the way, is when the frenulum -- the piece of tissue that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth -- is too short.  It means that the tongue is too "attached" to the bottom of the mouth, which can cause problems with nursing and eventually eating and speaking as well.)

Charlotte's case was mild, and she had clearly found a way to compensate for the difficult latch and still get enough milk (she had gained close to two pounds since her last checkup ten days earlier... yowza), but since it was still causing me pain, and would be more difficult to fix later when the frenulum is thicker and more formed, we opted to do it now.

They gave her some pain meds, kicked me out of the room, and the procedure basically involved just clipping tissue to allow her tongue more freedom of movement.  It bled a little.  Charlotte was upset but not for long.

Mommy's tears: maybe worse than this.  And definitely not pictured.

I nursed her to calm her down afterwards, and right away I could tell her latch felt so much better.  And when she cries now, her tongue comes way farther out of her mouth.  She's had a fussy few days that I suspect are related to her sore mouth, but we'll get through it. 

I've had a handful of people (several veteran moms, including my own, and even our doctor) tell me in the last few weeks that some nursing pain is normal at the beginning.  But while I definitely got sore with my first two babies while my body eased into breastfeeding, I never had any pain with them (besides Anneleise's bad latch).  So the concept of "normal pain" was sort of lost on me.  Clearly what's normal for some moms is definitely not for others.  Score one more in the category of trusting your instincts.

Just goes to show that every mom is different, every baby is different, and even third-time moms still have something to learn about this whole nursing thing!

Grandparents Galore

Last week we had a steady stream of visitors coming to check out our new arrival. 

For those of you keeping count at home, Nathan and Anneliese and Charlotte have four sets of grandparents.  Although it can be chaotic when it's time to arrange visits, especially around the holidays, most of the time we feel like they're pretty darned lucky to have so many relatives to love (and yes, even spoil) them, and we like being part of a big family.

Marmie (my mom) got to meet Charlotte a week ago Sunday when she brought Nathan and Anneliese back home after their week in Huntersville.

Then on Tuesday, Grandma (Mark's mom) came up and spent the night with us.  She got to finally see our new house, and meet Charlotte...

...and spend some bonding time with all three of her grandbabies.

On Thursday, Opa and Oma (Mark's dad and stepmom) drove up from South Carolina for the morning, and stayed with us for lunch.  They brought toys for big brother and big sister, and lots of hugs for new baby Charlotte.

three generations of Goettsch!

Then in a whirlwind grand finale, Grandpa and Cathy (my dad and stepmom) came to visit on Saturday, bearing barbecue and hugs...

three grandbabies and one more on the way SOON!

...and my Grandpa (who has the distinction of being the only man I know in his generation who never ever seems fazed by baby crying)... 

...and they had Ashley and John hot on their heels.

After all the chaos of the week had died down somewhat, Ashley and John managed all three babies for a few hours so Mark and I could nap.  Together.  Which sounds sweet and sappy but I don't care. It felt oh so good. 

And then they hung out with the kiddies even longer so we could have dinner, just the two of us, out of the house (gotta love the fringe benefits of a baby who learns how to take a bottle way too soon)... and I had my first post-pregnancy beer!  (Which might or might not have made me slightly drunk.  Nine booze free months means it only takes one, apparently.) 

Anyway what all that adds up to is... Ashley pretty much rocks.  And she's going to be an awesome mommy herself in a few short weeks!

For more pictures of Charlotte meeting her grandparents and relatives (and some (non-graphic, don't worry) shots of me teaching Ashley and John about breast pumps)), click here for the photobucket album.

Family on the Greenway

We took our first whole-family outing early last week, the day after Nathan and Anneliese came home from Huntersville.  It was quite the trek -- about two hundred yards down our street to the greenway.  (What?  We still had to load up all the kids and the stroller, so it totally counts.)

All we did was take a walk, but it released some pent-up energy from the kids, and did my mental state a world of good (I don't do well when I feel cooped up and lonely... leaving the house regularly, even in the summer when we don't have much scheduled and Mark is off work anyway so I don't technically need to, is an absolute requirement for me).

We had some bickering over the water bottle, some fussing when one little girl got too tired to walk, and some whining when one little boy fell and skinned his knee. But they made up for that by holding hands and trying to run together (and with Daddy), sitting together in a tree stump and grinning about it, and especially when they both wanted to help push Charlotte in her stroller.  Awwwww.

For even more pictures of Charlotte's arrival and first few weeks at home, click here for the photobucket album.

First Cloth Diaper

Charlotte's cord stump fell off this weekend.  Which in some families would be a milestone in itself, but in our family, it mostly means mommy is super excited about putting her in her first cloth diaper.

!!!!!!!!!!!

She loves it.  I promise.

This one is a Happy Heinys Mini.  It's cute and soft and squishy, and despite my being a little nervous about the bulkiness, it totally fits her.  And it adjusts to get two sizes bigger, so I think these will last us a good while.  (Her Tots Bots Tinies also fit really well right now.)

Best part?  It holds all the poop in.  **mommy passes out from happiness**

Fluffy bums ftw!

New House! We Live Here Now!

Can I still call it the new house?  We've lived here for four months, and we're finally really settled in. 

Before we left for the hospital last week, Mark went around and took a bunch of pictures, because we still hadn't really shared many since we've moved in, and also because with Nathan and Anneliese out of town, and Charlotte still inside me... yeah it was almost clean around here for a minute.

So because you, oh internetty bloggity friends, were so tolerant of renovation pictures and updates, here you go.  Before and after pics of our new house (well, the downstairs living areas, for now).  This is what it looks like now* that we're living in it. 

Kitchen BEFORE:

Kitchen AFTER:

Living room BEFORE:

Living room AFTER:

Bonus room BEFORE:

Bonus room AFTER:

Wow, now that I look at these pictures I realized we need to, like... hang pictures and stuff.  We'll totally make that happen.  By Christmas, I promise.

Next time, bedrooms!

*But way messier.

Bird Bath for Charlotte

A couple days ago, we washed Charlotte off for the first time since the hospital.  (Please please stop acting surprised.)  She can't have a real bath yet, since her cord stump is still hanging on by a thread.  So we did what my Grandma B used to call a "bird bath" -- just mopped her off with a wet soapy washcloth.

She did not love it.

Nathan also did not love it.  He stood by looking over my shoulder in concern, constantly reminding me to be gentle, and to not hurt her, and mommy she doesn't like that!

(They both survived, relatively untraumatized. Obviously.)

And Charlotte looked awfully sweet wrapped up in her hot pink monster towel afterwards. 

(But who doesn't look sweet wrapped up in a hot pink monster towel?  I mean really.)

Every time she keeps her eyes open long enough to meet my gaze for a few seconds (not often), I'm reminded that as much as she looks like Nathan, those big dark eyes are completely reminiscent of Anneliese. 

And I love it just as much this time around.

The Shoelaces are Contagious

This is our good friend (and now, neighbor!) Hayes, whom Nathan adores.  When you're four, there is almost no one cooler than the twelve-year-old who's nice enough to spend time playing with you.

Your daily Nathan

And that person gets just a little bit cooler when he agrees with your taste in shoelaces.

Yes, the orange laces are clearly becoming a Thing in these parts.  Not gonna lie, I didn't see it coming.

Top Ten at Ten Days

Charlotte is ten days old!  Here are the ten best things so far:

1.) She knows me and responds to me.  My voice, my touch.  It totally makes me feel like a real mommy.

2.) Sleeping with her mouth open.

3.) Her squeaks. Still awesome.

4.) Hanging out with Daddy. Even outside doing yardwork.

5.) Snuggling with her on my chest.

6.) Her daily late-afternoon nap in our bed.  She looks so sweet and tiny up there.

7.) The one night when she slept from just after midnight til 6am.  Make no mistake, though, it was just one night. 

8.) Baby yawns.  Even better when squeaky.

9.) Her weird and fuzzy hair. Maybe a better word is... tufty. Or just weird. But I love it.

10.) Her awesome newborn smell that still hasn't worn off because we don't really wash her that much (don't judge). Sweet and spicy and exactly like all three of my newborns have smelled. I want to bottle it and keep it forever, especially knowing Charlotte's my last one.

Nathan and Charlotte

As surprising as Anneliese's quick bonding with Charlotte has been, Nathan's has been anything but.  We fully expected him to be quite taken with his new sister quite fast, and indeed he was. 

He's so good and so gentle, and so concerned when she cries.  He's constantly bringing her things to make her feel better when she fusses -- Kate the puppy, his friend cars, a toy plane, etc.  He's constantly telling us that she's thirsty for milk from mommy... the idea that mommy's milk is Charlotte's drink and food seems lost on him, so he only ever calls her thirsty, not hungry. :)

Yesterday morning while I was on a boob break,* Nathan got to feed Charlotte a bottle.  He took his big brother responsibility very seriously.

And later that morning, I found Charlotte napping in his bed.  Apparently Mark put her there while he was playing upstairs with Nathan and Anneliese.  And Nathan had kindly surrounded his baby sister with some lego and matchbox cars and trucks.**  All totally necessary for sleeping, of course.  Very sweet in a very Nathan way.

He keeps asking me if she knows him yet.  He's clearly anxious for her to be as attached to him as he already is to her.

And these two are definitely cut from the same cloth.  I keep thinking to myself how much Charlotte reminds me of Nathan as a newborn.  It's not in my head!  They look so much alike!

Nathan at 2 days old... Charlotte at 2 days old

Yay for sibling bonding.  :)  If it made me happy when there were only two, I'm excited at the possibilities with three!

*The last boob break I've taken! Yay, it's getting better.  Also the construction seems to have moved down the street somewhat.  Wins all around.

** Yes, yes, we do indeed own a toy tractor trailer with the undertaker on the side.  Nathan calls it his redneck truck. *sigh* THANK YOU ASHLEY.

Street Construction

So when we brought Charlotte home from the hospital last week, we were greeted by lots of road equipment.  Blocking our driveway.  Awesome.

(They actually tried to detour us around the block, and Mark had to pull up and talk to the traffic guard person to convince him we live here and to let us through. Um, totally not parking a block away and walking my new daughter home for the first time.)

This construction has been working its way down our street for a few weeks now (replacing a water main or something), so we knew it would land in front of us eventually. But here's the thing.  It's now been in front of our house for a week.  I don't understand how it could move along at a steady clip and then just stop.  In front of our house. For a week.

I'm over it.

Yes, the kids think the steamrollers and backhoes and dump trucks are fun and interesting.  But that cuteness lasted about half an hour, and then the constant crashing and digging (whatever jackhammer they're using literally shakes our house) and beeping OH THE BEEPING has begun to make me insane.  (Read: irritable.)  My nerves are totally shot.

This is no longer a cute anecdote for Charlotte's baby book.  It's an incredibly obnoxious reality where one machine goes back and forth and back and forth over a ten-yard stretch, BEEPING  on every one of those backs, and then moves fifteen feet and does the same thing for another hour.

I cannot take it any more.

I do not understand how they're not done!  At least with the twenty yard that lie directly in front of my house and driveway.  MOVE. ON.

Ugggggggggh.

This post brought to you by my raging post-partum hormones and mood swings.  You're welcome.

Charlotte's Birth Story

Hey guess what.  Charlotte is a week old.  Yes, already.  So before I forget the details of last Monday, I'm going to recount her birth story.  Now, bear with me.  It's fairly unremarkable how the whole thing went down, except for the last fifteen minutes.  But I guess unremarkable is pretty much the goal when it comes to labor and delivery, amIright?

So shortly before midnight last Sunday, I finally packed my bag for the hospital.  (And I'm not even lying about it this time.)  Not because I was in labor and it was time to go, but because the induction I was hoping it wouldn't come to... was coming. First thing the next morning.

But wouldn't you know, as soon as that dang bag was packed, I started contracting.  Nothing regular, but real contractions that told me it's time.*  I can't even tell you how relieved I felt that things were starting up on their own.  It alleviated so many of the fears I had about inducing before my body agreed it was ready. I went to bed and slept as much as I could.

12am to 4am - I finally get tired of being woken up with each contraction, so I just get up. 

4am to 6:30am - I fill a few hours with my dvr, the computer, and a quick swim.  Because why else do we have a pool in our backyard except for a pre-dawn swim in labor?  I mean really.  Then I sit in the baby's room, wrapped in a towel, and watch it get light outside and feel cheesily happy because it's Charlotte's birthday!

6:30am - I call the hospital to find out what to do about my induction time slot.  Do I come in, even though I'm contracting on my own?  Yes, apparently.  I guess my chart says not to let me go past today (again with the low fluid) so they don't want to risk labor puttering out, and they tell me to come around 8 or 9.

6:30am to 9am - Contractions about ten minutes apart.  Each one reminds me of the terrible horrible awful no good very bad pain, lots of pain that will come if I don't get the epidural in time.  Yes, my fear of that is all-consuming.  I get cranky and stressed.  I take it out on Mark.  (Have I mentioned it before?  I'm lovely in labor.)  We bicker, I shower, we straighten the house, we take one last belly pic, we go to the hospital.  Somehow I decide against breakfast.  This will soon prove to be a terrible decision.

10:30am - Settled in a hospital room, which might be the very same room that both Nathan and Anneliese were born in.  (Yep, just checked. 4B30. Seriously, WakeMed?)  It looks different in the light of day.  Contractions eight minutes apart but not really painful.  IV is in place, pitocin is started, platelet count is approved for epidural (which has been ordered).  A whopping 1cm dilated. Nothing to do but wait and hope it goes fast.

11:55am - It's very quiet in our room.  Contractions every three(ish) minutes, pain is about twice as bad, trying not to cry.  Not miserable, but I'm feeling ready for the epidural.  Mark is having trouble staying awake, he keeps dozing off.  Not in an annoying way, it's sort of sweet.  I'd be doing the same thing except for these contractions.  Now 3cm dilated.

12:30pm - Mark is downstairs in the cafeteria where I sent him for some lunch to perk him up.  Water is broken.  Contractions are suddenly way way way worse, and I start to feel panicky.  Text Mark to tell him please come back (he's run into a church friend who works for the company who's doing some roofing repair work at the hospital today... honestly of all things; they're having lunch together), eyeball the epidural kit on the counter and regret not asking to have it put in earlier.  Like, an hour ago.  Or yesterday.  Owwwwwwwwwwww.

12:35pm - Even though I swore I wouldn't want anyone to know I'm in labor, I'm sending panicky texts to an incredibly reassuring friend, and I realize for a minute that it's sort of... nice that someone else knows where I am and what's going on.  In that mindset, I decide to distract myself from the pain by checking facebook and twitter and reading something (anything omg it hurts) in my google reader.  This works for fifteen minutes or so.

12:50pm -  I realize I have to wait twenty minutes for the second bag of pre-epi fluids to go in, then call the anesthesiologist who will take who knows how long to get here, then he has to actually do his whole needle-spine thing, then it will be fifteen minutes before it starts working.  Bottom line: I'm still at least an hour from pain relief.

1pm - 2:30pm - This is the most painful part of my labor.  Contractions just under two minutes apart.  Fortunately Mark is a labor expert by now, and he's saying and doing all the right things.  Striking a balance between supporting me, distracting me, and reminding me that I've been through much much worse (which half the time annoys me but at the end of the day it's true and therefore helpful).  I'm crying but trying not to panic. I'm mostly failing.

2:45pm - Epidural is in and working moderately: I'm tingly but not totally numb.  Whatevs, I'll take it.  I feel human again.

2:50pm - Still only 3cm dilated? Really? But it hurts. Why is this not working?? My inner this is why I'm scared of inductions voice starts getting louder. My worry about a stalled labor resulting in a c-section gets more pointed. (Yes, just four hours in. I know, I know, it seems dumb. But with Nathan and Anneliese, I was only in active labor for about four hours total. In my mind, I should be holding Sprout by now!)

3pm - Our nurse finds me in tears, worried my epidural is failing (my numb area is getting smaller... not good), re-doses it, and sticks around for a few minutes to make sure it fixes itself (it does).  In the meantime we chat about our kids (she has eight! three biological and five adopted) and our churches, and she's encouraging and nice without being a cheerleader type.  We love her.  Best nurse out of all three labors, hands-down.  Her name is Catherine.

3:15pm - Mark has a healthy one-sided running commentary going, chattering about how my cervix was slow to open with the other two as well, and then just sprang open super fast when it was ready.  And how the doctor keeps saying that's what's going to happen this time too.  But they're all dumb.  What do they know?  I'm totally going to stall out.  They're going to make me have a c-section.  I'm sure of it.

3:25pm - Catherine walks in and finds me in tears again.  She's worried it's from the pain, but really I'm just missing Nathan and Anneliese and all I can think about is hugging them.  She laughs at me, but in a nice way.  Mark texts my dad to ask for pics of them in the hopes of cheering me up.  My mood swings are all over the place. 

3:30pm - Hmmm could my mood be because I'm ravenous? Food and drink have been added to the all I can think about list.  Normally I wouldn't hesitate to cheat and eat a snack in labor, sure that it doesn't really matter.  But right now I'm so convinced I'm headed for a c-section that I don't eat anything.

4pm - I'm 5cm dilated.  Instead of being glad for some progress, I'm discouraged it's not enough progress.  My OB Dr. Bass jokes that he has a coffee date with his wife downstairs in the cafeteria at 6:25, so we definitely will be getting the baby out before then.  I roll my eyes. 

5:15pm - Still at 5cm dilated.  Sprout is doing just fine in there, but I'm hungry and discouraged and can't shake my ever-growing c-section fears.  I just want to be done with it all and hug my baby girl.  And not have to have surgery to make that happen.  More crying.

5:30pm - Another Nathan has texted me about starbucks, donuts, and sent tweets about popcorn.  He can't possibly know the extent of my hunger misery, but I still want to strangle him a little bit.  But at least for fifteen minutes, I have transferred my labor frustrations elsewhere, and my c-section worry is temporarily distracted.  So... win?

6:05pm - I am looking through texted pics from my dad, of Nathan and Anneliese swimming in his neighborhood pool (love!), trying to ignore the increasing pain and pressure, and... is that an urge to push?  No, that can't be right.  I ignore it long enough to send one or two more texts.

6:08pm - Yep, 10cm.  Time to have a baby.  Dr. Bass tells me she's posterior (not facing the floor like she should be) so I  might need to angle differently to push her out than I'm used to.  Ha!  I don't actually know any different.  Nathan was sunny-side up, and Anneliese presented sideways, facing my thigh.  We laugh a little about how bizarre that is, and how her delivering OB didn't even know what to call it in my chart. At any rate, I'm unfazed by the prospect of a posterior delivery.

6:12pm - Everything is almost set up for me to start pushing, when I remember how much I hate hospital hats.  Before I have this baby, we're getting out different hats. She is not wearing that ugly horrible hospital hat!  Mark is a good sport and finds the hats in the hastily-packed hospital bag.  I have a feeling everyone is rolling their eyes but I pretend to ignore it.

6:15pm - It's so calm.  Unlike my two meconium babies, Sprout has managed not to poop inside me, so there are no extra doctors or nurses or nicu people hanging around.  Just me and Mark and Catherine and Dr. Bass.  Who is surely about to miss that coffee date with his wife downstairs.

6:16pm - I push.  Once.  Mark looks at me, wide-eyed, and says wow good job darlin'!  He seems excited.  Dr. Bass reaches for a bulb syringe (you know, those baby booger-sucker things) and I briefly wonder what the heck he needs that for (um, that tiny thing is not going to be any kind of force against all the mess that's about to flow out of me, for realz) when it occurs to me it has to be for Sprout.  Which means her head is out.  Which means I've pretty much delivered.  Already.  Whaaaaa?

6:17pm - Mark says oh look, there's her little hand.  Um, excuse me?  I've watched enough baby shows on tv to know that's not good.  But sure enough, little Sprout is shooting out fist-first (technically a kind of breech) with her right arm crossed over her chest and reaching up along the left side of her head.  And she's facing sideways (like Anneliese! another one?) to boot!  Well hi there, bizarre presentation.  So Dr. Bass tells me not to push anymore and he oh so very carefully pulls her torso out, working around her shoulder and arm.

6:20pm - Happy birthday, Sprout! :)  She's all the way out, arms and shoulders working just fine. Praise the Lord!

Immediately after delivery, I was oh so happy I got to hold her right away (Nathan and Anneliese's meconium prevented that with either of them).  She was lying on my chest when they cleaned her up, and when Mark cut the cord.  It was a really nice few minutes (well, a lot of minutes... she was quite the gunky little lady).

And I'm happy to say that even though it took twice as long as my other labors, the induction definitely wasn't as bad as I had worried.  And the end result?  Definitely worth it. 

*for Mark and Another Nathan: it's bo time, to be exact

Meeting Baby Sister

Nathan and Anneliese came home today!  After ten days with grandparents, they're finally back.  And we're so glad!  Even as we were enjoying an easy(ish) quiet(ish) week with just Charlotte, Mark and I missed our big kids like crazy.

They were both very excited to meet their new baby sister. 

Nathan kept asking us is that Charlotte? as if he wasn't sure this is the baby we've been waiting on, this is the baby that's no longer inside mommy's tummy (and he definitely didn't know what to make of my no-longer-pregnant status... he kept touching my belly and asking why Charlotte's not in there anymore)!  He even got to hold her. Charlotte was less than thrilled, which worried Nathan a bit. But he did just fine. :) 

Anneliese was far more interested in her baby sister than I thought she'd be.  She kept saying baby, baby, and wanting to play with her (even when we wanted her to do other things... like eat lunch... and take a nap).  She must have hugged her and kissed her a hundred times over the course of the afternoon.

And... she shared Hattie with Charlotte!  I'm pretty sure that in her toddler love language, that's the sweetest most selfless little gesture Anneliese could have made. 

Yes, I cried a little.  (Regardless of the fact that she totally took Hattie back ten minutes later when she needed some soothing of her own.  Whatevs.  It was still sweet and awesome.)

For a while, Anneliese was so mesmerized by Charlotte that she pulled up Nathan's extra car booster seat and plopped down in front of the baby swing and just stared at her.  Like she was settling in for a good show or something.  :)

After their naps, both kids gave Charlotte the birthday present they made for her at Build-a-Bear a few weeks ago... Kate the puppy.  I couldn't believe it, but Charlotte actually seemed to like it.  She buried her face into its fur, gnawed at it a little, and then dozed off with her head resting on its head.  Made me laugh. 

And afterwards, any time I got up and took Charlotte somewhere without Kate, Nathan (who is already an expert on his new sister, of course) would rush up to me and put it in my lap and tell me Charlotte needs this! 

So now all my babies are happily sleeping under one roof.  Even though the littlest one will surely be awake in the next hour, this still makes me unspeakably happy.  Yes, juggling three will be hard, maybe harder than I'm wise enough to realize right now, but that's still how I want it -- all three of them, at home, with me.