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Month: July 2018

Elias’s Birth Story

7 / 31 / 187 / 31 / 18

As of right now, Elias is just 6 hours and 10 minutes old, and he’s spent most of that time asleep. (Fingers crossed that his early sleepiness bodes well for good sleep habits later on!)

Sona had been having irregular contractions for several days, but they became more regular on Sunday night, and she contracted every 7-8 minutes all day on Sunday.

Still, when things didn’t seem to be progressing quickly, she decided to go to work yesterday morning. After talking with her OB, though, she scheduled a mid-day appointment to check on the size of the baby, as there was some concern about him getting too large for delivery. (Finn got stuck for quite a bit.)

Sona was so convinced that she was in labor that we approached the OB appointment like the real deal, getting the house ready, loading the car with our hospital bags, and dropping off Sona’s car to our long-time babysitter, who would be responsible for bringing Finn home from school. We also told my mom, Mimi, to get on an airplane.

The OB agreed and, after seeing that Sona was steadily contracting and that her water was so close to bursting that our OB was fearful she’d break the bag by checking dilation, she told us to go across the street and check into labor and delivery–we were having a baby!

We checked in at around 2:30 and immediately got placed into a room. They hooked Sona up to monitors and, not long after, the on-call OB came in to game-plan. Sona was steadily contracting, but the contractions weren’t as regular as they would have liked. Still, the fact that the water was about to break any second (which the on-call doc confirmed, too) and the fact that there were already concerns about baby getting too big was enough to convince the doctor to move forward with labor. She mentioned starting Pitocin, but we decided to hold off.

At around 7:00, Sona went ahead and got her epidural and, because it became clear that contractions weren’t progressing quickly enough, and we decided to go ahead and start Pitocin not long after. Luckily, Sona never really experienced any extreme discomfort. We expected that the water would break quickly, per the doctors’ warnings, and we didn’t want to be in the position of not having time to do an epidural before pushing, so we took the doc’s advice and did it early enough to curtail any discomfort.

The waiting was tough, but the labor wasn’t particularly bad. Once again, Sona never made a peep. Honestly, if you watched the whole thing, you wouldn’t even know that she felt one second of discomfort. She was a total champ.

Luckily, we got to sleep from around 10:00-3:00. At that point, the baby’s heart rate became slightly irregular, and there were a few tense moments when you could tell that the doctor was debating whether or not to take action. Luckily, Elias rallied, and, at 3:30, Sona started pushing.

The whole process was so quiet, calm, and peaceful. I held her leg, took pictures when I could, and did my best to make sure she was okay. I kept thinking, “Are we really having a baby right now?”

Once again, like Finn, Elias’s shoulders had a hard time coming through Sona’s pelvis, but they found their way at 4:03, and he was born pink and screaming–unlike Finn, who was blue and had to be resuscitated.

The docs wanted to get him straight into the hands of the pediatricians, as they were still a little concerned about how much his heart-rate dipped. They cut the cord quickly and whisked him into the little neonatal room adjacent to the birthing suite, where we watched as they checked every finger and toe. Meanwhile, Sona didn’t have a single bead of sweat on her.

After a bit of assessment, they declared Elias healthy and CHUNKY–8.12 pounds and 22”. He’s a big, big boy! He had some limited movement in his left arm, which they think is likely due to his shoulder getting slightly stuck; it already seems to be improving.

Mommy and baby are happy and healthy, and we all feel–for now–surprisingly well-rested. Our little chunky nugget is starting to squirm, and I want to go scoop him up.

I’m so proud of my wife, who is a beast, and I’m so in love with our little piglet. I can’t wait until he meets his big brother. I’ve already told him how much they will love each other–and how much we love them both.

 

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Dear Sona, You’re In Labor

7 / 31 / 187 / 31 / 18

Dear Sona:

It’s 10:49 PM. Today, at around 2:00, while at an OB appointment, our doctor told us to go across the street and check into labor and delivery. “Let’s have a baby!” she said. So, here we are.

You’re sleeping a bit, while you can, and you told me to get some sleep, too. I probably should, but I can’t. Instead, I’m writing to you.

This afternoon, at 2:30, we got placed into a room. At around 3:00, the resident confirmed that your “bag was about to burst.” At 7:45, you got an epidural. Now, you’ve been on a Pitocin drip for nearly an hour in hopes that this whole thing moves along.

It looks like we’re going to have a 7/31 baby. Since that’s the birthday of one of my favorite people in the whole world (shout out, Stephanie!) and Harry Potter, too, apparently, I think that sounds pretty dang good.

But for the past 8 hours, we’ve been in this little hospital room, waiting for our second little boy. Judging by your on-again, off-again labor, he’s clearly going to be another stubborn Leo, but we’ve grown to love that characteristic in our first Leo boy, and I’m sure we’ll love it in this one, too.

While we’ve sat here, waiting, we haven’t turned on the TV or watched videos on our phones, we’ve just talked. We’ve been so calm. You’ve been so calm. (Before we got here, we weren’t so calm. I was frustrated that we had decided to wash all of the couch cushion covers the night before we thought you might go into labor, and you were vacuuming furiously–right up until the second we had to leave the house.) We need to be better about that.

But since we’ve been here, we’ve been a team; we’ve been at our very best. “I don’t think we’ve talked this much in years,” you said a little earlier. “And we probably won’t ever get the chance to talk this much again,” I replied.

I’ll do better with that, I promise.

Right now, though, before life gets really busy and we are so tired that we can’t even function and before you feel like a “milk cow” and we are both completely overwhelmed with caring for our newborn and our toddler and juggling the 10,000 things that all moms have to juggle, I just want to say: thank you for being my partner throughout all of this, and thank you for giving me these boys.

I love you–and our little Leos–more than you will ever, ever know. I wouldn’t want to do this life with anyone else.

xox–D

 

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Baby Deux: What We’ll Do Again & What We Won’t

7 / 27 / 187 / 27 / 18

We’ve scheduled an induction for August 3. If Elias doesn’t make an appearance before his due date, he will be making an appearance on it. Sona is past the point of discomfort and, since Finn had shoulder dystocia, making his delivery a little difficult, we don’t want to wait for Elias to get bigger.

It’s strange to think that, at this time next week, we will very likely be a family of four. I am ready for a new baby. We worked especially hard for this one, and we know it is going to be our last. So, we’re romanticizing Elias’s newborn days in a way that, perhaps, we won’t once we’re ragged and tired.

Of course, because time is a thief, I’ve also been thinking a lot about Finn’s newborn days, which seem impossibly long ago. If you weren’t with us then, you can look back at some of my older posts, detailing that time, like this one, about the first day of his life.

I am so glad I have dozens of blog posts from Finn’s first year, as they not only help me relive that time, but they also remind me of what life was like for us as parents of a wee one. I’ve already been re-reading blog posts as a way to remind myself of some of the practical things: how we got Finn to be such a good sleeper, when we introduced solids, what our daily routine was in the first few weeks, etc. I know this stuff will come back to us naturally–like riding a bike–but it’s also nice to have record of the fact that we’ve already done this, and we all survived.

There are some things, though, that we are approaching differently with Elias. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and we definitely feel like we learned some things with Finn that will lead us to change things up a bit with Elias.

So, I thought I’d write a bit about what we will do the same–and what we won’t. Here it goes:

We will follow the exact same “sleep training” program. “Sleep training program” sounds a bit more rigid than what we did, actually. Still, there’s a reason this is first on the list: Finn is, and always has been, an amazing sleeper. He regularly sleeps past 8:30, goes to bed without a fuss, doesn’t wake in the night, and still takes 3-4 hour naps. We got very lucky in this regard, and folks are quick to remind us like Elias will likely be the exact opposite. Still, I’m going to follow the same protocol, which actually isn’t any formal protocol at all. We did a mix of “le pause,” from Bringing Up Bebe, starting when Finn was first born, and incremental night weaning, necessitated by Sona returning to work at eight weeks, and a tiny little bit of cry-it-out–but not until he was several months old. The fact is, Finn slept 3-4 hour stretches from the get-go, and he was sleeping through the night in his own crib, pretty much unassisted, by 7 weeks. It will be a bit trickier this time, as Finn and Elias will be sharing a room, but I plan to do things as similarly to what we did with Finn as possible. I talk a bit more about his transition to STTN here, and I’m happy to share more, if anyone wants to chat.

I will not stress as much about “connecting” with Elias in the first few days. With Finn, I struggled a lot with insecurities about whether or not, as the non-bio mom, I’d connect with him easily. That stress overshadowed some of my interactions with him in the days when we were at the hospital, which I wrote about here. I also spent a lot of time running around, checking on the pets and taking care of out-of-town guests, in those first couple of days, which meant that I missed out on some hospital time. All of that got me pretty down, and I had more than a few good cries. What I now know is that I will love Elias to the ends of the world and back again, and our relationship doesn’t hinge on how much time we get together in the first 48 hours, though, of course, I want all of the time. With Elias, I’ll be more confident that things will progress naturally, and I won’t let worry about that interfere with the birth.

I will not wear an ugly grandma bra for my first skin-to-skin interaction. Okay, this is silly, but really: LOOK AT THIS PHOTO. Don’t worry. I already bought a simple black sports bra for the occasion.

Sona will be better at self-monitoring her emotions. This is a biggie. Sona is, now, quick to say that she didn’t enjoy her maternity leave with Finn. She struggled a lot as a new mom, and, looking back, I think we both wonder whether she had post-partum depression. Anxiety and fear overtook her ability to experience much joy at having a newborn, and as a result, she doesn’t remember much of that time–and she has a whole lot of regret about that. This time around, she wants to be more proactive about her emotions. That means a lot of things: seeing a therapist regularly, checking in with herself about how it’s going, and acting quickly when she feels like something is off. She wants to enjoy Elias in a way that she wasn’t able to enjoy Finn, and she knows now that she can’t get those days back.

We will try to maintain a more “normal” schedule. The luxury of only having one baby–and not a toddler–is that you can full enclose yourself in the baby bubble, which is a very real thing. Our whole lives revolved around little newborn Finn and HIS schedule. He was a night owl, and he regularly went to bed at 10-11 for the first few months. Our pediatrician actually encouraged this, saying that it’s a normal pattern for newborns, and we’d do best to let him adjust his schedule slowly. So, we did. We ate dinner at 9-10 each time, went to bed at around midnight, slept in until 10 or so, and so on. With Finn around, that just won’t be possible. If we try to do that, we aren’t going to survive.

We will shower with Elias. Finn took a couple of baths in his first week, and then I started to shower with him. In our little garden apartment, we didn’t have a large sink or much counter space, and using the big baby tub was a pain in the butt. So, showering started as a convenience, but I quickly realized that it provided the perfect opportunity to cuddle and connect. So, we kept it up. To this day, Finn showers with me every single night, and it is my favorite time together. He takes no more than 5 baths a year, usually, and I don’t plan for him–or for Elias–to begin bathing on their own anytime soon. Family showers for the win! (For what it is worth: a month ago, I showered with Finn, his BFF Veen, and Veen’s little bro, Dev–all at the same time! So, I’ve got this.)

We will try to be more protective of our family time. When Finn was born, so was Hotel Aquiline, as our tiny little garden apartment became a revolving door for out-of-town guests. The trouble is, when everyone you love lives far away, you have to host a lot of visitors, and we were so thankful that folks wanted to come meet little Finn–and we wanted them to meet him! But hosting out-of-towners is stressful, even when they say things like “you don’t have to entertain me!” That stress is compounded when you have a newborn. This time, we’re hoping that we can keep the visitors at bay, even for just a short while, so that we can really bask in the newness of our family of four.

We will not (did not) buy too many baby shoes or onesies or blankets. I mean, why didn’t anyone tell me that babies don’t wear shoes? And we were given onesies and blankets by pretty much everyone we knew.

We will take all the photos–and more. Finn is the most photographed child in human history, and I have zero regrets about that. I look at our old photos constantly, and they are our most valued possessions. I plan to photograph Elias just as much–if not more! And I hope to be in some of those photos, too, which is something I didn’t do as much with Finn. I also play to re-do my 365 day project, wherein I took a DSLR photo of Finn every single day for a year. With Elias, though, I want to do his first 365 days.

We will opt out of a nanny and into daycare. I was lucky to stay home with Finn for the first 6 months of his life, and I’ll be able to do the same with Elias. After that, Finn joined a nanny share with another little girl, which lasted about 8 months. When it was clear that wasn’t going to work out, we had to scramble to find a daycare. It was absolutely the most stressful part of Finn’s first year. In the end, I wish we would’ve just done daycare from the get-go. We absolutely LOVE where Finn is now, and we love everyone who works there. He developed so much more quickly when he was socialized with a bunch of other kids, and daycare was, for us, a thousand times more reliable and stress-free than a nanny. Elias will be starting daycare right at 6 months, and we’re super happy with that decision.

We will chill the *&$! out. Every meme you’ve ever seen about first and second babies is true. We were way too overprotective and anal about Finn, and we made the lives of grandparents and babysitters and everyone else who touched him pretty much miserable. With Elias, we will chill out. He will be fine. You want to come take my baby for a day? Go for it! I won’t give you a 10-page instructional manual, I promise.

We will be more present. Finn was our first baby, and we were so stressed out about everything (see above). My maternity leave was, to this day, the best period of my life so far. I relished every single second of being with him, but I still wish I would have paid closer attention during that time because, now, I know how quickly the baby phase passes. With Elias, I really, really hope that we can give ourselves the grace to stumble, be tired, be a little cranky, but still recognize that, once that time is gone, we will never, ever get it back. And one day, we will absolutely ache for these years. (I already ache for Finn’s baby years.) This, more than anything, is what I hope for the next few months.

 

 

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Day Out with Thomas, 2018

7 / 16 / 18

On Saturday, we went to experience a Day Out with Thomas for the second year in a row. Finn was able to enjoy it so much more this year, and we had a great time.

The forecast said it would be 94 degrees and sunny in Union, IL, where the event took place, and so I really tried to convince Sona not to go. I didn’t want her to go into labor on Thomas–or at all. But Finn has literally been talking about this event for months, ever since we first bought the tickets in early April. So, there was no way I was going to talk Sona out of going. We both wanted to be there for our boy.

Luckily, it was cloudy for most of the morning, and it even drizzled a bit. We welcomed the mist and the cloudiness, as we were just happy to avoid full sun.

Finn was so excited to ride Thomas and Percy, and we were excited to make the most of what will likely be one of our last pre-baby weekend.

Here are a ton of picks, including some last year/this year comparisons!

When you ask a very busy toddler to smile, this is what you get…

 

Riding these little trains was also a highlight of last year’s event:

Same train last year:

He’s grown just a bit…

He is OBSESSED with this tattoo. We’ve had to be very careful not to wash it off.

What a difference a year makes:

I love this boy more than words.

Wanted a quick train “massage”…

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22 Days

7 / 11 / 187 / 11 / 18

If we manage to keep Elias in Sona’s belly until her due date, I only have 22 days left as the momma of only one boy. And, judging by how things are progressing, I don’t think we’ll make it the full 22 days.

We are ready for Elias to be here. The house is in order. The baby clothes are washed (and soon to be put away). All of Finn’s baby gear has been pulled out of storage, reassembled, and cleaned.

I am prepared for Elias. But, if I’m being honest, I don’t feel at all prepared to share my heart with another little boy.

Please don’t write to me, telling me that your heart grows. That you find the love. That the minute Elias is born, all will be right in our family-of-four world. I know these things to be true. I believe these things will happen.

Yet, this isn’t a post about logic or reason. This is a post about how I’ve found myself in tears numerous times in the past couple of weeks, trying to imagine what life will be like when I can no longer give Finn 100% of my love and attention. I’m crying now, just thinking about it, again.

Yesterday, Sona found out she is 3cm dilated and 70% effaced. The news set us into a frenzy of anxiety and stress and excitement. And a bit of panic. The irony is that we are not at all panicked about having another baby. Some of that may stem from our naivete about just how nutty life will be with a newborn and a toddler–or from the fact that we remember Finn’s early days really fondly, and we feel like we missed out on the often fraught exhaustion that sometimes clouds the newborn weeks.

But most of that is because we are both very worried about how Finn will fare during the transition. First and foremost, we’re stressed about having to leave Finn for the delivery. Of course, these things can’t really be planned, and the uncertainty of not knowing when Sona will go into labor–and who will be around to watch our toddler–is stressful. My mom is set to arrive on our due date, and she can hop a flight as soon as we call her, should Sona go into labor sooner, but she’s still at least a day away. To complicate matters further, my parents are going to be out of the country–on a remote, isolated Bahamian island–all of next week. So, there are 7 days in which they absolutely couldn’t be here.

Because of this, we have our favorite long-time babysitter on call. She’s got a bag packed and, should we need her to, she’ll be here to stay with Finn. But he’s never done an overnight with her–and he hasn’t done an overnight without us in well over a year. When you combine that with the fear and suddenness that will certainly accompany his finding out that we’ve had to leave without warning–and possibly without saying goodbye–and this momma is a nervous wreck about how all of it will go down.

So, for many reasons–those already mentioned, along with the fact that I have 10 days left in both the class I am taking and the class I am teaching–we’re really hoping that Elias hangs on until late July.

But regardless of timing–of whether papers have been written or graded or cribs have been assembled or grandparents are on standby–I have a seismic, raw ache and a pretty deafening sense of melancholy about letting go of the past 3 years in which Finn has been the most beautiful, spirited sun around which our little lives have happily rotated.

When we were pregnant with Finn, I experienced a similar ache, bemoaning the life Sona and I had lived as a twosome for 15 years. This is more acute, though. This is also accompanied by raging mom guilt–and by the knowledge that, whereas Sona and I can still escape for a week, pretending its just the two of us again–I know that, come early August, I’ll never again be able to have my whole heart so blissfully full of just one little boy.

Here’s the thing about being a mom: it’s a very different kind of love. It’s a love that warrants a special kind of attentiveness and care. A love that is engaged and active and alert. The way I love Finn won’t fundamentally change, I know, but the way I practice my love for him will have to, especially in the beginning.

And this is all, really, good. This is a change we prayed for and worked for and welcome. A month from now, I’ll be writing a blog post admonishing the fear and trepidation and sadness I am feeling now. I do know that.

But right now, I just want to have a few more days with the little boy who is my sun and my moon and the thing I love most in the entire wide, scary, beautiful universe. We have 22 days left, hopefully, and I want to relish them as much as I can.

These photos are from a night a couple of weeks ago. It was on the cool side of warm, the sun was setting, and we decided to forgo bedtime and take an evening scooter ride to the beach. We walked the fog-draped pier, waved at kayakers as they headed towards downtown, and watched as Finn splashed around in the water, the city we love so much blurring into the background.

I stood on the beach that night and thought, “Damn, I’m so lucky.” And I am. I so, so am.

 

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