Baby V

It's hard to believe that little Virginia joined us six weeks ago (time flies!).  I've been meaning to sit down to catch up with the world for quite some time now, but of course every time I sit down at the computer, Baby V has other plans for me.

V had her six-week appointment today and got several shots, so she's still sleeping it off and I'm taking the opportunity to get the laundry done, the dishes unloaded, and some words on the screen.  It's been a whirlwind the last six weeks, and I feel like I'm just starting to get a handle on life with a baby.  She's now sleeping 10 pm - 5 am, so I feel much less haggard all the time (though recent photos would argue that I'm still looking haggard).

As I previously mentioned, baby girl remained stubbornly transverse until the end, so we went ahead with the scheduled c-section.  I had mostly come to terms with the idea, so I tried to enjoy the fact that there was no tedious waiting game.  My mom flew in the night before, and I took a leisurely approach to the morning of: I slept in, took a long shower, and even dried my hair.  I had Blake take a before picture of my enormous stomach, and then had my Mom take a before picture of our family of three.  Yes, three.  We count Bear.

Our check-in time was 10:45, so at 10:40 we got in the car and drove the approximately 2 minutes to the hospital and waddled in with our bags.  I'm glad I wasn't in labor, because the check-in process took a while (I guess it was a big day for babies?).

We spent the next several hours in the labor and delivery room where I was hooked up to monitors and IVs, watched my feet and legs slowly swell to epic proportions, and Blake had a grand old time in his fancy doctor scrubs.  The surgery was scheduled for 12:45 p.m., but I guess our nurses decided to take a long lunch or something because we didn't walk down to the OR until about 2:00.

It was surreal to walk into an operating theater with the bright lights, sterile everything, and Black Eyed Peas playing over the speaker system.  Not really the way anyone expects to give birth, right?

I'll spare you all the gory details, but in a nutshell: the spinal didn't work the way it was supposed to, so I felt quite a lot of what was going on (the horror! the horror!), something went wrong with my organs at one point, leading to me losing lots of blood (lots of which I could see splattering up on the sheet separating me from the surgery. Again, the horror! the horror!), and I basically spent the entire 45 minutes crying and wishing I could get up and run away while Blake held my hand and tried not to look panicked.

Also, I hope V is happy being an only child. No more c-sections for me, thank-you-very-much.

But in the end, it was worth it.  Because that little squish on the right, came out of that big squish (me - check out those chins!) on the left.

Little V cried for about two seconds when the wiped her off, then as soon as they gave her to Blake, she quieted right down and stared at him.  She peacefully stared at her daddy for the rest of the surgery, which was probably the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

 

 I'll also spare you the tedious details of our three day hospital stay, but by the time we left I think I'd gained more weight than I walked in with.  Those IV fluids really stuck with me for about a week after I came home.  For your viewing pleasure - or displeasure- here's our first photo as a family of four.  Makeup-less and swollen to epic proportions, but happy as can be to be home with our darling baby girl.  All those years of work, doctors, and medicines were worth it.

In Full Bloom

It really is pathetic how slow I've been to record any recent events in my life.  All I can say is that I'm very slow, very waddle, and it's taken a very long time to get my house somewhat recovered from the bathroom renovations.  I have a new a profound dislike of drywall dust.  That stuff gets in every crevice and demands to be scrubbed off rather than simply dusted.  I'm convinced I'll be finding the stuff hiding in corners for the next three years.

But I digress.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends threw me the loveliest baby shower (my Mother-in-Law hosted it at her house).  The theme was "In Full Bloom," which was perfect for the first sunny day we'd had in weeks.  Adrienne is an interior designer and Tiffany is a party planner, so as you can imagine, it was a gorgeous shower and I felt incredibly lucky to be celebrating Maybe Baby's arrival.

One of my favorite blogs is a hilarious but also terrible place on the internet called GOMI (Get Off My Internets) where people go to snark on other people's blogs.  It can be quite cruel, but it's often extremely funny.  My favorite is when snarkers begin calling bloggers "Cara de Pan."  For the longest time, I thought it was a reference to a specific fashion blogger, but then I finally realized that it's a translation of "Bread Face."  Well, look at these photos and call me Cara.  I'm positively puffy.

Also, I make the funniest faces when left to my own devices/when I don't realize I'm being photographed.  I've spared you most of my funny faces, but just believe me when I tell you there were quite a few pictures that had me giggling to myself as I flipped through them.  This is all proving to me the underlying/subconscious reason I don't "remember" to take many photos with me in them.  Oh well.  There's a certain charm to being able to remember oneself just as puffy as one actually was during month nine of pregnancy.

Back to the main event: as I said, the shower was beautiful.  The food was amazing. I have the most talented friends who can bake and cook with the best of them.  There were dark chocolate coconut macaroons, fruit tarts, turkey and brie sandwiches, raspberry french macarons, Italian sodas... I'm getting hungry just thinking about all of the delicious food I ate that morning.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have the most generous friends.  Maybe Baby will be the best dressed and most well-read baby around.  A lot of the women at the shower were members of my book group and it was fun that so many of them brought their favorite baby books to add to Maybe's collection.  It's fun to have old favorites that I remember from my childhood, and so many new others that I hadn't read before.  I can tell I'm going to have lots of fun reading to her every day (or to myself at the beginning?).

It's hard to believe (but extremely exciting) that we'll be meeting her in less than a week!

Transverse

Well hello nearly defunct blog.  It's been a while.

Mostly it's been a while because every time I sit down and write I end up complaining about something.  And really, my life is quite cushy and I have no reasons to complain, so therein lies the conundrum of personal blogging.

Objectively, I look at the past few weeks and things have been pretty awesome:

Maybe Baby is almost here.
Maybe Baby is healthy.
We're getting a brand new bathroom and fixing other issues in our house that have long been on our list.

I'll admit, we're pretty spoiled.

But then there are the little things like our renovations dragging out a week later than expected because of the awful March ice storms we've had, and the cabinetry orders getting messed up and costing us more time and money.

And the bigger things, like this baby being stubbornly transverse.  I had no idea that was even a thing until the ultrasound tech told us that baby girl is laying with her head on my left, her bum on my right, and her feet dangling down and around "like a little doughnut."  Her positioning makes things fairly uncomfortable for me (my ribs feel like a hot poker is being pushed up against them at all times..hooray!), but mostly what it means is an automatic c-section.

We're crossing our fingers that she'll surprise us and flip into position, but we've scheduled a date just in case she is just as stubborn as I am.  It was surreal to schedule with the hospital the exact date and time for baby's arrival (April 15th at 12:45 p.m. in case you're wondering - Best tax day ever!).

I know it's ridiculous to complain about not getting the birth experience I was hoping for when the baby is healthy and c-sections are so safe, but it's been a hard mental/emotional adjustment to make.  I think what's been hardest is that the entire pregnancy process has been so, for lack of a better word, medicalized.

A doctor created the baby in a petri dish.  A doctor put the baby in me.  A doctor is going to cut the baby out of me.

Some good friends of ours used to joke that they were working on a new invention called the "Incu-baby" that would gestate a baby for you so that you didn't have to be pregnant.  A sort of gestational carrier that you could set up in your living room and dump feed into every once in a while like a fish tank.  Well, I've been joking with them lately that the Incubaby (TM) already exists.  It's me!  Put an embryo in.  Feed it anti-nausea pills and the occasional milkshake.  Take the baby out when it's ready.   Voila!

All joking aside, I've been surprised at how difficult it has been emotionally.  To feel like a gestational carrier instead of a mother.  I'm sure that'll change the moment the baby makes her debut, but man, am I ready to have that day come.

I vow to get my writing mojo back soon so that I can share all about the fabulous baby shower that my friends put on for us last weekend, and the finished product bathroom (if it ever gets to that point), but until then, this is the Incubaby (TM) signing off.  I need a nap. And maybe a milkshake.

Getting there

At almost 33 weeks along, I'm getting to the point in my pregnancy where I want to schedule my doctors appointments for first thing in the morning, wear my lightest clothing, and make sure to shave my legs. All of this in preparation, of course, for stepping on that scary metal scale.  While the nurse keeps moving the balance further and further to the right, my eyes get bigger and bigger.

I've never considered myself an incredibly vain person, but the bi-weekly weigh-ins have made it fairly clear that I'm a little more prideful than I thought.  

I'll tell myself that it's just Maybe's gigantic head (thanks Blake...) but it's probably my diet of grapefruit, cheese, triscuts, and cookies. 

Anyway...

I'm also at the point in my pregnancy where I've apparently decided that it's a good idea to take on big home projects.  Right now there's a crew jack hammering the bejeebers out of our upstairs bathroom while I wear a surgical mask and earplugs and hide out in the family room.  Did you know that in 1951 bathroom tile is securely fastened in about three inches of pure concrete (both the walls, the shower and the floor)?  That's a whole lot of concrete...a whole lots of dust...and a whole lot of extra weight that our trusty floors won't have to hold up anymore.  

Blake and I have spent the past two weeks stewing over finishes and seeing the dollar signs fly as we've ordered all of the supplies.  The UPS guy and I have become quite close (he has generously carried things into the house for me since I can't lift them from the porch and Blake is still recovering from a back injury).  Our living room looks like a Home Depot exploded and there is a tub filling up the majority of our study.  Like Blake says, it's like we are camping in our own home.  It's awesome...and awesomely hilarious.

We have been dreaming of this bathroom renovation for years and finally felt like we should pull the trigger before Maybe gets here.  It's madness to be sure, but at least it's fun madness and it comes with an end date.  

I can't wait to post the before and after photos.  No more five by five bathroom!  No more knees touching the tub when you're on the toilet.  Such luxury! 

Year of the Sheep(adoodle)

Oh, Mr. Bear.  How I love thee. Let me count the ways.

Oh, Baby Bear.  How I get frustrated with thee. Let me multiply the ways.

My goal for the past several months has been to keep Bear mat-free so that we can keep his fur long.  We prefer the sheepdog look to the poodle look, but his dense fur is pretty high maintenance, so it takes eom real doing. 

Blake built me a laundry/craft table in the unfinished portion of our basement and I've found that it works really well as a grooming table.  It's high enough that when I put Bear on it he doesn't try to jump off.  In fact, he just stands there in utter dejection while I brush him and tell him what a good dog he is.  It makes me feel bad that he's scared to be up so high, but it's the only way to brush him without him thinking it's a game. Everything is a game to this little guy.

I gave myself a big pat on the back when I picked Bear up at the groomer a week ago.  He came out looking great and had maintained most of his fluff.  This is a first.  Usually he has to get a short cut because his matting is out of control. But this time. This time was different.  This time he came out with a serious swagger to his fluffy walk.

Blake and I marked the occasion by pulling out the nice camera and getting some glamour shots of our main man.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I felt like squealing "it's so fluffy I'm going to die!" every few seconds.  Yes, he's a soft as he looks.

Lest you think he's all fluff and sweetness. Here are some other Bear anecdotes for your comedic enjoyment:

1.  A couple days before he was groomed, there was a day where I had to give Bear three baths. Twice because he had been playing in the snow and was covered in snowballs (dingleberries, we like to call them), and once because he had a stow-away cling-on.

I'm usually pretty good at spotting cling-ons.  In fact, I'm usually meticulous about keeping his "poop-shoot" shaved (oh the ways your dignity leaves you when you get a puppy).  But this one he got past me.  Well, he got it past me until he decided to jump up on the couch and drag his bum across my lap, leaving a very unpleasant-smelling skid mark in his wake.

Needless to say, bath number three included the use of surgical gloves and a plethora of gagging.

2.  I made the mistake of letting Bear run around on the neighborhood tennis court with his friends for over an hour.  The poor guy ran down his paw pads and got blisters.  I felt like the worst dog-owner in history as Bear spent the next day carefully licking his paws.  Uhg.  The poor guy didn't understand why he wasn't allowed to go on walks the next couple days.

When I finally took him out on a short walk, he made it three blocks before he sat down and refused to go any further.

Of course this was the one time I'd forgotten to bring my phone, so I couldn't call Blake to come pick us up.

Three blocks doesn't sound like much, but I'm 7 months pregnant, waddly in the extreme, and not supposed to pick up things over 25 pounds (Bear weighs in at a heafty 32 pounds).  But I couldn't let the poor guy suffer and didn't want to drag him home on his sore feet.

So I picked him up.  And he was in so much pain that he started head butting me and crying.  And I started the heavy, stuttery breathing that precedes crying.  I waddled three blocks home with a head-butting dog and a determination not to have a breakdown before entering my home.

I made it through the door, but just barely...I started crying so hard I almost fell over.  Blake, who was on a conference call on the couch, looked at me with panic in his eyes.  Hormones. I tell ya.  They make a girl do the strangest things.

Alls well that ends well, though.  Bear's paws are just fine.  And I used enough crying power to get me through the next year.  Go team.

Bonjour Bebe

Two important questions before I get into things:

1.  Why did I think that horizontal stripes would be a good look for pregnant-me on a night where there would be photographic evidence?

2.  How in the world do I always forget to take photos?

Now that that's out of the way...

Ashton (far left) and Meg (just to my right) threw me the loveliest baby shower while I was out in Utah.  Meg has a three year old and is due with her second daughter in a couple weeks, and Ashton has two little boys at home, so I was impressed and honored that they'd had the energy and wherewithal to plan and execute such a wonderful party.

Note: Rachel F. (far right) is pregnant with her 4th (!!) and is due in May.  Don't I have the most beautiful friends? Also, her husband surprised her at Christmas with tickets to come out to Utah the week of the shower, which was the most glorious gift to me.

While we ate the delicious food that Ashton and Meg has prepared (Dainty lemon cookies! An assortment of cheeses! Fruits, crackers, candies!  Be still my heart!), we spent the evening reminiscing about old times and telling funny stories from growing up.  I've known Ashton and Rachel since 4th grade and Meg since 9th grade, so there are all sorts of awkward and hilarious anecdotes we remember about each other.

I wish I had thought to get a picture with the whole group, but as I mentioned above, I just plain forgot. I'd like to blame it on the influence sudafed and antibiotics, or even pregnancy brain, but I think it's more just that I never remember such things.

The entire group was quite large and was comprised of friends from growing up, college roommates, friends from Paris study abroad, friends from DC who now live in Utah, my mom and aunt and grandmother, and the mothers of my childhood friends.

Not to be trite, but I felt so loved that evening.  It was wonderful to have all of the important women in my life there to celebrate with me.

I opened an almost embarrassing amount of gifts and was near tears all night from the overwhelming generosity of my friends and family.  I was proud of myself for keeping my emotions in check.  Maybe Baby is one lucky (not to mention, incredibly spoiled) little girl.

It's the Holiday season

You know, I thought that I'd be much more prolific with my blogging when I quit my desk job.  But, it turns out that sitting at a desk 9-10 hours a day is actually helpful in the blogging department.  Now my days are filled with other projects (and the eternal morning sickness that just sucks all my energy and will to be productive), and I do a lot of my writing by hand or away from the intrigues of the internet.  So, sitting down for some quality blogging time seems to happen less than I'd like.

The holidays always seem to be an especially busy time of year.  And is it just me, or does the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seem shorter every year?  There's just so much to do, and so little time in which to do it.

So, in the interest of brevity, and due to my recent sniffly temperament, here's what we've been up to since I checked in last:

1.  Pregnancy has made my sinuses stuffy in the general sense, so when I started getting stuffier last Sunday, I tried to play it off as a pregnancy symptom plus maybe a small cold.  A couple days later I was at the Urgent Care at the request of my OB.  Turns out I had a double ear infection and a sinus infection.  That, coupled with nausea and nosebleeds made for a very interesting week where I did little else but sniff Vicks Vap-o-Rub and blow my nose.  All I can say is thank goodness for antibiotics!

2.  Bear and Blake were troopers throughout my self-imposed quarantine.  Blake woke up extra early before work every day to take Bear on a long walk, and then took him on a long walk again (in the pitch black) when he got home.  Bear, for his part, was very sweet to me all week, and spent most of his time in bed with me resting his chin on my feet.

3.  I re-watched a couple of seasons of Gilmore Girls between nose blows.  It made me nostalgic for college (when I watched the show the first time, Rory and I were at the same time of life and I felt a special kindred with her).  Embarrassingly, Bear seemed to recognize the theme song by the end of the week.  I swear he was rolling his eyes at me every time a new episode started.  He's a cultured dog, but I guess he doesn't appreciate quality cinematic entertainment when he sees it.

4.  We've started in on our traditional Christmas movie marathon.  Every year we start with Love Actually on Thanksgiving, and proceed with Home Alone 1 & 2, Elf, Christmas Vacation, Fred Claus, and The Santa Clause (if I get my way - Blake hates that one).  Blake also makes a list of all the good Christmas shows on TV and we set them up to record so we always have something Christmassy to watch.  We're serious about our holiday entertainment around here.

5.  We're working hard to get our house decorated in time for our annual Ugly Sweater Christmas party this weekend.  Blake has held this party every year for 13 (or maybe 14?) years and it's one of our favorite Christmas traditions.  Everyone seems to have a great time each year, and it's always a hoot explaining to half our friends that we- as boring Mormons- aren't going to have alcohol at the party.  It's like a rite of passage for them, I think, surviving a Mormon party.  Ha.

Add in laundry, keeping the house mud-free with a Bear on the lose, and attempting to keep our sanity through this hellish experience called pregnancy, and that just about sums it up.   Here's to a happy and healthy holiday season filled with blogging and cheer.

Dignity - of which I have none left

Last Tuesday I lay in bed trying to get to sleep.  As I tried to finagle my pregnancy pillow into a comfortable position, I thought about how grateful I was for that very (uncomfortable) moment.  Blake was asleep next to me, dead to the world, Bear was curled up at my feet - snoring and acting like a portable heater.  I felt so lucky that IVF worked for us and that things were going so well (aside from the ever-present nausea. yuck).

I fell asleep happy.  And then I woke up to a nosebleed.  Not just any nose bleed, but the most horrific blood faucet I've ever had.  I spent the next 45 minutes hunched over in the bathroom, pinching my nose and trying to get it under control while Bear paced and whined next to me.  Poor guy is very sensitive to when we're not feeling well and he was not pleased with the situation.  Either that, or he was antsy about postponing his morning walk.

Thankfully, I got the nosebleed under control in time to walk over to my dentist appointment.

I brought some spare tissues in my pocket, just in case, but didn't seem to need them on the walk over.  However, right after I signed in at the front desk, I felt the familiar rush.

[Warning, graphic descriptions ahead. Proceed at your own risk.]

Before I could even grab the box of tissues on the counter, my coat, hands, and the bottom half of my face were covered in blood.  I mumbled an apology to the receptionist and took a seat in the corner of the waiting room, hoping that it would stop quickly.

No such luck.

The old ladies trickling in for their appointments looked ill at the sight of a someone dripping so much blood all over the place.  Pretty soon, the entire staff of the dentist's office was crowded around me trying to help.

My dentist, who is probably the world's coolest dentist, had the distinct privilege of helping me change the packing and seeing huge, slimy clots dangle out the end of my nose in between tissues.

They moved me to my own room to "bleed privately," and brought me ice packs, tissues, gauze, and a slew of packing materials that look suspiciously like tampons with the string cut off.

Half an hour later the blood had dried up...along with what remained of my dignity.  I mean, I thought I'd lost all dignity being sick from IVF and then being sick from pregnancy (being sick in public is just soooooo fun!), but here I was going deeply into the red (pun!) in the dentist's office.  Oy.

Here's hoping that the holidays this year will be more green and white...and less red.

Before I go and leave you with the image of gooey blood clots lingering in your mind, here are some darling picture of the Bear.  We bought Maybe Baby a small stuffed animal that looks just like him, but now he thinks it is his.  Sigh. Sibling rivalry already?