Wellbread Mom: December 2013

Today Harry is five weeks old. He's lying across my lap on a pillow, sleeping for the moment. How are things going for us? I'm not sure. Things right now are such a heavy mix of awesome and worry.

The awesomes are many.

New babies smell like heaven. I am a "smells" person. My favorite smells are bread, cookies, Toby, my kids, leaves, grass, rain, citrus, wintergreen, and cardamom. New baby smell is better than all of those. It doesn't matter if the kid is freshly washed or a little grungy, it's all good. Be warned, I sniff babies. I hope that's not a creepy thing to admit.

Harry's little frog-shaped naked body is the cutest thing ever. He's got a double-chin, a little hollow sternum, and a round pot belly. His wee baby legs are beginning to chub a bit at the thighs, but the calves still look like curved little chicken bones. Perfectly round little knobby heels remind me of how hard he'd kick me when I was still pregnant. There is no shape more perfect than a new baby's head.

He just started smiling on purpose yesterday. I love when a new baby makes the transition from blank and perplexed stares to an actual affectionate expression. Sometimes when he's eating, he will gaze intently into my eyes, and I feel like he's probably having some kind of spiritual experience.

It's interesting watching the rest of the family make room for a new baby. The older kids hold him quite willingly most of the time, and the younger kids ask to. Cora and Loch and Ivy mostly don't slow down long enough to hold on for more than a minute, but I'm happy that they want to. I adore watching my husband's big hands wrap around a teeny little baby. It's just so cute.

But then there are the worries.

Is he getting enough to eat? I always fret that the baby isn't gaining enough weight. My kids always want to sleep as soon as they latch on, then try again in fifteen minutes or so. That would be great if all I needed to do was sit and lactate. We had some difficulties at the beginning, but I think we're a feeding/eating team now. Harry is chunking out and he pees through his diaper and clothing and blanket every day or two. It's a lot of laundry, but I am so happy that he has pee to spare.

Will I get to do something I want for five minutes ever again? I know in my head that I have seven kids and a full-time job and one of those kids is a new baby. It makes me feel whiny, but there we are. I'm trying, and I know I can't do everything. But sometimes it feels a lot like drowning in "need to dos."

Are the older kids being neglected? We've revamped our work schedule to ensure that Cora and Loch have more parent-hands-on time each day than they've been getting. I don't know how much it's helping them, but I can concentrate on work better when I know they're doing something beside watch TV, arguing over the tablet, or crying for us all day. I'm trying extra hard to spend time with the kids instead of on the internet and blogging...

Am I going crazy? Yeah, a little. I hope it's only a some, and only for a while. I have a hard time not crying whenever I think about...almost anything. I may be a "sniffer" (see above), but I am not a crier at all. I am way more comfortable with withdrawal or anger, which is sad on it's own, I know. What's even scarier is when I'm not sad or angry or anything. Sometimes I just feel blank, or maybe fuzzy.

I get so tired of advice. I know people mean well when they tell me that this is the best time of my life, and I will miss it so much later. I know I will. But I won't miss all of it. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing it right now, losing the amazing and precious because I can't focus on them through the crap. And then I feel bad about that, too.

So, I had that baby. Now I'm going to tell you about it in awesome and gory detail, so if you're not into that kind of thing, skip it and don't judge. My boat, my rules. It is probably over-sharing to put it all out here, but I want to remember while it's fresh in my mind. (Mild nudity pics, shoulders and cleavage.)

It's been so long since I've updated my blog, does the internet even know I was having another kid? This is number seven for us, after about two years of me swearing that Cora was the end, amen and amen. Except, she wasn't. Yeah, I got pregnant again on purpose, not that it's anyone's business.

Okay, it's not the smartest thing in the world for a costumer to be due two weeks after Halloween. It's the busiest time of year for us, work-wise. I seriously thought I'd be due at the end of November when I was contemplating the timing. Then I was pregnant, and realized my mistake. Oh, well...

You know joke that women have amnesia about labor and delivery, because no one would ever have a second child if they could remember what it was like the first time? That amnesia worked for me...four times. With Lochlan and Cora and Harry, I remembered in lurid detail.

Let me tell you about my brain. It is my worst enemy sometimes. It knows me and my weak spots better than anyone, and uses them against me. This means I spent the last few weeks of my fifth and sixth pregnancies in a state of controlled panic, with the deepest parts of my head telling me that I. Could. Not. Do. This.

If there is one thing I've learned about having babies, it is this: relaxing makes things easier, being tense makes them more difficult. Loch and Cora were both long and stressful births for me, and I struggled with depression and feelings of inadequacy for months after each one. Thanks, brain, for setting me up for failure like that.

I wanted this time to be different. This is most likely the last baby for us. I'm 35 now, so practically an adult, and adults deal with things like this, right?

My lovely doula friend, Natalie, recommended some prenatal relaxation music/meditations for me to listen to. I felt silly having some lady's voice soothingly telling me that I could do this thing, that my body works just fine, that I and my baby are healthy and strong...but I would take all the help I could get to combat the voice that ran in my head the rest of the time.

I made it through Halloween. Then the day after, our whole family got a stomach bug. I spent three days flat in bed with nothing to do but watch Netflix and worry between trips to the bathroom. All the panic I had been fending off hit me like a freight train.

One thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I usually have babies pretty close to my due date. I've probably told twenty people this very fact in the last month alone. I had nearly two weeks to go, so I'd just worry about having the baby later. I was working hard at heading off the waves of anxiety by replacing the painful flashbacks with an image of meeting the new baby.

I struggled through two half-hearted days at work. Tuesday night I made an effort to spend some time with the kids by watching TV with them while Loch and Cora jockeyed for position on top of me. After more than enough of that, I dragged my enormous self off to bed at 8.

I had just managed to doze off when POP! Oh, not that. But it surely was my water breaking. I felt sick. Toby got the kids ready, and we headed out the door for the the 2 hour drive to my midwife in Arkansas.

I had three contractions before we got to the first town. Maybe I'd have to stop and have the baby in one of the three hospitals we'd pass on the way....but things were slow but steady on the drive. I tried to think of a way to tell Toby I wanted to change my mind. Finally, I just did. He reassured me that I've done this before, and done it just fine. Not what I wanted to hear.

(I've had this much typed for almost a week, and I have been thinking about how to finish. I feel like this post should be in two parts: 1) Jill is afraid. 2) Jill does it anyway. Now on to part 2.)

It rained off an on all the way to my midwife's place in Harrison. It was 11:30 or 12:00 when we parked the van and I headed in while Toby started unloading kids. Water ran ankle-deep on the edges of the road, and the streetlights were reflecting brightly off the rain and damp. I still felt kind of half-numb because it wasn't time yet in my head, and half-panicky because it was time anyway.

Three midwives waited in the living room. Candy has now delivered five babies for us, everyone since Maggie. She recently broke her ankle spelunking (my midwife is is awesome) and was still getting around with a giant boot on her foot and a medical-grade scooter. Candy's apprentice and a backup midwife named Diana were there to help.

They checked me and I was at four. I did swear in my head. Cora took twelve hours from that point.

Here's where things changed. I was still having contractions and still scared, but I was in the routine of something I had done before. When I thought about what I did and didn't like about my previous birth experiences, and realized that I had done very little decision-making or requesting what I wanted. So, instead of falling into a pit of despair, I asked if I could get into the tub.

You know how good a warm bath feels when you're tired and achy? It certainly doesn't make the pain go away, but it's cozy and relaxing and it helps support your body. I've labored in the tub a couple of times, with Hollis and with Cora. I'm a bath kind of girl, and warm water is a happy place for me. I hesitantly removed my shirt, revealing my huge stretch-marked belly, and climbed in. I've never been totally naked before with lots of other people around, but hey, everybody there was going to see everything before it was over, right? That was quite literally the last time I even thought about being exposed. It stopped mattering.

Contractions kept coming in pairs, and it seemed to me like they were stacking up quickly. Here's another thing I did that was new: I breathed slooooowly as I could, and tried to keep my body limp. Not easy at all, but it helped. Toby sat right over the side of the tub from me and held my hand, and every time I had a contraction I stared right into his eyes and tried to relax as hard as I could.

Sample dialogue:

Jill: Tell me you love me.

Toby: I love you.

Jill: A million times.

Toby: Yes, I love you a million times.

Jill: I know.

Toby: Just relax. Relax your shoulders.

Repeat, about every three minutes, for two hours.

I think I should get nerdy bonus points for Han Soloing him repeatedly (I love you, I know). Some tiny part of me was laughing, even at the time.

Once, I really felt like I needed a bit of a break, and I said so. I don't pretend to be one of those people who understand and can control their body perfectly. My body and I are awkward partners and we misunderstand each other all the time. But when I said I needed a break, I had one. Things stopped for ten minutes or so, and I was able to relax. Then we were off again.

A few times, I curled into a tight ball and squeezed my eyes shut. This is how I remember handling contractions the last two difficult labors. I always felt like a scared rabbit in the path of an oncoming truck. I could tell such a difference in how tight and stressed I felt, so I went right back to the routine.

My hair kept getting into my face and it was getting annoying. That's the beauty of having a hair professional in the family. Laural twisted my hair into two little ponytails at the front of my head, like a little yappy dog that's been to the groomer. Don't judge her skills by how it looks in the pictures, though. My hair was dirty and sweaty and we only had a few minutes between contractions.

I cannot emphasize enough how much Toby helped me out here. At one point right before pushing, I had turned over onto my hands and knees, and Toby was kneeling right across from me outside the tub. I pressed my nose and forehead into his and probably breathed loudly into his face while maintaining eye contact.

I was vaguely aware of a few conversations around me, like when the midwives were discussing when I'd be ready to push. I wanted to have a handle on how much progress I'd made. I felt like things were pretty serious and really working, but was I at 7 or 10? So, I asked for someone to check, and it turned out, I was past 9. Diana told me that I could push when I felt like it. We weren't in for a 12 hour labor this time.

Yes, I had willingly done this before. Yes, I felt, and still do, that having a baby with a midwife outside the hospital is the way I want to do it. But deciding to push a baby out of my most tenderest bits? Uh, I changed my mind. I was not going to push until I couldn't help it. I am a total pansy like that.

At this point, I think I reminded Toby that I was not mentally out of it, like I had wanted to be. I proceeded to plan a vasectomy and tubal ligation for us. I also told him that he needed to be a doula. Then I felt a bit like pushing...and I didn't. Then I felt like pushing again...and I did. It hurt, but not as much as I had been remembering and dreading. I passed the point of no return and it didn't matter. Diana told me to wait a minute while she checked for cord around the baby's neck, and then out came Harry. I grabbed him and lifted him onto my chest, while sitting back against the side of the tub.

I know I had this big goofy grin on my face. Nothing hurt anymore, and I was holding the baby. I did the gender check, and Toby said he knew it was a boy as soon as he saw his face. I said the first thing I always say after a baby gets here: "I'm so glad that's over." Truth.

The whole thing, from water breaking to holding Harry in my arms, took 5 1/2 hours. Can I say I felt like a rockstar superhero? A naked, stretch-marked rockstar superhero in a bathtub full of really bloody water? Well, I did. (The pictures are black and white for a reason. Bloodbath has a whole new meaning for me now.)

We all spent a few minutes admiring our handiwork. It's like a party, after the baby comes and everyone is all right. Eventually, I handed little Harry off to my Mom while Toby and the midwives helped me into the bedroom. I put a shirt on and snuggled up the the little guy. He looked so much like his older brothers that I kept giggling about it.

Cora was the only kid to stay awake the whole time, but she watched TV and didn't come in and howl for her Dad once. Maybe she knew I needed him more? We showed her the baby, and she wasn't terribly impressed. She climbed onto Toby's lap and fell asleep immediately.

I don't know where to end this. It's been 3 1/2 weeks since Harry made his early debut. I'm still remembering little flashes of things, like watching my turquoise toenail polish flake off in the water during transition. I am so glad things went better than I thought they would. I am thankful that I had the boy early, so I didn't have more time to worry.

We are enjoying getting to know our new little guy. I can't wait to see who he will grow up to be. Our kids have a distinctive look, and it's so funny because he looks so familiar. It's like we've known him forever.

It's taken me this long to get it all out, because the reminiscing is emotional for me. I seriously feel like I climbed Everest. I am overwhelmed by how well Toby took care of me every time I needed it. I told him on the way home that it was the best thing he's ever done for me.

That's the story of how we became a family of nine. I can think of about three people who will read this far, so high five to you!