Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

A couple of months ago, Will decided to adopt my frequent “you’re making me crazy” or “stop driving me crazy” type outbursts as his own.  Except he got confused and combined them into “you’re making me drive crazy” or “stop making me drive crazy.”  It only took a few times of hearing this before Nic and I adopted this particular terminology.  It’s something I encourage everyone else to adopt for themselves.  There’s making you crazy, there’s driving you crazy…and then there’s a whole special level for “making me drive crazy.”

– She’s so big.  I can’t get over how much she’s grown.  She is very very long.  I’m anxious for her 2 month appointment so we can see how much she weighs and how tall she is!

– She’s a good sleeper.  She wakes up 2 or 3 times a night and is always happy to eat then either fall asleep or just look around.  She goes to sleep at night in her crib and I usually take her back to her crib after her first wakeup/feeding.  After that I get too lazy to shuffle beds.

– She’s tolerating our kisses better.  She’s always not minded Will’s, but in the beginning she made faces when Nic or I kissed her.  She seems to accept them as her lot in life now.

– She doesn’t like the carrier that Will LOVED.  I’m glad I had gotten a different carrier this time, because she loves that one but really doesn’t like the two that I used most with Will.

– She spits up a lot.  Which is generating a ton of laundry!

– Her eyes were decidedly gray from weeks 2-4, but just in the last day or two they are shifting ever so slightly over to the blue gray side.  They are definitely still gray, but they’re a little more blue than they were before.  (And absolutely not brown, which means Nic was wrong–HA!) 

– She likes to be naked from the waist down.  Sometimes after a diaper change we’ll let her just lay on a diaper and she is always so content to just air out her hoo-ha. 

– She LOVES baths.  This morning she was fussy and nothing seemed to help so we took her upstairs and gave her a long bath and she was blissfully content until we took her out!

– She likes to have a blanket rubbed over the top of her head.

– Her feet are ridiculously long.

– We got out the 2006 scrapbook today and she is still the spitting image of Will at that age.  We kept trying to tell Will that they were pictures of baby WILL, but he kept shouting “NO!  It’s BABY ELLIE!”  Which was understandable because they look exactly like pictures of her!

So much is easier the second time around.  There’s the bold confidence of knowing you’ll screw up in 8000 ways but it will still be okay.  Of knowing that the weight will come off.  Of knowing that you’ll eventually sleep again.

And then there’s the little stuff.  Like how much faster nursing is.  My milk came in within 30 hours, and thanks to an overactive letdown, her nursing sessions are always under 15 minutes, and usually only around 5!  And this weekend (just two and a half weeks in) I got to ditch the nursing pads.  (And tested out that bold new world with two date nights in a row, and managed to escape without any embarrassing mishaps!)

And the early start to good sleep habits has been incredible.  Granted, she’s an easy baby, so I think it’s a combination of things, but I was careful in the beginning to never let her fall asleep nursing–I’d pop her off before she finished going to sleep…so now she REFUSES to fall asleep nursing.  If she’s starting to doze off, she pops off the nipple before finishing falling asleep.  Which is a whole new world for us–Will literally had to FALL OFF the breast deep deep deep in sleep.  He was 5 months old and if I wanted to do something during his nap I’d have to nurse him to sleep in his crib and then try to make a ninja exit or he’d wake up and the whole thing would start again.  At 10 months old he was waking up 9+ times a night!

This baby?  She can put herself to sleep because we let her practice that!  Last night we did stories with Will and then put her in her crib.  She lay there happily sucking on her bear pacifier and then fell asleep…all on her own.  This morning I lay her down on our bed to help Will with something, and 5 minutes later she had happily dozed off.  She’s still there.  Will even went in and kissed her (no shock there), and she opened her eyes…and went back to sleep without any help.  It’s like watching some sort of Christmas miracle with my own eyes.

And the thing about mothering 2.0 is that I don’t feel like we have to be strict about that stuff.  If she falls asleep on her own for a nap but needs to be held/rocked for the next one, that’s okay.  If she wakes up twice one night but five times the next, that’s okay, too.  Because as long as she’s doing these things SOMETIMES, I know we’re in for a much easier time of it!

Last night and this morning Ellie was crazy with the nursing.  If she was awake, she was fussin and rootin.  My milk came in this afternoon and she’s like a different baby!!!  All happy and sleepy like a baby.   This change also coincided almost exactly with Nic’s arrival.  These 2 are already sooooooo cute.

She likes to roll her eyes back into her head which freaks me out a lot.  And she is just a little jaundiced so cross your fingers that her bili level tomorrow morning is low–I am very anxious to go home and not have to log her every fart!! 

It might be a few days before I get around to writing Ellie’s full birth story, but as I lie here in the hospital working off some vicadin dizziness/nausea (gotta love those afterbirth pains!!) I want to capture a few of the little things I don’t want to let slip through the cracks!

And if you haven’t seen the preview pictures my friend Charlotte took and posted within hours of the birth, you HAVE to see them:  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=661065036#/album.php?aid=151416&id=551491425&ref=mf   I contacted her this fall about doing birth photography for us, and of course even though we’ve only had lunch together twice, she’s now family after having seen as much as she’s seen! 

–  Sending Will and Nic home tonight I realized that we’d be having a girl slumber party here in the hospital (Heather’s staying with me and Ellie) while they do the man thing at home.  I told Nic they could have a weiner party.  Will, who has been talking about and planning his upcoming birthday party for the last month, chimed in “But I don’t want to have a weiner party!”  “Okay, sweetie” I said.  And he said “I want to have a BATMAN party.”  Poor guy thought I was proposing turning his 4th birthday into some kind of bachelorette party.  Complete with weiner cake.

–  When I called my dad to tell him about his new granddaughter, Willie got on the phone for a bit.  I asked him to tell my dad what his baby sister was like, and his answer to the question “what is ellie like?” was “beautiful.”

– Of course, in a follow up question when I asked what she looked like, he said “a t rex dinosaur.”  Which, to Will, is the same thing. 

– This evening he wasn’t feeling well.  He had a stomach ache (we later learned), but the first sign was that he was on all fours on my hospital bed, butt in the air, head down on the bed, quietly saying “peeeeeeeeace” over and over.  Just like mommy had done on the kitchen floor this morning!  It was sooo precious–Will copying my hypnobabies ‘cue word’ and favorite laboring pose!!

– The moments when Will met Ellie.  This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time!  And thank goodness the hospital lifted the ban on visiting children last week (way to go ellie for waiting–just 6 days ago this couldn’t have happened!) so that they could meet just 30 or 40 minutes after her birth (we wanted to make sure all the scary “mommy getting stitched up and leaking all over the place” stuff was finished first).  It was amazing.  But different than I had expected–I thought he would be surprised, but when Will came in the room he wasn’t surprised at all to see me sitting with Ellie–he 100% knew that was going to happen!  He came in with balloons for her and a little giraffe that Bernadette had gotten with him at the gift shop [Nic went to bring Will in the room and he said Will was SO excited to bring Ellie her presents] and when Heather asked “who is that with Mommy?!” Will looked at her like she was missing a few brain cells and said “Baby Ellie” like “DUH.”  And then he came closer and said “ahhhhh” when he saw her face and then that was it.  He was in love.  Holding her, kissing her, wanting to see her at all times.  She had to get her bath/bloodwork/warmer time shortly after that and Will did not like not being able to see her.  I had him sit on the bed so he could get a peek at her while this was going on and he protested “But I can’t see Baby Ellie’s eyes!”  He keeps telling her what a good job she’s doing (at what, I’m not quite sure) and he has sung to her (first song–the batman theme) and just loves to love her.  And call me crazy, but I swear his voice calms her down.  Which actually makes a lot of sense because he certainly has been the LOUDEST thing in her life for the last 9 months!  AND she seems to like his kisses better than mine!

– Tonight was a little traumatic.  Nic and Will went to get her crib (we had a coupon that expired today, and Nic was going to get it after work, but we sort of had a baby instead) and the plan was for them to come back to the hospital and say goodnight to me and Ellie and then go home.  Except Will really was sick and had an accident in his pants.  They had come back to the hospital to get Heather (Heather and I had only just decided to have a sleepover here), and Will was upset about going home without me, but didn’t have any pants to get to say goodnight.  So we passed Ellie off to the nurses for a few minutes so we could run downstairs to say goodnight to the boys (they wouldn’t let Ellie stay with Heather without me–funny all the weird hospital policies).  It was a little weird leaving the hospital and going outside while still a patient–it felt like a jail break!!  But when he got in the car Will soon wanted to know where Baby Ellie was–what the heck were we all doing without her?!  And with the LONG day and him being sick he wasn’t keen on going home without me, but we managed it and I hope he was good on the drive home with Nic and not too sad.  Thank goodness that kid believes that drs and god are about the same.  (The other night after dinner he announced “I ate too much food.  I feel sick.  You need to take me to the dr.”)  I told him that I had ouchies and needed to stay at the hospital with the doctors for two nights.  And that was good enough for him.

– Ellie is a great nurser.  It is fantastic to have that going well from the start!  And of course it probably helps that I’ve got 2 years of nursing under my belt, but I feel like a lot of it is just her.  She just “got” how to latch (and latch properly)!!

– She is AWAKE.  Natural birth babies tend to be very alert since they’re not sleeping off any drugs, but she is particularly alert/awake.  She was totally awake for FOUR HOURS after being born!  And the thing that amazed the nurses and Heather–she opened her eyes immediately as she was being born.  Her eyes were delivered and they shot open–her mouth was still inside me and there she was, looking around!

me:  I think we should change Ellie’s name.

nic:  To what?  Stupid Late Face?

I love that he can make me laugh and roll his eyes at me, all at the same time.

So here’s the deal.  Last week and the week before and the week before I was super excited about having this baby.  It felt real and like it might happen any moment, and we were all getting really really excited.  Because second babies come sooner than first babies.  And even my midwife expected her to arrive before 40 weeks.

And then she blew it.  She waited too long and the news cycle changed.  And now I’m not super excited, nor do I believe that she will arrive at any moment.  I know that she will arrive in the next two weeks, just because it’s very rare to go past 42 weeks (and you have to fight doctors in order to do it), but I’m no longer excited.  Just kinda begrudging.  Cause when you spend most of your time reminding yourself of all of the good things about not having a baby yet, you start to believe them.  Like the fact that I still get to sleep for more than 2 hours at a time.  Or that I don’t have to lug around a 20 lb car seat bucket of arm torture.  Or that when we go to the store I just have to wrestle ONE kid into a 5 point harness.  So I can go without alcohol.  And a waistline. Because I have sleep, a ton of fun stuff planned for this week (ummm–hello The Bachelor’s latest episode being available on hulu tomorrow), and no whiny cry cry babies.

So suck it, Baby Ellie.  I’m over you.

Will was either 5 days early or 2 days early (depending on which of his due dates you believe in more)…so today, two days before Ellie’s due date, I’m officially more pregnant than I have ever been before.  I think I will celebrate with a cookie.

We will be spending the morning at church, followed by the play equipment at the mall (we are still doing the “fun family activity immediately after church” to try and reinforce the idea that church is a GOOD thing and not a punishment thing).

The last few weeks have been super busy, so it’s been easy to distract myself and stay positive.  But I really thought I’d have that baby last week/this weekend, so I’m out of things that HAVE to be done and things that I am super excited about doing, and now I’m just pretty much out of energy and don’t want to do any of the things I should be doing (a couple of loose work ends to tie up) and would really like to have a baby as an excuse for not accomplishing them. 

I refuse to be whiny and annoying and the cliche “get this baby out of me” woman, though, so I keep trying to come up with good things.  Like a new knitting project.  Or how we cleaned out/set up Ellie’s room yesterday (though we still don’t have a crib).  Shopping would be an excellent diversion, but it’s not really compatible with self-employed maternity leave (which is code for unpaid maternity leave).  So really it’s just a lot of character building right now.  Staying positive in the face of an annoying little brat baby who has been teasing me with false labor for a month impatience.  Good practice for labor. 

After my doctor’s appointment yesterday (I’m 2-3cm–hurray!) we came home and I was watching my friend’s tub homebirth video.

Will is feeling better.  He woke me up with the sweetest kisses in the world.  One kiss followed by a bunch of kisses.

And then I was finishing my cereal and he was on the sofa in the living room and I heard “do you want to come sit by me?”

So I did.

And he then said “I’m glad you’re sitting by me.  Thank you.”

WHAT A SWEETIE!

 We have been working on remembering to say grace at dinner.  Mostly because when we started going to church again we noticed that Will doesn’t know how to pray.  Ooops.  My bad.

Church has been going very well.  Our parish doesn’t have a nursery, so part of what kept us away (along with the fact that we worked most weekends until December) was a deep dread over sitting through Mass with Will.  But I decided that it would be character building for us all to deal with it, so we started going again two weeks ago.  And Will surpassed our expectations.  Sure, he needs the occasional whispered correction, and he asks at the end of every song if NOW we can go, but we haven’t had to take him outside once.  And we’re treated to little snippets of songs that he picks up.  Like the other day I overheard him singing to himself “Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to unders.”

Last night Will fell asleep in the car on the way home from our errands and he slept until 10pm.  When he woke up, he was hungry, but his mommy was sleeping.  So Nic took him downstairs to make him some waffles.  Nic came upstairs a few minutes later to tell me this story:

Will was sitting at the head of the table, all bundled up in a blanket (at 10pm it’s a little cold in our house!) with his waffles in front of him while Nic grabbed some milk in the kitchen.  And he heard “thank you for the sun. thank you for the toys.  thank you for all the things.  OH!  IT’S TOO HARD!” and then “Bless the sun.  I DID IT!”  Nic went out and they practiced grace together.

Will is sick today.  He came into our room this morning early and told me he felt sick.  I thought it was because he was tired, and kept getting him to try to go to sleep.  He asked for a bucket…I got it for him.  Some lounging and trying to get him to go back to sleep.  Then we decided to go downstairs to watch a movie…and he threw up in our doorway.  Oh.  So you really ARE sick.

Some cute Will sick lines this morning:

“I don’t want to die.”

Me:  “Do you want some water?”  Will:  “NO!  THAT MAKES MY TUMMY UPSAD!”

Me:  “Do you need the bucket?”  Will:  “NO!  I feel FINE!” (with a little panic in his voice)

“Can I have an apple?  That makes my tummy feel better.”

“My throat is spicy.”

“Baby Ellie wants to fix me.”

“It’s so terrible.”

He is normally very sweet and mellow and mild and kind and pathetic when he’s not feeling well.  Today he’s not any of those things.  He’s CRANKY.  And DEMANDING.  And MAD.

Thank God I’d just ordered Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs through Netflix.  A brand new movie to watch over and over again?  That’s how we’re spending our day.

We are closing in on Ellie’s due date and I am getting soooooooo excited.  Mainly for Will to meet her.  He is such a chatterbox lately that I am just loving all the baby ellie stuff I hear from him.  Like today, we were at Gymboree using our gymbucks (not for clothes for Will, since he doesn’t have any summer clothes in a 4T…but for MORE summer clothes for Ellie, who now has an entire room chalk full of the most ridiculously cute outfits ever) and I was looking at the racks and overheard this one way conversation:

“Is that your Baby Ellie?  I have a baby sister Baby Ellie.  Your Baby Ellie is so big.  My Baby Ellie is so small.  She’s in Mommy’s tummy.  I like your Baby Ellie.”

I wish I’d had a tape recorder.  I peeked over and there was a 6 or 7 year old girl with her 18 month old sister and Will was so excited to share this bond that they have–HE has a baby sister, too.  All of his friends have baby sisters, and he is about to get one!

Some gems I’ve heard in the last few days:

random “I love Baby Ellie”s

and this morning as we lay in bed

To my belly: “Hey Baby Ellie guess what?!  PEANUTS.”  (This is a very popular Will game.  You say “hey Mommy/Will/Daddy guess what?”  And the default answer is “I love you.”  (and this part of the game can go on for a while as I try to say “I love you” in as many different ways/speeds/volumes/inflections as possible and Will says it at the same time trying to guess which one I’m doing)  But Will’s FAVORITE part of the game is mixing it up.  Instead of “I love you” Will says “peanuts” or “elephant peanuts” or “fish” or something else.  (but usually peanuts) and then “I TRICKED YOU!”  So “peanuts” is now shorthand for love in our house.

He also loves to “eat” baby Ellie.  He takes a pretend bite out of my belly, says “I eat your baby Ellie!”  I protest, and then he spits her back out (he also does this with eyes, legs, hands, faces, etc).

He seemed very concerned last week that she was going to be too big for him to carry and hold.  So we spent a lot of time talking about how little she will be, and how she will be just the right size for holding.  Which I think is part of what prompted his size comparison of sisters at Gymboree. 

In other Ellie news, my guess had been the 17th for her birthday, so I am officially wrong.  (Which makes me mad because I’m always on a quest to prove to Nic that I DO have a sixth sense about things.)  And Nic had a dream about her last night–he dreamt that she was born and was running around the delivery room and was very hard to catch.  She was also very ugly.  And apparently we discussed the fact that it was a good thing she was so advanced (running around moments after her birth like a giraffe) since she wasn’t cute.  And it was good that Will was so cute, because he wasn’t very advanced.  (Don’t defend him–the kid took 4 months to hold up his own head.)  And this is why I think 4d ultrasounds might be a bad idea.  2 out of 3 of Ellie’s have not been cute.  Which explains the nightmares.