I was able to blog lots more immediately following Amelia's birth than I have been able to now. The irony is, Amelia was a much more difficult child to care for.
Yes, I am going to compare my experience with newborn Amelia to my experience with newborn David. I think it is difficult not to compare your children to one another, particularly when they are so different. I know that may make some of you wince, but I think it's okay to point out the differences.
And the simple truth is this: it is far easier to make little David happy than it ever was for little Amelia. After a few weeks of simply rather easy baby care, James and I both started to worry that we were both actually complete wimps when we received Amelia, and maybe she wasn't that hard.
Well. I pulled out my journal, and the evidence is irrefutable: I haven't had to walk David around the block for hours in the middle of the night to get him to stop screaming even once! We haven't had episodes of SCREAMING for no discernable reason (there's always a reason; you just might not know what it is). Amelia WAS a difficult baby to care for.
David gets "fussy" sometimes, true. But when something isn't quite right for him, I feel like I have a sixth sense to know what it is. I can tell when his "fussiness" is just him complaining about how uncomfortable his intestines are while learning the complicated skill called pooping. (No, newborns don't necessarily know how to do that perfectly at first. They have to learn how to simultaneously tense the right muscles and relax their little sphincters and let it all out... Great drama in the meantime.) I can tell when he needs a good burp. I can just tell.
And then when I can't get him calm simply with cuddles and nursing, often all it will take to calm him down is to stand up and start walking until he's asleep (within five minutes instead of an hour of pacing! amazing!) or maybe give him to James and let Daddy bounce him on the yoga ball. He likes being bounced. Even if the bouncing doesn't put him to sleep immediately, it will at least calm him down so that he's in that nice "quiet, alert" state rather than ballistic.
He doesn't scream the entire time he's in his car seat. We give him a pacifier when we strap him in, and then he doesn't imitate a banshee. (Yes, he does accept a pacifier! What is this black magic?) He will often go to sleep instead. Amelia would scream persistently for hours upon hours no matter what we did in the car.
He allows us to put him down, and he likes the swing. Not like some mythical babies I've heard, but he likes or tolerates it long enough that I can go to the bathroom, or clip my fingernails, or eat a bowl of cereal, or do any other such activity that is best suited to a person with two free hands. It is fabulous.
I can still imagine an easier baby than this, but considering that Mr. Gregarious (James) is his father, I'm not convinced it's possible for us to actually produce one. I suspect this may be as mild as a Dilts can get.
Nursing has gone flawlessly. No problems. Had slightly sore nipples for a few days, had a little engorgement right when my milk came in two days after birth, and then it's been sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows from then on. (Only the sunshine is more like milk lasers. Milk LAZORS!)
More evidence that nursing is going along all right... David is growing pretty quickly. Amelia did, too, but she was screaming whenever she wasn't nursing, so she nursed a lot. I was hoping David wouldn't grow quite so quickly... I mean, Amelia grew quickly enough that I was soon overwhelmed with how heavy she got, and how speedily she got into size 5 diapers and 12-month size clothing. But David is as big as Amelia was at six weeks old, and he is only three weeks old. Dang. Looks like I might end up with another chubster.
Oh, he sleeps, too! A lot. Especially at night. He doesn't really wake up in the night... I mean, he kind of does. He wiggles enough to wake me up, and I offer him noms before he has more opportunity to startle himself awake. I have to make myself disturb his happily sleeping self to change his diaper once a night so the two of us don't wake up in a puddle of his pee. Ew, gross.
Now... all this is great. But lest you think I am living a perfect new mom life, no problems whatsoever, let me remind you that I also have a tot.
Amelia must have heard rumors that when you get a new baby, the parents are not supposed to sleep for the next few months (or even years! I hope she didn't hear that rumor, even if it is true...) following acquisition of said baby.
She is doing her very best to ensure that James and I are getting as little sleep as possible.
Two nights ago, for instance, she would not go to sleep. She screamed for hours while James held her down in bed... and when David finally figured out how to sleep through big sister's screams, I left him to sleep on his own and then I held her down to sleep. She finally passed out at 2am. That's a new record. I mean, maybe she did that a few times as an infant, but gosh. For the tot version of Amelia, this is a new record.
All things considered, Amelia is adjusting excellently to having a new baby brother. She likes him a lot. She is known to exclaim, "CUTE!" and insist on holding him, and nearly smother him lovingly to death (actually quite scary for me) if I ever leave him unattended. She really loves her little brother and hasn't even once demanded we put him back wherever we found him. She is happy to have him.
All the time, that is, except for bedtime. Bedtime, don't you know, is Amelia's special cuddle time with Mommy.
Well, unfortunately... most of the time, now, when bedtime rolls around, Mommy is nursing and/or cuddling little brother. Which means that Mommy is unavailable to cuddle Amelia.
This has directly resulted in the Amelia-not-going-to-sleep-at-night problem. She had made lots of progress at learning to fall asleep without me before Dragon was born, but she still hadn't mastered it. Obviously. Hence the screaming until 2am. Oh well. The super late nights are (very gradually) happening less often.
James is having a really hard time losing this much sleep. He thinks it is partly so hard because it's more directly Amelia's fault rather than Dragon's fault. In his mind, it would have been easier to cope with lost sleep if it the newborn was to blame, because a newborn doesn't know any better. A toddler, though! Phaw! A toddler should already have adult sleep habits! (Okay, so he knows that isn't true. But he wishes it were. Oh, how he wishes.)
Sure, he is getting more video game time in the late nights while Amelia settles down from hyperactivity to a somewhat drowsy state. But these sleep mishaps are having an effect on how well his mind works during the day, which for an academic is a serious problem. Being able to think at your highest capacity is really important when your job is to mathematically prove something new and super awesome. Oh well.
Now, Amelia hasn't been getting enough sleep either. It's not just James and I who are tired. For those of you who have ever had a sleep-deprived toddler, you can see where this is going.
We have a chronically sleep-deprived toddler. Yeah. She isn't at her rosiest lately. My goodness, she is a volatile mess way more often than we parents are used to dealing with. Rosy toddlers can be a joy, but thorny toddlers without enough of those blossomy moments can really just suck. Especially when you are adjusting to having more than one child at once.
So sometimes we parents are less than stellar at fulfilling her needs. She would probably be doing even better if we weren't so physically and emotionally sapped, because then we'd be able to give her more of the love and attention she is craving, but alas. We are somewhat sapped and it is showing.
It is, however, tough to get too upset with Amelia. Her cries, though deafening, are immediately followed by wails for a hug. I think that's a good thing. She recognizes that she needs help to calm down, and even if you are really ticked at some horrid mess she's made, it is hard to stay too angry when she says she just needs a hug.
(Amelia's cries have gotten LOUDER these last few weeks. Enough so that I one point, instead of responding to ear-shattering shrieks like any normal person would, I just laughed and mourned to James that we didn't have an instrument to measure how many decibels the sound coming out of Amelia's face was. It was simply an awe-inspiring level of noise, and I just itched to measure it in quantifiable terms. Ha.)
As I said, all things considered, things are actually going fairly well. We have a new baby and a chronically sleep-deprived tot who sometimes doesn't feel like she's getting enough hugs, but! Things are going well.
Oh, what about me? Uhh... Well, as I like to shout from the rooftops... I'M NOT NAUSEOUS ANYMORE! HUZZAH!
Other than that, I am recovering pretty well. My down-there stitches hurt for a while, as could be suspected. Now they itch sometimes, as can also be predicted. I'm no longer actively bleeding (you bleed for roughly two weeks after giving birth, kind of the mother of all periods). "Down there" is doing fine.
The bad news is that I overexerted myself soon after David was born so my recovery isn't as fast as it could have been. I could tell I overdid it because my pelvis got really upset at me--sore, and more uterine bleeding, and the urge to sleep for forever.
I know what did it. We went to a science museum-type place a few days after David was born, and Amelia had a blast. I was attempting to follow James and the tot around while carrying David in the car seat, because I really wanted some cute tot pics, but this proved too much for me. My pelvis decided to start yelling, "HEY, LADY! Would you puh-leez quit it? I just pushed out a baby, and I need some time to recover! LIE DOWN!" It was kind of a bummer. I finally had the energy to chase after a tot, and then my body wasn't ready to handle it yet.
So yeah. I had to force myself to relax and not pick up the thirty-pound tot, or the ginormous boxes full of baby clothes, or the heavy car seat containing a not-so-heavy infant, even though I finally felt able to. I had to depend on James a lot more.
(My journal tells me I did the same thing after Amelia was born. I forgot and made the same mistake. Doom! Note to self: After your third baby, resist the urge to do ALL the things! I know you feel great, but you won't feel great if you do ALL the things!)
I am doing pretty well now. Again, I have energy! Yay! In the week following birth, James kept saying, "Wow. You OBVIOUSLY feel better." It was apparently like night and day. I was suddenly smiling and laughing so much more. Making jokes. Moving more like a healthy person. I don't know. You'd have to ask him to elaborate. I wasn't exactly an outside observer.
So yeah. Now... all that leaves to tell you, I guess, is the big thing that has been really stressing me out for the last week. I am now feeling a lot better than I did when I found out last Wednesday during David's two-week well baby checkup... I'm not freaking out about it anymore. I have plenty of time to freak out about it some more later.
David is perfectly healthy except for one thing. That one thing has a fancy name (hypospadias) but all it means is that his urethra ("pee-hole") is not where it's supposed to be.* Whoops. He may need a surgery sometime between six months and eighteen months old to correct it.** It's not for sure, though.
Sometime between three and six months old, we will take him to see a pediatric urologist to check it out. Until then, we won't know whether or not he will actually need surgery, but I predict that he will indeed need it.
Doom. This'd be very stressful for me, even if it's not a "major" surgery. As far as I'm concerned, any surgery is a major surgery on my baby. :( I had a really hard time emotionally this last week just because of this idea of likely surgery. On my BABY.
I think so far I have only mentioned this to James, my mom, and my best friend here in Oregon (and I guess a few others overheard when I told her). Even though I am usually quite open about a lot of things, it was hard to talk about this for some reason.
I think it might be hard to talk about because it's a penile abnormality. It's not exactly your standard bit of conversation. "Oh hey, my son's penis is a little wonky. By the way. This isn't awkward or anything." Yeah. How do you even bring it up? It is easier to bring up the possibility of surgery before bringing up the reason for the surgery. If it had been any other body part, it might not be so hard. Oh well.
So yeah. Hypospadias. Darn it. Between this, my research to help us decide whether or not to circumcise our son (we didn't), and the nature of my work at the fertility clinic, I now know WAY more about the male reproductive system than perhaps any laywoman has any right to, ha. Possibly more than James does. Okay, definitely more than James does.
Love and milk lazors,
Jenna and Amelia and David
*The urethral opening is on the underside of the head of the penis. Yeah. Not where it belongs.
**Not correcting it will theoretically lead to problems when he's older. Like having to pee sitting down because the pee stream is... very messy, or multiple streams, or whatever. Okay, that's not too bad... But also, more importantly, difficulty with erections and such. Possibly painful erections. Important. If we want grandbabies via David, we will have to consider these things. (Gosh, it is strange to think that my infant son will grow up someday.)
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
After David Was Born
Okay, so I was a bit naughty and left you guys on kind of a cliffhanger. You'll have to forgive me. I'd just given birth earlier that day, remember. And then, instead of delivering the continued story the next day as I had promised, I didn't write anything on my blog for a heart-wrenching three days. You'll have to forgive me again. I did have a newborn and a toddler to tend to, and James has been going to work for at least a few hours every day since Wednesday. (I think maybe I will allow him to go back to work all day again on Monday.)
Right. So. Fixing that cliffhanger business. So.
After about two hours of labor, I pushed David out. They put him on my belly, and he started talking and complaining about his exit immediately. Seriously, really cute baby noises. He sounded like the cute baby dragon or baby dinosaur noises you hear on cartoons and movies.
I felt much better, and I felt far better than I had after, say, my labor with Amelia. I felt pretty good, actually. Except that those private bits between my legs were a bit upset. Don't get me wrong, though, it felt much better than the sensation of having a baby trying to get out from there. They just weren't happy again yet.
For those of you who read Amelia's birth story, you may recall that I got an epidural. This time I was completely unmedicated. I hadn't even had Tylenol or anything. Or even a warm bath for pain management (cough, James). Not that I had wanted an epidural, but I have this feeling there wouldn't have been time for one even if I had demanded such a thing. So I had a bit more sensation down there in the nether regions this time with which to feel the delivery of the placenta.
Placentas are slimy, and a lot less bony than babies. It felt kind of gross coming out. I was curious how much the placenta weighed and had them weigh it. It was about a pound and a half, so definitely not record-breaking. After it was out, I can say that I was no longer nauseous.
Meanwhile, David was making cute baby dragon noises and looking around. By this point, I think someone had toweled him off some. (He hasn't had a bath or anything yet besides that quick towel-dry straight from the womb.) A few minutes after birth, the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, and someone (not sure if it was one of the midwives or the nurse) clamped the cord and helped James cut it.
David had come down so quickly that my tender tissues hadn't really had time to stretch out enough, so I had torn my perineum (the skin between the vaginal opening and the anus) a little... though one of the midwives (Anne) told me it was just a little bit. She wasn't sure it was bad enough to even need repair at first, but she decided to put a few stitches in anyway, just to make sure it heals up nicely. Again, given the lack of epidural, I could feel a lot more of this process than I had last time, even with the local anesthetic. Pokey needles are pokey. Ouch.
So yeah. More cute noises from little Dragon. Once he even made a sound that sounded a lot like "uh oooh!", and both Anne (the midwife-in-training) and Annie (the postpartum nurse) kept laughing at how adorable he sounded.
I was starving. I made James spoonfeed me lemon yogurt. Ah, I knew I had brought him for something, besides transportation to the birth center. (I don't know if he'll believe me, but I think I could have driven myself if I had needed to. It would have really sucked, but... yeah. I could've done it, frosty windshield and all! Bahaha!)
I had basically ignored him throughout labor, especially after his cold water faux pas. I'd been too grumpy to actually get upset at him for that... Ah, wait... I suppose I did use him for something during labor. I neglected to mention that I vomited during labor, and James handed me an emesis bag all helpful-like. He might've said (okay, did say...) a few encouraging words (too exuberantly, of course). Otherwise, he was just kind of an annoying, bouncy, excited, and far too happy presence in the room.
(Gosh, James is bad at containing his excitement. In the weeks leading up to birth, whenever I'd have a particularly uncomfortable contraction, James would respond by expressing glee, presumably because he was excited about the baby coming. Despite my attempts to train him to respond with sympathy for my pain instead of glee--we had plenty of time to practice this--I don't think it really sunk in. Sure, he stopped saying things like, "Yay! You're in pain!"... But um, the more intense labor got, the more James bounced up and down with adrenaline and happy excitement. Gosh. Stop being so happy.)
David started nursing pretty quickly. He was really interested in it, but it took him a little while to find the nipple. His latch was pretty good, thankfully. (Amelia had significant trouble with nursing at first, likely because she was over two weeks early, and possibly also due to disorientation and other side effects of the epidural.) David tried to find the second breast, too, but he was so bad at locating the nipple that even with help he eventually just gave up and napped instead.
But, boy! He was persistent. He nearly crawled off my chest (more like nearly launched off, despite lack of wings) more than once, and sucked and licked all over my belly and my chest--everywhere except the nipple, that is. He spent a long time looking for the noms before deciding being born had been hard work and that a nap was in order.
Once David and I were suitably cleaned up, they left us alone for a while. As I said, David fell asleep, draped across my chest. We were both still naked, and we had a warm blanket over the top of us. I still hadn't really moved since I had given birth. I think maybe they had had me scoot over a few inches at some point so they could remove the mess out from underneath me (all the amniotic fluid and blood and exciting stuff that comes out with baby) and put new, clean things there, but otherwise I was in the exact same spot I had pushed in. It was kind of nice to just kick back and relax.
Though... at this point, I was starving. Again. I had James bring me flower juice (water with elderflower syrup in it), string cheese, and a granola bar to tide me over until... well, next snack time. I think Amelia came and visited at this point.
Oh, Amelia. She did just fine. We had brought our friend Cassie Anderson to help out. Despite being woken up at 5:25am, Amelia was in a great mood. She and Cassie apparently had a grand ol' time playing and sharing snacks.
Cassie tells me, though, that when I was making mighty screams, Amelia's eyes got all wide and concerned, and she put her hands up to her mouth, and said, "Oh no! Mommy!" "Are you worried, Amelia?" "Yeah..."
When Amelia saw David, she said, "Ooh, beebee! Cute!" I think, though, that the visit was mostly for her to make sure I was okay. And, well, I was smiling and happy at this point, so I guess that reassured her enough that she could go and play some more with Cassie.
At some point, I handed David over to James, and I walked over to the bathroom. The nurse had the tap water going, hoping that would encourage me to pee, but it didn't really help. After sitting there for ages, I finally did pee, and I exultantly proclaimed, "I peed!" ... just like Amelia does. I felt a little silly for being so proud of myself, but I suppose that's okay.
Maybe three hours after birth, we finally measured David. He weight 8 lbs, 8 oz. He was 21.5" long, 14" around the head, and 13.5" around the chest. He hated it. He made his first truly distressed cries. They were actually even kind of loud. (He is so quiet compared to Amelia. Straight out of the womb, Amelia's cries were piercing, and David's are... mild squeaks.)
Went back to bed and cuddled the newborn some more. He was still naked. And, um, he made it quite obvious that his bowels were working fabulously. He pooped meconium all over me. Twice. We eventually decided to put a diaper on the kid. He soiled that one.
The nurse did a pulse oximetry test to screen for congenital heart defects, but he didn't pass it immediately, probably because he was working hard on both a giant loogey out his top end, and several giant poops out his bottom end. After he got those cleared up, we would be allowed to leave. (The pulse oximetry results had be normal before we could go home. The pushing phase of labor had been so incredibly brief, that although most babies get some help expelling the mucus from their airways during the pushes and squeezes on the way out, David did not get that benefit. He just came out so fast.)
Before we left, he soiled yet another diaper, so much so that the nurse was shocked. It was the biggest load of meconium she had ever seen a newborn produce. And this was meconium load number four. (I am so grateful that he held all that poop in until after he was born.) "Just like daddy," I commented. No, seriously. I am convinced the man child has inherited his father's gastrointestinal system. Darn it.
James had fed me many snacks by this point, but I was still starving and both he and Amelia were starving and tired and just itching to leave. Itching. They had both been ready to go right at the four-hour mark (you are required to stay at the birth center for at least four hours after the birth), but we had to stay for five hours while David was working hard on spitting up mucus and pooping out meconium. Once he finished that and the pulse oximeter read normal results, we got ready to go.
So we all loaded up in the car and headed home. Kind of. Again, we were all so starving. Obviously, we had to stop at Five Guys for bacon cheeseburgers. Then we went home and napped all afternoon. (The one lady at Five Guys who bothered to ask how old the cute baby was ended up completely dumbfounded and shocked upon learning that he was only six hours old... and that I was walking around out of the hospital and snarfing bacon cheeseburgers already. And impressed.)
Tada!
Love and bacon cheeseburgers,
Jenna and Amelia and David
Right. So. Fixing that cliffhanger business. So.
After about two hours of labor, I pushed David out. They put him on my belly, and he started talking and complaining about his exit immediately. Seriously, really cute baby noises. He sounded like the cute baby dragon or baby dinosaur noises you hear on cartoons and movies.
I felt much better, and I felt far better than I had after, say, my labor with Amelia. I felt pretty good, actually. Except that those private bits between my legs were a bit upset. Don't get me wrong, though, it felt much better than the sensation of having a baby trying to get out from there. They just weren't happy again yet.
For those of you who read Amelia's birth story, you may recall that I got an epidural. This time I was completely unmedicated. I hadn't even had Tylenol or anything. Or even a warm bath for pain management (cough, James). Not that I had wanted an epidural, but I have this feeling there wouldn't have been time for one even if I had demanded such a thing. So I had a bit more sensation down there in the nether regions this time with which to feel the delivery of the placenta.
Placentas are slimy, and a lot less bony than babies. It felt kind of gross coming out. I was curious how much the placenta weighed and had them weigh it. It was about a pound and a half, so definitely not record-breaking. After it was out, I can say that I was no longer nauseous.
Meanwhile, David was making cute baby dragon noises and looking around. By this point, I think someone had toweled him off some. (He hasn't had a bath or anything yet besides that quick towel-dry straight from the womb.) A few minutes after birth, the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, and someone (not sure if it was one of the midwives or the nurse) clamped the cord and helped James cut it.
David had come down so quickly that my tender tissues hadn't really had time to stretch out enough, so I had torn my perineum (the skin between the vaginal opening and the anus) a little... though one of the midwives (Anne) told me it was just a little bit. She wasn't sure it was bad enough to even need repair at first, but she decided to put a few stitches in anyway, just to make sure it heals up nicely. Again, given the lack of epidural, I could feel a lot more of this process than I had last time, even with the local anesthetic. Pokey needles are pokey. Ouch.
So yeah. More cute noises from little Dragon. Once he even made a sound that sounded a lot like "uh oooh!", and both Anne (the midwife-in-training) and Annie (the postpartum nurse) kept laughing at how adorable he sounded.
I was starving. I made James spoonfeed me lemon yogurt. Ah, I knew I had brought him for something, besides transportation to the birth center. (I don't know if he'll believe me, but I think I could have driven myself if I had needed to. It would have really sucked, but... yeah. I could've done it, frosty windshield and all! Bahaha!)
I had basically ignored him throughout labor, especially after his cold water faux pas. I'd been too grumpy to actually get upset at him for that... Ah, wait... I suppose I did use him for something during labor. I neglected to mention that I vomited during labor, and James handed me an emesis bag all helpful-like. He might've said (okay, did say...) a few encouraging words (too exuberantly, of course). Otherwise, he was just kind of an annoying, bouncy, excited, and far too happy presence in the room.
(Gosh, James is bad at containing his excitement. In the weeks leading up to birth, whenever I'd have a particularly uncomfortable contraction, James would respond by expressing glee, presumably because he was excited about the baby coming. Despite my attempts to train him to respond with sympathy for my pain instead of glee--we had plenty of time to practice this--I don't think it really sunk in. Sure, he stopped saying things like, "Yay! You're in pain!"... But um, the more intense labor got, the more James bounced up and down with adrenaline and happy excitement. Gosh. Stop being so happy.)
David started nursing pretty quickly. He was really interested in it, but it took him a little while to find the nipple. His latch was pretty good, thankfully. (Amelia had significant trouble with nursing at first, likely because she was over two weeks early, and possibly also due to disorientation and other side effects of the epidural.) David tried to find the second breast, too, but he was so bad at locating the nipple that even with help he eventually just gave up and napped instead.
But, boy! He was persistent. He nearly crawled off my chest (more like nearly launched off, despite lack of wings) more than once, and sucked and licked all over my belly and my chest--everywhere except the nipple, that is. He spent a long time looking for the noms before deciding being born had been hard work and that a nap was in order.
Once David and I were suitably cleaned up, they left us alone for a while. As I said, David fell asleep, draped across my chest. We were both still naked, and we had a warm blanket over the top of us. I still hadn't really moved since I had given birth. I think maybe they had had me scoot over a few inches at some point so they could remove the mess out from underneath me (all the amniotic fluid and blood and exciting stuff that comes out with baby) and put new, clean things there, but otherwise I was in the exact same spot I had pushed in. It was kind of nice to just kick back and relax.
Though... at this point, I was starving. Again. I had James bring me flower juice (water with elderflower syrup in it), string cheese, and a granola bar to tide me over until... well, next snack time. I think Amelia came and visited at this point.
Oh, Amelia. She did just fine. We had brought our friend Cassie Anderson to help out. Despite being woken up at 5:25am, Amelia was in a great mood. She and Cassie apparently had a grand ol' time playing and sharing snacks.
Cassie tells me, though, that when I was making mighty screams, Amelia's eyes got all wide and concerned, and she put her hands up to her mouth, and said, "Oh no! Mommy!" "Are you worried, Amelia?" "Yeah..."
When Amelia saw David, she said, "Ooh, beebee! Cute!" I think, though, that the visit was mostly for her to make sure I was okay. And, well, I was smiling and happy at this point, so I guess that reassured her enough that she could go and play some more with Cassie.
At some point, I handed David over to James, and I walked over to the bathroom. The nurse had the tap water going, hoping that would encourage me to pee, but it didn't really help. After sitting there for ages, I finally did pee, and I exultantly proclaimed, "I peed!" ... just like Amelia does. I felt a little silly for being so proud of myself, but I suppose that's okay.
Maybe three hours after birth, we finally measured David. He weight 8 lbs, 8 oz. He was 21.5" long, 14" around the head, and 13.5" around the chest. He hated it. He made his first truly distressed cries. They were actually even kind of loud. (He is so quiet compared to Amelia. Straight out of the womb, Amelia's cries were piercing, and David's are... mild squeaks.)
Went back to bed and cuddled the newborn some more. He was still naked. And, um, he made it quite obvious that his bowels were working fabulously. He pooped meconium all over me. Twice. We eventually decided to put a diaper on the kid. He soiled that one.
The nurse did a pulse oximetry test to screen for congenital heart defects, but he didn't pass it immediately, probably because he was working hard on both a giant loogey out his top end, and several giant poops out his bottom end. After he got those cleared up, we would be allowed to leave. (The pulse oximetry results had be normal before we could go home. The pushing phase of labor had been so incredibly brief, that although most babies get some help expelling the mucus from their airways during the pushes and squeezes on the way out, David did not get that benefit. He just came out so fast.)
Before we left, he soiled yet another diaper, so much so that the nurse was shocked. It was the biggest load of meconium she had ever seen a newborn produce. And this was meconium load number four. (I am so grateful that he held all that poop in until after he was born.) "Just like daddy," I commented. No, seriously. I am convinced the man child has inherited his father's gastrointestinal system. Darn it.
James had fed me many snacks by this point, but I was still starving and both he and Amelia were starving and tired and just itching to leave. Itching. They had both been ready to go right at the four-hour mark (you are required to stay at the birth center for at least four hours after the birth), but we had to stay for five hours while David was working hard on spitting up mucus and pooping out meconium. Once he finished that and the pulse oximeter read normal results, we got ready to go.
So we all loaded up in the car and headed home. Kind of. Again, we were all so starving. Obviously, we had to stop at Five Guys for bacon cheeseburgers. Then we went home and napped all afternoon. (The one lady at Five Guys who bothered to ask how old the cute baby was ended up completely dumbfounded and shocked upon learning that he was only six hours old... and that I was walking around out of the hospital and snarfing bacon cheeseburgers already. And impressed.)
Tada!
Love and bacon cheeseburgers,
Jenna and Amelia and David
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
David's Birth Story
[Need I remind you that I tend to reveal all the juicy details? This is a birth story. It involves my nether regions... Read on at your own risk.]
For weeks and and weeks prior to the birth, I'd been having prodromal labor... meaning that I was having some really uncomfortable contractions that never escalated into real labor. They were uncomfortable enough to make me extremely grumpy, though.
Thankfully it was on and off instead of constant. So there were plenty of days in those last few weeks wherein I hardly noticed what my uterus was doing, thank goodness. And then there were the days where my uterus was a complete and utter jerk.
A week ago, I got my membranes swept at my checkup with the midwife. That means she stuck her fingers into my cervix (that's the entrance to the uterus, located at the top of the vagina) and then manually separated the bag of waters from the cervix. It feels really, really crampy. But, seriously, compared to the discomfort my uterus had been inflicting on me for a while, it wasn't that bad.
In theory, sweeping the membranes is supposed to stimulate prostaglandin release, and thus encourage the cervix to soften and dilate, and therefore encourage labor to start. At this point, I was 3-4 centimeters dilated and 50% effaced. Emily, the midwife in clinic that day, thought I'd go into labor quite soon and even told the on-call midwives to expect my call at any time.
Only... jerkface uterus was against this idea, and besides cramping like a monster all of that day, nothing happened. The uterus wasn't too mean to me for the rest of the week. I was supposed to go get my membranes swept again on my due date, but this didn't pan out because a midwife had called in sick and things were hectic.
So I went in to see the midwife in the morning yesterday, a little frustrated that I had made it several days past my due date, especially when I really wanted to have the baby in the birth center. (I would be required to give birth in the hospital after 41 weeks, which was only a few days away.) Oh, and not to mention that I was having pretty much every pregnancy symptom in the book on top of the disgusting nausea and vomiting.
The midwife (Emily again) swept my membranes for the second time. This time, I was 4-5 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced. In the words of my sister-in-law, I was walking around with the door half-open. (Ha.) Emily also mentioned that my bag of waters was "bulging" and that she was afraid that she'd accidentally break it.
I went home and, within a few hours, my uterus got grumpy again. Soon I was having contractions every five minutes apart or so. At this point, I would still label this prodromal labor, but I guess it's hard to say. I say it's prodromal because, although they were really, really uncomfortable and annoying, they were still the kid brother contractions I'd been having for weeks, not really real ones. That said, they were kid brother contractions with an attitude, and I thought they might escalate into real labor, so I summoned James home. This was mostly necessary because I was getting really grumpy with Amelia, who was magically headbutting me in the uterus every single time I had a contraction, and jumping all over me, and... well, if you're having contractions (even the kid brother kind), this is not welcome attention. I swear the kid had a spidey sense, or something.
After James had been home for an hour or so, we decided to go on a walk since the contractions, still every five minutes, had not intensified. We walked outside, and decided the sun was too assaultive, and jumped into the car instead. We headed over to Target and walked there instead. For hours.
Sure, the contractions sucked... But I'd done labor before, and I was under no impression that anything was actually happening with them. They'd been going on for four hours now, every five minutes, and I hadn't had any worthy of the name mama bear... all kid brothers. All of them.
Frustrated, I called the midwife on call (Patricia). Her advice was to go home and take a warm shower/bath, which would do either one of two things: 1) kick real labor into gear, or 2) relax my uterus into a non-labor stupor. It did the latter, which very nearly crushed all of James' hopes and dreams. Seriously, he was more depressed than I was. Patricia had me eat a good dinner, drink lots of water, and go to bed on time, warning me that she suspected real labor would probably start in the night some time.
I had some contractions later in the night before bed, but again, these were all kid brothers. I managed to sleep through them. When I did wake up multiple times in the night, it wasn't the contractions that woke me, it was the full bladder.
Until about 4:30 am, that is. Bam. Contraction! I was suddenly awake. And oh, this wasn't a kid brother. So I pulled out my phone to time the suckers (I hate timing contractions... hate, hate, hate it), and after about three of them, five minutes apart, hurting like the dickens... I determined this was real labor and called the midwife around 4:45 am.
It was Hilary at this point... and her on-call shift ended at 6am. She thought I probably had some time before I'd need to show up at the birth center, and told me just to plan on meeting Patricia (the midwife who'd be on call starting at 6am) there... at 6am. Like... over an hour later. Of course, she said, call back if you really think you need to get there sooner, but I think you'll be fine.
I agreed to this plan at first, thinking it was probably sensible enough. I got into a warm bath, hoping that this'd soothe the pain somewhat, but...
I ended up calling Hilary back at like 5:20am to tell her I needed to go to the birth center before 6am. My contractions were three minutes apart. Oh, and they sucked. All I could think of is that these contractions sucked so bad, and boy, did I not want to be confined in the passenger seat of the car while trying to deal with one. Seriously. That plan was a no-go. Car ride now, not later. (We also called our friend Cassie to come, because we needed someone to watch Amelia at the birth center while James was helping me out.)
Poor Hilary reluctantly met us at the birth center at about 5:45am once I insisted that I really couldn't wait until 6am. I think I was right. Once we got there, I started to get very nauseous. (For the people who don't know, this is a sign that I am almost fully dilated and that the pushing stage is about to happen. I.e. labor is almost over.) We had to wait a few minutes for Hilary to show up, and during that time, I was madly pacing through contractions and keeping an eye out in the landscape for a suitable place to vomit. Because I might have to.
We got inside. I stripped immediately. Well, immediately after a contraction, anyway. I found a toilet. Baby was low. As in, really low. Pushing poop out low. My rectum felt squished, probably because it was. It was like... like... there was a baby's skull pushing down on my butthole from the inside. Kind of like that. Only this was secondary to feeling like my entire pelvic bone was trying to come out. Basically, lots and lots and lots of pressure in the nether regions.
Hilary checked baby's heart rate and my cervix as soon as I let her. Baby was fine. My cervix was 9 centimeters dilated, so she warned me that I'd probably want to start pushing any time now. "Has your water broken?" "No." At this point, Patricia showed up and took over. Anne (a midwife-in-training) showed up, too...
I got in the bath, only to discover that James had failed miserably at making sure the water was warm. It was pretty chilly. Too chilly for the baby, so I wasn't going to be allowed to give birth in the tub, and the water wasn't all that effective at relieving the pain. I supposed that was okay, because my only specific plan for the birth was to do whatever I felt like, but I was pretty annoyed. Not gonna lie. Annoyed.
I elected to stay in the water for a time, though, because of the buoyancy. I started to basically bob up and down with each contraction, because that's what my body felt like doing. I suppose this was getting baby down into the birth canal. In the meantime I was still annoyed at the cold water. Oh well.
Patricia and Anne kept saying things like, "Wow. She is so calm and focused!" between the contractions. I'm not sure what I would have called it. Focused, I guess. Calm...? I might have been. I think there should be a different word for it. I don't know what it is. I felt very primal though. Maybe that's it.
I was bobbing up and down for a contraction in the tub, when... SKIDOOSH. (Not the Wuxi finger hold!) "My water just broke." It felt like there was Diet Coke up there and someone had dropped some Mentos in. Only it was exploding out my hoo-ha. (Pleasant? Uhhh... not really...) Followed immediately by a baby's head.
And that's when I stood up and somehow got out of the tub. I'm not sure who I used to get out. James, Patricia, or Anne... or all of the above, maybe. In any case, I got out of the tub, and sat promptly on the birthing stool. And at this point the pressure in the nether regions got really bad, that and the stinging. Oh, the stinging!
The stinging is the stretching of the... everything. The perineum and everything around it. We could feel David's head when I got out of the tub. It was so squished that it was super wrinkly. (The midwife later told me one dad asked if that was baby's brains when the same thing happened with his baby. Nope. Just very squished head.) Someone commented that he didn't have much hair. I said "can't" here, I think. I was trying to say that "I can't tell if that's baby's head or just me", but talking was impossible. The stinging felt like I was ripping in half, right down the middle. I have some important bits right down the middle. I was worried about them.
I got fed up with the birthing stool, and waddled kind of spread-eagled over to the bed, because I had this idea that side-lying would be comfortable for me. Only as soon as I laid on my side, I realized... No, no way. Not the side. So I turned onto my back, slightly propped up, and with my legs wide...
And then I really, really, really had to push. I'd kind of been pushing before, but now I pushed. And I vaguely remembered that screaming helps with pain management. So I let out some mighty screams. Best pain management technique ever. It really did help. It also really helped to keep in mind that David was practically almost out.
With a mighty scream, I got his head out. And also, a lot of amniotic fluid. I don't remember if he made any sounds at this point. I wouldn't have realized that he was partly out had the midwives not told me. With another mighty scream, and a lot of my body urging me to just get that sucker out, I got the rest of him out in a giant gush of fluid. James was fortunate not to get splashed.
And then I felt much better. It was 6:39am, about an hour after we'd arrived, and about two hours after labor had started.
They put him on my belly, and he started talking and complaining about his exit immediately. Seriously, really cute baby noises. He sounded like the cute baby dragon or baby dinosaur noises you hear on cartoons and movies.
And then...
Cliffhanger!
I guess this is a good enough place to stop for the night. I can fill you guys in on the rest of the experience in the birth center with the new baby tomorrow or something.
Love and Wuxi finger holds (skidoosh!),
Jenna and David
For weeks and and weeks prior to the birth, I'd been having prodromal labor... meaning that I was having some really uncomfortable contractions that never escalated into real labor. They were uncomfortable enough to make me extremely grumpy, though.
Thankfully it was on and off instead of constant. So there were plenty of days in those last few weeks wherein I hardly noticed what my uterus was doing, thank goodness. And then there were the days where my uterus was a complete and utter jerk.
A week ago, I got my membranes swept at my checkup with the midwife. That means she stuck her fingers into my cervix (that's the entrance to the uterus, located at the top of the vagina) and then manually separated the bag of waters from the cervix. It feels really, really crampy. But, seriously, compared to the discomfort my uterus had been inflicting on me for a while, it wasn't that bad.
In theory, sweeping the membranes is supposed to stimulate prostaglandin release, and thus encourage the cervix to soften and dilate, and therefore encourage labor to start. At this point, I was 3-4 centimeters dilated and 50% effaced. Emily, the midwife in clinic that day, thought I'd go into labor quite soon and even told the on-call midwives to expect my call at any time.
Only... jerkface uterus was against this idea, and besides cramping like a monster all of that day, nothing happened. The uterus wasn't too mean to me for the rest of the week. I was supposed to go get my membranes swept again on my due date, but this didn't pan out because a midwife had called in sick and things were hectic.
So I went in to see the midwife in the morning yesterday, a little frustrated that I had made it several days past my due date, especially when I really wanted to have the baby in the birth center. (I would be required to give birth in the hospital after 41 weeks, which was only a few days away.) Oh, and not to mention that I was having pretty much every pregnancy symptom in the book on top of the disgusting nausea and vomiting.
The midwife (Emily again) swept my membranes for the second time. This time, I was 4-5 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced. In the words of my sister-in-law, I was walking around with the door half-open. (Ha.) Emily also mentioned that my bag of waters was "bulging" and that she was afraid that she'd accidentally break it.
I went home and, within a few hours, my uterus got grumpy again. Soon I was having contractions every five minutes apart or so. At this point, I would still label this prodromal labor, but I guess it's hard to say. I say it's prodromal because, although they were really, really uncomfortable and annoying, they were still the kid brother contractions I'd been having for weeks, not really real ones. That said, they were kid brother contractions with an attitude, and I thought they might escalate into real labor, so I summoned James home. This was mostly necessary because I was getting really grumpy with Amelia, who was magically headbutting me in the uterus every single time I had a contraction, and jumping all over me, and... well, if you're having contractions (even the kid brother kind), this is not welcome attention. I swear the kid had a spidey sense, or something.
After James had been home for an hour or so, we decided to go on a walk since the contractions, still every five minutes, had not intensified. We walked outside, and decided the sun was too assaultive, and jumped into the car instead. We headed over to Target and walked there instead. For hours.
Sure, the contractions sucked... But I'd done labor before, and I was under no impression that anything was actually happening with them. They'd been going on for four hours now, every five minutes, and I hadn't had any worthy of the name mama bear... all kid brothers. All of them.
Frustrated, I called the midwife on call (Patricia). Her advice was to go home and take a warm shower/bath, which would do either one of two things: 1) kick real labor into gear, or 2) relax my uterus into a non-labor stupor. It did the latter, which very nearly crushed all of James' hopes and dreams. Seriously, he was more depressed than I was. Patricia had me eat a good dinner, drink lots of water, and go to bed on time, warning me that she suspected real labor would probably start in the night some time.
I had some contractions later in the night before bed, but again, these were all kid brothers. I managed to sleep through them. When I did wake up multiple times in the night, it wasn't the contractions that woke me, it was the full bladder.
Until about 4:30 am, that is. Bam. Contraction! I was suddenly awake. And oh, this wasn't a kid brother. So I pulled out my phone to time the suckers (I hate timing contractions... hate, hate, hate it), and after about three of them, five minutes apart, hurting like the dickens... I determined this was real labor and called the midwife around 4:45 am.
It was Hilary at this point... and her on-call shift ended at 6am. She thought I probably had some time before I'd need to show up at the birth center, and told me just to plan on meeting Patricia (the midwife who'd be on call starting at 6am) there... at 6am. Like... over an hour later. Of course, she said, call back if you really think you need to get there sooner, but I think you'll be fine.
I agreed to this plan at first, thinking it was probably sensible enough. I got into a warm bath, hoping that this'd soothe the pain somewhat, but...
I ended up calling Hilary back at like 5:20am to tell her I needed to go to the birth center before 6am. My contractions were three minutes apart. Oh, and they sucked. All I could think of is that these contractions sucked so bad, and boy, did I not want to be confined in the passenger seat of the car while trying to deal with one. Seriously. That plan was a no-go. Car ride now, not later. (We also called our friend Cassie to come, because we needed someone to watch Amelia at the birth center while James was helping me out.)
Poor Hilary reluctantly met us at the birth center at about 5:45am once I insisted that I really couldn't wait until 6am. I think I was right. Once we got there, I started to get very nauseous. (For the people who don't know, this is a sign that I am almost fully dilated and that the pushing stage is about to happen. I.e. labor is almost over.) We had to wait a few minutes for Hilary to show up, and during that time, I was madly pacing through contractions and keeping an eye out in the landscape for a suitable place to vomit. Because I might have to.
We got inside. I stripped immediately. Well, immediately after a contraction, anyway. I found a toilet. Baby was low. As in, really low. Pushing poop out low. My rectum felt squished, probably because it was. It was like... like... there was a baby's skull pushing down on my butthole from the inside. Kind of like that. Only this was secondary to feeling like my entire pelvic bone was trying to come out. Basically, lots and lots and lots of pressure in the nether regions.
Hilary checked baby's heart rate and my cervix as soon as I let her. Baby was fine. My cervix was 9 centimeters dilated, so she warned me that I'd probably want to start pushing any time now. "Has your water broken?" "No." At this point, Patricia showed up and took over. Anne (a midwife-in-training) showed up, too...
I got in the bath, only to discover that James had failed miserably at making sure the water was warm. It was pretty chilly. Too chilly for the baby, so I wasn't going to be allowed to give birth in the tub, and the water wasn't all that effective at relieving the pain. I supposed that was okay, because my only specific plan for the birth was to do whatever I felt like, but I was pretty annoyed. Not gonna lie. Annoyed.
I elected to stay in the water for a time, though, because of the buoyancy. I started to basically bob up and down with each contraction, because that's what my body felt like doing. I suppose this was getting baby down into the birth canal. In the meantime I was still annoyed at the cold water. Oh well.
Patricia and Anne kept saying things like, "Wow. She is so calm and focused!" between the contractions. I'm not sure what I would have called it. Focused, I guess. Calm...? I might have been. I think there should be a different word for it. I don't know what it is. I felt very primal though. Maybe that's it.
I was bobbing up and down for a contraction in the tub, when... SKIDOOSH. (Not the Wuxi finger hold!) "My water just broke." It felt like there was Diet Coke up there and someone had dropped some Mentos in. Only it was exploding out my hoo-ha. (Pleasant? Uhhh... not really...) Followed immediately by a baby's head.
And that's when I stood up and somehow got out of the tub. I'm not sure who I used to get out. James, Patricia, or Anne... or all of the above, maybe. In any case, I got out of the tub, and sat promptly on the birthing stool. And at this point the pressure in the nether regions got really bad, that and the stinging. Oh, the stinging!
The stinging is the stretching of the... everything. The perineum and everything around it. We could feel David's head when I got out of the tub. It was so squished that it was super wrinkly. (The midwife later told me one dad asked if that was baby's brains when the same thing happened with his baby. Nope. Just very squished head.) Someone commented that he didn't have much hair. I said "can't" here, I think. I was trying to say that "I can't tell if that's baby's head or just me", but talking was impossible. The stinging felt like I was ripping in half, right down the middle. I have some important bits right down the middle. I was worried about them.
I got fed up with the birthing stool, and waddled kind of spread-eagled over to the bed, because I had this idea that side-lying would be comfortable for me. Only as soon as I laid on my side, I realized... No, no way. Not the side. So I turned onto my back, slightly propped up, and with my legs wide...
And then I really, really, really had to push. I'd kind of been pushing before, but now I pushed. And I vaguely remembered that screaming helps with pain management. So I let out some mighty screams. Best pain management technique ever. It really did help. It also really helped to keep in mind that David was practically almost out.
With a mighty scream, I got his head out. And also, a lot of amniotic fluid. I don't remember if he made any sounds at this point. I wouldn't have realized that he was partly out had the midwives not told me. With another mighty scream, and a lot of my body urging me to just get that sucker out, I got the rest of him out in a giant gush of fluid. James was fortunate not to get splashed.
And then I felt much better. It was 6:39am, about an hour after we'd arrived, and about two hours after labor had started.
They put him on my belly, and he started talking and complaining about his exit immediately. Seriously, really cute baby noises. He sounded like the cute baby dragon or baby dinosaur noises you hear on cartoons and movies.
And then...
Cliffhanger!
I guess this is a good enough place to stop for the night. I can fill you guys in on the rest of the experience in the birth center with the new baby tomorrow or something.
Love and Wuxi finger holds (skidoosh!),
Jenna and David
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Excerpts
So... I am all blogged out. But, you, a hardcore Jenna and Amelia fan, whine, you haven't blogged at all in the last few weeks! How could you possibly be all blogged out?
My dear, dear fanatic. I apologize. But it's not really my fault, you see. It's all the online LDS distribution center's fault. No journals in stock. So I resorted to an online journal instead. And now I can type, just like I'm blogging, every single day! And I do. I type up nearly a thousand words every night. I can hardly stop myself. A side effect of switching to online journaling is a markedly decreased motivation to blog. Or even post Facebook status updates.
This is very bad news for you, I know. And I was being super thoughtful and kind tonight, and I imagined your predicament. I came to the conclusion that providing you with a few excerpts from my online journal over the last little while wouldn't hurt anything. Be warned... I may not post anything after this for a while. Most likely the next entry will be about Dragon's birth!
2 Sep 2014
There. Lots of love and stuff,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
My dear, dear fanatic. I apologize. But it's not really my fault, you see. It's all the online LDS distribution center's fault. No journals in stock. So I resorted to an online journal instead. And now I can type, just like I'm blogging, every single day! And I do. I type up nearly a thousand words every night. I can hardly stop myself. A side effect of switching to online journaling is a markedly decreased motivation to blog. Or even post Facebook status updates.
This is very bad news for you, I know. And I was being super thoughtful and kind tonight, and I imagined your predicament. I came to the conclusion that providing you with a few excerpts from my online journal over the last little while wouldn't hurt anything. Be warned... I may not post anything after this for a while. Most likely the next entry will be about Dragon's birth!
2 Sep 2014
I've been agonizing over what to name our son. What to name him, what to name him...? Now, see, I tend to like more traditional boy names, if I like them at all. David. James. Benjamin. Joseph. Henry. But, for whatever reason, I cannot actually imagine naming this particular child any of the more traditional names. And I absolutely despise most other names, so... dilemma.5 Sep 2014
The name that I am most tempted to name him is Dragon James Dilts. Seriously. This is precisely the sort of name that even a year ago I would have had difficulty keeping my face straight and my voice level had I actually run into a parent who revealed that they had just named their son this name. But it feels increasingly... comfortable.
We've been calling him Dragon for about half of the pregnancy. I was wearing a shirt with a fire-breathing dinosaur-type creature on it one day, when I asked Amelia what we should name her baby brother. She pointed to the creature on my shirt, so we laughed and said, "Oh, we should name him Dragon, should we?" My reaction was simply that under no circumstances would I ever write the name Dragon on a birth certificate. Ever.
But it just feels increasingly right, and everything else just feels increasingly wrong. I have stated that we will name him James Griffin Dilts, and somehow that... doesn't fit? I haven't any idea why. That seems like a perfectly good name, yes?
At this point in time, I confess that Dragon James Dilts bothers me primarily because other people do not unanimously approve. Oh, it seems the entire Dilts family approves. My mother, I believe, thinks it is a little strange, but is open to it. My dad... he hasn't said so, but I have this feeling he thinks naming a baby Dragon would be a horrid mistake. And I seriously worry what my extended family will think[, ...but t]hey are polite enough to not vocalize any disapproval they may have... so far, anyway. [My friend] told me [my old employer] gave significant pause upon learning what we planned to name the baby. Perhaps it was simply because it was just unexpected. After all, I don't think I seem the type to name a baby something unusual.
Anyway, as for the events of the day...
This morning I had my appointment with the midwives. James wasn't planning to go to campus today at all, so I left Amelia at home. Unfortunately, she woke up right when I left anyway. Blegh. The appointment went normally. I saw Chris. She is nice. She thinks Dragon isn't terribly big, maybe about the same size Amelia was. I'm measuring right, he's moving a ton, he's head down, and his heart rate is great. Not much to report.
Came home. James took Amelia out on a very long walk/adventure. I spent the time getting some last-minute me time reading stuff on the Internet. Then I drove James to the airport. Uneventful drive... Amelia was giggling at James the whole time we drove over there. She cried when he left, and then fell asleep on the way home.
Only then once we arrived back home, she didn't stay asleep through the car-to-bed transfer. Augh, this is so frustrating! This means her nap lasted a grand total of... oh, I don't know, twenty minutes? That's not even a full sleep cycle. It was very... sigh. Almost heart-breaking. As I mentioned, the attempt to hold her in bed until she fell asleep was very bad for my nausea.
Food prep has been practically impossible throughout pregnancy. Preparing food is pretty much a surefire way to trigger an aversion. I therefore find myself unable to get myself anything more complicated than a bowl of cereal. This isn't particularly good news for feeding a toddler healthily. It's not particularly good news for feeding myself healthily, especially when I already seem to have an aversion to healthy food in general.
Oh goodness. So tonight the big craving (another word for the only thing I can think of that actually sounds palatable) is a giant waffle/pancake-type thing absolutely smothered in fruity sauce and/or syrup and/or whipped cream. I feel guilty about going out to buy something like that, but there is no way in a million years I'll be able to make it myself in my current state. Nor does any of the food available in the house sound palatable. And being hungry is making my nausea worse. And there is the hope that Amelia will eat something while we're out. I have not been feeding her well.
Not that feeding her IHOP food is feeding her well, but it's feeding her something. Gagh. We are WAY over our budget. I've been so craving-driven and aversion-avoidant that I've used practically all our food stamps on random things like cheesecake, expensive Costco casseroles, Papa Murphy's, etc. Food can be pricey if you go about it in the right way. Anyway, I will feel bad if I do end up going out for food. It's just... what do I do?
I eventually decided to go to Shari's, and I invited Paul and Cassie to come with. I needed something to eat before I got so sick that I was unable to function. Amelia didn't eat. It was supremely frustrating. On the plus side, I did get to eat something that resembled a good meal. And I got to socialize with Paul and Cassie. Huzzah. Still just frustrated about Amelia not eating anything or sleeping today. I wish James were here to help. Oh well.
Today Amelia woke us up around 9am. Not too bad. She let me ignore her for a surprising amount today. I've been practically adhered to the computer screen. Perhaps not the best. I read a ton about car seat safety, and then I also entered several giveaways. Statistically speaking, perhaps it is worth it to enter these things, because you may actually win... but I wonder. I entered one for an Amazon gift card, one for a Diono Radian RXT car seat, one for Bamboobies nursing pads, one for a $500 Southwest gift card, etc. I find myself offering up a quick prayer at times telling Heavenly Father how nice it'd be to win some of these things, and honestly, I wonder how much he pays attention to prayers like that. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that He has a personal rule to not interfere with things like giveaways. I wonder how closely related a giveaway is to a lottery or other gambling-type activities in His mind.6 Sep 2014
In any case, all the reading about car seat safety has me feeling extremely nervous about holding Dragon as a lap infant for our trip to Pennsylvania in December. Not only that, but after gate-checking his carseat in order to hold him, I'll worry about the safety of the car seat. Sigh. Gosh, but I wish we'd had loads of cash with which to buy a fourth ticketed seat for our family. I should tell James that really, we should never, ever hold a lap infant again. It's just not worth it, I don't think. Perhaps it'd be a better idea to ask James' parents to ask around and see if there's an infant car seat just hanging out in someone's garage waiting to be used for a second baby or something. In any case, a borrowed seat might be as trustworthy as our own after it's been checked luggage.
I seriously never want to check a car seat again now, and even more, I never want to hold a lap infant on a flight either. It's not safe for so many reasons. Thinking about the physics of what could happen on an airplane... makes me shudder. My own body weight could crush the kid dead. Doom.
Anyway, as mentioned, Amelia was actually somewhat successful in entertaining herself today. It helped that I made myself look away from yet another compelling article on car seat safety and really focus in on her at least some of the time when she came for loves. We read a few books. We had a bubble bath together. We ate some yogurt and some Cheerios.
The big impressive thing of the day... Amelia pooped in the little potty all by herself. Well, that's not the impressive part. The exciting news is that she dumped it into the big potty and flushed it away all by herself. It was marvelously odd to not have been able to see the (possibly) giant turd before wishing it hasta la vista, but I know it existed because of the skid marks on the little potty bowl, the general turd smell in the bathroom, the delightful fecal remnants on Amelia's bumhole, and Amelia's adorable sense of accomplishment. But still. I never saw it. Weird.
Amelia napped some... I am having difficulty napping lately. Not sure why. I wasn't able to talk to James much today. He checked out of his hotel at 4:45am, apparently, and spent most of the day visiting Denali National Park. I assume he is not responding to texts because Denali is in the absolute middle of nowhere, but I am feeling somewhat lonely without his little love notes.
I read some about homeschooling while I was quasi-napping. Usually when I think about homeschooling, I wonder if I'll be capable of doing that with all my health problems, but for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps it would be better for my health (particularly my mental health) to homeschool. I would forever be engaged in learning, and I know that really does a lot to increase my life satisfaction. This is a very liberating thought.
I also find myself feeling (already!) that I am ready to start "working on" kid number three. I'm still pregnant with number two, and only a few days ago I had practically resigned myself to having only two children for a while (and felt guilty about how having a third might negatively affect our current family!). Um. The priesthood blessing James gave me just a little bit ago mentioned trusting my instincts and my logic and such, and um... how does this work when I feel like my instincts are pendulous? Back and forth, back and forth. No more babies. More babies ASAP. No more babies. More babies ASAP! I don't know. Right now, three babies sounds perfect. A girl, a boy, and one more girl. Then stop? Eek, James is going to seriously facepalm when he hears I've switched back over to the "more babies ASAP" camp.
After the nap, we walked over to Cassie's and it wasn't long before Amelia was obviously starving and I hadn't fed her... and I had a killer craving for Wendy's chicken nuggets, so that's precisely what we did next. Amelia's kid's meal was chicken nuggets, fries, and chocolate milk. The toy was a tiny board book. She likes it. I ate a gajillion chicken nuggets. After I finished my first helping, I felt hungrier than I had before I started eating, so I got some more. Ha.
Today I was quite ill when I woke up. Amelia was very insistent that I wake up and get out of bed though. We talked briefly to James on Skype. Amelia, of course, cheered up significantly in talking to him. She loves him a lot. After the Skype call we dinked around a bit until it was about time to go get him. There was a football game today, so I wanted to start driving over to the airport a bit early. About the exact time I wanted to go, though, Amelia demanded a yogurt. I decided to feed one to her before going, and I still got to pick up James on time. Traffic was bad, but not awful. It was, of course, stop and go around the stadium, and I was surprised that the turn from MLK Blvd toward the Delta Highway was blocked off, but even going the long way up Coburg and onto Beltline, everything turned out fine.7 Sep 2014
James' reunion with Amelia was adorable. I had gotten her out of the car and we were waiting under a tree next to the drop-off zone. I caught a glimpse of James before Amelia did, and I said, "Do you see Daddy?" She gasped, yelled, "I see you!", and then ran over to him with a giant grin, and gave him a big hug. James had to let go of his suitcase, and it started to roll away. It was moderately amusing to see him trying to stop it from rolling into the road while still hugging the tot.
Drove home (not using Centennial, ha), and it wasn't too long before the three of us were all asleep in a row on the bed. We were asleep for three hours or so. James was so exhausted.
He was wonderful and made two grilled cheese sandwiches for Amelia and me. Then, while he was watching Amelia, I took a long, glorious, warm shower and washed my hair and face well and everything. Huzzah! I had kind of washed myself off in the bath while he was gone, but it is nearly impossible to really get myself as clean as I like with Amelia in the tub/shower with me. I feel so much better.
Amelia and James were reading books together for a long time tonight. They read a couple books about pregnancy and life with a new baby, and she was very interested. I don't know how long an attention span is normal for a two-year-old, but I think it is safe to say her attention span is significantly longer than normal. She and James must have been reading long picture books designed for older kids for maybe twenty minutes. Maybe more. And then James needed to spend more time preparing for his Elders' Quorum lesson tomorrow, so I took over on the reading-to-tot duty. I don't know how much time I spent reading to her, exactly, but maybe forty minutes later, she started losing patience actually reading the words on the page, so we switched to talking about the pictures, and then we did that for maybe another twenty minutes or so before I was done with that activity. She was so sad about being done. This child is definitely interested in books.
Of note: at some point after reading the books about new baby, James told Amelia that soon we would have a new baby and that Amelia would no longer be the only baby in the house. Her clear response was, "No, no! I'm the baby!" I think she understands a lot of what we say, and she surprises me sometimes with what she says. I think she understood that we were going to the airport in order to get Daddy, so perhaps she is actually kind of understanding when we say that there is going to be a new baby soon. I think it is also helping to leave some of the baby gear out, like the car seat and the playard. Amelia especially likes playing with the car seat. She puts the baby doll into it and pushes it around.
James got distracted from his laptop and was talking to me for a while. We turn around... "Amelia, what are you doing!?" "I'm typing!" she announces, quite proud of herself. Indeed, she was. She looked like a perfect little office secretary... well, except for the part where she's completely naked except for shoes.
Sacrament meeting was mostly okay. We sat Amelia in our laps again during the sacrament service. She does not understand why she is being made to sit still. She does, however, really enjoy talking about the pictures of Jesus we can see from our seats in the foyer. I think it would be even harder for her if we were somewhere she couldn't see the pictures... like in the chapel. Hur. I think we should make a little "sacrament focus book" for her. Given her adoration of books, I think it would help her to sit still this way. Not only should it help her sit still, but I think this will help her to learn. After browsing through store.lds.org, I think the Gospel Art Book will be absolutely perfect. I have not yet decided whether we should buy one, or get two (one for just Amelia to abuse and love, and one for the family). They are only $3.50. Huzzah! That's amazing.8 Sep 2014
Went to my midwife's appointment. Saw Hilary today. Dragon is still head down with his back to my right, with his butt up toward my ribcage. Heart still beating and all that jazz. He's doing just fine. I didn't really gain any weight this week. I'm shocked! After all those huge stacks of pancakes and bucketloads of chicken nuggets, etc. Seriously, I was expecting to have gained a few pounds, ha. Oh well. I did not lose weight this week. I was at 160.6 lbs. Hilary gave me a list of things to bring to the birth center, so I guess I can start really actually packing for labor. Huzzah! I am officially far enough along to be allowed to labor in the birth center on Friday. It will be hard for me not to hope too hard for labor to start during week 37, ha.9 Sep 2014
[...]We tried to get Amelia to nap, but it was just obviously not working, and she was just obviously not tired enough to nap. She'd giggle, and then look over at us and squeak, "HI!" and lick us and all of that. So... we gave up on the nap idea for a bit. I'm getting nervous that this is going to be more than a phase... After all, she has always seemed to need less sleep than other children I know. And naptime has begun to be more and more Amelia resisting nap and less and less nap. Oh well. We shall see what happens. Hopefully she goes back to napping soon. I think I will at least attempt nap everyday, and not fight too hard if she refuses.
Our new car seat arrived today... a Diono Radian R120. It is fancy. I spent a long time making sure it was installed correctly, including the rear-facing tether, which is a pretty unusual feature. I eventually determined that we did indeed need the angle adjuster that is sold separately. Sigh. I was hoping we wouldn't need it, but it really is a rather long seat. Amelia clearly fits into it better than she fits into her current one, though, so...
The only problem is that the angle adjuster is out of stock everywhere online. I sent an email to Diono to ask how long until this backorder issue is solved. I have put blankets underneath the seat for the moment. I will be far more comfortable once I can get my hands on a real angle adjuster, since that was what the seat was crash-tested with (and passed!), but in the meantime this will have to do. After all, we still need to be able to drive...
I did put in an order on Amazon for the angle adjuster. Theoretically it will ship in 1-3 months. Doom. I also ordered some LR44 batteries, a travel-sized luggage scale, and an indoor humidity meter... all things I would like to have prior to our holiday travels, but don't need now. I have wanted a hygrometer for some time now, because it is sometimes hard to know when it is too humid or too dry in our room before problems start happening. For instance, a little bit ago, I was getting up to pee four or five times a night. I'd pee, and then I'd try to resist taking a huge drink... but I couldn't resist! I was so thirsty! It was seriously disturbing my sleep. I eventually figured out that it was simply too dry in my room. Once I pulled down the humidifier, I only needed to get up once to pee in the night, and I wasn't thirsty. Sleep was much better after that.
Anyway. We went to FHE at Paul and Cassie's. [Stuff happened.] Came home and got ready for bed. Tonight Amelia pointed to a picture of a puppy and proudly enunciated "the puppy!", then pointed to a second puppy and proudly said "the puppies!". Yikes! Singular vs. plural AND articles!
And then, while we were saying family prayers, she said her own prayer... I don't know what she was praying for, but it clearly involved puppies. She was folding her arms and ended with an "amen". It was adorable.
It was about midnight by the time Amelia and I climbed into bed, and despite her lack of nap, she seemed no worse for wear. This is not a good sign for this merely being a phase! Oh no!
During the early afternoon, I called the pediatricians' office's nurse help line to ask about Amelia's possible vulvovaginitis. For about a week, on and off, she's been complaining about irritation down around her vulvae and vagina. And, in the last couple of days or so, she's been producing a very stinky smell down there. I haven't seen much of any discharge and it wasn't pink, but I called for advice. The nurse's advice was to do baking soda baths three times a day (add a few ounces to the bath water) to help restore a good pH balance in the vaginal area. Did that. Also set up an appointment for the evening.10 Sep 2014
Amelia didn't like the idea of a nap when I first posited this to her. But I was super smart and just offered to cuddle in bed for a while. She did like this idea. So we cuddled for a while, and eventually she calmed down enough that suddenly the idea of napping didn't seem so scandalous. So I put her in a diaper instead of panties, got her into a shirt, and then we cuddled to sleep. She napped for two hours, and then she was as happy as could be, and pretty hyper.
James got home shortly thereafter, and he made us Ramen noodle soup for dinner. I dropped him off at [someone's] house so that he could read [...] Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians [to said someone], then I went to the pediatrician with Amelia. The pediatrician said Amelia's nether regions looked fine even though it kind of sounded like a yeast infection, so really the only advice she added was to put diaper rash cream on it. She knew enough about cloth diapers to know that ammonia buildup [on the diapers] was a possible culprit, but not enough to know that diaper rash ointments are all no-nos with cloth diapers... The ointments will build up on the diapers, void the warranty, cause them to lose absorbency and basically ruin them. Thankfully, I am super nerdy and had already researched this a long time ago and knew that coconut oil was a cloth-safe alternative to diaper rash creams. It is soothing for babies and has all sorts of antimicrobial, antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties, so... it's perfect. Plus, it's a food item, so food stamps will pay for it. :) Went to Fred Meyer in order to get some before picking James up [...]. Got a handful of other things, like animal crackers, chocolate almond milk, and a new hook for hanging my purse on the wall. Got James. Went home.
Amelia was AWFUL for the car ride from the pediatrician's office to Fred Meyer, and throughout the store. The reason? Her prize from the doctor was a small sheet of bug stickers. She would not leave the office until I had helped her remove them all and put them on her shirt. But then she kept messing with them... and dropping them... and folding them on themselves... and basically, all the things you can possibly do to a toddler's sticker in order to make the toddler upset. So during the car ride, she'd drop one. "OH NO! WHERE IS? OH NO! WHERE STAH?" And while crossing the street, she'd drop another. I don't know where it went, so I attempt to get her to keep walking... because, well, it's the middle of the road. "OH NO! WHYYY?!" And then she flopped herself down onto the asphalt (again, still in the middle of the road) and screamed. Yes, it was glorious.
On the plus side, I do think Amelia genuinely loves her new car seat. It is much more comfortable for her, I think. It took a little bit of time to figure out how to get the harness tight enough on her, but everytime I ask her if she likes her new seat, she answers very, very emphatically, "YASS." Another plus... there is so much more room in the back seat now. We might even be able to fit two more people back there instead of just one.
Oh my heck, last night was simply awful. Awful. Amelia was obviously exhausted out of her mind, but she could not fall asleep. We were all in bed around 10:30pm, and I think she finally passed out nearabouts 12:30am. Like I said, awful. We need to figure out how to teach her to fall asleep, but the problem is, I also have great difficulty falling asleep many nights. It is a good night when I fall asleep within an hour of lying down. Two hours isn't too unusual. So how am I supposed to teach the chitlin how to fall asleep quickly? Augh.
Anyway, thanks to the awful sleep quality last night, I was quite exhausted and had a migraine and all that jazz. But I forced myself out of bed because I had an appointment with Dr. Mitchell (my psychiatrist). Thankfully, James was wonderful and such and stayed home to watch Amelia for me while I went to the doctor alone. This was especially nice because she hadn't even woken up yet and sleeping tot is always a good thing. (Well, maybe not always, but...)
The appointment went fine. I was very, very nervous to confess that I had just up and stopped taking Wellbutrin (suddenly, even) without discussing it with anyone. I think the official stop had happened back when I was so sick that I needed IV hydration. I just stopped. And then I felt fine without it. In fact, I am feeling better than I have in years. Better than I have in my entire life, possibly. I don't know if the Wellbutrin was kind of numbing me down(/up?) somehow (while still making me feel leagues above where I felt during the depression), but the fact is I feel fabulous emotionally despite feeling the opposite way physically. I am still quite sick, but I feel... more dynamic, somehow.
Dr. Mitchell was somewhat nervous about letting me stay off, but she agreed to let me try. She reviewed my entire psychiatric history with me first, summing it up with, "So, you were severely depressed for an entire decade?" ... "Yup." Well, I'm still very excited to be off of it. It's not cheap for one thing. We are getting an excellent price for it with insurance, but it costs us roughly $420 each year--not insignificant, by any means. And then, well, I am pregnant and planning to breastfeed (for FOREVER! I mean... not forever... right...), and it's nice to not have to worry about what it is doing to the baby. Or me, for that matter.
Home. Felt yucky, but wanted to go out and about again, so the three of us all went to the library briefly. I checked out a few books on babies/toddlers, some of which I've read before. For instance, I checked out Dr. Sears' The Fussy Baby Book again because I need to remind myself of reasons why I perhaps shouldn't get pregnant again immediately. I still think I'm absolutely crazy, because I'm super sick, and yet I am already pining for baby three. I'm not even done baking baby two. What is wrong with me...!? So yes, I am attempted to reconvince myself that it wouldn't hurt to just wait a while. Right...? I SHOULD NOT NEED CONVINCING.
Anyway. We decided to move the new car seat to a different seat location in the back since right behind the driver's seat wasn't really working well. The new configuration is the tot's seat behind the passenger, and the infant seat behind the driver. I was hoping to fit the tot seat in the middle, but the Graco infant seat is far too wide to allow anything right next to it. Now we know... when baby three comes, we cannot use our current infant car seat and will need to buy a skinny seat. That, or get a new car. Replacing seats sounds far less stressful and less expensive than getting a new car...
There. Lots of love and stuff,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Tot
Amelia is currently obsessed with the song "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" from Disney's The Aristocats. Since last night or so, she is prone to incessantly beg "ey-buh-ee" until we play it. I am content to play the song on repeat without the video up on screen, but she really likes the video too. Last night she was really tired (and possibly feeling unwell?) and whimpered "ey-buh-ee" over and and over again until I sang it a capella. And I sang it over and over again until she slept. Yikes.
I think she is having a wordsplosion right about now. It would not surprise me to report that she regularly uses 300-400 words, especially after attempting to create an extensive Amelia-to-English translator's dictionary. Such a thing might be impossible without recording every word she says over the course of a few days... and even if I were to do that, while I was compiling a list based on that data, she'd probably spout off another fifty new words just to spite my attempts at scientific completeness. Oh well. Here is a very partial list of Amelia's vocabulary...
dooo! = I do! [yes]
no, pee! = No, please!
nao... = No [Mother, that was a stupid suggestion]
my! = mine!
pee = pee, please, pink, pizza, piano
poo = poo, spoon
pah-ee = potty
pie = Pinkie Pie, My Little Pony
shy = Fluttershy
uh-shy = Fluttershy
cuh = color
pah = pen, pencil, marker, paper
cull = popsicle
chee = cheese
chee(oh) = Cheerio
cho = Cheerio
djoo = juice (or other non-water liquids for drinking)
bubboo = water, bottle, bubbles
doot-doo = music
shao = shower, bath
bao = ball
boh = bow, bowl
buh = butt
beh = belly, belly button
birh = bird, bear
boooo = book, boob, nurse
dao = down, up
dreh = dress
gwee = green
bwoo = blue
bwao = brown
yeh-oo = yellow
weh = red
meow = cat
*blows raspberry* = elephant
see = seat, chair
all gah! = all gone
all duh! = all done
tee = tree
twee = three
too! = two, numbers
priy = pretty
prey = pretty
appoh = apple
nana = banana
sih-dao = upside-down
bee! = B, letters, bee
wai = wipes
sai = outside
cah = car
yay! = yay!
yeah! = yeah!
uh oh... = uh oh...
eye! = eye
ee-uh = ear
tee = teeth
no = nose
hey-uh = hair
aff-oh = flower
uff-oo = puzzle
awful = waffle
cwai = cry
shoo = shoes
sah = socks
nay = naked
Pah-oh = Paul (our friend)
Cah-ee = Cassie (our friend)
puppy = puppy
keeee = keys
foh = phone
cheh-ee = cherry
nee = need
neeee = knee
aahhh = arms
toh = toes
fee = feet
eeeewww = ew
goh = gross
ew, goh! = ew, gross!
fah = fall
About here I realized I had set myself an impossible task and decided to do something else.
In any case, you may or may not have noticed that Amelia has something against consonants. Or multisyllabic words. Or both? It's like she picks her favorite syllable from a word, chops off a consonant or two, and then goes with it. I guess that's baby talk for you.
Except sometimes she deigns to speak more fully. Sometimes longer sentences will spill out of her mouth, and at those times the words themselves sprout their appropriate missing consonants so as to sound more proper and such. Examples: "It's just so funny!" "Where's the puppy?" "That's not juice!" "That smells." [This one was said to a passing smoker, hah!] "I peed and pooped!" "The cat says meow!" I suppose there is also "I am cry 'cuz bedtai." That one... I had told her that I don't like it when she screams. She responded by explaining that she wouldn't cry if I didn't enforce bedtime. Hah. Yeah, RIGHT.
She's also been inventing signs. She invented one for "smile" the other day. She smiles and runs her fingers across her teeth. She is now very happy to point out that other people are smiling or happy using this sign. Her sign for "dance" is to dance with her pointer fingers.
Oh, music. She loves it. She is beginning to recognize when a song sounds "sad" and will start making mournful noises, point to the speakers, and say "sah". She understands "tempo" in some sort of crude way. She is already responding to the beat and will sway in time to a waltz, and convulse in time to something more exciting, like "Everything is Awesome". I am somewhat amused to report that her dance moves are a bit monotonous. It's always the dancing disco pointer fingers, even if she is dancing to a hymn. Ha.
Another favorite is "Let It Go"... If she's in the mood she'll do all the arm movements Elsa does in the movie. She's been doing that less often recently, though, because we've been limiting screen time... at home, anyway. Kind of. It is just too easy to watch a gajillion random Internet videos. And then Amelia gets upset when we stop. So we try not to start up on those. We are even attempting to make ourselves not click on random videos in our news feeds. This is turning out to be extremely difficult. Especially for James, it is just an automatic to click play when y'all share videos.
Anyway, I'm not sure if we've actually reduced screen time much while I've been terribly sick and weak, but I think watching movies as a family is an improvement over random Internet vids. We've watched "The Lion King", "Kung Fu Panda", "Up", "The LEGO Movie", and "Frozen" in just over a week. Amelia, I think, is starting to actually understand much of what we are watching. Scary. Sometimes she will look at me questioningly to explain something. Last night I had to explain to her that Anna and Elsa were sad because their mommy and daddy had died.
Food... augh, food. Let me tell you, we were having some good success in breaking Amelia's cheese and juice fixation for a few days before I got sick enough to need IV hydration. All I did was just not give her cheese or juice and suffer through the whining. And there was a lot of it, because she was refusing all food except those two things, and was thus hungry. And also increasingly desperate. She actually started eating random stuff with me. Huzzah!
And then I got sick, and I have been nearly unable to eat anything that isn't cheese or juice. (What's up with that?) And there is no way on Earth I'm going to be able to convince the tot to eat alternative foods if that is comprising the vast majority of my own diet. Oh well.
Other foods besides cheese sandwiches and juice that I've been able to stomach include elderflower syrup in water, Rice Krispies treats, fancy Austrian chocolate, G.H. Cretor's Chicago Mix popcorn, and... well, yesterday I ate a vinegar-doused Greek pasta salad, then licked the extra vinegary stuff off the bowl, much to James' dismay. (For whatever reason, James cannot stand vinegar. It's really quite odd.)
Notice anything that all those foods have in common? They are invariably high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. Also low in fiber. Everytime I attempt to eat an actual fruit or veggie, I have massive difficulty. I am even having trouble with the tomato sauce on pizza.
I have to be careful with juices, too. Some juices I can't handle... like orange juice. Or the strawberry juice James brought back from Austria. Peach, apricot, grape, and even mango have all been fine. Oh well. Haven't yet figured out a homemade smoothie recipe that'll sit well in my belly. Again, oh well. The midwives and I are in agreement here: just eat it. I am having too much trouble keeping down macronutrients to worry much about micronutrients.
It just still feels so wrong. Sometimes I hear Dr. Fuhrman's voice in my head saying something to this effect: "You are poisoning your unborn child! And your toddler! And yourself! Bad Jenna, bad!" Don't worry. I beat him up every time he says that. I realize that suboptimal nutrition is better than no nutrition. I managed to gain seven whole pounds in the last two weeks to make up for the weight I lost during the very bad bit. Huzzah! I am smack dab in the middle of the "normal weight gain" curve today.
Today I also "completed" my hunt for 3T-sized clothes. HUZZAH. Ugh. I eventually decided that the best method, if forced to purchase clothing, anyway, is to purchase only at thrift stores like Goodwill and Value Village... and to buy only clothes with the color tags that happen to be half-off... Because I am unwilling to pay more than an average of $1 per article of clothing, especially since it is going on a crazy tot. This color tag method really only works if you show up first thing in the morning on the day they change the color tags... (Turns out both Goodwill and Value Village change the color tag sale once a week... Goodwill on Sunday, and Value Village on Thursday. I had the bestest luck showing up at Goodwill on Monday morning, and Value Village Thursday morning.) Only took a few trips after I started timing it right.
Now, my success noted, I am actually disappointed that the clothing I purchased is fitting so well, because that means it won't fit for long. 3T shirts all fit... well, perfectly. 3T dresses... also fit well. Importantly, none of the skirts end above her knees. 3T pants... well, dang. These don't fit perfectly. They are invariably too long, by maybe an inch or two. However, they fit her waist fantastically--better than the 2T pants, anyway--so she will be donning rolled up pant legs for a bit. I have this sinking feeling her legs are going to grow a few inches soon, anyway. Strangely, 3T pajamas (especially the nice Carter's ones) are all too big. I guess they just try to make pajamas roomier to be more comfy?
I actually bought quite a bit in 4T as well, especially in shirts, because they don't look all that big on her. I hate shopping for clothes. I hate it. And, in a year from now, I will be getting ready to move to California with a three-year-old and a one-year-old. While James has no income. Sounds awful. We are already saving dollars for this time, and plan to save nearly our entire tax return for this time, so I figured it'd be a great idea to save tot clothes, too. Especially when I am finding them for a dollar or even fifty cents.
The only thing we have to investigate further is a 3T or 4T swimsuit, but the 2T one she has is fairly roomy, especially if she doesn't wear a diaper with it. And maybe shoes. But I am picky about shoes. I usually buy those new. There is a reason Amelia has one pair of shoes right now that she wears everywhere. (We also have some bigger shoes available for when that pair gets too tight.)
Woot. Anyway, Amelia is getting better at taking care of herself. She is avidly trying to figure out how to clothe and declothe herself (as well as how to hang up clothes just perfectly) and is getting pretty good at it. Toileting... sigh. Okay, I shouldn't sigh so much about this. She is actually doing really quite wonderfully. She manages to use the potty most of the time, usually without us even asking.
The sigh comes from when she stealth poops in the potty by herself. She doesn't know how to wipe her own bum adequately, of course. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I do not care to elucidate on the cause of my sighs further.
This whole semi-success transition phase is rough. Just when I had my diaper-washing routine down, she stopped soiling diapers that quickly. I am now washing them three times every two weeks, when really, they were meant to be washed every other day. This means I have ended up submitting the diapers to a more exciting wash routine to combat the fact that the diapers now have more time to become BFFs with ammonia while waiting in the wet bag for a wash. It will help when Dragon gets here. Or perhaps we will need to go buy panties for Amelia soon.
Amelia's artwork is getting increasingly complicated. For those familiar with or interested in the stages of artistic development, she is firmly entrenched in the preschematic stage. She is now sometimes drawing boobs on Mommy stick figures. I know now what she considers my most important feature. (I promise, I didn't teach her that.) She also draws things besides people, on occasion... such as bees, trees, bananas...
Oh, and sometimes she tells stories about the people she draws. Once she was drawing lines down a face, and she explained to me that the guy "is sah, is cry, cry, cry..." Apparently, he was crying a lot, because she kept drawing lines over his face until you couldn't tell there had once been a person underneath.
At times I get a little freaked out by Amelia's leaps in artistic development... I mean, the standard wisdom is that kids don't start drawing like this until age 3, or maybe 4. I can tell James is a little freaked out sometimes too. Once, after sitting for a while with a concerned face, he asked me, "So... if she's 2, and she draws like a 3-year-old, does that mean her IQ is 150? Or maybe she draws like a 4-year-old. 200!" I laughed at him, and I assured him that art skills likely don't correlate that neatly with IQ.
Besides, I don't want to admit I have a kid quite that unusual until I absolutely have to. I mean, I was labelled gifted as a kid, both my sisters should have been (one was dyslexic and that got in the way, so sad), James was (and I estimate that his raw intelligence is higher than mine is), as far as I can tell, all his brothers and sisters fit in the gifted category (except maybe the one with Down syndrome... though I have a sneaking suspicion that if it weren't for that pesky extra chromosome, she'd be as intelligent as the rest of them) as did his parents, etc., etc., etc. So, I have just assumed all my children will be quite intelligent.
I am just now beginning to realize that, more than pride-inducing, it is just plain frightening to see signs of it in Amelia. It's overwhelming. I mean, I'm responsible for the majority of circumstances in her life, and just thinking back to the difficulties I had growing up with the gifted label makes me exceedingly nervous. How do I coach another small "gifted" kid through life?
I know the stereotypical reaction to a parent who thinks their child is unusual in anyway (especially if they let slip the g-word) is something like "Oh, come on. That's perfectly normal. Puh-lease. Stop bragging already." *eye roll, loss of respect*... That alone makes me scared to even express my anxieties. But it is the truth. Oh, of course, there is a part of me that is exceedingly pleased to see that Amelia is intelligent. How could I not feel that way? But the overriding emotion is the, "Oh goodness. Here comes the rollercoaster ride."
In any case, Amelia is quite good at drawing for her age. I don't know how much of that is hereditary, but practically my dad's entire family is exceptionally talented in the visual arts and many of them use that skill in some way to make their living. So, at the very least, there is that to look forward to. Predictably, my dad esteems it very important to encourage Amelia's interest in art as much as possible. He spent lots of money to send her a TON of art supplies for her birthday. So... you can look forward to more photos of artwork on Facebook.
Well... it is nap time.
Love and tadpole people,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
I think she is having a wordsplosion right about now. It would not surprise me to report that she regularly uses 300-400 words, especially after attempting to create an extensive Amelia-to-English translator's dictionary. Such a thing might be impossible without recording every word she says over the course of a few days... and even if I were to do that, while I was compiling a list based on that data, she'd probably spout off another fifty new words just to spite my attempts at scientific completeness. Oh well. Here is a very partial list of Amelia's vocabulary...
dooo! = I do! [yes]
no, pee! = No, please!
nao... = No [Mother, that was a stupid suggestion]
my! = mine!
pee = pee, please, pink, pizza, piano
poo = poo, spoon
pah-ee = potty
pie = Pinkie Pie, My Little Pony
shy = Fluttershy
uh-shy = Fluttershy
cuh = color
pah = pen, pencil, marker, paper
cull = popsicle
chee = cheese
chee(oh) = Cheerio
cho = Cheerio
djoo = juice (or other non-water liquids for drinking)
bubboo = water, bottle, bubbles
doot-doo = music
shao = shower, bath
bao = ball
boh = bow, bowl
buh = butt
beh = belly, belly button
birh = bird, bear
boooo = book, boob, nurse
dao = down, up
dreh = dress
gwee = green
bwoo = blue
bwao = brown
yeh-oo = yellow
weh = red
meow = cat
*blows raspberry* = elephant
see = seat, chair
all gah! = all gone
all duh! = all done
tee = tree
twee = three
too! = two, numbers
priy = pretty
prey = pretty
appoh = apple
nana = banana
sih-dao = upside-down
bee! = B, letters, bee
wai = wipes
sai = outside
cah = car
yay! = yay!
yeah! = yeah!
uh oh... = uh oh...
eye! = eye
ee-uh = ear
tee = teeth
no = nose
hey-uh = hair
aff-oh = flower
uff-oo = puzzle
awful = waffle
cwai = cry
shoo = shoes
sah = socks
nay = naked
Pah-oh = Paul (our friend)
Cah-ee = Cassie (our friend)
puppy = puppy
keeee = keys
foh = phone
cheh-ee = cherry
nee = need
neeee = knee
aahhh = arms
toh = toes
fee = feet
eeeewww = ew
goh = gross
ew, goh! = ew, gross!
fah = fall
About here I realized I had set myself an impossible task and decided to do something else.
In any case, you may or may not have noticed that Amelia has something against consonants. Or multisyllabic words. Or both? It's like she picks her favorite syllable from a word, chops off a consonant or two, and then goes with it. I guess that's baby talk for you.
Except sometimes she deigns to speak more fully. Sometimes longer sentences will spill out of her mouth, and at those times the words themselves sprout their appropriate missing consonants so as to sound more proper and such. Examples: "It's just so funny!" "Where's the puppy?" "That's not juice!" "That smells." [This one was said to a passing smoker, hah!] "I peed and pooped!" "The cat says meow!" I suppose there is also "I am cry 'cuz bedtai." That one... I had told her that I don't like it when she screams. She responded by explaining that she wouldn't cry if I didn't enforce bedtime. Hah. Yeah, RIGHT.
She's also been inventing signs. She invented one for "smile" the other day. She smiles and runs her fingers across her teeth. She is now very happy to point out that other people are smiling or happy using this sign. Her sign for "dance" is to dance with her pointer fingers.
Oh, music. She loves it. She is beginning to recognize when a song sounds "sad" and will start making mournful noises, point to the speakers, and say "sah". She understands "tempo" in some sort of crude way. She is already responding to the beat and will sway in time to a waltz, and convulse in time to something more exciting, like "Everything is Awesome". I am somewhat amused to report that her dance moves are a bit monotonous. It's always the dancing disco pointer fingers, even if she is dancing to a hymn. Ha.
Another favorite is "Let It Go"... If she's in the mood she'll do all the arm movements Elsa does in the movie. She's been doing that less often recently, though, because we've been limiting screen time... at home, anyway. Kind of. It is just too easy to watch a gajillion random Internet videos. And then Amelia gets upset when we stop. So we try not to start up on those. We are even attempting to make ourselves not click on random videos in our news feeds. This is turning out to be extremely difficult. Especially for James, it is just an automatic to click play when y'all share videos.
Anyway, I'm not sure if we've actually reduced screen time much while I've been terribly sick and weak, but I think watching movies as a family is an improvement over random Internet vids. We've watched "The Lion King", "Kung Fu Panda", "Up", "The LEGO Movie", and "Frozen" in just over a week. Amelia, I think, is starting to actually understand much of what we are watching. Scary. Sometimes she will look at me questioningly to explain something. Last night I had to explain to her that Anna and Elsa were sad because their mommy and daddy had died.
Food... augh, food. Let me tell you, we were having some good success in breaking Amelia's cheese and juice fixation for a few days before I got sick enough to need IV hydration. All I did was just not give her cheese or juice and suffer through the whining. And there was a lot of it, because she was refusing all food except those two things, and was thus hungry. And also increasingly desperate. She actually started eating random stuff with me. Huzzah!
And then I got sick, and I have been nearly unable to eat anything that isn't cheese or juice. (What's up with that?) And there is no way on Earth I'm going to be able to convince the tot to eat alternative foods if that is comprising the vast majority of my own diet. Oh well.
Other foods besides cheese sandwiches and juice that I've been able to stomach include elderflower syrup in water, Rice Krispies treats, fancy Austrian chocolate, G.H. Cretor's Chicago Mix popcorn, and... well, yesterday I ate a vinegar-doused Greek pasta salad, then licked the extra vinegary stuff off the bowl, much to James' dismay. (For whatever reason, James cannot stand vinegar. It's really quite odd.)
Notice anything that all those foods have in common? They are invariably high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. Also low in fiber. Everytime I attempt to eat an actual fruit or veggie, I have massive difficulty. I am even having trouble with the tomato sauce on pizza.
I have to be careful with juices, too. Some juices I can't handle... like orange juice. Or the strawberry juice James brought back from Austria. Peach, apricot, grape, and even mango have all been fine. Oh well. Haven't yet figured out a homemade smoothie recipe that'll sit well in my belly. Again, oh well. The midwives and I are in agreement here: just eat it. I am having too much trouble keeping down macronutrients to worry much about micronutrients.
It just still feels so wrong. Sometimes I hear Dr. Fuhrman's voice in my head saying something to this effect: "You are poisoning your unborn child! And your toddler! And yourself! Bad Jenna, bad!" Don't worry. I beat him up every time he says that. I realize that suboptimal nutrition is better than no nutrition. I managed to gain seven whole pounds in the last two weeks to make up for the weight I lost during the very bad bit. Huzzah! I am smack dab in the middle of the "normal weight gain" curve today.
Today I also "completed" my hunt for 3T-sized clothes. HUZZAH. Ugh. I eventually decided that the best method, if forced to purchase clothing, anyway, is to purchase only at thrift stores like Goodwill and Value Village... and to buy only clothes with the color tags that happen to be half-off... Because I am unwilling to pay more than an average of $1 per article of clothing, especially since it is going on a crazy tot. This color tag method really only works if you show up first thing in the morning on the day they change the color tags... (Turns out both Goodwill and Value Village change the color tag sale once a week... Goodwill on Sunday, and Value Village on Thursday. I had the bestest luck showing up at Goodwill on Monday morning, and Value Village Thursday morning.) Only took a few trips after I started timing it right.
Now, my success noted, I am actually disappointed that the clothing I purchased is fitting so well, because that means it won't fit for long. 3T shirts all fit... well, perfectly. 3T dresses... also fit well. Importantly, none of the skirts end above her knees. 3T pants... well, dang. These don't fit perfectly. They are invariably too long, by maybe an inch or two. However, they fit her waist fantastically--better than the 2T pants, anyway--so she will be donning rolled up pant legs for a bit. I have this sinking feeling her legs are going to grow a few inches soon, anyway. Strangely, 3T pajamas (especially the nice Carter's ones) are all too big. I guess they just try to make pajamas roomier to be more comfy?
I actually bought quite a bit in 4T as well, especially in shirts, because they don't look all that big on her. I hate shopping for clothes. I hate it. And, in a year from now, I will be getting ready to move to California with a three-year-old and a one-year-old. While James has no income. Sounds awful. We are already saving dollars for this time, and plan to save nearly our entire tax return for this time, so I figured it'd be a great idea to save tot clothes, too. Especially when I am finding them for a dollar or even fifty cents.
The only thing we have to investigate further is a 3T or 4T swimsuit, but the 2T one she has is fairly roomy, especially if she doesn't wear a diaper with it. And maybe shoes. But I am picky about shoes. I usually buy those new. There is a reason Amelia has one pair of shoes right now that she wears everywhere. (We also have some bigger shoes available for when that pair gets too tight.)
Woot. Anyway, Amelia is getting better at taking care of herself. She is avidly trying to figure out how to clothe and declothe herself (as well as how to hang up clothes just perfectly) and is getting pretty good at it. Toileting... sigh. Okay, I shouldn't sigh so much about this. She is actually doing really quite wonderfully. She manages to use the potty most of the time, usually without us even asking.
The sigh comes from when she stealth poops in the potty by herself. She doesn't know how to wipe her own bum adequately, of course. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I do not care to elucidate on the cause of my sighs further.
This whole semi-success transition phase is rough. Just when I had my diaper-washing routine down, she stopped soiling diapers that quickly. I am now washing them three times every two weeks, when really, they were meant to be washed every other day. This means I have ended up submitting the diapers to a more exciting wash routine to combat the fact that the diapers now have more time to become BFFs with ammonia while waiting in the wet bag for a wash. It will help when Dragon gets here. Or perhaps we will need to go buy panties for Amelia soon.
Amelia's artwork is getting increasingly complicated. For those familiar with or interested in the stages of artistic development, she is firmly entrenched in the preschematic stage. She is now sometimes drawing boobs on Mommy stick figures. I know now what she considers my most important feature. (I promise, I didn't teach her that.) She also draws things besides people, on occasion... such as bees, trees, bananas...
Oh, and sometimes she tells stories about the people she draws. Once she was drawing lines down a face, and she explained to me that the guy "is sah, is cry, cry, cry..." Apparently, he was crying a lot, because she kept drawing lines over his face until you couldn't tell there had once been a person underneath.
At times I get a little freaked out by Amelia's leaps in artistic development... I mean, the standard wisdom is that kids don't start drawing like this until age 3, or maybe 4. I can tell James is a little freaked out sometimes too. Once, after sitting for a while with a concerned face, he asked me, "So... if she's 2, and she draws like a 3-year-old, does that mean her IQ is 150? Or maybe she draws like a 4-year-old. 200!" I laughed at him, and I assured him that art skills likely don't correlate that neatly with IQ.
Besides, I don't want to admit I have a kid quite that unusual until I absolutely have to. I mean, I was labelled gifted as a kid, both my sisters should have been (one was dyslexic and that got in the way, so sad), James was (and I estimate that his raw intelligence is higher than mine is), as far as I can tell, all his brothers and sisters fit in the gifted category (except maybe the one with Down syndrome... though I have a sneaking suspicion that if it weren't for that pesky extra chromosome, she'd be as intelligent as the rest of them) as did his parents, etc., etc., etc. So, I have just assumed all my children will be quite intelligent.
I am just now beginning to realize that, more than pride-inducing, it is just plain frightening to see signs of it in Amelia. It's overwhelming. I mean, I'm responsible for the majority of circumstances in her life, and just thinking back to the difficulties I had growing up with the gifted label makes me exceedingly nervous. How do I coach another small "gifted" kid through life?
I know the stereotypical reaction to a parent who thinks their child is unusual in anyway (especially if they let slip the g-word) is something like "Oh, come on. That's perfectly normal. Puh-lease. Stop bragging already." *eye roll, loss of respect*... That alone makes me scared to even express my anxieties. But it is the truth. Oh, of course, there is a part of me that is exceedingly pleased to see that Amelia is intelligent. How could I not feel that way? But the overriding emotion is the, "Oh goodness. Here comes the rollercoaster ride."
In any case, Amelia is quite good at drawing for her age. I don't know how much of that is hereditary, but practically my dad's entire family is exceptionally talented in the visual arts and many of them use that skill in some way to make their living. So, at the very least, there is that to look forward to. Predictably, my dad esteems it very important to encourage Amelia's interest in art as much as possible. He spent lots of money to send her a TON of art supplies for her birthday. So... you can look forward to more photos of artwork on Facebook.
Well... it is nap time.
Love and tadpole people,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
I'm Not A Wimp! Yay!
So remember how a week ago I was practically dead because I was so sick? Here's the story with all the details...
I was feeling fine on Monday, so I grabbed Amelia and we ventured to Costco. This was the most adventurous I'd felt since James had flown to Vienna, Austria for a mathematical physics conference. Later, I went to FHE with my friends... There, I was fine at first, but began to feel quite ill. I had to go lie in the back while others took care of Amelia. Went home, went to bed.
Woke up around 3:30am Tuesday morning, feeling absolutely AWFUL. Finally rolled out of bed at 5am, feeling worse. I was throwing up little mouthfuls of wonderfulness, and then I drank some liquid... Which is resulted in vomiting up nearly 1.5 L of extra wonderfulness. No idea where all the volume came from. Felt all right after that; ate a dissolving Zofran, went to bed.
Woke up again at 7:30am feeling just as awful, but I had a midwife's appointment that morning, so I proceeded to attempt getting ready to go. I thought I should probably eat or drink something. After wracking my noggin, the only thing in the house that even remotely sounded half-appealing was a bowl of plain Cheerios in milk. I got this for myself... ate two bites, and then immediately vomited another 1.5 L. Ate another dissolving Zofran, to no avail.
I do not know where all this volume came from, but I knew it was not a fair exchange. One sip or one bite of something should not result in over a liter of liquid loss. I was still peeing, but it was scarily dark in color... red brown. I knew I was going to start faring even worse if I was unable to get down any water, because dehydration is majorly one of my nausea triggers.
I was seriously feeling too ill to actually go to the midwife, but I felt like I should go. Firstly, see, I have trouble explaining to them how ill I am. This would seem the perfect time to show them how bad I am feeling. Secondly, I strongly suspected that if I did not get IV hydration, I was not going to survive... or survive well, anyway.
James wasn't here to help me, after all, and all the people who had exhibited willingness to help during the day (when the majority of my acquaintances all work during the day) were either out of town or, in the case of one woman, was herself recovering from a hospital visit for an emergency blood transfusion. So I would be alone. All day. With Amelia. Even without Amelia, being alone in that state would be bad. I would probably get bad enough that I'd have had to call random people in the ward asking if they were available to take me to urgent care.
So I resolved to get to my appointment. I made it. I drove there with a bucket in my lap, but did not vomit while driving. Huzzah.
I got Amelia there with me, the process of which might've seemed comical to me had I been feeling differently. She was not waking up, which was fine with me for the time. I stuffed a few snacks for her in my purse since I was sure she'd want breakfast. Got a water bottle, packed a wet bag, and then grabbed Fluttershy... and then put her pants, socks, and shoes in my purse with the snacks because...well... She was still sleeping and was half-naked. When it was time to go, I just picked her up out of bed and put the confused, quasi-awake toddler directly into the carseat with a little thing of Cheerios and a cup of milk, and went. I was quite proud of myself for gathering and bringing all those things, even if I was too pathetic to actually change the kid's diaper or put her clothes on.
So yeah. I walked in with a half-naked toddler and a vomit bucket. Standing on the scale indicated that I had lost weight this last month. Theoretically I should be gaining maybe a pound each week by now. When the midwife came into the exam room, I was lying on my side on the exam table, clutching the vomit bucket, and crying. Amelia was excitedly raiding my purse for fruit snacks, still reeking of an overnight pee diaper and half-naked.
Apparently, this presentation was effective! The midwife (this one was the newbie in practice) went to fetch the senior midwife on staff, who theoretically has more experience treating hyperemesis, and that midwife decided IV hydration was indeed an excellent idea. Only when she said it, she said I would need to head over to the urgent care in the hospital for it. All our eyes flicked over to the toddler in the corner who had successfully transformed any semblance of order in the room into chaos. I knew I needed it, though, so I told the two midwives that I thought IV fluids would help.
It was eventually decided to put me in bed in the back-up birthing suite, to bring toys and books from the waiting room for Amelia, and to call someone to come here and administer IV fluids there instead of at urgent care. I can only imagine the chaos that might have ensued had a such a thing been attempted at the urgent care. The back-up birthing suite is rarely used, so it was a good place to hide me. [They have two full birthing suites at the birth center. The back-up room is for when three patients happen to be laboring at the same time, which in the history of the birth center, has never actually happened. So far only one lady has given birth in that room, and she chose to because for whatever reason, she liked it better than the actual birthing suites.]
So I waited in bed for someone to show up. It took something like half an hour for her to come. When she showed up, she looked at my veins and... yikes, what veins? She wrapped my arm in a warm towel for a bit, and even then, she could not get a needle into a vein. She eventually had success with a vein in my hand.
I am always surprised how quickly administration of IV fluids can help me feel just better enough that my mind starts working again. I felt like I could chase Amelia... you know, if I hadn't been all wired up and such. Plus, moving lurched my stomach around, so I didn't. Instead, Amelia had all sorts of fun with emesis bags, gauze, and gloves.
Amelia was also very sweet. She figured out that Mommy was sick and would pat my arm affectionately, and give me kisses, and offer me her water and snacks. I managed to eat maybe an eighth of a graham cracker. This was quite an accomplishment. Someone brought me a bit of chamomile tea with honey in it, too. I was able to drink this, but only once it'd been iced.
Anyway, we were at the birth center for maybe three and a half hours. Amelia eventually got deathly bored attending my side. She took my purse, inserted Fluttershy, a water bottle, and some snacks, looped it over her shoulders, and opened the door and left. This happened a few times. Thankfully, between the midwives, lactation consultants, and other staff around, she never got far. Some of the nurses played with her some to help alleviate her boredom.
Once the liter-sized bag was empty, they sent me home. We went home and had our nap. Amelia eventually woke up, though, of course, and by then I was still not recovered, though I was no longer vomiting. I fed myself by eating one bite of chicken salad each hour. I did not feed Amelia, but she seemed to feed herself just fine. She got into all the cupboards and ate her fill of... well, snack food, I think. But in any case, she did not starve.
I eventually got hold of my friend Cassie, and she came over to help with Amelia. When she showed up, she walked in on me crying in bed, and Amelia cuddling me and patting my arm and giving me kisses. Amelia kept trying to feed me fruit snacks. She was very sweet.
At this point, I was so sore. Bed sore from lying down all day, maybe. Dehydrated-type muscle soreness, almost certainly. Anyway, I decided to move my pathetic form to the bathtub and took a wonderful bath with Epsom salt, mint oil, and rosemary oil. It was exactly what I needed to not be in extreme pain anymore. After that, a couple of friends came over and gave me a priesthood blessing. Cassie stayed for a while after they left to put more food down in Amelia's reach. After she left, I attempted to have a Skype conversation with James, who had just woken up for the day over in Vienna. Only that didn't work. I kinda just stared and drooled and stuff. (Only I didn't drool.) So we went to bed.
I woke up in the wee hours of the morning again... but instead of vomiting and such, I was super hungry. Amelia also woke up (to my dismay), so the two of us ate whatever it was that I felt able to eat. The only thing I felt I could eat was juice and cheese. By coincidence, perhaps, these are Amelia's most favorite sources of calories, so she did not object to sharing. I suppose the juice craving was my body saying, "Ooh! Water, sugar, and other electrolytes? And a maybe a dash of some other micronutrients? Yes, please!" and the cheese was my body saying, "Ooh! Milk sugar, protein, with some fat and salt? Sounds like something I should eat!" We went back to bed after our juice and cheese.
But then, the next day, that's pretty much all we ate. Me, because that's what my body demanded (anything else caused me to start feeling awful just thinking about it). Amelia, because those are her favorite foods, and it's impossible for me to eat them in front of her without sharing.
The next day, I was able to drink plain water, even. And I felt hydrated. I do not know how many of you understand the relief of rehydration after dehydration. It feels like every cell in my body was rejoicing about the availability of water. It is a very similar feeling to what I feel when I start eating a nutrient-dense diet after eating a normal, nutrient-deficient diet for a while. It's just that feeling of every cell exuberating.
Of course, the day after that, I started feeling normal-for-pregnant-me again, but whatever.
Anyway, enough of my acquaintances have described falling ill for about twenty-four hours, with only nausea and vomiting for symptoms, that I suspected that perhaps my sudden decline from simply severe nausea to hyperemesis that lasted roughly twenty-four hours was not a random pregnancy thing but instead was this bug manifesting itself.
Well, it seems James has caught it now, and I am even more convinced that it was bug plus pregnancy nausea equalled hyperemesis last week. James vomited today, probably for the first time since he had salmonella on his mission... which was seven years ago. (Yikes.)
I confess that watching James be sick has elicited in me mostly glee. Some sympathy, yes, but by far, mostly just glee. Before you condemn me as a horrible person, let me explain more: right now, he is acting exactly the same way I've been acting for months. Normally, he is incredibly active, but... he has the same facial expression. He keeps saying things like, "I need to lie down.. Ugh..." and "I'd play games or something, but... too much effort." Too much effort! He understands! It really does take a lot of effort to use both hands (and use your brain) while gaming! And then later, "Ugh... I'm not really feeling nauseous right now anymore, but... my body just says, sit down and don't move. Uuuugh..."
Yes. This. This is exactly what I've been feeling since... I don't know. Early February. And James is wide-eyed and horrified just imagining constantly feeling like this for a mere month! Or even a measly week! Ha!
Guys! Do you know what this means? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?
It means I'm not a wimp!
I mean, I have slowly been realizing this. Yes, I've been feeling like a pathetic wimp for months and months, but that does not mean wimp is my natural state.
In fact, a few weeks ago I was explaining to God that I feel like a complete wimp, and I was hard-pressed to find any evidence to the contrary. After all, I've been very, very inactive. Exhausted, all the time. Walking the short distance to the mailbox, even without a toddler in tow, often seems an unattainable goal, even when I'm not feeling particularly nauseous. I don't know very many people younger than 45 without serious chronic illnesses who feel like this, even with their version of pregnancy sickness.
The Spirit reminded me of two past happenings in my life, and people's stunned reaction to these happenings.
1) I went to church after my water had broken and was waiting for labor to start.
People's reaction: Why the heck are you HERE?
Me: ... Should I not be? I would be more bored waiting at home...
People: You are INTENSE!
2) I went to church six days after giving birth, and four days after returning home from the hospital.
People's reaction: Why the heck are you HERE?
Me: ...Should I not be?
People: You must not have torn down there or something. You're not in pain? You're not tired?
Me: ... ... Oh, I tore. It is quite painful. And I am extremely tired. But I feel at least one hundred times better than I have in months! I'm not nauseous! I can eat!
People: You are INTENSE!
I was further reminded that when I went to the hospital as a teenager for my spinal fusion surgery, I was categorized as exceptional in my recovery. I was the happiest kid the staff had ever seen. I got up and walked the day after they'd operated on my spine. I also began to turn myself over in bed around the same time. I freaking gave a tour of the hospital the day after that. And then I was released and went home on day three, with the comment from the old surgeon that this was the quickest recovery he'd ever seen from this particular surgery.
I. Am. Not. A. Wimp.
Now, with that in mind, it is somewhat frustrating--even more so--that so many people seem to dismiss my struggles during pregnancy without acknowledging that I'm a rockstar (thanks, Dad Dilts). And, before that, my struggles with chronic fatigue, nerve pain, etc. I'm not a wimp! I promise!
Hmm. Can you believe that the content of this single post was originally going to be a short, single paragraph, in-a-nutshell summary of last week's illness? Anyway... I'm'a go tend my sick husband. (Glee!)
Love and stomach flu,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. I should mention before closing that the timing of this illness, if I had to get violently ill while James was in Vienna, was nothing short of miraculous. It was exactly timed for right when my midwife appointment was. If I had not gotten IV fluids so promptly, I imagine things would have deteriorated into something much, much worse. To complicate things, I have intense anxiety about phone calls, so I may have never gathered the courage to call a medical provider, or someone in the ward, or even family as my condition worsened. I may have needed to get to an urgent care or emergency room, and have been unable to do so. Another miracle: Amelia never got sick, not even a little. (This may have had something to do with a priesthood blessing given to her before James left for Vienna... He had given me one and Amelia wanted one, too. I'm so glad for it now.) Having a sick toddler at any time within a few days of me getting sick would have been completely unmanageable for me. Moral of the story: God knows exactly how much we can handle, and though He isn't likely to prevent trials from happening in the first place, He will make sure we are able to get through it. The gospel is just so awesome. I could go on ad infinitum, but let this suffice.
I was feeling fine on Monday, so I grabbed Amelia and we ventured to Costco. This was the most adventurous I'd felt since James had flown to Vienna, Austria for a mathematical physics conference. Later, I went to FHE with my friends... There, I was fine at first, but began to feel quite ill. I had to go lie in the back while others took care of Amelia. Went home, went to bed.
Woke up around 3:30am Tuesday morning, feeling absolutely AWFUL. Finally rolled out of bed at 5am, feeling worse. I was throwing up little mouthfuls of wonderfulness, and then I drank some liquid... Which is resulted in vomiting up nearly 1.5 L of extra wonderfulness. No idea where all the volume came from. Felt all right after that; ate a dissolving Zofran, went to bed.
Woke up again at 7:30am feeling just as awful, but I had a midwife's appointment that morning, so I proceeded to attempt getting ready to go. I thought I should probably eat or drink something. After wracking my noggin, the only thing in the house that even remotely sounded half-appealing was a bowl of plain Cheerios in milk. I got this for myself... ate two bites, and then immediately vomited another 1.5 L. Ate another dissolving Zofran, to no avail.
I do not know where all this volume came from, but I knew it was not a fair exchange. One sip or one bite of something should not result in over a liter of liquid loss. I was still peeing, but it was scarily dark in color... red brown. I knew I was going to start faring even worse if I was unable to get down any water, because dehydration is majorly one of my nausea triggers.
I was seriously feeling too ill to actually go to the midwife, but I felt like I should go. Firstly, see, I have trouble explaining to them how ill I am. This would seem the perfect time to show them how bad I am feeling. Secondly, I strongly suspected that if I did not get IV hydration, I was not going to survive... or survive well, anyway.
James wasn't here to help me, after all, and all the people who had exhibited willingness to help during the day (when the majority of my acquaintances all work during the day) were either out of town or, in the case of one woman, was herself recovering from a hospital visit for an emergency blood transfusion. So I would be alone. All day. With Amelia. Even without Amelia, being alone in that state would be bad. I would probably get bad enough that I'd have had to call random people in the ward asking if they were available to take me to urgent care.
So I resolved to get to my appointment. I made it. I drove there with a bucket in my lap, but did not vomit while driving. Huzzah.
I got Amelia there with me, the process of which might've seemed comical to me had I been feeling differently. She was not waking up, which was fine with me for the time. I stuffed a few snacks for her in my purse since I was sure she'd want breakfast. Got a water bottle, packed a wet bag, and then grabbed Fluttershy... and then put her pants, socks, and shoes in my purse with the snacks because...well... She was still sleeping and was half-naked. When it was time to go, I just picked her up out of bed and put the confused, quasi-awake toddler directly into the carseat with a little thing of Cheerios and a cup of milk, and went. I was quite proud of myself for gathering and bringing all those things, even if I was too pathetic to actually change the kid's diaper or put her clothes on.
So yeah. I walked in with a half-naked toddler and a vomit bucket. Standing on the scale indicated that I had lost weight this last month. Theoretically I should be gaining maybe a pound each week by now. When the midwife came into the exam room, I was lying on my side on the exam table, clutching the vomit bucket, and crying. Amelia was excitedly raiding my purse for fruit snacks, still reeking of an overnight pee diaper and half-naked.
Apparently, this presentation was effective! The midwife (this one was the newbie in practice) went to fetch the senior midwife on staff, who theoretically has more experience treating hyperemesis, and that midwife decided IV hydration was indeed an excellent idea. Only when she said it, she said I would need to head over to the urgent care in the hospital for it. All our eyes flicked over to the toddler in the corner who had successfully transformed any semblance of order in the room into chaos. I knew I needed it, though, so I told the two midwives that I thought IV fluids would help.
It was eventually decided to put me in bed in the back-up birthing suite, to bring toys and books from the waiting room for Amelia, and to call someone to come here and administer IV fluids there instead of at urgent care. I can only imagine the chaos that might have ensued had a such a thing been attempted at the urgent care. The back-up birthing suite is rarely used, so it was a good place to hide me. [They have two full birthing suites at the birth center. The back-up room is for when three patients happen to be laboring at the same time, which in the history of the birth center, has never actually happened. So far only one lady has given birth in that room, and she chose to because for whatever reason, she liked it better than the actual birthing suites.]
So I waited in bed for someone to show up. It took something like half an hour for her to come. When she showed up, she looked at my veins and... yikes, what veins? She wrapped my arm in a warm towel for a bit, and even then, she could not get a needle into a vein. She eventually had success with a vein in my hand.
I am always surprised how quickly administration of IV fluids can help me feel just better enough that my mind starts working again. I felt like I could chase Amelia... you know, if I hadn't been all wired up and such. Plus, moving lurched my stomach around, so I didn't. Instead, Amelia had all sorts of fun with emesis bags, gauze, and gloves.
Amelia was also very sweet. She figured out that Mommy was sick and would pat my arm affectionately, and give me kisses, and offer me her water and snacks. I managed to eat maybe an eighth of a graham cracker. This was quite an accomplishment. Someone brought me a bit of chamomile tea with honey in it, too. I was able to drink this, but only once it'd been iced.
Anyway, we were at the birth center for maybe three and a half hours. Amelia eventually got deathly bored attending my side. She took my purse, inserted Fluttershy, a water bottle, and some snacks, looped it over her shoulders, and opened the door and left. This happened a few times. Thankfully, between the midwives, lactation consultants, and other staff around, she never got far. Some of the nurses played with her some to help alleviate her boredom.
Once the liter-sized bag was empty, they sent me home. We went home and had our nap. Amelia eventually woke up, though, of course, and by then I was still not recovered, though I was no longer vomiting. I fed myself by eating one bite of chicken salad each hour. I did not feed Amelia, but she seemed to feed herself just fine. She got into all the cupboards and ate her fill of... well, snack food, I think. But in any case, she did not starve.
I eventually got hold of my friend Cassie, and she came over to help with Amelia. When she showed up, she walked in on me crying in bed, and Amelia cuddling me and patting my arm and giving me kisses. Amelia kept trying to feed me fruit snacks. She was very sweet.
At this point, I was so sore. Bed sore from lying down all day, maybe. Dehydrated-type muscle soreness, almost certainly. Anyway, I decided to move my pathetic form to the bathtub and took a wonderful bath with Epsom salt, mint oil, and rosemary oil. It was exactly what I needed to not be in extreme pain anymore. After that, a couple of friends came over and gave me a priesthood blessing. Cassie stayed for a while after they left to put more food down in Amelia's reach. After she left, I attempted to have a Skype conversation with James, who had just woken up for the day over in Vienna. Only that didn't work. I kinda just stared and drooled and stuff. (Only I didn't drool.) So we went to bed.
I woke up in the wee hours of the morning again... but instead of vomiting and such, I was super hungry. Amelia also woke up (to my dismay), so the two of us ate whatever it was that I felt able to eat. The only thing I felt I could eat was juice and cheese. By coincidence, perhaps, these are Amelia's most favorite sources of calories, so she did not object to sharing. I suppose the juice craving was my body saying, "Ooh! Water, sugar, and other electrolytes? And a maybe a dash of some other micronutrients? Yes, please!" and the cheese was my body saying, "Ooh! Milk sugar, protein, with some fat and salt? Sounds like something I should eat!" We went back to bed after our juice and cheese.
But then, the next day, that's pretty much all we ate. Me, because that's what my body demanded (anything else caused me to start feeling awful just thinking about it). Amelia, because those are her favorite foods, and it's impossible for me to eat them in front of her without sharing.
The next day, I was able to drink plain water, even. And I felt hydrated. I do not know how many of you understand the relief of rehydration after dehydration. It feels like every cell in my body was rejoicing about the availability of water. It is a very similar feeling to what I feel when I start eating a nutrient-dense diet after eating a normal, nutrient-deficient diet for a while. It's just that feeling of every cell exuberating.
Of course, the day after that, I started feeling normal-for-pregnant-me again, but whatever.
Anyway, enough of my acquaintances have described falling ill for about twenty-four hours, with only nausea and vomiting for symptoms, that I suspected that perhaps my sudden decline from simply severe nausea to hyperemesis that lasted roughly twenty-four hours was not a random pregnancy thing but instead was this bug manifesting itself.
Well, it seems James has caught it now, and I am even more convinced that it was bug plus pregnancy nausea equalled hyperemesis last week. James vomited today, probably for the first time since he had salmonella on his mission... which was seven years ago. (Yikes.)
I confess that watching James be sick has elicited in me mostly glee. Some sympathy, yes, but by far, mostly just glee. Before you condemn me as a horrible person, let me explain more: right now, he is acting exactly the same way I've been acting for months. Normally, he is incredibly active, but... he has the same facial expression. He keeps saying things like, "I need to lie down.. Ugh..." and "I'd play games or something, but... too much effort." Too much effort! He understands! It really does take a lot of effort to use both hands (and use your brain) while gaming! And then later, "Ugh... I'm not really feeling nauseous right now anymore, but... my body just says, sit down and don't move. Uuuugh..."
Yes. This. This is exactly what I've been feeling since... I don't know. Early February. And James is wide-eyed and horrified just imagining constantly feeling like this for a mere month! Or even a measly week! Ha!
Guys! Do you know what this means? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?
It means I'm not a wimp!
I mean, I have slowly been realizing this. Yes, I've been feeling like a pathetic wimp for months and months, but that does not mean wimp is my natural state.
In fact, a few weeks ago I was explaining to God that I feel like a complete wimp, and I was hard-pressed to find any evidence to the contrary. After all, I've been very, very inactive. Exhausted, all the time. Walking the short distance to the mailbox, even without a toddler in tow, often seems an unattainable goal, even when I'm not feeling particularly nauseous. I don't know very many people younger than 45 without serious chronic illnesses who feel like this, even with their version of pregnancy sickness.
The Spirit reminded me of two past happenings in my life, and people's stunned reaction to these happenings.
1) I went to church after my water had broken and was waiting for labor to start.
People's reaction: Why the heck are you HERE?
Me: ... Should I not be? I would be more bored waiting at home...
People: You are INTENSE!
2) I went to church six days after giving birth, and four days after returning home from the hospital.
People's reaction: Why the heck are you HERE?
Me: ...Should I not be?
People: You must not have torn down there or something. You're not in pain? You're not tired?
Me: ... ... Oh, I tore. It is quite painful. And I am extremely tired. But I feel at least one hundred times better than I have in months! I'm not nauseous! I can eat!
People: You are INTENSE!
I was further reminded that when I went to the hospital as a teenager for my spinal fusion surgery, I was categorized as exceptional in my recovery. I was the happiest kid the staff had ever seen. I got up and walked the day after they'd operated on my spine. I also began to turn myself over in bed around the same time. I freaking gave a tour of the hospital the day after that. And then I was released and went home on day three, with the comment from the old surgeon that this was the quickest recovery he'd ever seen from this particular surgery.
I. Am. Not. A. Wimp.
Now, with that in mind, it is somewhat frustrating--even more so--that so many people seem to dismiss my struggles during pregnancy without acknowledging that I'm a rockstar (thanks, Dad Dilts). And, before that, my struggles with chronic fatigue, nerve pain, etc. I'm not a wimp! I promise!
Hmm. Can you believe that the content of this single post was originally going to be a short, single paragraph, in-a-nutshell summary of last week's illness? Anyway... I'm'a go tend my sick husband. (Glee!)
Love and stomach flu,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. I should mention before closing that the timing of this illness, if I had to get violently ill while James was in Vienna, was nothing short of miraculous. It was exactly timed for right when my midwife appointment was. If I had not gotten IV fluids so promptly, I imagine things would have deteriorated into something much, much worse. To complicate things, I have intense anxiety about phone calls, so I may have never gathered the courage to call a medical provider, or someone in the ward, or even family as my condition worsened. I may have needed to get to an urgent care or emergency room, and have been unable to do so. Another miracle: Amelia never got sick, not even a little. (This may have had something to do with a priesthood blessing given to her before James left for Vienna... He had given me one and Amelia wanted one, too. I'm so glad for it now.) Having a sick toddler at any time within a few days of me getting sick would have been completely unmanageable for me. Moral of the story: God knows exactly how much we can handle, and though He isn't likely to prevent trials from happening in the first place, He will make sure we are able to get through it. The gospel is just so awesome. I could go on ad infinitum, but let this suffice.
Monday, August 4, 2014
A Complete Guide to Pleasing Amelia Materialistically on Her 2nd Birthday (August 20th)
I am pleased to report that the toddler is turning two this month. This means that not only has she survived, it also means that I have survived. Huzzah! ... And I suppose that perhaps James has also survived. (I wonder sometimes, though. He certainly doesn't seem alive when playing video games sometimes. He doesn't drool while playing, though, so I have hope he's still up in that brain somewhere.)
So yeah.
I went through the grueling process of combing my brain for gift ideas for the tot.
She loves drawing. We splurged and spent an entire five dollars at a thrift store for a chair and table for her to draw at. She already has washable markers. So... not sure what to say there. We've got this covered, I guess. Unless you have a mysterious stash of only pink washable markers, that is. She clearly prefers the pink marker to all the others, and it is therefore receiving the most abuse. It almost certainly will be the first of her markers to bite the dust.
Speaking of Amelia's love of pink, she is also quite fond of dresses, particularly pink ones. This... well, it isn't a nice dress. In fact, it doesn't rightly belong in the category of dress. It is a nightgown. But! It is pink, comfortable, and dress-shaped. Therefore, Amelia absolutely adores it. It currently smells of pee and I keep putting it in the laundry, only to have Amelia pull it out, hang it up primly on an hangar, and declare it to be "priy [pretty]". I have the most obscene difficulty keeping pee-ridden pink "dresses" in the laundry.
Let's see. She also has, of necessity, a positive opinion of all things "grown-up". Grown-up cups are superior to sippy cups. She can drink out of them without spilling just fine. The problem arises when she attempts to place the cup down on a table or something.
[Random aside time! I do not know why I really want to show you this cup, but I really want to show you this cup. The cup pictured below has recently become near and dear to my heart. (I received it as a graduation gift--filled with candy, of course--from my old employers in the BYU Chemistry Department. I once grumbled about what a useless gift it was. I have repented. I love it so much now.)
It is perfect for me to grab a cup of Ovaltine or something, because it is designed in such a way that sharing with a toddler becomes a production of ease rather than horror. It's got a handle. And the edges flange out... which makes controlling the rate at which fluid flows from cup to the toddler's oral orifice much easier. I fear for the day that this fragile item shatters. I will be sad.]
So yeah.
I went through the grueling process of combing my brain for gift ideas for the tot.
She loves drawing. We splurged and spent an entire five dollars at a thrift store for a chair and table for her to draw at. She already has washable markers. So... not sure what to say there. We've got this covered, I guess. Unless you have a mysterious stash of only pink washable markers, that is. She clearly prefers the pink marker to all the others, and it is therefore receiving the most abuse. It almost certainly will be the first of her markers to bite the dust.
Speaking of Amelia's love of pink, she is also quite fond of dresses, particularly pink ones. This... well, it isn't a nice dress. In fact, it doesn't rightly belong in the category of dress. It is a nightgown. But! It is pink, comfortable, and dress-shaped. Therefore, Amelia absolutely adores it. It currently smells of pee and I keep putting it in the laundry, only to have Amelia pull it out, hang it up primly on an hangar, and declare it to be "priy [pretty]". I have the most obscene difficulty keeping pee-ridden pink "dresses" in the laundry.
I also imagine any actual dress that is even remotely princessy will also be well-received. (She is size 3T right now.) These are my favorite clothing items to get at thrift stores, because for whatever reason, I don't get a lot of these handed down to me, and Amelia loves wearing them. Here is my most recent haul pictured with the one dress that still actually fits the girl. (She love, love, LOVES that red dress, Steffanie.)
And any dress-up stuff or old costumes you may have hiding in your closet? Amelia will adopt them.
[Random aside time! I do not know why I really want to show you this cup, but I really want to show you this cup. The cup pictured below has recently become near and dear to my heart. (I received it as a graduation gift--filled with candy, of course--from my old employers in the BYU Chemistry Department. I once grumbled about what a useless gift it was. I have repented. I love it so much now.)
It is perfect for me to grab a cup of Ovaltine or something, because it is designed in such a way that sharing with a toddler becomes a production of ease rather than horror. It's got a handle. And the edges flange out... which makes controlling the rate at which fluid flows from cup to the toddler's oral orifice much easier. I fear for the day that this fragile item shatters. I will be sad.]
Oh, right. Things Amelia likes. Grownup things. Like... I imagine she's go nuts over a tot-sized vacuum cleaner or a tot-sized broom, if you happen to find such things second-hand. I used to have a teeny-weeny toy piano like this when I was little. I suspect Amelia would seriously go bonkers having any of these items in her own size because Mommy is so obsessed with the big-sized kind. I can only imagine how excited she would be to "help" me vacuum, sweep, or make sweet music. Ha.
If you want a guaranteed hit, think anything My Little Pony. Aunty Becca already surprised her a few months ago with a complete Ty set of the Mane 6. Amelia is absolutely, completely, profoundly obsessed with Fluttershy here, whom she affectionately has dubbed 'Shy or what sounds like "Uh-Shy". So, in particular, anything Fluttershy will be her most favorite thing ever. My Little Pony books? Also her most favorite thing ever.
Only thing to be careful of: the old My Little Pony is not her favorite. If in doubt, just ask yourself... Do the ponies look creepy? If the answer is yes, don't bother. If the answer is no, and they look digitally rendered and such, you probably have the right ponies.
Next guarantee: Lego DUPLO blocks. New obsession in our house. I plan to collect lots of these. I will also collect actual small Legos when the time comes. And then I will keep them forever. I don't think I've ever met a kid who didn't like playing with Legos. Along a similar line, I think Lincoln Logs'd be popular with the beebs, too, but I have not tested this theory.
You could also send board books. I hesitate to say this, but it is possible that we have enough board books right now. our board book shelf is full at the moment. Perhaps, however, it is merely the case that it is time to get more shelf space. I believe there is no such thing as too many books. (Or Legos.)
Anyway, here is your complete guide to gift-finding for Amelia. I even compiled an Amazon wish list for those of you who are inclined to buy something new for her. I would like to point out that pretty much nothing on there is anything I expect you to buy on Amazon. Like a brand-new toddler trampoline? Talk about overkill. There's a toy piano on there, a toy vacuum... some Disney princess dress-up stuff... some random ponies... and then a heckuva lot of Duplos. (If you are inclined to buy something from there, I really think the My First Zoo Lego Duplo set would be the winner.) But honestly, the wish list is more of a guideline. Clean out your closets for such things, ask around... Used stuff is fabulous.
Love and stuff,
Jenna
and Amelia
and Dragon
P.S. If you wanted to get a "you survived two years of Amelia" gift for us parents, maybe you could send us something to actually clean those spots where Amelia deigns to pee on the carpet. (Grumble, grumble.) My parents had this old thing for such purposes when I was growing up. It got lots of use for cleaning up pet pee, as I recall, but I find myself considering how useful such a thing'd be for Amelia pee. Heck, a little UV light for finding pee stains would be equally useful.
P.P.S. If you want to give us something for the new baby... tubs of used baby clothes are the way to go. Otherwise, send us cash or gift cards or checks or something we can use for the truly random things we actually need besides baby clothes!
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