a geeky girl

Ever since Harper was born I’ve been telling myself it’s all temporary. Both to help me cope with the unfun, and to remind myself to enjoy the sweet moments.

Middle of the night wake ups? Temporary. She’s been sleeping through the night for almost 2 weeks now.

Crazy person no evening sleep cluster feeding from 5-10pm? Temporary. She now eats at 3, 5:30, 7:30 and 9:30 without freaking out in between and actually sleeps some in between now too. (This insanity came with the sleeping through the night).

Sleeping through the night? Temporary! I mean for now it’s great, but I know she’ll hit a growth spurt, and learn a skill (like rolling over) and she’ll wake up and be pissed off and I’ll have to get up at night with her again, but that too will be temporary.

Rocking her to sleep? Temporary. Maybe less temporary than I would like sometimes, but I know I’ll miss those snuggly moments too.

Jack freaking out because WHY ARE WE ROCKING HERE AGAIN, PUT HER IN THE CRIB ALREADY? Hopefully temporary, but I think this one will depend more on her teaching herself to sleep than on him learning to get over it. Poor kid.

Free time while both kids are napping? TEMPORARY! Jack is away and talking to himself in his crib, so I guess I should go get him and also it’s time to start Harper’s evening feeding routine to try to keep ahead of that maniac!

My baby is 2 months old today! We had her checkup and things are great! She’s right in the middle of the growth curves and her dr said everything looks great. I asked him if he had any recommendations for getting this baby to take a bottle because literally, one night she took one and one night she refused, and she hasn’t taken one since (like 2-3 weeks) and MAN I would like that kid to take a bottle once in a while! He suggested I try to offer her a bottle between breasts when she was still dazed in eating mode and just keep trying til she gets it. In the mean time if anyone else has any suggestions I am MORE than open to them! Please, advice!

Also, I just noticed that I didn’t post the whole story of Harper’s birth. I’m not entirely sure how that happened because I distinctly remember typing it up, I have no idea where it went. So here’s the rest of this post… And for the record I would like to point out that my water broke around 5:45 and my baby was born at 8:40. Holy crap.

We got to the hospital around 6:15 and checked in. I was definitely in labor at that point but my contractions varied from “hmm, not bad” to “OMG that hurt like crap,” as opposed to being pretty darn painful like they were with Jack.  Plus, holy cow, my water broke! At home! (On my parent’s sofa!) That’s not actually supposed to happen! You’re supposed to go to the hospital and let them break it for you! (Sorry about the sofa..)

Anyways, when we got in the room I pretty much immediately explained to the first nurse (who was apparently not my labor nurse, just someone checking me in) about the steroids and platelets and MY EPIDURAL THAT WAS NOT NEGOTIABLE. She also had to do a test to check to make sure my water had actually broken. She very apologetically told me it would be “uncomfortable” (it was a tab of paper that turned a certain color if it was amniotic fluid. I’ll let you use your imagination about how they had to check. I told her not to sweat it because I didn’t think it would be the most uncomfortable thing happening to me that evening. She agreed and the good news was it was definitely my water breaking.

Then I met my labor nurse who was SO NICE! (The nurse that checked me in was really nice too, but I really liked my labor nurse. Too bad I can’t remember their names.) I quickly explained to her about the epidural as well and she got my bloodwork started so we could get that epidural quickly.

Contractions kept coming, stronger now, although sometimes some were lighter. I wasn’t too worried about it because dammit, my epidural was on its way and then it wouldn’t hurt at all and blah blah blah yay epidural! The best part was that my nurse said they didn’t have to recheck my dilation because they were sure I was in labor and it didn’t matter how far I got before the epidural so extra yay!

Labor was really hurting by then, but my epidural was coming so I kept breathing and I’ll admit, screaming sometimes too because DAMN that hurts.

And then the anesthesiologist came in. I was so happy to see him. What a nice man.

And then they told me I had to sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed to get the epidural and that sounded REALLY hard. So team effort, pregnant woman sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed and OH MY that hurt, and felt kind of weird.

And then my nurse said “does it feel like you have to push?” and I thought about it for a minute and said… yes?

So back down on the bed for a dilation check and GUESS WHAT! 10cm! No epidural for you, it’s time to push! And I’m pretty sure I started swearing at that point because I worked REALLY HARD to be able to have that epidural and IT WAS RIGHT THERE in my room and I was SO CLOSE!

After all that I pushed (and pushed) and 100% pain med free (I didn’t bother with the other pain drugs because the epidural was coming, I figured there was no point!),  and I had that baby.

It was such a different experience. I mean it, it was unreal. My doctor told me the universe must have lined up in my favor that night because everything went so smoothly. I figure (1) if that was true I’d have had an epidural and (2) the universe owed me after Jack’s birth. I’m actually not entirely sure it doesn’t still owe me after that cluster fuck.

So in less than 3 hours from start to finish I had a kid. They say the second labor is half the time of the first and they are NOT kidding. Apparently it’s even shorter if you have a third, but I think I’ll just take their word for it!

6:40 – Good morning! Time to wake the baby up! I know, that seems SO WRONG. Why on earth would someone ever wake the baby on purpose?? Because I want to feed the baby before Jack gets up at 7. I hate to feed her after he’s up because then he’s stuck entertaining himself while I’m on the sofa. Just boring for him.

6:45 – Feed the baby. Depending on what time Jack wakes up I may change her too, or if he gets up a little early I may go get him and then finish feeding Harper after I get him out of his crib.

7:15 – Good morning, Jack! Change him and bring him downstairs. Play for a few minutes.

7:40 – Breakfast! Cereal with Jack. He usually has rice krispies.

8:00 – Harper is getting sleepy. Get her ready for her nap. Diaper, book

OMG breastfeeding.

I keep thinking it’s a good thing that there are so many health benefits to nursing because otherwise I wouldn’t have even bothered this time, it was such a disaster last time. I mean.. maybe not a complete disaster, but it was definitely not all rainbows and sunshine and puppies like I had hoped. I felt like I fought it for months last time. Seriously, like me against breastfeeding where my baby and my body were like “don’t do this” and I was just damn determined not to let it beat me. In the end I would call it a draw. I got him off the nipple shield and nursing fairly well, and while I always had supply problems I did get my supply up somewhat, but never enough to not supplement with formula.

I know all the books are like “Your problem is probably not low supply because it’s so rare” but I fed on demand, I pumped after all daytime feedings, I took herbs, I did everything the lactation consultant told me to to the point of it driving me nearly crazy and in the end it didn’t really make a difference. I nursed him til he was 6-7 months old and supplemented with formula the whole time. Eventually I switched to formula only because pumping at work pretty much stopped working and he was pretty much not interested any more because nursing took longer than a bottle and did not allow him to look around the room to keep tabs on everything that was going on.

So far things have gone much better with Harper. Aside from one night in the hospital when I had already nursed her for like 30 minutes and she was still starving, we haven’t had to give her any formula! (I asked them to give her a bottle in the nursery at the hospital because my milk had not come in yet and man that baby was hungry and MAD.) She nurses fairly well (although she does have trouble staying awake sometimes which is frustrating) and she’s usually pretty quick about it taking 25-30 minutes (but of course there are times when it’s like 45 minutes later and I’m starting to get suspicious.. like when did nursing end and comfort sucking yourself to sleep begin? Because OH HELL NO).

All that being said, I just do not love nursing. I feel bad saying that, but I really don’t. Fortunately I know it gets easier, faster, and better or else I’d have thrown in the towel already. I mean it’s hard being tethered to the couch for 30-45 minutes or more out of every 3 hours. Plus being the only one who can get up and feed the baby in the middle of the night sucks sometimes, but dammit, this time I am totally winning this war and I’m not going to quit now (although MAN my freaking boobs still hurt sometimes… not like in the beginning when I literally dreaded feedings because holy crap that shit HURT, but now it’s more of a dull achy, kind of bruised feeling that I don’t remember from last time that I’m hoping also goes away with time. it’s awesome).

And for anyone with one kid wondering about how it is having two now.. I think feeding Harper is the hardest part of my day most of the time (sometimes that’s tied with getting two kids out of the house to go somewhere). Because that’s 30-45 minutes that I have to be sitting in a chair not playing with Jack. We try to read books, sometimes we watch a TV show or a few youtube videos or something, but it still sucks.

And now I have a newborn.

Sunday evening we were at my parents’ house for dinner. I was upstairs with Nate and my dad admiring his new TV and my water broke (around 5:45pm). Or I was pretty sure it broke. I thought there was a chance that maybe I’d just peed a little, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. I hopped up and bagged ass to the bathroom to pee, but the damage was already done!

So I went back, announced my water broke and went downstairs to tell everyone else and to call the doctor. Then off we went to the hospital, sadly before we got to have dinner. Fortunately I had eaten some chips and dip so I wasn’t worried about starving while I was in labor.

My contractions started after my water broke, maybe by 6pm and we were checked into the hospital by around 6:15. Fortunately my parents live really close.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to attempt to register Jack for preschool starting in September. Preschool. Starting in September. They’re already registering.

We’re not doing anything too fancy, just signing him up at a local church preschool to get him some socialization basically. Just a part time, 2 day a week 3 hours a day thing. He can learn people skills like playing with other kids and following directions in a group. Important stuff like that, that I just don’t feel like we can do for him 100% at home. At least not without adopting an army of 2 year olds for him to play with.  And I’m just not too keen on the idea of starting him at a preschool where they actually intentionally teach them things. Not that they wouldn’t teach him things here, just that I want this to be about play and not about his future college plans already, you know?

The part that blows my mind about this whole thing (aside from the fact that he’s going to be going to PRESCHOOL! Wasn’t he just a baby?? Is it too soon??) is that this preschool that I’m really hoping he gets into is like the last one to register. Church preschool around here is apparently so highly in demand that not only are we signing him up now for something he won’t attend until SEPTEMBER but they have a lottery system to do it. You show up at the community center, you put your name in a bucket, and then they call names. There is no first come first serve because people started coming crazy early and to be honest, if it had required it, I would gladly have been one of them.

So tomorrow morning my mom is picking Jack up and I’m going to go hopefully get him into a 2 year old class for September. If not I’m going to get him on the wait list and then cross my fingers that some other kid drops out, or gets accepted somewhere else that was actually their first choice or something like that because I only toured two preschools and then I really only liked this one, so hold a good thought for me!