Archive | thoughts

my last day as a mother of one {Part 2 of 2}

February 8, 2013 at 3:53 pm

Exactly two weeks ago today I gave birth to our precious little baby Gil, an adorable bundle of love. Of course, that bundle of love has currently had me dancing for the last two hours to keep him happy and get him to go back to sleep. (Welcome to my new life!) While I would never go back to live without this precious baby, I must admit that this day I am in the process of chronicling — my last day as a mother of one — is looking very restful right now!

I know this last day with just Lena and myself was an unusually good one; we had no errands or activities on our plate and spent the entire day enjoying each other, mother and daughter, and peacefully playing, eating, walking, and talking together. I also know that these days will come again, perhaps in six months or so, once Lena and I and Gil all have a routine. But until then, this day with just Lena and myself is very much a thing of the past, even though it still seems close enough to relive in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, back to the agenda at hand. We’re picking up again at lunch, where I had leftovers (veggie enchiladas and blood orange salad) and Lena had Ramen (so easy…), blueberries, and yogurt. We shared an apple.

Lena: “My?” (Meaning “more” noddles.)

Me: Drink your soup, Lena, and then you can have more.

Lena: *gulp gulp gulp*

After lunch I got to wash the lunch dishes, something which I knew then would be impossible with two little children. (I was right. So far it is impossible.) Lena occupied herself for a few minutes while I did this… apparently by climbing back up into her high chair and shaking her water cup upside down.

I try to make my household tasks into a game and include Lena as much as I can. Helps me get more done! In this case I had to get the stubs of candle out of the top of the candlesticks. She enjoyed playing with the bowl of warm water while I dug out the soft wax. Then we set up the candlesticks with fresh candles to be ready for dinner that night.

Time to do something that she wants to do. We spent the next hour or so playing on the living room rug. One part of playtime was all 150 blocks through the shape sorter. Whew!

Siena, our Maine Coon kitten and ever-present companion.

Bathroom break. Lena’s playing with a jar of chocolate chips, one of which will be her “teet” (treat) when she is finished. We’ve since moved to giving her a goldfish after each successful trip to the toilet, which works extremely well if you only dole out goldfish as a reward! She loves them and always wants the parent who is with her to enjoy a goldfish as well.

Good girl… cleaning up after herself.

And back to playing, this time with the kitty and also the punch and drop toy we got her for Christmas.

Naptime again! These very yellow photos are due to the mellow, sleep-inducing (we hope) lamplight in her room. Siena snuggles down in her new favorite spot until I nudge her out so I can snuggle there with Lena for storytime.

Two naps in one day… I know I’m blessed! I use the 1.5 hours to clean the bathroom…

… put a few more things in my bag for the hospital…

… and do some dinner prep. On tonight’s menu: Sausage, Potato, and Fennel Chowder with fresh sausage from a butcher in town.

She’s up again! Someone’s happy to see her.

She helps me finish up a little dusting, which for her means using a paper towel for about 3 seconds before announcing that it is “tash” (trash) and running off with it to find a garbage can.

Back to the kitchen to finish up dinner before Elliott gets home from work. Lena tries a sip of my “doose” (juice), Pom and sparkling water. She’s not a huge fan.

We’re in the bathroom again when Daddy walks in! Lena runs to him for a hug, telling him excitedly that she just earned another “teet,” which earns an extra enthusiastic hug and kiss from him.

I stopped taking pictures at this point. I think I thought the routine would be the same with two babies as with one once Elliott got home. But I forgot that newborns don’t go to sleep at 7:30pm and wake up at 7am like Lena does. I forgot that they like to be held, especially while you’re eating dinner. I forgot what it’s like to put your baby in the Moby wrap and rock from one foot to the other while you wash the dinner dishes. I forgot that I might be nursing a newborn in the evenings while Elliott and I are watching Downton Abbey or dong Bible study together or attempting to blog. Basically… I think I conveniently didn’t realize how much a newborn would transform our whole lives, not just the 9-5 weekdays that Lena and I spent together.

So yes, the newborn is here. Gil is here, all adorable 8.5 lbs of him, with his beautiful thick hair and sleepy blue eyes. He has completely transformed our lives in every way, and it is taking an enormous amount of sacrifice so far. We’ve sacrificed having free hands. We’ve sacrificed our free evenings. We’ve sacrificed sleep… oh, so much sleep. We’ve sacrificed snuggles with our daughter (and turned them into double snuggles, which aren’t always easy to do!).

But we’ve gained so much. Welcome, little Gil. How will our days look with you in our pictures?

11 :: in a picture an hour, Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom Series, family, Gil, Lena, motherhood, thoughts

{birth story} welcome, Mark Gilchrist!

January 29, 2013 at 9:57 pm

As I write this, a sleeping baby boy is nestled next to me, I can still hardly believe this is happening. To us. Again. We get a newborn of our very own! A tiny, days-old baby who does nothing but eat, sleep, and poop; who needs us more than anything else in the world; who is ours, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones; who looks like an adorable chipmunk right now but will one day look like his daddy and me. I just want to wrap all these beautiful moments up and lock them away so that I can pull them out and savor them again over and over.

And so I blog about them.

I’m excited to share Gil’s birth story with you all, but of course it will be a pretty simplified version of the story. My brothers-in-law are some of my most avid readers and I want to spare them the birthing details! If you would like to read a more extensive account, I’m going to type one up today. Feel free to let me know through my Contact Page if you’d like to receive a copy.

OK, here we go…

Well, Friday, January 25th, began as any other. Lena was eating breakfast and I was making oatmeal when suddenly my phone rang. It was my OB calling to let me know that she wanted me to come in for another blood test. Remember how last week I was complaining about itching on my hands and feet? All week we’d been waiting for the results of one remaining, all-important blood test to come back from the military hospital in Germany. Finally I requested that we get my blood tested in Sicily as quickly as possible, and so my OB had asked for insurance approval on my behalf. As of Friday morning the claim had been approved, and so… could I come ASAP to get my blood drawn?

By 9:30am I was watching the lab technicians take my blood away. If it came back with elevated bile acid levels, it would mean I did have cholestasis of pregnancy. That would probably mean induction. As I hadn’t felt itchy for days now, I put it out of my mind and went on with my day.

At 4pm Lena and I were out on a walk on a crisp winter afternoon. My OB called again then and I answered cheerfully, not really thinking about what she might have to say.

“Hi, Becca. Well, your lab results came back and you do have elevated bile acids. The highest normal value is 7 and your level is 10. Based on the elevated level and the fact that you are already over 39 weeks, my recommendation would be induction. Preferably tonight.”

For a minute it felt like everything went into slow motion. Induction? Like… go into the hospital and get Pitocin? Have a baby? Tonight? This long-awaited event… now?

I called Elliott and we talked for a long time, going back and forth, reviewing a medical journal article about cholestasis, discussing whether we should wait until the morning or have the baby that night. Finally I said I wanted to go ahead with induction, even though it might mean a long, hard delivery for me. The right thing to do was to get our baby out of harm’s way.

I walked home with Lena, feeling emotional. I would never walk this way with just one baby again. She was about to be a big sister! I was about to be a mother of two. I was going to meet my son that night!

I called my friend Becca to come get Lena, finished packing my hospital bag, and then packed a bag for Lena, too. When Becca came, I laughed and was cheerful, but she knew there was so much more under the surface. I couldn’t shake the dark cloud that hung over me. Becca hugged me and told me she understood; “just pray and commit it to God, and then go forward.”

I drove the whole way to base with my hand on my stomach. For a long time the baby didn’t move and I panicked, thinking it might be too late. But then he shifted reassuringly, and shifted again. I would hold him in my arms tonight, God willing!

Elliott met me on base and we walked into the hospital together just before 7pm. I had been there that morning — that morning of the blood draw, of greeting acquaintances and friends around the hospital, of rolling my eyes about “when will this baby ever come?” — and it all seemed so far away now.

A few minutes later the nurses for the night shift came in to introduce themselves. One of them we already knew and we were hoping she would be working whenever I delivered. She seemed so calm and conscientious and obviously loved her job. (She’s probably going to read this so… hi, Melissa! We were so glad you were there.)

The OB on call came in and introduced herself. I had only met her once and was at first disappointed that my regular OB wasn’t on call. However, I ended up loving Dr. Adriano and am so glad she delivered Gil. Together we went over my birth plan. I explained that I had a natural childbirth with my daughter and have taken Bradley childbirth classes, and so my desire with this birth — even with induction — was to adhere as much as I could to a natural, drug-free delivery. I wanted to move around during labor. I didn’t want to be offered an epidural. I preferred as much privacy as possible throughout the process. A little bit shyly, I also said that Elliott would like to catch the baby and cut the cord, two things that seemed rather natural-birthy in a classic hospital setting. But Dr. Adriano was unphased and said she’d do whatever she could to accommodate us.

And then induction began. At about 7:15pm, Melissa started Pitocin, a drug that would begin contractions. Elliott pulled The Italian Job out of his bag; he’d stopped by the library on his way to the hospital! Good husband. We settled back to watch the movie and wait for things to happen.

After about an hour of Pitocin, I was having regular contractions but could barely feel them. That was enough to satisfy Dr. Adriano that labor was progressing as it should, though, so she broke my water. Since I had delivered Lena less than 6 hours after my water was broken, I hoped that meant I didn’t have long to wait for serious labor and then delivery.

By the end of the movie around 10pm, the contractions were definitely painful. With Lena they got much more painful and frequent, though, so I thought I still had awhile to wait. I could still get up and walk around and had moved to sitting on an exercise ball. Eventually I moved the ball to the side of the bed, sat on it, and leaned my torso forward on some pillows.

I think by then it was about 10:30, and the contractions began to get much stronger. I muscled through them for about 30 minutes and then learned I was 9cm and could probably start pushing whenever I felt like it. Around me I could hear Melissa and Dr. Adriano getting ready for delivery. Elliott stood by my side, rubbing my back, encouraging me after each contraction. He was just what I needed through all of this: calm and reassuring, quiet and supportive, and quick to help me smile.

Dr. Adriano asked if I wanted to get into bed at this point, but since I was comfortable (??), I asked to stay where I was. They decided they would just roll the ball away when the baby was ready to be born.

About 25 minutes later, right before Gil was born, Elliott donned gloves and was ready to reach down to hold Gil’s head as he slid into the world. At my request only the doctor, nurse, and Elliott were in the room, and they were all waiting quietly, respecting my desire for no cheering/counting and just letting me take my time. I was in a great deal of pain; I had totally forgotten that it hurt this much! However, the pain wasn’t getting any better, and I finally told myself, “There’s no one and nothing that can help you with the pain except to have this baby. Just push through the pain.” So I did, and it was awful for a few seconds, but then… then I heard a piercing cry, the melt-your-heart cry of a brand new baby, a baby who, in the space of a second, goes from inside you to out in the world, gulping in air, filling his perfect little lungs, and crying for his mama.

They helped me into bed and put Gil in my arms. He was a total mess, not at all cleaned off after delivery. Holding my little son in my arms, naked and brand new and hollering, was an entirely new experience for me, because the hospital staff had cleaned Lena and wrapped her up before I held her. The first time I met Gil was raw and messy, humbling and beautiful.

At first I couldn’t get over how much Gil looked like Lena. That round, red little face and all that dark hair! But Elliott could already see Gil’s Uncle David, his grandfather Mark, and definitely Uncle Eric and Uncle Jonathan too. One thing Elliott thought right away, though, was that the name at the top of our list just didn’t fit. We gazed into our little boy’s face, running down our list of names, trying to decide what to call him. In the end it took us over 12 hours to decide on a name, about as long as it took to agree upon Lena’s! Are all parents so anxious that the face fits the name?

I’ll share the background on Gil’s name on Thursday, as well as a bunch of photos from those first 24 hours with our son!

25 :: in Baby Numero Due, family, Gil, motherhood, thoughts

itchy feet, baby kicks, and still waiting

January 17, 2013 at 2:38 pm

Back in the day: 2-week-old Lena. *cue heart melting*

Well, based on some excitement this morning, we thought today might be the day that our little boy would be born!

But it wasn’t. I’m still pregnant.

It all started last night when I yanked off my slippers and told Elliott, “My feet are so itchy. Why is that? So weird.” That night the itching continued and even got worse. The soles of my feet and my hands both itched, at times so much that I couldn’t sleep.

When we Googled these symptoms in the morning, we learned that they are related to cholestasis of pregnancy, a condition in which bile flow from the liver slows or stops. “Cholestasis of pregnancy,” says the Mayo Clinic, “poses no long-term risk to the mother. Cholestasis of pregnancy can be dangerous for a developing baby, however. Early delivery is usually recommended.”

Ummm… yikes!

And when I called my OB, she thought so too. We spent the morning at the hospital for a non-stress test, amniocentesis fluid level test, and several labs. The results of all of those so far show a happy, healthy, kickin’ away baby who has plenty of resources in there to keep hanging out for awhile and no apparent distress. They sent us home, all smiles, and told us to come back if the itching got much worse.

So no baby today. And thank the Lord, frankly! When I got off the phone this morning and we knew we had to go in to the hospital (and might come back with a baby), I looked around the house and felt bubbling concern. I’m not ready to have a baby! There is still so much to do! I have to organize his clothes in his room, I have to put our files in order, I have to clean the kitchen. I still haven’t packed my hospital bag or frozen a single meal!

“And,” I said to Elliott. “It’s January 17th! I don’t want to have a baby on January 17th!”

“Why not?” Elliott said, unperturbed by the possible new birthdate of our baby. “Let’s see, one-seventeen-thirteen… that adds up to 31. 31 flavors of ice cream. It would be a good birthday.”

Thank you, honey.

So not today. A little more time to prepare. A little more time to look at the mess in my house instead of look down at a little bundle in my arms. A little more time to plug through a to-do list (which will be just as long when the baby comes anyway). A little more time to realize I am worrying about the wrong things and to thank God that this–the timing, our health, our baby boy’s birthday–is all in His hands.

Did you feel ready when your baby arrived? Or were you overdue and more than ready?

16 :: in Baby Numero Due, family, motherhood, my faith, thoughts

these final days

January 16, 2013 at 3:38 pm

I had my 38-week appointment today for our little babe. Hard to believe he could arrive any day! The news from my doctor is that he doesn’t look that ready to come out yet (can’t blame him) and so we’ve probably got another two weeks to wait here… at least. Maybe three weeks. Maybe four.

Or maybe he’ll come tomorrow.

In the meantime, life as it is has taken on a whole new meaning for me. These days are limited. Change is on the horizon.

What will he be like? Quiet and chill? Anxious and colicky? A good eater? A good sleeper? Mothers tell you they are so excited for their new babies–and they are!–but they are also full of apprehension about what this unknown creature will be like. In some ways a mother already knows her unborn child better than anyone, for he came into existence and has grown inside of her for nine months. Yet in most ways everything about him is a complete mystery.

My response to the unknown has been to worry, which is foolish, I know. Worrying will do me no good! But my other response has been to slooooow down and take a deep breath and savor. Life right now is not perfect by any means, but it is good and it is full of beauty. I want to treasure these days up in my heart, locking them away to ponder over and remember forever.

Most of all I want to remember my quiet days at home with Lena. Our days are fairly routine here: awake by 7-ish, breakfast at 8-ish, goodbye to Daddy at 9-ish, nap at 10, lunch at 12, another nap at 2 or 3, and dinner prep starts at 5. In between we go on walks around the neighborhood or I push her stroller into town for groceries. We bake cookies for Daddy. We sit on the rug and play with her puzzles, her baby doll, her blocks, her paper and crayons. We read books before her morning nap, before her afternoon nap, and sometimes in between, too. She occasionally helps me with cleaning, like turning the vacuum switch on for me or dusting side-by-side. We practice words. We dance. We change diapers, we change clothes, we wash diapers, we wash dishes, all day long.

In this world, my daughter is my constant companion, my chatty little shadow, my ever-present friend. When she is napping and I am putting together a blog post and I see a picture of her, I actually miss her. And she’s only been asleep for 30 minutes! And I need the break! But I look at her–her huge blue eyes, her curling brown hair, her petite little hands, her beautiful little body–and cannot believe she is our daughter, and how pretty and sweet she is, and that she exists in this world and loves us more than anyone and calls me, “Mama.”

As some of you know or remember, I’ve felt a great deal of emotional conflict about being a stay-at-home mom. As a result, I am spending a lot of my spare time trying to develop talents so that I can work from home. Yet in this past year I have also fallen in love with this new job of staying at home with my child. I wake up each morning and look forward to the day. (And that is saying something when you consider other things that have happened in our lives this past year.)

With a new baby due any day, I feel a great deal of apprehension about the changes ahead. Apprehension… excitement… thankfulness… and just a bit of fear. And that is why I savor my life as a mother just as it is right now, savor our quiet and uneventful days together, savor today.

9 :: in Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom Series, Lena, motherhood, thoughts

New Year’s Day in the orange groves

January 9, 2013 at 5:36 pm

On New Year’s Day we took a long hike down in the valley below our home. We were tired when we started out, discouraged from an argument, wearily determined to turn the tide for 2013. I hoped the blue-sky day and the outdoors would refresh our souls.

And, amazingly, that happened. I guess sometimes you don’t know how soothing an afternoon will be to your soul. How quiet hours can reset you when you spend them lying in the grass and eating oranges… and talking or not talking… and just being still.

^ Lena has become especially attached to these shiny black beetles lately.

^ more bugs

^ 36 weeks pregnant, Lena’s first orange of the day, and our town in the background on the cliff’s edge

^ picking olives and clutching her prize

I love these photos because they capture a moment in our lives, a moment that will soon be past when our little boy arrives in just a few weeks. They also capture so much of what we enjoy right now, from the Sicilian oranges hanging from the branches to Lena’s complete fascination with bugs to the hugeness of my belly to Lena’s love to snuggle on top of us whenever we lie down.

They also capture my husband in so many ways as a father: the way he is completely at home in the outdoors, his playfulness with Lena, and the quiet way he encourages her to explore creation: to hold bugs, touch amazing plants, pick olives straight from the trees, and sit peacefully in the grass watching bees buzz from flower to flower.

Our lives are so complex. Yes, there is eager anticipation. Yes, there is crippling sorrow. And always there is deep, abiding joy.