a bedtime story

My husband and I, by some miracle, have been blessed with 2 kids who are good sleepers.  I think that I slept well as a child when I finally chose to actually go to sleep.  I wasn't terribly old when my parents decided that I would just come to bed whenever I got sleepy and left me to my own devices, which included putting Barbies in all of my dad's shoes.  And as far as I know, my hubby's parents weren't exactly the scheduled go-to-bed-at-9-o'clock-on-the-dot kind of folks either.  So, the fact that both of our kids (so far) are at least semi-agreeable to the idea of having a bedtime routine and going to bed at a somewhat regular time every night is truly amazing.

I should interject here that we are not rigid conformists to any schedule whatsoever.  We are more what you'd call the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of parents.  I should also remind everybody (including myself) that the Bebe is a mere 5 weeks old and there is still plenty o'time for a rebellion.

And we're going to hope that the beginning of said rebellion did not in fact take place last night.

It all started when it was I and not her father who put her to bed.  I did everything exactly the way he does as near as I could tell, but it just wasn't the same.  The second part of the problem was the fact that her father was already asleep when we actually went to bed and he didn't wake up to snuggle up next to her, which she's also accustomed to.

The snuggling is something I cannot do because she smells me or senses me with her magical food source sixth baby sense or something, so unless I want her to eat every hour of the night instead of every hour minus maybe 2, I try to keep a safe distance.  I thought she was just going to wake up altogether when I laid her down, but with some gentle coaxing and a lot of pacifier reapplication, she drifted off soundly.  I, unfortunately, was not tired at that time, so I laid very still and read for a while.

I was feeling all proud of myself for putting my own kid to bed without actually nursing her to sleep AND getting some bedtime reading time in (something that never happened with the Kiddo until he was close to a year old).  But then I turned off the light and our night of calisthenics began.  Well, ok, I turned off the light and barely drifted off enough to be groggy and then she woke up.  For the next 3 hours or so she wavered between totally asleep and some state of semi-wakefulness which included a lot of wiggling, working her feet out of her sleeper, and grunting reminiscent of a warthog.  Needless to say it wasn't all that conducive to sleeping anywhere near her (although her daddy didn't seem to be having any trouble).

About 3 AM, and after trying to nurse her back to sleep numerous times, I decided it wasn't going to happen and just got up to give her a sleep aid bottle in hopes that a full-er tummy would help her sleep.  We made it back to bed about 3:30 since I got hooked on an episode of Roseanne and had to finish it.  By that time, I was wide awake and my husband had abandoned me to go sleep with our snugglier-than-I-am firstborn.  I managed to drift off eventually, blissfully certain that now that her tummy was comfortably full, she was zonked out we were good until mid-morning.  Also, the Kiddo had gotten up early the previous day and had only a short nap, so that was promising too.

So, naturally, the grunting routine re-ensued around 6-ish.

And the Kiddo came pitter pattering into my room around... 6-ish.

Which coincidentally is also the time my husband is about to walk out the door.

With an infant attached to me and, I might add, not pleased about still being in the bed, a toddler rubbing my ear/playing with my hair/running his hands all over my face and intermittently blocking my air supply, and my husband standing over me saying how much he wished he didn't have to leave but he had to so bye... it didn't take long for me to bolt upright, throw myself out of bed, and stomp into the kitchen.

And so at 6:30, I was sitting in the recliner trying to rock a baby back to sleep while being scaled and still having my ear rubbed by the Kiddo who was none too pleased himself about being awake.

Thus, I've already been up for going on 2 hours and am watching a segment on Sesame Street about how it's all right to cry and am seriously considering it.

Yes, we have 2 good sleepers, which I think makes it worse somehow when they don't sleep well than if they slept poorly all the time.

Bebe is asleep in her swing... and grunting.  Kiddo is sitting next to me... and rubbing my ear.  And I am awake... and wondering how I'm going to feel when I look at the clock a sweet forever from now and it's only 10 AM.

I think a trip to Mam-Ma's may just be in order...

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Welcome, Bebe!

We all know that I tend toward being a little longwinded extremely detailed in a good way.  And obviously the birth of my second child is probably something I could get carried away with, so I'm going to do my best to hold it to a minimum with as little actual medical terminology as possible.

Maybe.

Unless I change my mind.

...

On Tuesday, May 5 at 8:26, we welcomed a sweet little daughter to the world.  Yep... the Bebe is a girl.  Not that I was surprised since everybody and their brother (including a woman in Best Buy's restroom) had been telling me for approximately 7 and a half months that I was having a girl.  I'm glad everybody else in the world were such great prognosticators because I apparently have zero motherly intuition.

So, we arrived at the Labor & Delivery department of our local hospital a little after 5:30 AM so I could be prepped for a 7:30 c-section.  My doctor had instructed me to get there between 5 and 5:30, so in keeping with every other appointment I'd had during the pregnancy, I showed up a few minutes late.  My ever-punctual husband decided that going through town would be a smarter idea than taking the interstate since there would be no traffic at that time of day.  What he didn't count on was the fact that stoplights work on timers during the wee hours, so we sat at several of them... all alone... in the dark... no one else at any of the other lights.

For once it was his fault we were late.

I'm sure he would interject some well-thought-out (and probably accurate but nobody tell him I said that) argument at this point were this actual conversation and not my blog and therefore 100% governed (however creatively) me and me alone.

I'm already being longwinded... er, detailed.

So, we got to the hospital and after saying "I can't believe this is finally happening" about 443 times as we walked in we made it to L&D.  I don't remember my nurse's name, but pretty much the first words out of her mouth were, "Take off everything and put this on.  It opens in the back." To which I replied, "You aren't even gonna buy me a drink first?"

Next came the hook up of monitors, allowing me to hear the swoosh swoosh swoosh of my baby's heart for the final time.  Not that I was feeling really sentimental about it.  Because I wasn't at all.  I was ready.

Next came the smattering of fun questions like "Any history of mental illness?" "Do you use any recreational drugs?" and my personal favorite, "How much do you weigh?" That one's funny to me because these nurses who have been working in L&D for years honestly think that a full-term pregnant woman still looks at the scale.

During the inquisition, another woman came in and my nurse introduced her as who would be shaving me and putting in my Foley.  Now, since this wasn't my first rodeo I understood that by "Foley" she meant Satan-spawn little plastic tube that is a urinary catheter, but couldn't she have just said that? 

After the questioning was over the real fun began.  Nurse #2 came in and shaved me, which is not glamourous and employs one of those little buzzy beard trimmer things that tends to grab your hairs and run for the door.  The poor nurse apologized numerous times, but I reassured her that I'm tough and could deal with whatever I had to do since, well, I had to do it.  Her response to that was, "Well, how do you feel about catheters?" At least she didn't call it a Foley, but what kind of question is that.  How do I feel about catheters? I had only ever met one and is that really enough to base a whole opinion on?

Yes.  Yes it is.

I told her that I obviously wouldn't want to get one every day, but since I had to have one I figured I might as well just grin and bear it.  I can deal with even the most uncomfortable things as long as I know it's going to be over at some point.  She told me I had a good attitude which I was pretty sure should have entitled me to... something.  Maybe a big badge that said "This patient has a good attitude about catheters."

I should add that this same nurse, when actually administering the catheter, told me that the "trick" with catheters is to relax as much as possible and just get totally loose.  Her advice to help me do this was to imagine myself laying on the beach.  The advice didn't really help so much since it caused me to alternately think of the looks I would get if I were laying on the beach in that position and sand in extremely uncomfortable places.

She had barely finished up with the catheterization process when nurse #1 came in to put in my IV.  I had a major abdominal surgery looming in my future and I actually felt the blood drain from my face when she said the word IV... even though it's not really a word at all, just a 2-letter abbreviation.  Getting shots and having my blood drawn doesn't bother me, but getting an IV really almost makes me feel like puking.

Once that was finally done I actually had a few minutes to rest and let my blood pressure return to normal.  It was getting close to 7 AM and I knew all I had to wait for now was my epidural. Something else I was dreading big time.  Call me crazy, but having a ginormous needle scraped against my spinal cord makes me a little uneasy.

It was a little after 7 when the cRNA showed up complete with his little cart of doom and torture and the surgical tech gal who was wearing a floppy blue hat with frogs on it and referred to the catheter bag as my "purse." Again, at least she didn't call it a Foley.

As an aside here, I've been trying to figure out what the "c" in cRNA stands for.  RNA is registered nurse anesthetist, right? So what is the "c"? Certified? Who knows.  I think his name was Todd, but he referred to himself as "Sweet T" and sang Three Times a Lady to me. He reminded me of my husband's uncle which somehow didn't make having most of my bare behind exposed any more awkward.

After that was done, I was all set and ready to go.  I just had to wait for somebody to come wheel me away.

For effect, I should add this flattering picture my loving husband took:

This shot almost makes it seem like I endured some actual labor, but in reality I was just yawning.  Does anybody else yawn uncontrollably when they're nervous or is that just a me thing?

Pretty soon after getting the epidural, they wheeled me off to OR #10, the same room the Kiddo debuted in.  And it was every bit as cold and scary as I remembered it being.  I had a couple of minutes to look around before they strung up the drape and I noticed that they had the same stereo stuck in the wall that we have in the Pathfinder.  I've yet to figure out the purpose of a stereo in an operating room, but being the chatty gal I am I mentioned it to the floppy frog hat surgical tech gal who asked me if I had brought any CDs.  I wish I'd had the presence of mind to tell her to check my purse.

I didn't.

And the rest is pretty much history at this point.  I laid there in a state of drug-induced stupor.  At some point, they let my husband come in and I think he was afraid I was dead because every time I closed my eyes he would say, "Are you OK?" And after about 15 minutes, I heard my baby girl's first cries.

Then I spent an hour in recovery feeling good and coming out of an anesthetic fog.  And after 2 nights in probably the most uncomfortable bed in the universe, I got to come home and start doing laundry again.  I can't remember, by the way, if I actually did laundry on the day I came home or if I waited until the next day.

It was a very smooth surgical procedure and has been a textbook perfect recovery up to this point 2 weeks later.  I feel in no way like I had a baby or a surgery anytime in the recent past.  Best of all, I don't feel pregnant anymore! Yippee! I can now comfortably stand on one foot and I can talk on the phone while moving around my house without getting the slightest bit out of breath.  Best best of all, I have a very healthy sweet baby who is already growing and changing every day.

All of these are things I'm thankful for.  I prayed for these things the whole time I was pregnant.  I prayed for these things while I was on the operating table.  There's no way for me to appreciate God's goodness and there's no way I could ever say thank you enough for the things He's done for me in this situation and all the rest of my life.

In the end, all of the nervousness, the awkwardness, the discomfort, and so on and so forth... it was all worth it.  Every bit.  And here's why...

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