If Paul could see the tissues I go through while he slumbers. 

http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/01/nella-cordelia-birth-story.html
This was such an honest birth story.  Written looong ago but new to me.  I cried when I read it, cried when I told Paul about it.  Just so real and raw.  I feel more prepared if the experience is ever mine.

http://randycourtneytripproth.blogspot.com/
I can’t imagine.  Forgive me for being taxed with discipline woes today, explaining for the fifteenth time to Julia that it’s not ok to yell when you want a turn to talk looks like jelly beans.  Oh the trials I am not ready for.

http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/04/2011-lesson-2-dont-carpe-diem/
Let’s end on funny.  Is this ‘viral’ yet?  It seems so.  I died laughing and then had a Steel Magnolias (the laugh/cry) moment.  “I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes…”  Spot on lady.

My Sweet Peach,

 

 

Mom

Julia galloping around her first day as a 2-year-old, and her mother talking really loudly.  This is probably just grandparent material.

There is much to tell about Christmas break, let’s start with the only photos I have – those that others have sent me. 

Two things that were not great in Utah
1) We didn’t have a camera battery
2) Our time was cut short

The rest was amazing! 

Christmas was wonderful.  We’d originally planned on spending more time West, getting to see more people I love, but Paul had a client issue a few days into our trip, which required him home.  With two lap children, my lone lap wasn’t going to get the rest of us home as scheduled, so we all changed our flights. We were happy to see the people we did and can’t wait to catch up with those we missed!

Luckily, Christy and I had planned to see eachother early enough in the week to keep our date.  Also, Christy is family.  We had the perfect evening, she cooked a delicious meal (she can just ‘whip things up’ like no one I know).  We got to hang out in the kitchen, snacking and chatting.  The kids played together.  Adam brought home amazing raspberry sweet rolls.  We talked and talked and talked until we had to put the kids down, and then I borrowed a sweatshirt, and then we had to roll out the aerobed…  spontaneous sleepovers are the best.  In the wee hours of the morning, Christy and I slipped over to the temple.  Adam and Paul fed the kids homemade pancakes.  Sigh, it’s a dream of mine to live next to this girl one day.

These are from Christy - our too short date, her two boys, my two girls (!), my happy naked little Lillie… it was not enough time, but it was grand! 

And then we looked and they were sitting holding hands. 

Oh, I looooove her.

Are Davis & Lillie holding hands too?  Oh my, all my dreams coming true…

BFs 4-ever

We had family photos a few weeks ago.  This is one of my favorites.  Oh how I love love love this little girl.  She now says “I ubv you Mom” without solicitation.  There are no words. (except to relay how hilarious it is that sometimes when I respond with, “I love you Honey”, she parrots, “I ubv you Hu-neee”, with complete sincerity)

They were a puppy (Lilah, our neighbor’s dog to be exact), and a butterfly.  We only took a couple of phone pictures.  For shame.

There was slow walking; confusion; staring instead of the ‘trick-or-treat’ line we’d rehearsed; Lillie (in her giant butterfly get-up) needing to be fed on the cobbled curb of the Old Town street we were wandering; candy, Julia’s first really – which explains why she was nursing a lollipop non-stop.  The pup kept as much candy in her hands as she could hold at all times.   Loved it.

The critters with our friend Suzette, a really good witch at heart.

Always such a good sport Lil.

Julia with her bestie Sadie, a gun-blazin’ cowgirl with the cutest ‘yeeee haaawww’ you’ve ever heard (and a Mama who actually takes photos).

I melt.

I found a photo of me in the pink smocked dress! Now it’s a true flashback because I remember that flowered carpet…

Yesterday, Julia wore a little pink dress to church.  My mom made it for me when I was a toddler – she made beautiful clothes, a talent I wish I had.  Here’s a little video for the grandparents

And a few photos for my Mom

Lillie wore one of Julia’s first dresses.  So sweet this little cycle of life.

Indicators I’m losing my brain (all of this in the last 24 hours):

 - Went to the grocery store for rolls.  Bought lots of things, no rolls.

 - Visited same grocery store later for a price adjustment on my Halloween candy (yes, I’m THAT lady) and rolls, left again without rolls.

 - Got a text from Jocelyn asking if I was coming.  Coming where?  I wondered.  To the pumpkin patch we had planned mere hours before to meet at. 

 - Rushed girls out to car when I finally figured out we were late, and drove off with my diaper bag on the asphalt of my parking spot.

 - Stopped at the same grocery store a third time in 24 hours for the same still-needed rolls.  Checked my diaper bag (since retrieved) – no wallet.

Just saying – if you’re wondering why I didn’t dress my girls and do their hair for the pumpkin patch, it’s because it was a miracle we got there at all.  Thanks to Jocelyn for the photos (add No Camera at Photo Op to the list of forgets).

I do love my Little Plums.

Luli, Millie (“Mimi”) & Sadie (“Saysee”), nearby is Sabrina (“Brina”)

Lillie wasn’t that keen on being nestled into the pumpkins.  It might have been because she heard me notice how similar her cute head was to those orange gourds around her.

Julia loooooves these girls and asks for them about twenty times a day.  She inserts them into her prayers, the excitement she has for church, and the little babble stories she tells.  It’s a dream come true to live just down the street from her besties!

Lillie turned 3 months old yesterday, so clearly it’s time to blog about her blessing…

My sweet Lillie Bug,

You are officially two months old. At your one-month appointment the Dr. said you looked two, so by now you probably look four.  I love every centimeter and ounce of your perfect little body.  At your two week appointment you weighed 9+ lbs,  and at one month you were 12+ lbs, making you bigger (height, weight and head) than nine out of ten babies your age.  I always pictured having a baby with dark hair, and here you are, with a thick, full, beautiful head of it.  More than I ever dreamed.  We always have our fingers in it, and people constantly stroke your head when they hold you - that downy fluff is irresistible.

Your disposition is positively angelic.  You are the sweetest, most laid-back baby imaginable and I’m grateful every day for you as my number two.  What would I have done if you were needy?  Heavenly Father knows what He’s doing when it comes to birth order, I’m convinced.  You have slept so much from day one that I worried a little (remember your sister’s early sleep patterns, our ‘normal’ reference was skewed).  You usually close your eyes at night for six or seven hours straight. Heaven!  Is there a greater gift for a new mother?

You do think I’m waterboarding you when I bathe you.  And hate sudden movements.  Your tummy hurts sometimes, which means you get fed often in small doses.  We get a lot of time on the couch together you and I, but you’re so happy in your little seat and in your bassinet generally that I’m grateful for the times you need me.  My guess is that you’ll have a tender heart.  I hope I’m always sensitive to it.

You smile as much in your sleep as when you’re awake, making me think you see images of your heavenly home.  I feel it closer since you’ve come.  It’s a really happy thing to be the ones to get to welcome you here. I kiss you so much it’s funny.  Bless you little Lils for gracing our family.  You’re my sweet pumpkin pie.

xo,
Your Mama

* these photos taken lovingly by our dear Hollie when you were six weeks old

Hollie just gave me the most beautiful photos of Lillie with her Grandma Mickelsen.  So I’m using them as incentive for me to get something else done before I can post them.  I never did write down Julia’s birth story, so even though we’re nearly two months out, here’s Lillie’s.  Warning:  I’ll most likely be long-winded and graphic (is there another way? it’s childbirth) :

Let’s give me a minute to take it all back.

For the past 18 months I’ve gone from pregnant woman to pregnant woman, encouraging them with phrases like, “The epidural is AMAZING!  Barely felt a thing!”, “Labor is only one day”, “It’s not as bad as you think”, and “Recovery?  No big deal.”  I mean, you can tell that Julia’s delivery was heavily medicated, no?  Boy, payback was destined.  Deserved.  All those women who heard me nonchalant the pain part and then felt all sorts of terrible things during their deliveries… this one’s for you.

Things started out swimmingly.  After being induced with Julia, 11 days overdue, I was determined (as most 39 week pregnant women are) to go into labor on my own this time around.  Paul, Julia and I braved the DC heat, and took a long uphill walk on Sunday evening, July 17th.  By the end of the walk, things definitely felt different.  Heavier.  Lower.  And my walk was distinctly more cowboy than ballerina.  I was surprised since I felt like I’d walked to bring Julia to no avail (looking back, I think I counted a couple of times up and down our stairs as vigorous exercise).  Monday morning I woke up with some tightening and pains - ones I’d been having on and off for days.  Since similar pains had led to a whole lot of nothing at my last Dr. visit, I wasn’t convinced they should be minded.   Around noon I realized that things were picking up, but didn’t know what to make of it since my pain scale monitor registered about 2.5.  I called Paul, who was in court an hour away in Leesburg.  No answer.  Around 1:00pm I was pretty sure I’d have to cancel my 2:00pm walk with Hollie.  Even if this was a big fat fake-out, I wasn’t in the mood for waddling around in the heat.  I called Hollie, who excitedly asked if I wanted her to drive me to the hospital.  Oh, no.  This is probably nothing.  And Paul will be on his way home soon I’m sure.  Just checking in, you know, just in case.  And cancelling our walk.  I’ll be in touch.

Paul called.  He was just leaving court, and I think he knew by my report that this wasn’t nothing.  But what did we know?  We were induced with the Peach.  Everything was monitored from start to finish.  This going into labor business was the stuff of stories and birthing class videos.  Paul wanted me to have a back-up plan, to have Hollie ready to rush me to Fairfax.  I just wanted him to get home… contraction… now.  Minutes later the ramp-up was apparent.   This was happening a little faster than I’d imagined.  I called the Dr. (the answering Dr. was the one who delivered Julia, and was due in nine days herself) who said “you’d better go to the hospital.”  I for some reason had expected to be talked out of this plan, not into it.  She also said in an emphatic whisper, “Why did you go into labor today?  Today is Dr. B.!”  Gasp.  No!  Booo.  Dr. B was the one Dr. in my practice I’d wanted to avoid for delivery.  Described as “trigger happy where the OR is concerned,” he was a walking c-section waiting to happen.   My nightmare.

I call Hollie back, who is the kind of friend who acts like it’s really great news that she gets to drive you to the hospital.  Lots of enthusiasm and an I’ll be there asap.  Hollie arrived with her daughter Sadie minutes later, and was sunshine + action, exactly the kind of person you want in a crisis.  She packed everything from Julia + carseat (a feat) to my hospital bag into her car and our girl party raced down the beltway with excitement.  It was actually pretty fun, that drive – traffic behaved, I was with three of my favorite people, my love was on track to meet me there, and I was getting a bit more confident with the increasing pain that I was not going to be laughed at in triage.

I was the baton, and was handed off to Paul at the hospital door.  Something about him still being in a suit made it seem more dramatic.  We finished paperwork (I still can’t believe they make you remember numbers at a time like this) at the front desk, but by now I would zone out every few minutes to breathe through a contraction.  Hurting more.  Waiting at the nurses desk.  Hurting more.  In triage.  They couldn’t find my Dr., so I asked the nurse to check me – she was on her way out when I asked if she was allowed to tell me how far along I was.  “Yes, but I don’t want you to freak out.  You’re a six.”  Freak out?  This was fantastic!  I’m not a two!  But then I was back to hurting, enough to have Paul remind them that I’d love an epidural when I got to labor and delivery.  Twice.

Dr. B finally comes in, seeming a bit… groggy (turns out he’d been in a sleep room catching some z’s), I’m wheeled to my labor/delivery room.  He checks me and says calmly that I’m a seven.  I’m less calm as I remember the stories of women wanting an epidural around this point and being told it was ”too late.”  Seven hurts a lot.  Paul’s arm is getting squeezed like the prey of a python.  I’ve never made pretense about wanting to try natural labor.  Only 2% of me ever thought it possible, and both of those percents were gone now. I suffocated Paul’s arm.  “I need the epidural.  I’m not one of those natural girls.  Please.  Epidural.”

Turns out everyone on the planet had gone into labor that day.  Nurses were making jokes that they were called into rooms to start paperwork, and ended up staying to deliver babies.  I tried to laugh.  Instead I squeezed everything around me (hospital bed bar, Paul’s bruising arm).  Hard.  I asked the Dr. if it was too late for an epidural, and before he answered I said/gasped/pleaded “PLEASE don’t say no!”  “There’s still a window,” he seemed to lie.  I saw the way a couple of nurses looked at him and knew the window was more like a cubby hole.  When the anesthesiologist ran in with his cart, I could have leapt for joy (were it not for the excruciating pain that had overtaken my body).  Paul got excited when he recognized Jerry as the same anesthesiologist who’d helped Julia’s entrance into the world be relatively comfortable.  We both relaxed (big needle aside), and I felt like Jerry would do me right again.  He said something about a “fast-acting dose” and re-inserted the needle since I’d cringed during a contraction, and apparently that was bad.

Oh bless you Jerry, I thought as almost instantly my pain eased.  Within five minutes the overwhelming pain had dissipated, and I think I heard angels singing in the distance.  I noticed pretty quickly that it was a different relief than I’d felt with Julia.  With her I was numb to the point of one leg being dead and having to cheat to look at the monitor when they asked if I could feel the next contraction coming.  Not so this time.  While comfortable, I could move around as if I’d not been anesthetized, and could definitely feel the pressure of the contractions.  But the pain had plummeted from a nine to a three, and I felt relaxed, grateful, excited for the baby, and void of the panic that had accompanied the pain.  Forty-five minutes later I was a ten, and it was time!  Miraculously, there had been a shift-change during this time, and a Dr. I’d never met before took over for Dr. B.  Hallelujah! Dr. E was a woman in her late 50′s.  I felt my chances at delivering without c-section rise immediately and the pushing began.

Ow.  I don’t remember feeling this with Julia… Ow!  Owwwwwwww.  I was doing my best to push, but wow, suddenly everything was REALLY painful again.  Let me pause to say that while I love modern medicine, I don’t expect having a baby to be a pain-free experience.  I just hadn’t experienced THIS feeling before – this was mighty uncomfortable.  There were sensations that I hadn’t expected, hurting in places I didn’t know had nerves.  I pushed.  And pushed.  And pushed.  And was asked by every new person who walked in the room (where do all these people come from, has anyone figured out why it takes 64 people to give you the once over before you can deliver?) how long I pushed with the first one (25 minutes) and how big she was (8 lbs 13 oz).  Inevitably there was a headshake of confusion, especially as we passed the first hour and then the second.

I can’t adequately describe the pain.  There aren’t words, but if my grip would have torn that metal hospital bed bar in half, I wouldn’t have been surprised.  I don’t think I cried, tears would have somehow relaxed my body, which was tense every inch.  I bit Paul’s hand at one point.  It was not pretty.  I remember thinking that this was the stuff of movies – the panting, the sweating, the noises that you always want to mute because they sound so fake and overdone.  I wanted to bite a stick – did only pioneers do that?  Or kick someone – did only mean people do that?  Or make a loud noise.  It seemed the most allowable of the three, and I did some of that.  I thought at one point how I don’t think I did more than grit my teeth and growl once or twice with Julia, and here I was yelling in pain. I apologized later to the nurses’ station as I was being wheeled to recovery.

The time limit my Dr. had given me to push was three hours.  It had been two and a half and I was getting nervous, frustrated, and so tired I thought I was going to collapse.  I wondered if in collapsed form everything would still hurt this much.  The pain progressed and the ‘delivery dose’ they tried to squirt into my epidural drip IV didn’t seem to phase me.  Dr. E said that they would start prepping an operating room, but that we would try vacuum and forceps first.  Oh good.  Honestly at that point you could have told me that a tiger was going to be involved somehow and if it worked I wouldn’t have cared.  I racked my brain for good news, and seemed to remember that some of my natural labor friends (I’ve never been more mystified or in awe) relayed that the baby’s exit was less painful than the transition labor or pushing.  Really.  REALLY?!  Because while the whole last few hours had made me think I just might end up in two pieces (or many), there was no feeling in the world like that baby being pulled out.  It.  Was.  Excruciating.  I felt like time stood still as they forced that little giant baby into the world with their tools (is this graphic enough yet?  I’m sorry, but for when Lillie doesn’t feel like cleaning her room, I’m going all the way here).  The pain was one of those numbers on the 1-10 scale that’s way above 10.  They discovered as they started some of the medical intervention that our little miss was posterior (face up), a little bit diagonal, and coming forehead first.  Well, that explains it.  I thought I just totally stunk at pushing.

At 9:01pm, when she’d officially joined us, they had to rush Lillie over to the waiting NICU staff to make sure she was ok post-meconium stuff, so I didn’t get to hold her right away.  But as I confessed to a friend of mine, I don’t know if I would have had the energy in that moment.  I had never felt more spent.  I remember saying in this barely-there voice to the delivery nurse, who I loved, “thank you, thank you for getting her out.”  I needed a minute (ok, about ten, they were still finishing me off) to get to elated, and to realize that the torture part was actually over.  But then it was.  And I could hear my baby.  And see a tiny head of dark hair off in the distance.  My heart did a somersault (the only part of my body left with some kick).  I heard them talking about how big she was, and saw proud Papa Paul watching over her.  When they handed me my little Lillie, I cried.

She was beautiful, but she’d been through a lot this little one.  While I was feeling bruised and battered, her face actually showed her trauma of being in an unideal position for hours – little bruises and marks.  I think that’s why they hand you your baby as quickly as they can, of course so you can love your new little one, but also so you’ll quit your belly-achin’ (as Paul’s dad would say).  It was love, fast and furious.  She was mine, and while the entire miracle of birth is such proof of God to me, I also felt like I’d worked for her.  I have to say, as I sat there feeling grateful for everything/one that helped deliver this baby, I thought of pioneers and ancestors and all of the woman throughout time who didn’t have the things we do now.  That they had to endure without the knowledge that in the end, someone could fix whatever was going wrong, and that the baby WOULD come.  And listen you natural labor people – I thought you were crazy before.  Now I think you’re CA-RAZY.  My hat’s off to you though.  Big time.

And now she’s here, ours, a little angel.  We made it through 9 lbs 1 oz of labor together, and now can just cuddle and coo.  She’s the peaceful, sleepy, good-natured newborn of my dreams.  Julia came easily and rocked our boat hard those first two months.  Lillie came hard and has been a piece of cake.  It all works out, doesn’t it?

* Hollie wrote her version of Lillie’s entrance here, if you want to hear it from the hero herself