Month: May 2006

Many visitors, surprising amounts of sleep, and schoolwork have kept me from finally getting a summary of what’s been going on posted. Below the jump, your first update on what life with two kids has been like in the home of the blogger.

It’s still a little hard for me to believe that the wife made it all the way to our scheduled c-section date. We were both quite convinced that the water would break early and we’d have to head in before May 17. But there we were, last Wednesday at 9:45 AM, her in her surgical gown and me in my bunny suit, ready to hit the ER. Things were definitely more laid back than last time, when after eight hours of laboring, the medical team rushed her into the ER to get the kid out quick. I had a decent sense of what was going on this time, and did my best to register the events around me. The extraction of child actually goes quite quickly: it was just six minutes after the first incision that our little C.’s head was pulled from her mother’s abdomen. That’s when the fun began. First, we were shocked by the full head of dark hair. Then, both our eyes bugged out (along with the medical team, who all work with S.) when we heard “7-8” called out for the weight. Almost a pound bigger than her sister at birth! We were both expecting something in the ballpark of seven even. As the surgery continued (I did my best not to look in that direction, but this time I heard more details than I cared to) S. became nauseous and had trouble breathing. Both were side effects of the spinal block. Unfortunately, the breathing problem persisted and we spent over an hour in a recovery room with S. on an oxygen mask. Fortunately, it was just the anesthetic and not something more serious.

With the hard part done, we settled in to bonding with out newest daughter. I was ready for fatherhood the first time, but it was definitely a learning-as-I-went process. This time, however, I jumped right in. While S. was recovering, I got to hold C. for most of her first two hours. Where I sat motionless with M., afraid I’d drop her or hurt her, I walked around with C., rocking her and talking to her openly. It took me awhile to get over the self-consciousness of talking to an infant when others can hear you two summers ago. Not this time. Poor C. got an earful about all the things we’re going to do together, how fun her big sister is, and so on. Our first night went about as well as we could have hoped. C. had a couple three hour stretches that allowed us to sleep. The next two nights, I brought M. home so she could sleep in her own bed, but I can’t say I had the best nights of sleep I’ve ever had. They were both the kind of sleep where I was out as soon as I hit the pillow and then suddenly it was 7:00 and Meg was chattering over the monitor. Oh, and that glass of Irish whiskey I had Thursday night? About three sips felt like an entire bottle. So much for fine liquor on limited sleep.

Saturday I brought my girls home. S., after getting through the initial breathing issues and getting onto her pain meds regimen, was doing fine. C. continued to eat well, loaded up her diapers with a vigor her sister didn’t discover for some time, and otherwise was a sweet, quiet little thing. She left the hospital at 7 lbs, 5 oz. where her sister left down almost a full pound at 5 lbs. 11 oz. While C. eats well when S. feeds her, this time we’ve not been afraid to supplement early and often with formula. Both S. and I agreed it’s not worth a screaming child to satisfy the views of people who aren’t in our family regarding breast feeding. We continue to balance the two, and it seems much less stressful on both mom and daughter than what we went through two years ago.

My initial assessment was that C., other than her hair, looked a lot like her big sister. I’m beginning to revise that view. Last night, I started noticing more and more elements of her mother in her face. Where Meg and I have more deep-set eyes, C. and S.’s eyes seem more prominent. The girls have, at this point, different chins. C. does seem to have my lips and nose, though. Her eyes are the classic newborn dark blue shade that Meg also had for her first 4-5 months. A big difference, however, is in C.’s appendages. Her fingers and toes and feet all seem to be much longer than Meg’s at the same age. Enhancing that variance is the fact C.’s feet slipped when they took the impression of them, making them look about two inches longer than they really are. Still, they’re long, so perhaps she has a chance to be a tall one. It’s hard to read personalities much at this stage, since newborns don’t really do much, after all. But she does seem amazingly laid back and pleasant. She gets a little fussy after she eats, and really gets angry when her diaper comes off. But other than those times, she enjoys just hanging out on her mom, dad, grandparents and aunts or in her bouncy seat.

All parents worry about how the older kids will react to newborns. Meg has done pretty well. She has some melt-downs each day, but it’s tough to know if they’re induced by the presence of a new kid or just a function of Meg’s age. We’ve been trying to include her in activities like feeding and dressing the baby, which she seems to enjoy. S. has preached a program of calm, kind, and consistent with Meg to help her get through these strange times. Dad needs to work on the calm part a little, as his tolerance for whining is even shorter than usual these days! Meg actually enjoys it when C. is crying. It makes her laugh. That could make for some interesting “encounters” if it continues as the girls get older. Fortunately for all in our house, Meg is still sleeping 11-12 hours at night and taking a good nap each day. If she suddenly reverted to waking up early and not napping, we would really be struggling. Best of all, anytime she sees a binky, which C. has not taken much interest in so far, she says, “Baby binky,” and has made no moves to pop it into her own mouth. Her sister’s name? “BabyC..” One word.

We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of help from family so far. The in-laws watched M. the first day and night, then again on Friday so I could get back to class. Two sisters-in-law came to town last weekend, and another comes into town today. Extra hands always help.

A couple funny stories from the hospital. First, during the surgery, after the baby was out, I tried to listen into what the physician and nurses were talking about while they were closing S. up. I didn’t catch the entire conversation, but it was something about building fences in backyards. Of course. What else are you going to talk about during major abdominal surgery? Later, S. told me that when the anesthesiologist told her the nausea was a result of her “innards” being put back into place, she thought of the Family Guy line when Stewie sees Lois acting like a bad ass and says, “Ooooh! Looks like someone wore their ovaries on the outside today!” I’ve promised to say that during the section if we do this a third time. Finally, in the next room from ours was an Asian family that we later learned were keeping things real, as far as people in their home country do (I’m guessing they were Japanese, but Carmel has a decent sized Korean population too, so I’ll go with the generic Asian to avoid a bigger faux pas), and made the nursing staff do everything other than feed the kid. Friday morning, as I was leaving for Bloomington, S. pushed C. down to the nursery so she could take a shower and whatnot. We had just left our room when the Asian couple came walking towards us, semi-frantically. First, the husband leaned in close to C.. I thought he was just admiring the most beautiful baby born in Carmel since July 2004, so I smiled and thrust my chest out a bit. Then, I noticed the wife got in close, too. I repeated my proud papa act. When they got a few feet away, S. whispered, “Did you hear what he said?” “No.” “He said, ‘Is this mine?’!” I guess it was the dark hair that threw him off. Keep in mind, S. was wearing the same new-mom gown that the other mom was wearing. It’s not like she was in scrubs or something. I hate to criticize the parenting methods of others, but if you can’t tell your kid from someone else’s, you might want to reevaluate the amount of time you’ve spent with the kid.

I know there’s much, much more I should be sharing, but hopefully that will tide you over for now. Keep checking the picture page and the Baby C. album. I’ll be adding photos regularly over the next few weeks, until we get sick of snapping one every 30 seconds.

I have no idea how much sleep I got last night. C. was actually quite cooperative, but there’s something about those hospital, pull-out couches that keep you from falling asleep comfortably. Of course, I didn’t have a big incision in my stomach that required at least five different kinds of pain meds to mask, so I can’t complain too much. I know I slept from 10:30 to 11:30, then again a bit between 1:00 and 3:00. We sent C. to the nursery around 5:00, I guess, and I slept until 7:30. I was sure it was 11:00 or some lovely, late hour like that I slept so good during those two-plus hours. I think I got about four hours of sleep on Tuesday night, thanks to nerves and whatnot. So, rather than beginning to pour the experiences of the last 48 hours into the keyboard on ye olde PowerBook, I’m going to skim the readings for tomorrow’s class, then pour myself a nice glass of Jameson, drink a silent toast to my latest, weeest Irish lass, and attempt to get some sleep so I’m awake for my drive to B-town tomorrow. I’ll start getting you caught up on events over the weekend.

Baby C. Seven pounds, nine ounces, 20 inches long. Mom, dad, and big sister M. are all healthy and very happy to welcome our newest addition.

Here we are, 26 hours from a scheduled c-section and it looks like we’ll make it. I was convinced Little Sister would show up last weekend, for several reasons. But she’s so far refused to budge. People say we should be enjoying our final days of just having one kid, but that’s impossible. S. is miserable. When the kid isn’t kicking her or she doesn’t have monster acid reflux, she’s got a foot or head or something pushing on a nerve that makes her left leg go totally numb. And she can’t sleep. Oh, and there’s the peeing every five minutes. Fun stuff. I’ve been having trouble sleeping as well, because each time I hear S. move or make noise, I wake up to make sure she’s not going into labor. Or, when I wake up on my own, I have to lay there and listen to her breathing for several minutes to make sure she’s doing ok. She’s got it much tougher, I know, but it would be nice to go into infanthood with plenty of sleep.

Awhile back I wrote about my curiosity about how kid #2 will differ from kid #1. I probably shouldn’t draw broad conclusions from something like length of gestation, but it’s hard not to. M. was eager to get out, coming two weeks early, and has been non-stop ever since. She’s clearly a kid that has things to do and can’t wait to get them done. She’s in constant motion, always chattering, and prefers a jaunty toddler sprint to a slow stroll. Her sister, on the other hand, seems content to enjoy the womb as long as possible. Does that mean she’ll be laid back to M.’s active? She’ll be quiet when M.’s the life of the party? See, you can drive yourself crazy thinking of these things.

I think we’ve got a name. For about two months, we were down to X, Y, & Z. I ordered them like that, S. ordered them Z, X, Y. Z is a name she’s always wanted to use because of someone that influenced her a lot in med school. I didn’t like it at all, and in fact tried several times to remove it from the list. I actually preferred Y the most, but S. said she had seen a lot of kids come through the nursery recently with that name, so I moved X up. A month or so ago, we dropped Y and seemed to be settled on X. Then, suddenly, two weeks ago, I thought, “You know, Z is actually a pretty good name.” It took some effort, since we had both become very comfortable with X, but I think Z is going to be the winner. It just sounds right. I guess you’ll find out tomorrow. Don’t worry, no variation of Ava is on the list this time.

What’s been fun is to get M. to weigh in on names.
“M., what should be call your sister? Baby X or Baby Z?”
“Baby X! Baby Z!”
“Which one do you like more?”
“Baby Z! Baby Z! Nooooooo! Baby X!”
She’s a big help.

I realized today we’re in for a rude awakening when daughter #2 arrives. How? Well, over the last six weeks, M. has settled into an excellent sleep schedule. Sometime around 7:00 PM, she gets a bath. Then we either play with her toys or watch a Baby Einstein DVD until just before 8:00. That’s when we pull out her stack of bedtime books and work through them on the living room couch. When we’re done, she tells S. good night and I carry her upstairs, with her saying “Night night mommy!” until we get to her room. It’s really funny when we’re just outside her room and she’s still yelling back to S.. I put her into bed, close the door, and she’s down. Some nights she talks and plays with her stuffed animals for a little while, but we’ve not had to go back into her room for over a month now (Jinx!). Then, she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. Last night she was down for almost 12 hours. When she wakes up in the morning, she wakes up slowly and happily, starting with a few words here and there and eventually just chatting up her animals or the walls or whatever. When we go to get her, she’s always sitting up on her pillow and smiling.

What really rocks is she’s also settled into a great napping schedule. Most days she’s down sometime between noon and 1:00, and almost always for a minimum of two hours. Today she was down for over three. It wasn’t that long ago when we struggled to get her down for a 45 minute nap then tried to figure out how to get her to at least 7:00 PM before she crashed. All around excellent.

So, we’re finally back to sleeping like normal adults. Well, I am. S. is up every hour to either pee or because she’s getting kicked in the ribs or refluxing or whatever. And that’s all about to end with the little one waking us up every two hours. I coped pretty quickly in the early days of M., but I wasn’t a grad student who had to drive 140 miles three times a week then. I’m not looking forward to the sleep change part of our second round of fatherhood. As long as M. sticks to her schedule, I’m sure I’ll get through the next six weeks without destroying my GPA or falling asleep at the wheel. But if she suddenly begins having trouble sleeping, I might look into whether Starbucks has their own line of IVs.

No trip to the hospital yet, which leaves time for an update on M..

It’s official: I’m going to become one of “those” parents. M. has been exhibiting all kinds of strange, i.e. early development, behaviors recently and I’ve decided she’s a little prodigy. That big head is full of brain, apparently! She knows at least eight colors; all the ones in her starter pack of washable crayons. She can count to three and knows the number 8 on sight. Most of all, though, is her bizarre relationship with the alphabet. She’s had some magnetic letters for our refrigerator for a long time. They pop into a little player that says the name of the letter and the sound it makes. She never repeated those or identified them. For Easter, we got her some foam letters/numbers that go into the bathtub. All of a sudden, she started repeating the names of letters when we said them. Then she started saying them on her own. Finally, she began associating letters with people. D is daddy. “D daddy! D daddy!” Both S & G are for mommy. F is for Ampa Fred. C is for Mimi Carolyn. T is for Tia (Aunt Ann-Marie). J is for aunt Julie. H is for Henry (she has three friends named Henry). Both M and W are for M. (she doesn’t discriminate between right side up or down). Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. When she doesn’t associate the letter with a person, she can at least get the name of the letter. It was really freaking us out each night at bath time for awhile. Now she’s started to transition to picking out letters anywhere and identifying them. She had a book the other day and went through the letters on the cover, saying the name of each one that she recognized. 21-month-old kids aren’t supposed to do that, right?

Her vocabulary grows by leaps-and-bounds each week. It’s pretty amazing how she can go from repeating something once to using it on her own within a few days. Our favorite words are purple, pronounced “purckle,” and pretzel, or “preckle.” The other day I asked her if she wanted a purple pretzel and she tried to say it, then just gave me a confused look. S. told me to stop. If you can’t warp your own kids, who can you warp? I’ve probably given her a speech impediment that will cost us thousands to repair.

Today, S. was watching Oprah and M. walked into the room, looked at the TV, and said, “Oprah!” At least she said b-ball and Jayhawk months ago.

Oh, one other fun word. I loved those Volkswagen commercials that were aired earlier this spring, where the diabolical German “Unpimpsed zie car” by destroying non-Volkswagens. I especially liked when he said, “Oh snap!” after tossing a Nissan off a cliff or whatever. So I’ve started saying “On snap” around M. just to see what happens. Over the weekend, she was sitting in her sandbox and accidentally dumped a bucket full of sand on herself. “Oh nap! Oh nap! Oh nap!” was her distress cry. I laughed and made her say it for awhile before I dusted her off.

She’s obsessed with the sky. Planes in the sky. The moon in the sky. Tweet-tweets (birds) in the sky. She’ll go on-and-on. When we read her bedtime books, she gets all crazy anytime she sees a moon (“Issy moon!” which as S. pointed out sounds a little like the French “Ici” or here) and grabs the page so we can’t turn it. Funny when every moon totally wows her. “Ohhhh! Issy moon!”

In addition to her regular stack of books, she got a big sister book last week. She loves it. She’ll say “Big ickter, big ickter,” and bring the book to us. She points at the big sister in the book and says, “M.,” so perhaps she’s understanding a little about what will happen to the household soon.

We attempted to branch out from the Baby Einstein and Disney Channel fare by picking up an Elmo video at the library. She loves Elmo, even though we rarely watch Sesame Street. I can whistle the theme song and she starts talking about him. We made it about five minutes into the video the first time and she got all agitated, waving at the screen and saying “Bye bye, Elmo.” It turned into full-on tears so I had to shut it off. It was close to nap-time that day, so I figured she was just tired. I tried again Sunday and got the same reaction. Not sure how she can love him when she sees a doll or picture of him, but freaks out when she sees a video.

She’s already demonstrating anal tendencies. For quite awhile we’ve walked into a room and found books or blocks lined up perfectly. For a long time I wondered if S. was doing it just to freak me out. One day last week when S. was at work, I found M.’s five mini-farm animal dolls lined up, perfectly square, along a window sill. Spooky. If I could just get her to tackle the closet in my office, we could put these talents to good use.

The final weeks of pregnancy! Or, as women like to call it, hell. It’s safe to say S. is extremely uncomfortable. Skin feels like it can’t stretch anymore, but there is constant pressure from inside. An urge to go to the bathroom every five minutes because there’s a foot or head or arm pushing on your bladder. A complete inability to get comfortable in bed, which leads to hours of tossing and turning (In unrelated news, I slept better last night that I’ve slept in months!). Constant heartburn. Crankiness. The feeling that you just want to get it over with.

Yesterday marked the 37 week plateau. She’s scheduled for a c-section in two weeks. M. was born at 38 weeks. What are some sports cliches I can throw out here? It’s crunch time! We’re in the red zone! The clock is ticking! We’ve got our bags packed, our lists placed in easy-to-find locations. We’re trying to keep the refrigerator full so we don’t have to go to the store as soon as we return from the hospital. We’re getting close.