Of How the Older Child is Dealing With It All

In a nutshell: pretty well.

She was OK the first few days, had lots of questions about how he just showed up one day. She knows that he was in my belly and that he came out through the birth canal (yes I did say birth canal and vagina and all those things because I want her knowing the right words and anatomy is really just one of those things I’m picky about) but she wasn’t there for the actual birth.

Which I realize I didn’t write about just yet but it’s probably coming at some point.

After about a week she realized he was really cramping her style. Her activities were cut short as soon as the little squirmy thing needed to eat and somehow feeding him was more important that coloring, which was definitely not OK in her book. I decided we needed to have a mommy and daughter sleepover in the living room away from the baby. David was left in charge of bringing him to me when he woke up in the middle of the night and Styx and I watched movies (Thomas the Tank) and ate Oreos in the living room and slept in a Tinkerbell sleeping bag. It was fantastic and I don’t know why we didn’t do it before the baby.

Since then she has been a model big sister. I’m careful with the things I say because the child can pick out a poorly constructed sentence in a large crowd and remember it for months. I’m glad they’re different sexes because I can say “cutest little tiny baby boy ever” without it being an issue. My husband was worried about the use of the word “baby” but I’m not sure why because there are no rules about the number of babies allowed per family. Sometimes when I call her baby she asks “which one?” and I say You! and she says she’s a “babykid” which is a title she made up for herself.

Right now she mostly needs interaction. She was going to daycare before this whole maternity leave thing and now she’s been staying home for almost two months so she is bored. She loves other kids and we really need to find her another preschool. She is looking forward to her dance class starting on Monday and I think that will help considerably with her cabin fever.

She loves her baby brother and wants to hold him frequently but only for a couple minutes because “it takes too long to hold him”.  She says that once she’s taller she will change his diapers. I’m not sure why height is a requirement  but I’m OK with that right now.

I can see it, she will boss him around, give him a hard time, and make him cry sometimes but she will be extremely protective and love him to death for the rest of his life. I know from experience.

Baby Bear

I had a baby. On December 2nd. I’m writing a birth story, but it takes a bit longer than I anticipated.

Right now he’s soft and squishy and a perfect baby. Blue eyes, brown hair. Loves his mama. Eats frequently, poops mustard, sleeps three hours straight when swaddled, which I only do at night because I love him taking tiny 45 minute naps and being up again, even if it’s only for a few minutes. He does take one long nap in the afternoon and by the end of it I kinda miss him.

I was afraid of how breastfeeding would go, given my previous experience, but he’s doing great. He has a problem with fish lips but that can be easily fixed, and I do every time. I’m hoping one of these days he will just get it.

I started switching the days and nights from Day One, before it became a problem. I did the same thing with Styx and it worked very quickly. Roscoe already knows the difference, his nights are 10pm-8ish am. Not that he sleeps that whole time, but he wakes up only to eat (in the dark) and have his diaper changed (also in the dark) and gets rocked back to sleep.

Yes I rock my babies to sleep. And I let them be in bed with me. No I have no plans to change that. Yes, my three-year old outgrew it all on her own. No I do not think babies need to be independent. Frankly, Styx is too damn independent for my taste.

We’ve ventured out of the house twice, once ending up with us coming home just as he was beginning to cry in the car seat and another time ended with me breastfeeding in the car because I didn’t want him crying at all and we were nowhere near our destination. Yes, leaving the house with a one week old who eats every hour is a little ridiculous but I can’t stay in all the time without going crazy and I can’t go anywhere without him yet. Not that I would want to. My favorite pastime right now is holding him while he sleeps.

And I’m calling him Bear, the way I call Styx Bug. It came out the first night and now it’s stuck. (I’ve also been calling him Baby Jack sometimes, even though that is not his name). Coming up with a name was awful. It was a huge problem before he was born and once he was here we agreed that none of the names we were OK with fit him. I had been torn between a couple of names I liked a lot and they both went out the door when we tried them out loud. We finally chose the one and only name we could both live with, and David picked his middle name from his side of the family since I’d chosen Styx’s middle name from mine.

We both (David and I) ended up not getting our way, so we’re both a little peeved when it comes to this subject. The name does fit him completely, and just like with Styx we ended up with a name neither of us really liked but was definitely right.

Next up: Of How the Older Child is Dealing With It All.

42 Weeks

Yah, that’s right. Forty-two. Awesome.

I really didn’t think we’d be looking at a December baby, but here we are. November 30th and no baby yet. He may or may not come soon, who knows. I got to say it today, “I told you so” to my formerly optimistic midwife. I think she’s getting more antsy than I am.

Well, maybe not. I have very little to do in a house with only one kid, a cat and a brother and husband who are often gone. There’s a limited number of places I’m interested in going, not that I’m normally such a social butterfly. And frankly I’m avoiding people like the plague because they all say the same things:

1- “Have you had your baby yet?”

Answer: No.

2- “When are you due again?”

Answer: Two weeks ago.

3- “OMG!! WTF? Why have they let you go so long?! You poor thing! You MUST be miserable! Your doctor is such a quack! My doctor induced me at 39 weeks! Holy crap! What are you gonna do?! How do you live?!?!

Answer: I’m actually fine, just kinda bored. My midwife is monitoring the baby closely and he’s fine, too.

4- “When are you getting induced?”

Answer: I’m not

5- See #3 above.

So, since I normally have a short fuse anyway it’s best if I reduce the number of idiots people I interact with.  I also don’t answer the phone unless it’s one of the “safe” people who won’t ask stupid questions, namely David, my brother and my sister in law. I didn’t think I had to worry about my mother in law but she actually came over on Friday because she saw David’s car was in the driveway thought for sure I was in labor. Hello?!  NOT INVITED!! I told her when I was she had better stay in her house and wait for a frickin phone call.

My mother called me yesterday on a totally unrelated matter and asked if I’d had the baby yet. Seriously? I can understand random people wondering (like my boss, who left me a message today) but my mother? So I said yes, I’d had the baby three days ago, did I forget to call you? She said she won’t ask again.

Other than being a little testy and annoyed with people things are good. They are moving right along, just at a very, very, VERY slow pace.

Midwife’s diagnosis: all you need is some big contractions, this will be a short labor, everything is  ready to go.

Today we came up with a plan: wait till Friday. If nothing happens there are a few methods of getting things going.

41 + 1

Thanksgiving! Yay!

Nothing too exciting, we had David’s brother’s family over to our house for dinner and made a simpler Thanksgiving dinner than we have before. Mostly because people didn’t want me to be in charge of cooking “just in case” and nobody wants to take the same amount of time cooking that I do. Oh well. My parts were the best ones: stuffing, apple pie and pecan tarts. Best. Ever.

Baby-wise? Mmm.. nothing but random contractions to report. Increased of course while standing for an hour making pie crusts, lessened quite a bit while sitting at the computer watching random shows on Hulu.

Tomorrow would be a fantastic time to have a baby in terms of vacation and time off. November 25th sounds like a nice birthday, too, meaning it probably won’t happen. My optimistic midwife didn’t give me an appointment for Monday, she said I’d have the baby this weekend.
I’m fully expecting to call on Monday for an appointment.  Also thinking about popping into work to have someone check my hemoglobin.

40 + 1

Nothing too interesting, of course. I always knew this baby would not come early, and even though I don’t want to call it “late”, that’s really what we’re dealing with here. I’m not surprised, Styx was nowhere near ready at 39 weeks. This being a man-child, I figured he’d take even longer to cook.

Also, all four of my mom’s babies were 1.5-2.5 weeks late.

Nothing happened yesterday except contractions every 15 minutes or so. They never got more exciting and they never went away, they’re still around actually. It’s a little annoying but at this point I’ve tuned them out.  I guess I did also have an inexplicable need to go shopping for the “last time”. We bought a few last minute things (sexy postpartum underwear, except for the sexy part, earplugs (a newborn necessity for when the father works at 5:30am), fruit for snacking during labor, etc) and my husband stressed the importance of being born on the right day (Saturday) loudly, so the baby would hear.

I worked on Styx’s new dress for about an hour and made some mini-quiches to have in the freezer.  I realized late last night that I don’t intend to leave the house again until this baby has been born. Apparently. It wasn’t a conscious decision but I really was kind of packing nuts for winter.

And today I splurged and bought my baby a diaper! It was expensive ($23) I know, I have lots already, but this one was adorable and… it can be his Christmas present! Yes!

David is pushing for the purchase of an infant car seat and I’m resisting. I did find one that I’m OK with, but it costs as much as we paid for the convertible, and I can get four years of use out of that one. On the other hand, I can see the benefit of infant carriers during the winter. On yet another hand, what if I have a beast baby this time and he outgrows the thing in six months and then I end up spending three times as much money on car seats just like we did with Styx? Anybody met my brother? He’s a beast. I’m not exactly a waif myself. There’s lots of beastly potential in my gene pool.  On a fourth hand, if you spread the cost over two children it might be worth it. And we do intend on a third in a couple of years, have I mentioned that?

I don’t know why car seat purchase decisions are so agonizing in this house.

We tried almond milk. I like it, Styx says she does but takes forever to drink it. I still prefer rice.