It's interesting to note that my last entry was two weeks before I found out I was pregnant with Banks human #2. I guess that just goes to show what life is like these days. Being pregnant while having a toddler at home was hard. Having two kids is hard. There's not a lot of time. For anything. End of story.
Well, it's been five months, almost exactly, since human #2 arrived (Oliver Edward, Aug. 26, 3:08 pm, 8lbs., 20 inches), and I'm coming to the realization that it's not going to get any easier, so I've got to suck it up and get things going again, or I may never do it. The house will probably always be not clean (my new goal is to keep it not filthy), my projects will always be not done (I'm working to make them not too neglected), and this blog will be not planned out (but hopefully now not totally inactive).
So, part of what's kept me away is trying to keep up with all the crazy amazing stuff Ike's been doing in the last two years. That's pretty much impossible. Suffice it to say, it's been fascinating. I am sorry I couldn't write all this stuff down because I certainly can't remember everything that made Joe or me roll our eyes, stifle our laughter or just try to roll our tongues back in our mouths and pick our jaws up off the ground. It's seriously something new every day.
Now we've got two of them, and Ollie's a whole new bag of tricks already. He arrived via a fully natural (not the no epidural but pumped full of pitocin with needles and bags everywhere that I had with Ike), water birth. Compared to Ike's, this birth was night and day. I'm going to refrain from a serious rant, mostly because it's 9pm and I want to have time to read a little tonight before I zonk out. I will, however, say that I think that my experience with Ollie, attended by a midwife, just goes to show how much our bodies are capable of doing the whole birth thing "properly," and how much we women are capable of dealing with it, if left to our own devices.
I woke up on the hour at 1am, 2am and 3am, not really knowing what was going on, but registering that I was awake. By 4am I realized I was having contractions and tried to go back to sleep. I laid in bed until about 5am, when I realized I was just laying there waiting for the next contraction. So I got up and went for a walk around the block, paced around the house, did the dishes. At 7 I woke Joe up and told him to start making arrangements for his mom to come watch Ike, then I went for a couple more walks around the block. By 9am I was starting to have to concentrate on the contractions more. Joe told Ike we needed to get ready to go to the hospital so that Rocky (Ollie's in utero name, given to him by Ike) could be born. Ike got so excited he ran through the house at top speed, tripped on the corner of the living room rug and took a header into the corner of the coffee table. All he wanted for an hour and a half was for mommy to hold him. Mommy, meanwhile, was having serious contractions every three minutes. So, every three minutes I had to hand him back to Joe so I could go do my "exercises."
By noon I was getting antsy to go to the hospital, realizing that the ride to the hospital would SUCK if we stayed home much longer, but Joe wanted to walk with me a few more times to time the contractions before we hit the road (the hospital was 40 minutes away). We left about 1pm for the hospital and I listened to hypnobirthing stuff on the ipod the whole way there. When we got to the hospital I had to go to triage to be monitored for 20 minutes or so before I could go to the room (because with this particular "Alternative Birthing Center" within the hospital they don't do needless constant monitoring, but they want to make sure everything is okay before they turn you loose). So, while I was hooked up to the monitor my midwife got there. She did a pelvic exam to check how dilated/effaced I was (she told me later that by my demeanor--still talking, smiling between contractions, she expected me to be 3 or 4 centimeters, 5 at the most), and she said, "You're 7 centimeters, fully effaced, baby head down, perfect position. Let's get a room quick and go have this baby!" Joe still had to go back down to the car to get the camera and our stuff. I think I must have transitioned on the way to the room and while he was getting the stuff. I had about three contractions while he was gone and they were filling the tub, and just when I thought I couldn't do it anymore, the tub was full, Joe was back and I got in. I had one contraction and then started pushing. Pushed for about 20 minutes and Oliver came out screaming so loud even the nurses commented. He still screams like that. So, we were at the hospital about an hour and a half before the birth. Some of the nurses in the nursery told Joe we were lucky we didn't have the baby on the way to the hospital, but we figure we timed it perfectly. We paid attention to what was going on with me, knew how things should go, and that's how they went.
Whew. Well, so far the birth has been the smoothest, least complicated part of being the parents of two boys.
No comments:
Post a Comment