Valentine's Day, Postpartum

Two days after I gave birth to Anders, Pete told me he had made plans for Valentine's Day. We would drive into Chicago for the weekend, leave Anders with Pete's parents, and go to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for a romantic getaway.

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My initial response (which I had the presence of mind not to voice) was, "Are you crazy?" I was in the same robe I had put on minutes after Anders was born and I was sitting on packs of crushed ice. Valentine's Day was a little far from my mind. But I sensed my husband's fragile concern that our son, whom he already loved more than life itself, had stolen me, and that our our marriage would never be the same. So I said that it sounded like a fabulous plan, that I was already looking forward to it, and that six weeks would give me enough time to get nursing established, introduce a bottle, and store up enough milk for 24 hours away. Then I spent five weeks quietly stewing over the fact that six weeks wasn't long enough to do any of those things.

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Long story short, everything came to a head the day before Valentine's Day, but we put our problem-solving experience to good use. Pete's parents agreed to come to Grand Rapids (saving us the trip into Chicago), and we went on an abbreviated version of our overnight getaway in town. To my surprise, I had a wonderful time and Anders did just fine. So when Pete and I moved to Chicago last month we decided that we should make it a point to go on an overnight date once a month.

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The only problem is that our easy-breezy six week old who sucked any nipple you put in front of him (or any nose or pillow or hairbrush handle, for that matter) is now a six month old with awareness and preferences. And he prefers mommy's breasts over bottles. "Prefers" is perhaps too flexible a word. Anders prefers breastfeeding to bottles the way that Cookie Monster favors cookies over, say, poison-soaked cabbage. At least that must be what Anders thinks that I'm trying to feed him through Dr. Brown's nipple.

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I think it happened when we moved. We moved from Grand Rapids to Chicago, unpacked our belongings, put Anders in a rental car, drove for four days to Idaho, settled into a new apartment, then left him with a baby-sitter he had never met. It was a lot of change for a four month old--I don't blame him for wanting some consistency and mommy-time.

The first day that we left Anders with the baby-sitter I left a full bottle and gave her instructions on when to feed him. Four hours later we came home. The first thing I noticed when we walked in the door was the bottle sitting on the floor, full. Then I saw Anders sitting on the sitter's lap, grunting, with his hands clasped together and a very intense frown on his face. She told me that he refused to eat the bottle and that he had been sitting on her lap for a half hour. I took him to the other room to nurse him immediately, knowing he was a couple hours overdue.

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As soon as he latched on, he gripped my breast as if to say, "If you want this back, you're going to have to pry it from my chubby, dimpled little hands." His eyes were crossed and serious for those first few moments when he didn't get anything. When the milk came in, he raised his eyebrows like an orchestra fan listening to a particularly celestial strain of music. He smiled at me, milk dribbling out the corner of his mouth, then contentedly went back to work, happy as Cookie Monster with a mouth full of chocolate chips. He hasn't taken a bottle since.

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I gave him a month to get adjusted to his new home here in Illinois, and just recently we've tried the bottle again. We've read a few things and have gotten lots of advice, but so far he's just not buying it. And honestly, I'm okay with it. Because moving is a lot of change for a twenty-four year old. No matter how hectic my day, no matter how many class or work deadlines I'm stressed about, no matter how much I'm missing friends or my house, no matter how many questions I have about what the next few years hold, whenever my little boy looks up at me with that deeply content "I'm-at-home" look, I feel the same way.

Royal Envy

I know the Royal Wedding is like, so last weekend, but I'm still reeling a little. Why? Because until 2 a.m. MST, Friday morning, I didn't know that princesses were real.

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I mean, I've been to Buckingham Palace, but it looked like a museum. I've seen footage of Diana and I think she was wonderful, but she wasn't really during my time and she didn't live happily ever after. Hence, I always put "princess" in the same make-believe category as the sparkly pumpkins and helpful woodland creatures who accompany her. When people asked me if I wanted to be a princess when I grew up, I assumed they were patronizing me like they were when they asked if a fairy took my front tooth. No a fairy did not take my tooth. It turned grey and my mom tied it to a doorknob, then she gave me a quarter for it while I was sleeping.

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So what in the heck is THIS?!

Or this?!

Or this, I ask you!

Let this last weekend be a lesson to little girls everywhere. You really could be a princess when you grow up, and you should decide now if you want to pursue that. Otherwise you'll fall in love with a handsome and charming but nonetheless common man, and you may find yourself with plenty of happiness in your life but absolutely no pageantry. I don't have any practical advice for you (and neither will your guidance counselor), but I assume your first step will be to move to England. You'll probably also need etiquette lessons from Julie Andrews.

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For the rest of you who are either already married or too old to wait for Kate and William's future son, here are some ways to incorporate some Princess into your life:

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- Give yourself an arbitrary title. Based on the town I grew up in, I wish to be called the Duchess of Carpentersville.

- When you see a cute guy walking behind you this summer, drop your flip-flop and wait for him to hand it to you. He may think you're a little gross for continuing to walk barefoot, but just explain that you couldn't slow down because your Jetta was about to turn into a summer squash.

- Wear a tiara to work.

- I hear Kate and William don't have any maids in their country home, so continue to not have any maids.

- Drink tea every day.

- Plan a dinner party and ask everyone to talk very softly and to be very boring.

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Now let me hear your Duchess titles!

We're There Yet.

I blog and journal best when I have very little to write about and lots of time to stare into space and think introspectively about a particular experience or thought. When I'm actually doing things, it's much harder to focus. This is why my blog details my thoughts on finding a vintage electric fan at Goodwill and getting a pap smear, but says nothing about moving away from my best friends, unpacking my belongings at my in-laws house, or going on a road trip to Idaho to embark on the journey that Pete and I have been working toward for five years -- all while working part-time, taking classes full-time and breastfeeding a four-month-old bottomless pit. When you notice that I'm blogging a lot, assume that I've been sitting on my couch in my pajamas for about a week and invite me over for coffee.

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So if I were to rewind the last month and be a good blogger, here are some of the things I would have written about:

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- Having a garage sale is a ridiculous idea, unless you have a good friend to do it with.

- If your marriage can survive the first three months post-partum, it's probably safe to start planning your Golden Anniversary.

- Breastfeeding is God's way of encouraging moms to sit and rest and cuddle with their babies every three hours, but it's easy to distort that time into something it shouldn't be, such as an opportunity to practice daily life as an amputee.

- It's better to have pursed, invested, loved and moved than to have sat in the back of a church for four years.

- Moving is kind of like dying in that everyone takes the time to make you feel indispensable right before you're going to dispense.

- Wind farms are beautiful.

- I don't like the term "missionary wife," and when I explained why to the MAF candidate committee members and they agreed with me, I got a good feeling about the next decade of my life.

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So there. This entry was like calling an old friend who I haven't talked to in a while to catch up. Now I feel like I can open up a new post to write about how an ink pen got into my washing machine this morning and ruined my favorite pair of new jeans, and how this changed me a little bit for the better.

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Winter Joy

Even though I was born in the middle of winter and have lived in the Midwest my entire life, I do not accept winter as a legitimate season. I must have accepted it as a kid, because I have memories of my mom slathering Vaseline on my face before sending me outside to jump in the snow. But I remember these things like I was a different person in a different life. Who would hurl herself willingly into a pile of snow? I guess the same person who would ride her bike down steep hills without holding onto the handle bars -- another memory I cannot reconcile with my current self. The person I am today would never let go of the handle bars on a hill. The person I am today sits inside and complains about snow while sipping tea.

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Last year I started to see my hatred for winter as a character flaw. No matter how I looked at it, basically I had a sucky attitude about a reality that I wasn't willing to change. (It seems like you live where you do because you have to, but really, if you have about $65 you can physically remove yourself from winter and go south by bus.) I was tired of stomping my boots and cursing the snow-laden heavens for three months months every year. But rather than simply not complaining, I decided to try something even more challenging. I decided to enjoy winter.

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You should have seen me -- it was so cute. I had no idea how to start loving winter, so I just did all of the things that characters in Christmas movies do. I made hot cocoa and watched old movies and wore cute gloves and scarves. I snuggled on my couch, I read books, I looked out my window and smiled contentedly at the falling flakes. I also made a private blog in which I wrote about how charming and enjoyable winter is.

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All of this took me about five hours. And it was only late November.

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So last winter was okay. This winter, however. This winter I really figured it out. The very best thing to do if you want to avoid winter altogether: have a baby. Better yet, have a baby in your house so that you don't even have to go outside to get to the hospital.

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Think about it. When you wake up for work at 6:30 on a really dark, ugly winter morning, what do you really want to do? You want to quit your job and climb back into bed for as long as you please. You want to stay in your pajamas and have people bring you food on the couch. You want to hang out with friends, but you don't necessarily want to get dressed or go anywhere. You want to take naps and eat chocolate and not look in any mirrors.

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Having a baby in the winter is like a dream come true. I thought that I didn't want a December baby, but I couldn't have timed it any more perfectly. The holidays ended, I had a baby, and now I just looked outside and it's February 23. I'm just ready to start interacting fully with the outside world, and it's time to go on vacation to South Carolina! When I get home, there might be grass.

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But the best thing about having a baby in the winter (in case you aren't fully convinced that pushing an eight pound human out of your private place is worth the winter escape)...

... You get to fall in love and cuddle all day long.

Poopsie Daisy

Yesterday evening found me feeling like the world's most capable new mom. Pete was on his way home from work. I had homemade chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter. The house was tidy. And my sweet newborn was dressed in an adorable outfit that I had made myself out of a shrunken wool sweater. She's relaxed, she's rested, she's artsy: Supermom.

I finished feeding Anders, burped him, then spent a few minutes cooing at him. We were gazing into each other's eyes when I saw him scrunch up his little nose and furrow his little brow. Then I heard: SPLAT. SPLAT. SPLAT. Splat. Sp. Lat.
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I took him to the changing table, hoping for the best and cursing my decision to put him in a disposable diaper for the evening. Sure enough, the poop had leaked. And leaked. It was all the way up his back and seeping through the multiple layers of his handmade outfit.

I pulled the onesie over his head, trying to not drag the mustard-like feces through his hair. I stripped him down and brought him over to the bathroom. Thank goodness we had left the inflatable tub inflated. I set it on the floor and placed him face down in the empty tub, which he loved. (Not.) I then took a washcloth and sponged down his back and head.
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I was ready to cuddle him up in a towel when I saw something a little concerning... is it... yup! He peed! My son was now facedown in his own urine. I rinsed out to the tub, flipped him over, and sponged down his front side. WAAHHH!!!! WAAHHH!!! WAAHH!!! (Roughly translated: "I want to go back to the womb!!!") Ordinarily I would have had the space heater running for ten minutes before bathing him, but he should have thought of that before he pooped out of his shoulder blades.
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As soon as he was dried and dressed I heard a knock on the back door. This is the part of the evening that found me humbly thanking God for friends and community. Because behind that door was a friend with impeccable timing and a home cooked meal. Maybe Anders' hand-stitched outfit was ruined for the evening, maybe my bathroom looked like someone had torn through with a leaf blower, and definitely we were going to be a little late for small group. But by golly, there was dinner on the table.

Birth Story

As soon as I titled this post "Birth Story" I remembered that my last post was titled "Birth Plan." It's nice to have a plan, but I prefer a story. It's hard to know how to begin or end this story, though. There are so many points in time that I could consider the beginning and the final push was certainly not the end. I guess I'll start with the day I went into labor and see where things go.

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Wednesday the 29th I had an urge to get out of the house and get as much done as possible. I went to the mall and spent my gift cards; I went to the craft store and stocked up on a lot of yarn; I went to the Family Video and rented a handful of movies; I went to Meijer to buy groceries for the week; I went to Babies R Us to get some final items. As I was checking out of Babies R Us I thought, "I'll go home, make some dinner, put away these newborn diapers, and settle down on my couch to watch movies and knit for two weeks." My due date was three days away, and I fully expected to go ten or more days late.

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Just as I was getting dinner on the stove around seven, I started to feel some contractions. I figured they were a response to all of the walking I had done that day. My midwife had told me to "welcome" the cramps that I would be feeling prior to labor as I began to dilate, so I welcomed them and ate my dinner. We watched a James Bond movie and the contractions continued. Towards the end of the movie I was sitting on the floor and rocking around in circles, still insisting to Pete that they were just "practice" contractions that would go away. He wasn't convinced.

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After the movie I called my midwife, Yolanda, just to tell her what I was feeling. She asked me a few questions and said, "Well, I think we might have a baby tonight!" I said, "Really, you think so?" She laughed. "I don't know. You tell me." I still didn't think I was going to have a baby that night, but it was nice to know she was home and waiting for my next call.

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The instructor of the Bradley birth class we attended had mentioned several times, "If you go into labor in the evening, go to sleep!" So Pete went to bed around eleven and I stayed on the couch, trying to doze. I'm not sure if I actually slept, but I did get nicely disoriented. Looking at my midwife's notes, I see that I called her again at midnight to tell her that the contractions were strong and five minutes apart, but apparently I told her I still didn't want her to come over. I vaguely remember saying, "I don't know what you would do if you were here. Get some more sleep." I dozed in and out of contractions and then took a shower.

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Pete had been in and out of the bedroom to check on me, and at three in the morning he told me my contractions were two minutes apart. "Seriously?!" I couldn't believe it. We hadn't even told our moms in Chicago to start driving up for the birth, and my contractions were two minutes apart. Pete called our parents and started cleaning the house -- something I had made him promise to do if I went into labor while the house was messy. Meanwhile, I called Yolanda and told her to get her shoes on.

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As soon as I hung up I felt a movement and a sudden heaviness -- he had dropped. "I feel like pushing," I told Pete. I didn't see his response, but I imagine that woke him up out of any grogginess. At this point I was on my knees, draped over the side of the couch, swaying my belly in circles. My deep breathing was slowly becoming more vocal. At the height of some of my contractions, I found myself exhaling through my teeth (as I had learned in class) to lessen the pushing urge.

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Fifteen minutes later I heard Yolanda's voice in the kitchen just as I was (loudly) nearing the peak of a contraction. She swooped into the living room and put a warm, lavender scented towel on my lower back. It smelled wonderful. It hurt like hell. "Don't touch me!" I yelled, wishing I had the vocabulary to add, "But thank you, it smells lovely."

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As soon as the contraction was over she whisked me over the bathroom and told me to sit on the toilet. I sat on it backwards so that I could rest my arms and head on the back of the tank. As soon as I sat down I heard a rush. Pete and Yolanda were putting plastic and sheets down on the bed, so I yelled over, "My water just broke!"

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And with that -- it was on. I don't really remember what it felt like, but I do remember that it sounded like a herd of cows mooing in my bathroom. I couldn't control the intensity of my moans, but I could control the pitch, so I kept my voice low like I had read in Ina May's books. (High pitch noises make you tense up; deep and low noises have the opposite effect.) Sometime during this chorus of cows, my friend Kelly arrived and helped Pete and Yolanda set up.

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I only remember being on the toilet for a few minutes, but the notes say that I was in there for over thirty. Once things were ready, Yolanda moved me over to the bed to check my dilation. Then she said, "Okay, Joy. With this next contraction you're going to breathe in and out twice. Then breathe in a third time, hold the breath, and push."

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"What? I'm pushing?" The whole time that I had been in the bathroom I knew I was in transition, but somehow I hadn't fully accepted that I was in labor. "So, I'm really actually in labor?" Pete and Kelly half laughed, half smirked. "You're definitely in labor," Yolanda said.

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Suddenly Yolanda's beeper went off, and she said, "I am so sorry. I have to go make a call." I pushed with Pete and Kelly on either side of me. When Yolanda came back I asked, "Do you have another birth tonight?" She nodded. "Two other births, actually. I've never had three births at one time." All throughout my pregnancy I had this nervous inkling that she was going to have multiple births at the time I went into labor. What I didn't imagine is that she would be at my birth and calling back-up for the others. I was so thankful that she was there that I didn't mind when she would leave the room to coordinate back-up for her other births.

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Pushing was difficult, but I was so thankful to finally be doing something that it felt like a relief. After each contraction Yolanda checked heart tones and reported that he was doing well. About ten minutes into pushing she said, "I'm hearing cord tones where his neck is, and he's getting sucked back up after each push, so I'm pretty sure the cord is around his neck. This is really common and his heart tones are recovering just fine, but we don't want him to stay here forever. You'll have to really focus and push."

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We found the most effective position for me to push: Pete and Kelly each held up one leg and Yolanda held both of my hands to pull me up for leverage. I felt stronger than I ever have before -- I couldn't believe what I was doing. At the same time, I had never felt so weak. Towards the end Yolanda asked Pete to turn the space heater on, and I said, "No! Don't move, Pete." She looked at me and said, "It will only take a moment, and the room needs to be a little warmer for the baby." Pete let go of my leg and I let out a big growl (Kelly does a great imitation if you're ever interested); it hurt so much to have that leg unsupported. No one else could do the work for me, and yet I needed every person who was there.

After about 40 minutes of pushing Yolanda gave me some final instructions and helped me focus as intently as possible. I had planned on pushing with ease and grace -- none of that panting and grimacing that you see in movie labor scenes. But with the cord wrapped around his neck and what turned out to be a crooked presentation, I pushed for 45 minutes. With everything I had, I pushed.

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And then suddenly -- completely out of the blue -- there was a living, squirming infant laying across me. My infant. Mine. I watched him quickly turn pink as he started to cry. I stroked his back and fingered his little feet. I smelled him, I cuddled him, my heart broke open in gratitude for him, and all in that same instant, I loved him. He was here.

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Pete and I exchanged, "Can you believe we did this?" looks, and I saw the spaced-out look of amazement in his eyes -- an expression I still see when he looks at Anders now, two weeks later.

After everything was said and done (read: after I plopped out the placenta), Yolanda stayed to do some basic things. But seeing as how she had two other births in process, she left me in Kelly's capable RN hands to attend one of the other births. Back when I had decided to have a home birth, I wondered if I was going to miss having the constant care of nurses and doctors after the birth. I guess God led me to invite the right people to be there with me. I had a house full of people attending to my every need, and everyone who was there loved me and loved my baby. It was the best care I could have asked for. Nicole came over quickly after and I lounged around with her and Kelly. An hour or so after the birth they helped me to the bathroom. On the way back I started feeling a little dizzy. The next thing I knew I was sitting up in bed, carrying on conversation. "Do you remember fainting?" Kelly asked me. I had no memory of it, but apparently I had collapsed right into Nicole's arms. I decided to stay put in bed for a little longer.
The next few hours were a blur as family and my friend Beth arrived from Chicago. Pete and I drifted in and out of sleep with Anders.

Today is exactly two weeks after the birth, and it will be my first day washing a dish or heating up my own lunch. My mother-in-law stayed with us for the first few days, then my mother came for nine days. I've heard the term "Mother the mother" in regards to how a new mom should be cared for. I was thoroughly mothered by both my mothers and some dear friends. Now Pete is back at work and Anders and I have plans to nap, nurse and cuddle, watch movies and knit while friends continue to deliver meals.

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Everything about Anders' birth was a miracle to me, and an experience I will remember for the rest of my life. I am in awe of God's amazing design for birth and new life. I thank Him continuously for the healthy delivery of my wonderful son, and for the incredible husband, family and community that I've been blessed with. My heart is full.