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.

Birth Plan

This December finds me wrapping presents, roasting a leg of lamb, and preparing for the birth of my first son, who was conceived not-so-immaculately in Bethlehem over Easter. I started thinking about Mary a lot while I was there, and my connection with her has grown over the past nine months to a level that's probably inappropriate for a protestant.

Friends are starting to ask me whether I'm nervous about the birth, and I am. I've never done anything like it before. For as much as I've read and learned and asked, I can't know what to expect. What I really want is for everything to go according to my plan. So much of life is learning to roll with the punches and adapt and make new plans... but I want to wake up with some mild contractions on a morning when my house is clean. I do not want to be the fifth person in 30 years who my midwife has to call back-up for due to a birth already in progress. I want to labor for about eight hours, and I want to deliver my baby at home and hear him cry in no more than three seconds. I would prefer that all of this happen on either December 28 (for the tax benefit), January 1 (for the 1/1/11 birthday), or January 9 (exactly one week past my due date, giving me a week to relax without work or school).

I wonder if Mary had a birth plan, or a set of ridiculously specific expectations, like I do. If she did, I can't imagine it included going out of town at nine months pregnant. It also probably didn't include barn animals. But she had the same promise I have, the same promise you have, which is that no matter what happens or how different things are from expected, God is with us. It's a promise that He fulfilled through a birth some two millenia ago.

He's Here!
The Nativity, from Luke 1 -2
By Sally Lloyd Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible

Everything was ready. The moment God had been waiting for was here at last! God was coming to help his people, just as he had promised in the beginning. But how would he come? What would he be like? What would he do?

Mountains would have bowed down. Seas would have roared. Trees would have clapped their hands. But the earth held its breath. As silent as snow falling, he came in. And when no one was looking, the darkness, he came.

There was a young girl who was engaged to a man named Joseph. (Joseph was the great-great-great-great grandson of King David.) One morning, this girl was minding her own business when, suddenly, a great warrior of light appeared -- right there, in her bedroom. He was Gabriel and he was an angel, a special messenger from heaven.

When she saw the tall shining man standing there, Mary was frightened. "You don't have to be scared," Gabriel said. "God is very happy with you!" Mary looked around to see if perhaps he was talking to someone else.

"Mary," Gabriel said, and he laughed such gladness that Mary's eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Mary, you're going to have a baby. A little boy. You will call him Jesus. He is God's own Son. He's the One! He's the Rescuer!" The God who flung planets into space and kept the whirling around and around, the God who could do anything at all -- was making himself small. And coming down... as a baby.

Wait. God was sending a baby to rescue the world?

"But it's too wonderful!" Mary said and felt her heart beating hard. "How can it be true?"

"Is there anything too wonderful for God?" Gabriel asked.

So Mary trusted God more than what her eyes could see. And she believed. "I am God's servant," she said. "Whatever God says, I will do." Sure enough, it was just as the angel had said. Nine months later, Mary was almost ready to have her baby.

Now, Mary and Joesph had to make a trip to Bethlehem, the town King David was from. But when they reached the little town, the found that every room was full. Every bed was taken. "Go away!" the innkeepers told them. "There isn't any place for you."

Where would they stay? Soon Mary's baby would come. They couldn't find anywhere except an old, tumbledown stable. So they stayed where the cows and donkeys and the horses stayed.

And there, in the stable, amongst the chickens and the donkeys and the cows, in the quiet of the night, God gave the world his wonderful gift. The baby that would change the world was born. His baby Son.

Mary and Joseph wrapped him up to keep him warm. They made a soft bed of straw and used the animals' feeding trough as his cradle. And they gazed in wonder at God's Great Gift, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

Mary and Joseph named him Jesus, "Emmanuel" -- which means "God has come to live with us."

Because, of course, he had.

elephant wannabe

I have always known that I wanted to have a baby. What I didn't expect was how much I was going to love being pregnant. I don't know why -- my mom always had great pregnancies, and most of my friends seemed to enjoy pregnancy, too. I think I listened to the worst of everyone's experiences, watched a few too many sitcoms, and assumed that my pregnancy would be a compilation of all of it. I figured I would be crabby, emotional and irrational all the time... but according to Pete, I have been "more emotionally stable" than my non-pregnant self. (Okay, there were a couple meltdowns, but they were few and far between.) I thought I would look down from my positive pregnancy test and see stretch marks, but I'm almost eight months along and still in the clear. I thought my skin would explode into a pimplish frenzy, but my skin actually improved. I thought I would be exhausted all the time, but... well, yes. I've been exhausted all the time. That's par for the Joy course, though. And pregnancy is a terrific excuse for a nap.
The first time I talked with my midwife I was about twelve weeks along, and she said something that stuck with me. She said, "You're going to love pregnancy. The first one especially is just magical. But eventually the time will come when you'll have to let go of pregnancy and do the work of giving birth." Yesterday at my appointment I told her that I really hadn't believed her at the time. I said, "I'm still banking on the idea that something in these last few weeks will make me want to get this thing out of me, even if it means labor and then months of sleepless nights."

She said, "Well, even though you will probably get uncomfortable in the final days, you may never have that 'get this thing out of me' feeling. But here's the carrot I'll dangle in front of you: For as much as you love being pregnant, you are going to love this next part. You're going to love interacting with your baby and seeing him grow. You're going to love breastfeeding. You're going to love motherhood." (Yolanda has a way of making me feel better about stuff. I hope her calming effect works during birth, too.)

So here I am in the final weeks, and even if this is supposed to feel like the longest part, the holidays will probably whisk them away faster than I can ask, "Pete, will you rub my shoulders?" (Even if you have a very comfortable pregnancy, you should definitely take advantage of nine months of unlimited backrubs.) The pregnancy and labor books next to my bed are slowly being replaced with breastfeeding and baby care books, I'm stocking my pantry, freezing meals and washing baby clothes. Also, I'm trying to imagine that motherhood may be as enjoyable and exciting as these last few months have been.

* Photos are by Beth Laurren Photography, except for the last one. :)

STOP MAKING ME UGLY!

Today I spent roughly twenty minutes accusing Pete of making me ugly. This happens every two weeks when we take my baby bump picture. I look in the mirror, and I'm not ugly; I look at Pete's picture of me, and I am ugly. So it stands to reason that it is his fault.

Sometimes he makes me look like I forgot to apply makeup or do my hair:

Sometimes he forgets to move the camera strap:

Sometimes he makes me look pasty and crazy:



And sometimes he gets bored and forgets which bump he's supposed to be documenting:

But every now and then, he stops making me ugly and lets me be a cute pregnant lady:



(23 weeks, baby!)

Our Firstborn Shall be a Son

If there were any part of Pete that wanted to wait until the birth to find out the sex of our child, I beat it out of him with my bare powers of annoyance.

"What do you think it is, a boy or a girl?" I would ask at various times during the day. (Pete never claimed to have any intuition about the sex of our baby, which bothered me to no end. Once I pointed out that he should have intuition, since he was the one who determined the sex. "I'm sorry," he said. "I guess I wasn't really paying attention at the time.") He wouldn't ever answer my question, so I would follow it up by asking, "Do you think it's a boy?" to which he would nod in response.

"Really?"

He would shake his head.

"So you think it's a girl?"

He would nod.

"But you just indicated that you think it's a boy."

And so on. We repeated this exchange no less than three times a day for fifteen weeks, and then scheduled our ultrasound for the very first day that they allowed us to schedule it. I devised a brilliant scheme: the ultrasound tech would put the "results" in a sealed envelope for us to open with Pete's family at the reunion in Lake Geneva that same day.

The ultrasound went really well, but no sooner had we walked out of the office when I noticed a big, obnoxious, telling grin beaming from Pete's face.

"YOU KNOW!" I said, shaking the envelope in my hand. "HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

He shrugged.

"Did you see something on the screen?"

He shrugged.

"You don't know."

Shrug.

"HOW DO YOU KNOW?!"

In the end, the joke was on Pete, because the "female" that he saw on the screen referred to ME. He spent all afternoon imagining life with a daughter -- pink, dolls, pigtails, a wedding aisle -- and then we pulled "It's a Boy!" out of the envelope and he about fell over. It was an emotionally taxing day for Pete, followed by an emotionally taxing weekend for me, as the tech's office was closed and I couldn't call to ask why Pete had seen "female" on the screen. We sorted it all out by Tuesday.

So it's a boy! I knew it all along, anyways, and here's why: I have always been a boy magnet. Baby brothers flocked to me, one at a time, four in a row. Just look at the chubby-cheeked baby boy perfection I was surrounded with:



See what I'm saying? It only makes sense that a boy magnet would also be a boy-making machine. Our firstborn shall be a son, and judging by the boy-genes I have been bestowed, he's gunna be a cute one.

So bring on the blue stripes, miniature sailor outfits, and the quarter-sized sports equipment; bring on the trucks, the cars, the Thomas the Tank Engine and all of his friends; bring on the guns made out of everything including lunch items, the pitch-perfect machine gun noises that I still can't make, and the spit-infused sound effects to elaborate hot wheel crashes. Ask or tell me anything about your penis, little boy, and I'll respond without a blink... although I may spend a few minutes laughing into a pillow behind a closed door. If you look embarrassed about your underpants (and I know that look well), I'll look away until you get into the tub. My cabinets will always have a sufficient amount of Band Aids and peroxide, and my feelings won't be hurt when you lurch out my arms when daddy gets home. You know why? Because I am a pro at this. I got this one. You are one lucky little boy, and I already already feel like the luckiest mom in the world.