This was an interesting week for Pumpkin. She had her first week of camp, which, as mentioned previously, is the first place where I've ever dropped her off. I only cried a little on that first day, although Pumpkin didn't cry at all. When she asked if I was staying, and I said that I wasn't, she turned her back on me and went back to whatever activity she was already engaged in. I'm not sad about that - I'd rather she not cry, which would leave me feeling guilty. I just had one of those my-baby-is-growing-up moments. She went every day for four days, and apparently did very well. She did not completely embarrass our family, although she did have to be asked twice a few times to do things. Not bad considering that she was raised by wolves.
Another great moment in Pumpkin-land was yesterday's trip to the dentist. Six months ago when we first took her to the dentist, she was frightened and wouldn't open her mouth for more than a minute or so. At that time, I had been reading to her from a book about Dora going to the dentist. Since we've now read that book together about 50 painstaking times, Pumpkin is no longer afraid. She sat with her mouth open long enough for a proper cleaning and flossing. I'm still beaming with pride over that one since Pumpkin doesn't ever do what Pumpkin doesn't want to do.
The baby also hit a of minor milestone. One night she slept six and a half hours straight! This is reminiscent of Pumpkin who slept eight hours every night starting at three weeks of age. Other mothers hated me for that but sleep was more important than their approval. Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please let this baby follow suit. Pretty please?
Speaking of sleep issues, wouldn't it be cool if baby monitors had snooze buttons? What's the worst that could happen? Also, can anyone explain why it is so easy to doze off while sitting uncomfortably upright while giving a baby a late-night feeding, but it takes about twenty minutes to fall back asleep once returning to one's bed after said feeding?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Parenting Randomness
I miss writing. I find myself concocting posts in my head all the time, but the posts never come to fruition. I like to write at night, but nights have become a write-off as you can well imagine. I have to make peace with writing during day-light hours. I've only got time for randomness today as I can only expect both the baby and Pumpkin to amuse themselves for a short while.
Pumpkin started breast-feeding her dolls, although she feeds the dolls through her belly-button. In her defence, my belly-button is still protruding, and has a darker pigment than the rest of my skin, so I can see where she got confused. I've decided to let things be so she doesn't start talking about boobies when we're out at the store or something.
Pumpkin starts camp tomorrow. This will be the first time I will be dropping her off anywhere and I'm pretty nervous about it. The camp is at the same place where she will be attending pre-school in September, so it seems like a good idea to get her feet wet by trying out the camp first. I just can't imagine her going off into the world with all of her peculiar idiosyncrasies. Will they mock her for screaming, "I DID IT!!!" whenever she pees in the potty or toilet, or whatever they have. Will she even use their potty? Will the fact that she hasn't figured out the rules of "time out" be an issue? Is the fact that she doesn't do what she's told be an issue? I guess that's the real concern. Her behaviour is a reflection of me, and although she is 90% angel, the 10% devil that we see a lot of at home has me very worried. I don't want to be the mother of "THAT" kid. I guess it's time to step up the disciplining in this household, even though it doesn't get through that easily. While I was typing this post, I had to break for half an hour to implement and re-implement, and re-implement a time out, and only managed to get ten seconds of silence before I decided to quit while I was ahead. Maybe next time we'll make it to twenty seconds?
The baby is being a baby. Not much that you'll find interesting about her, except that she is so cute my head might explode. Thank you all for your compliments on her picture, BTW. Breast feeding is going well enough - no extreme pain, cracking or bleeding. She is willing to take a bottle, unlike when Pumpkin was an infant, so I still see a glimpse of freedom on the horizon. We're even escaping for a couple of hours for dinner tonight.
Well, that time-out sucked up most of my blogging time. Until next time...
Pumpkin started breast-feeding her dolls, although she feeds the dolls through her belly-button. In her defence, my belly-button is still protruding, and has a darker pigment than the rest of my skin, so I can see where she got confused. I've decided to let things be so she doesn't start talking about boobies when we're out at the store or something.
Pumpkin starts camp tomorrow. This will be the first time I will be dropping her off anywhere and I'm pretty nervous about it. The camp is at the same place where she will be attending pre-school in September, so it seems like a good idea to get her feet wet by trying out the camp first. I just can't imagine her going off into the world with all of her peculiar idiosyncrasies. Will they mock her for screaming, "I DID IT!!!" whenever she pees in the potty or toilet, or whatever they have. Will she even use their potty? Will the fact that she hasn't figured out the rules of "time out" be an issue? Is the fact that she doesn't do what she's told be an issue? I guess that's the real concern. Her behaviour is a reflection of me, and although she is 90% angel, the 10% devil that we see a lot of at home has me very worried. I don't want to be the mother of "THAT" kid. I guess it's time to step up the disciplining in this household, even though it doesn't get through that easily. While I was typing this post, I had to break for half an hour to implement and re-implement, and re-implement a time out, and only managed to get ten seconds of silence before I decided to quit while I was ahead. Maybe next time we'll make it to twenty seconds?
The baby is being a baby. Not much that you'll find interesting about her, except that she is so cute my head might explode. Thank you all for your compliments on her picture, BTW. Breast feeding is going well enough - no extreme pain, cracking or bleeding. She is willing to take a bottle, unlike when Pumpkin was an infant, so I still see a glimpse of freedom on the horizon. We're even escaping for a couple of hours for dinner tonight.
Well, that time-out sucked up most of my blogging time. Until next time...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Checking In
I'm still here, head above water. I haven't been posting because of visiting family members, and the fact that my blogging time coincides with my sleeping time, and you can guess which one wins out. The sleep situation isn't too too bad, although it takes a little getting used to. The baby sleeps in three hour stints, with the occasional four, but usually three. This would actually be completely tolerable except for the fact that I was given a rubella vaccine while in the hospital, and I turned out to be part of the five percent of people who have side effects. Nothing drastic, but aching joints, headaches, and a fever don't help the situation. Did you know that when you add a fever to existing, hormonal night sweats, you may as well wear a bathing suit to bed? Charming, no? Anyhow, although I've had all the babies that I'm presumably gonna have, I am now immune to a virus that is dangerous to unborn children. Better late than never?
It has been hours since I started this post and the baby isn't going to let me add much more as she had declared today to be boob-fest. For now I will leave you with a picture intended to melt your heart, or at least show off her natural faux-hawk:
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Drugs?
So I guess it's time that I shared the birth story with you guys. I honestly didn't think I'd have a very interesting one to offer, but since my birth plan more or less went out the window, I can entertain you with it somewhat. If you recall from a previous post, my only requests were to get an epidural, and to get the baby out. Although the baby is in fact out, it didn't happen in the almost pain-free method that I had so been looking forward to.
When Pumpkin was born, there was plenty of time to prepare. My water broke the day before, so they had to induce me about 15 hours later. The happy-epidural-woman took care of my pain, and the nurse who was looking after me kept bringing me Jell-o, and talking to me like I was four, which I quite liked under the circumstances. I was in the delivery room for a few hours before it was time to push, and when Pumpkin finally came out, there was a whole team of doctors and nurses waiting to take care of both mom and baby. This is how I imagined that the birth of baby #2 would be.
Last Thursday, which happened to be Pumpkin's birthday, I started having contractions. By mid day they stopped, and then resumed in the evening, which sucked since they were going to screw up the good night's sleep that I had planned to have before delivering. I was supposed to be induced on the Friday morning. The contractions went on through the night, although they weren't strong or frequent enough to keep me completely awake. I woke up a lot, but still managed to get some sleep. I was supposed to get a call between 6 and 8 in the morning to come in to be induced, but by 7:15, I left for the hospital, even though I hadn't received my call, and even though the contractions were still not consistently five minutes apart. Some were only two minutes apart while others were as far apart as twelve minutes. I was actually concerned that they would send me home if my doctor wasn't ready for my induction, but I wanted to try, and my mother was practically pushing me out the door to ensure that I didn't deliver in the car on Leslie Street. The two contractions that I had in the car were seven minutes apart, and only medium on the severity scale.
In the assessment room, I was ignored for about half an hour. The pain was still controllable with deep breathing, so no one was overly concerned. Finally I was asked to go lie down so they could determine how dilated I was, and as soon as I lay down, the pain intensified. My moaning and groaning could be heard by the other people in the assessment room, but I couldn't control it. I even yelped out, "Help!" at one point. Finally someone came to check me out, and called another nurse over for a second opinion. I hate when a medical practitioner calls a colleague over to check me out. It wasn't the first time that this has happened to me and it has never been a good thing. "Yup, she's ready to go! You're fully dilated", she said to me. I immediately started begging for an epidural for the pain but was told that the happy-epidural-lady was in surgery and that the baby would be out long before she could tend to me. I begged for something else. They said that they could get me some laughing gas, but then never found anyone who could give it to me. They rushed me to the delivery room while I continued to groan very loudly, as everyone in the assessment room looked on. The doctor on call came in after about 10 minutes of intense screaming, broke my water, and had me push. I pushed for maybe five minutes before the baby was born. I had only been in the hospital for just over an hour at this point. That doesn't beat HBM's 11 minutes, but I wasn't all that interested in competing.
So I accidentally had a natural childbirth. In hindsight, I'm glad I had the experience of it, only to say that I did, and to discover how intensely I can actually scream, but I still wouldn't recommend it to my friends. It may have been a better experience if I hadn't been anticipating the drugs for the past nine months, or even if I had read the "irrelevant" chapter on drug-free births. At least it was quick, and the end result is still miraculous.
When Pumpkin was born, there was plenty of time to prepare. My water broke the day before, so they had to induce me about 15 hours later. The happy-epidural-woman took care of my pain, and the nurse who was looking after me kept bringing me Jell-o, and talking to me like I was four, which I quite liked under the circumstances. I was in the delivery room for a few hours before it was time to push, and when Pumpkin finally came out, there was a whole team of doctors and nurses waiting to take care of both mom and baby. This is how I imagined that the birth of baby #2 would be.
Last Thursday, which happened to be Pumpkin's birthday, I started having contractions. By mid day they stopped, and then resumed in the evening, which sucked since they were going to screw up the good night's sleep that I had planned to have before delivering. I was supposed to be induced on the Friday morning. The contractions went on through the night, although they weren't strong or frequent enough to keep me completely awake. I woke up a lot, but still managed to get some sleep. I was supposed to get a call between 6 and 8 in the morning to come in to be induced, but by 7:15, I left for the hospital, even though I hadn't received my call, and even though the contractions were still not consistently five minutes apart. Some were only two minutes apart while others were as far apart as twelve minutes. I was actually concerned that they would send me home if my doctor wasn't ready for my induction, but I wanted to try, and my mother was practically pushing me out the door to ensure that I didn't deliver in the car on Leslie Street. The two contractions that I had in the car were seven minutes apart, and only medium on the severity scale.
In the assessment room, I was ignored for about half an hour. The pain was still controllable with deep breathing, so no one was overly concerned. Finally I was asked to go lie down so they could determine how dilated I was, and as soon as I lay down, the pain intensified. My moaning and groaning could be heard by the other people in the assessment room, but I couldn't control it. I even yelped out, "Help!" at one point. Finally someone came to check me out, and called another nurse over for a second opinion. I hate when a medical practitioner calls a colleague over to check me out. It wasn't the first time that this has happened to me and it has never been a good thing. "Yup, she's ready to go! You're fully dilated", she said to me. I immediately started begging for an epidural for the pain but was told that the happy-epidural-lady was in surgery and that the baby would be out long before she could tend to me. I begged for something else. They said that they could get me some laughing gas, but then never found anyone who could give it to me. They rushed me to the delivery room while I continued to groan very loudly, as everyone in the assessment room looked on. The doctor on call came in after about 10 minutes of intense screaming, broke my water, and had me push. I pushed for maybe five minutes before the baby was born. I had only been in the hospital for just over an hour at this point. That doesn't beat HBM's 11 minutes, but I wasn't all that interested in competing.
So I accidentally had a natural childbirth. In hindsight, I'm glad I had the experience of it, only to say that I did, and to discover how intensely I can actually scream, but I still wouldn't recommend it to my friends. It may have been a better experience if I hadn't been anticipating the drugs for the past nine months, or even if I had read the "irrelevant" chapter on drug-free births. At least it was quick, and the end result is still miraculous.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
It's A Girl!
I am pleased and exhausted to announce the birth of our baby girl, who arrived at 8:47 am on Friday July 4th. Her blog name is yet to be determined, and I'm too tired to give you the whole story, so I'll leave you with this pic for now and promise you the full story later: 
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Nope.
No baby yet. I have opted to be induced on Friday if nothing happens by then. I wasn't sure if I liked the idea of being induced, but then I found out that it was typically done between 6 and 8am, which works well with getting some sleep before hand. It also saves me having my water break in the middle of a pool party like last time. No, I wasn't in the pool, thank goodness. Too gross to contemplate. I still don't feel anxious to start up the whole newborn routine, but my body is certainly ready to evict the critter. Not that I was ever "glowing", but now I'm all grunts and groans. There just isn't any more space, and there are no comfortable positions to be found.
Other than that, all I have going on is toilet training. We've had a fair amount of success, but all I can really tell you at this point is that the process forces one to stay on top of the laundry. Is that a plus? I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel on that one.
Other than that, all I have going on is toilet training. We've had a fair amount of success, but all I can really tell you at this point is that the process forces one to stay on top of the laundry. Is that a plus? I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel on that one.
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