Food Chain

A friend of ours recently had his first baby, and we asked him how it was going. I absolutely loved his reaction. He said:

Babies are totally amazing. They're completely helpless and immobile, and they make more noise than should be possible from something that small. Could it be more obvious that we are at the top of the food chain? Our babies are born yelling at the top of their lungs, "Hey, look at me! Totally helpless little morsel of food right here!!!"

Yep, we're lucky that we created tools to defend ourselves, because holy cow our children do everything in their power to try to bring about their own destruction. Ages one through five can basically be described as "I have the physical ability to kill myself in a bazillion different ways, and none of the intelligence to stop myself from doing it by accident." I am constantly amazed by how completely oblivious LL is to the dangers around him. Jump in front of speeding cars? Stuff handfuls of food into his mouth until he chokes? Grab at hot candles? Eat random leaves and flowers found outside? Climb really high onto things when he has no reasonable plan for getting down? Run as fast as he can, with his eyes closed? Yes, these are definitely the actions of someone concerned with his own survival.

Last week, Kermit crawled off the edge of a cliff without a moment's hesitation. Okay, not a cliff. A stair. Just one stair. But seriously, no hesitation, and he banged his forehead pretty bad when the ground ended up not being where he wanted it to be. (Also, S and I were both standing right there when it happened, so we're not exactly winning any parenting awards right now.)

Kermit's latest favorite game: he tosses his head waaaay back, to give me a chance to tickle his chin and neck. What kind of an animal has offspring who think that the most intelligent thing they can do is to purposely expose their jugular?

Children make a lot more sense when you think of them as The Top of the Food Chain. But I'm not entirely sure that they're better off for it.

9 Months In, 9 Months Out

Yep, Kermit turns 9 months old tomorrow. I'm not feeling very eloquent these days, but I can manage bullet points:

- S and I usually bet on an over-under line for baby weights at well-baby checkups. S picked the line today at 21 pounds, and I took the under, because I thought that Kermit would be closer to 20 pounds. Also, at this age, LL weighed in at a svelt 19 pounds and change. But our tiny little Kermit, who still barely eats, tipped the scales at 21 pounds 13 ounces, putting him at the 83rd percentile. The only time either of my kids has ever been above 80th percentile, it has been for head size.

- Kermit also has a big head.

- After getting two teeth at four months of age, Kermit drooled and chewed for five months but made no further progress. On Monday, I discovered four new teeth. At his doctor's appointment today, Dr. K discovered two more. So Kermit sprouted six new teeth this week, and now has his full set of eight front teeth. That would explain the lack of sleep this week....

- Kermit is crawling. Big time. Nothing is safe.

- Kermit pulls himself up on everything, including things that are seriously not stable. (Ever seen a 22 pound baby pull himself up on an empty laundry basket?) And he's starting to cruise. Dr. K predicts that he will be an early walker. I predict that we are in trouble, because our house is not babyproof anymore.

- Last week, Kermit got his first pair of shoes. They're adorable.

- Any suggestions for how to keep an extremely mobile and extremely oral nine-month-old from killing himself by choking on the toys that your three-year-old leaves scattered all over the house? LL is pretty good about cleaning up his toys, but he is still barely three, so legos and other small parts still end up abandoned on the floor sometimes, and I'm constantly grabbing them moments before Kermit jams them down his throat.

- In the food department, Kermit is lukewarm about being spoon fed, but loves loves loves finger food. Peaches, avocado, applesauce, mango, shredded chicken, and cheerios are the current favorites. Last night, he enjoyed his first artichoke. (Side note: feeding artichoke to a baby is a pain in the butt.) He has also discovered that straw cups are the greatest invention of all time. No matter what he is doing, he gets very serious and concentrates when offered a straw cup of water.

- Kermit responds to his name. It's very sweet. We can't tell how much more he understands, but he definitely knows when we're talking to him.

- He's starting to figure out clapping. Especially after knocking down a tower of blocks, which is the current favorite game.

- Over the last month, we have gradually been weaning Kermit off of swaddling. At first, we were occasionally leaving one arm free. This week, we switched him from swaddling to a sleepsack. He now insists on sleeping clutching his security blanket, which is very cute. But it is taking him forever to fall asleep, because he keeps stroking my face and giggling instead of going to sleep.

- I would say that he isn't sleeping as well since we stopped swaddling, but he wasn't sleeping well before, either. He's still waking up once or twice a night to eat. He no longer goes back to sleep easily, and is often up for an hour or more in the middle of the night. The combination of teething, learning to crawl, separation anxiety, swaddling cessation, and yet another mild head cold have made the sleep problems inevitable, so I'm just hoping that everything happening all at once means that we can move on from it all, too.

- Good lord, I need more sleep. Soon.

- S's parents are visiting this weekend, and they are so excited to see Kermit crawling and playing and being all interactive. Yay!

- In addition to all of Kermit's recent advances, this has been a monumentally bizarre week for me, but I should leave the rest of it for a separate post. Discussions of SWAT team manhunts for crazed gunmen in my neighborhood probably do not belong in the same post as my baby boy's 9 month birthday.

- I love teasers, don't you?

Stream of Consciousness

No unifying theme. None. At least, I don't think so. If you find one, let me know.

Kermit slept through the night. Twice. And then immediately got sick. Now he's back to waking 2-5 times each night, and I'm even more exhausted than before. It was like glimpsing an oasis in the desert, and now it is gone.

I have two (two!) final round interviews this week. I believe that I have a decent chance at getting offers for both of them. Interviewing for jobs may be my least favorite thing to do in the whole wide world.

I am desperate to get a job, desperate to get back to some semblance of normal life, and yet every time I think about actually getting full-time childcare for Kermit and starting a job, I cry. A lot. LL is so happy being at Natasha's during the day that I don't even blink about sending him there, but Kermit is so tiny and snuggly and fun, and I've never been away from him for more than a few hours, and it's making me weepy. I still want to go back to work, but apparently my hormones are intent on making me miserable about it.

I predict that Kermit will be crawling within the next 30 days. I set him on the ground surrounded by toys, and he immediately throws one of them out of reach, then goes up on all fours to try to retrieve it. Every time. He's 7.5 months old right now. LL didn't reach this stage until 10 months, and didn't crawl until 11.5, so I'm kind of in shock about the possibility of early mobility.

Can you say "possibility of early mobility" 10 times really fast?

S went to a bachelor party on Saturday, and he got shot. Sort of. Not really, but there was a gun and a bullet and an injury, so why nitpick, right? I don't know much of anything about guns, and I'm a little unclear about what happened, but it went something like this: (1) S tells me that the bachelor party is going to involve guns and alcohol. I am supremely uncomfortable around guns, and I get mocked when I ask, horrified, "In what order?!?!?" (2) S assures me that they are going to a shooting range before doing anything else, and that everyone will be very very safe, and that I have nothing to worry about, and to stop prefacing sentences with, "And if I'm a widow next week, ...." (3) S becomes the envy of all his friends when they hear me saying, "Guns? Really? Are you sure you don't just want to go to a strip club?" (4) S comes home extremely hung over, sporting what looks like an ugly black eye. Between (3) and (4), something happened where S shot a pistol and the hot shell casing (?) flew into the air, ricocheted off a wall (?), and lodged itself between the safety goggles and S's eyelid (?), leaving an ugly black burn mark. I'm particularly unclear on how something like that happens if you're wearing safety goggles. Also, I have not at all changed my opinion on guns, at least as they relate to bachelor parties.

S and I went to a wedding on Sunday. (Ironically, a wedding having nothing at all to do with the bachelor party on Saturday. That wedding isn't for another two weeks.) We had Rosie come and watch the kiddos, and it was our first night out since before Kermit was born. The minister referenced Steve Jobs twice during the ceremony. He told us that the bride's mother had recently passed away but was watching the ceremony from heaven, despite the fact that the bride's mother had just walked down the aisle moments before and was sitting right in front of him. He started reciting a quote about love, then realized halfway through that it was actually about death, not love, so he apologized but then felt compelled to talk about death for a while. And, bizarrely, he kept making references to rock climbing.

Ever since he got his Big Boy Bed, LL has been insisting that either me or S sit in his rocking chair until he falls asleep at night. If we try to leave, there is much crying and carrying on. We warned Rosie that he would want her to do this, but when she sat in the chair, he told her, "No, that's okay, I'll go to sleep all by myself." And he did. WTF?

I made the mistake of telling LL that his birthday was coming up. He's a little unclear on what a birthday is. He is also completely unclear on units of time. I have had this conversation with him two or three times a day for the past several months:
LL: Is it my birthday today?
Me: No, not for a few more weeks.
LL: After naptime it will be my birthday?
Me: Um, no....
LL: Oh, I will play, go to the park, eat lunch, then it's my birthday?
Me: No, you have to eat like 30 more lunches before it's your birthday.
LL: I'm not hungry. Is it my birthday now?

LL is talking nonstop these days. It's amazing how his speech is getting more sophisticated day to day. Some of it is pronunciation, some of it is speech patterns, some of it is vocabulary. Really cool to watch it unfold. People told me that I would want him to please just be quiet for a little while! by the time he reached this age, but it hasn't happened yet.

We leave next week for yet another wedding (our fifth one this year) but this one is several hundred miles away, and we're driving. I am ... apprehensive. LL is pseudo-potty-trained. Kermit hates the car and rarely falls asleep in his car seat. This particular drive has large gaps between exits and random bouts of stop-and-go traffic. Almost every single time we've done this drive, S falls asleep and I have to drive the whole way. I've been stocking up on car activities for LL, but I have a sinking feeling that we're just going to end up singing songs for 9 hours straight, punctuated with random crying. Wish us luck.

Half Year

Um, Kermit is 6 months old today. Yikes! The last general update I wrote for Kermit was at 3 months, so here is a many-month summary of All Things Kermit.

Kermit was an early smiler, and an early laugher. Thus, he's very good at it by now. This kid will smile and laugh at anything. He likes imitating faces, so he will smile back at anyone who smiles at him. He's very popular with the old ladies at the grocery store. (A woman in her 90s threatened to kidnap him the other day; it was simultaneously flattering and extremely creepy.) He's ticklish everywhere. He's bizarrely startled by Peek-A-Boo, but loves it when we just look away from him, then look back at him and say, "Aaaaa..... boo!" (leaving out the "Peek" part). He loves it so much that now he laughs when you just say "A-boo!" to him, which LL does all day long. LL got very excited when we read the Disney version of Aladdin and discovered that the monkey in the story is named Abu. Thus, Kermit now has a stuffed monkey named Aboo, and he is awesome.

Kermit can roll whichever way he wants, but usually prefers just to rock from side to side, and rotate in a circle centered at his butt. Kermit is obsessed with toes. At first they were just cool to look at, but now he knows how to chew on them, and that makes them so much cooler. He is finally coordinated enough to get other things reliably into his mouth to chew on as well. He sprouted his first two teeth at just 4 months old, so it's good that he can help to alleviate his own teething now. He still prefers to chew on Mommy's fingers, though, and those teeth are sharp! Kermit loves sitting, and can balance for several minutes at a time, when he's in the mood. He still just collapses when he gets tired, so we need to keep pillows around him for now. He also loves standing while holding onto our hands. And we pulled out our jumperoo, and he's so crazy for jumping that we need to ration his time in that thing, or he'd want to be there all day long.

Kermit is still waking twice each night to eat (once around 11pm, and once around 4am). We're usually still up for the 11pm feeding, so this isn't too horrible, but it would be nice if he started sleeping more solidly at night. The reflux medication has improved his overall eating a bit, but he's still eating the majority of his food at night, and barely sipping milk during the day, so I'm reluctant to do too much to mess with his feedings right now. He outgrew his bassinet two months ago, so he now sleeps in his crib, which we set up at the foot of our bed. (Oh, how I long to move to a bigger house....) He loves "talking" to the penguins and polar bears in his crib when he wakes up. (And yes, is that not the coolest crib set you've ever seen?) I can't complain too much about his sleep, because he easily goes down for three naps each day, two of them an hour long each and one generally 2-3 hours, and he goes to bed easily at night. (I will now spit three times and throw salt over my shoulder.)

Kermit loves music, and we end up singing to him all day long. He is especially a fan of Laurie Berkner. Luckily, LL has learned how to sing many of her songs, so he takes over singing to Kermit when we get sick of doing it. Kermit still hates riding in the car, so we play Laurie Berkner on repeat to try to keep him calm whenever he needs to be in the car for a while.

At his well baby check-up today, he weighed in at 18 pounds, which is totally average for his age but gigantic compared to LL at six months. It's even more surprising since he is still eating below the normal minimum number of ounces of milk for a baby his age. Poor thing must have inherited my amazing ability to gain weight even when not eating. (As opposed to LL, who is taking after S -- they can both eat their body weight in whatever unhealthy food strikes their fancy, and still stay thin.)

Every afternoon, while I cook and while we eat dinner, Kermit hangs out in his high chair. He loves being up at our level, where he can see everything that's going on, but he thinks that it's rather unfair that we don't share our food with him. (He will probably get his first taste of "solid" food this weekend.) Kermit has also shown himself to be wildly adaptable. Unlike LL, who was a fussy mess if one of his naps was ever 15 minutes late, Kermit handles schedule changes with a smile. And he has already spent a few days with Rosie while I was out on job interviews, and he apparently couldn't care less which Big Person cares for him during the day. Which I guess is a good thing? I'm still not sure.

Happy Half Year, Kermit!

Bullets

Oy, I haven't written in a while. Part of it is that I'm busy (cf, two small children). Part is that I'm exhausted (cf, two small children, again). Part is that I was sick for a ridiculously long time. Part is perfectionism (I have so much that I want to write about, but I want to write it well, so I procrastinate on each post until I can do it properly). But now I'm hopelessly behind in what I want to record here! So, a quick bullet list, most of which will be expanded into a series of much cooler posts in the near future.

- I've started interviewing for jobs. Blech. I hate interviewing for jobs. I'm already growing tired of jumping through the hoops.

- Kermit turns 6 months old next week. It's so cliched to say it, but geesh, where did the time go?!? He has two teeth already, he's chewing on everything he can get his little paws on, he loves standing up, he wants desperately to learn how to sit up straight on his own, and he is ready ready ready to start eating real food, thankyouverymuch. Also, he loves to nap. Also, he is seriously the smiliest baby in the world, which is fairly impressive for a teething refluxy kid. Especially one that's constantly being stepped on by his older brother.

- LL has suddenly exploded developmentally. He's sleeping in a big boy bed, he's trying new foods with toddler abandon, he has suddenly found his voice and is carrying on full conversations, and he's progressing nicely with potty training. And he's nearly as tall as me. Well, not quite, but he's suddenly a heck of a lot closer than he has any right to be, since he's not yet three years old. Bedtime is getting ever-so-slightly better, but still kind of sucks. When things calm down a bit on all the other transitions he's facing right now, we will really need to do something about bedtime.

- Why yes, I did slip in there that we started potty training LL. It's been about two weeks. We're taking a very very very laid back approach, which is going fairly well so far. I've cobbled together a lovely low-stress technique that so far has resulted in a lot of successes, a few accidents, several conversations about the differences between boys and girls, and a weird pavlovian thing where LL needs to pee every time my phone rings.

- One of my resolutions is to cook more dinners at home. Also, I'm trying to lose some of that lingering fertility/pregnancy weight. Also, I'm tired of LL eating yogurt, cottage cheese, crackers, and fruit (and very little else) for every meal. Also, nobody ever taught me meal planning, or even much cooking, and I kind of feel like I've been blindly winging it for 15 years. Which might have been fine when I was cooking just for me, but now that I'm responsible for feeding two human beings, both of whom will hopefully grow up having healthier views on food than me, their overweight mother, I decided that I really needed to educate myself and make some changes. I've been reading lots of books. I've also been slowly integrating new ideas into our household, in the hopes that I can get some new behaviors ingrained while LL and Kermit are little, and before I go back to work and have much less time for planning. Summaries and book reviews will be coming soon.

- S and I went out to see a movie this week!!! For the first time in like a year!!! It was awesome! We saw Super 8. Highly recommended. I really liked it, and not just because it was two hours during which nobody pulled on my shirt and whined, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Also, I got to go to the bathroom before and after the movie all by myself.

- I got my hair cut last week, and my stylist asked what product I've been putting in my hair. I told her that my baby is teething right now, so he chews on his hands, then grabs handfuls of my hair, and I sort of just let his saliva accumulate there all day. I started going to this particular high-end salon when S and I were first married. I'm not sure that I'm quite their target clientele anymore.

Yep, those are the highlights. More later.

Back!

We just got back from visiting my family. The trip was exhausting but wonderful. We stayed at my parents' house, and my brother and his entire crew drove in and stayed there as well, and it was so much fun to have all the cousins together. (I must say, though, that 11 people was a bit much to be staying in my parents 3-bedroom house, especially when it includes 5 kids ages 4 months through 11 years.) The last time LL saw any of these cousins, he was only 9 months old. This time, he was old enough to actually play with them, and he had such a good time. We also got to go to several of my favorite hangouts from when I was a kid, see a few of my oldest friends who are still in the area, and eat some food that I can't get where we currently live. (Oh frozen custard, how I have missed you! Why oh why is frozen custard only available in like three cities in the US? It is the most fabulous food on earth.)

LL has been talking for weeks about wanting to see the oldest cousin, B, who is 11, so we thought that he would spend the whole time trailing after him. Instead, he happily played with LiLi, who is also two. The middle cousin, age 7, spent the entire time playing with Kermit, which freed up the 11-year-old to play with S the entire time. (Have I mentioned how much all kids, especially the 8-12 set, love S? He's amazing.) With both my children happily occupied, I got to spend some quality time with my brother, which is very rare these days. I tried to soak up those chunks of time when no one was sitting on my lap or whining for a snack. Yay, vacation!

Now we're back to reality. Kermit's eating got worse while we were gone, and we've switched him to a new reflux medication in the hope that he'll start eating a normal amount. He ate well yesterday for the first time in a month, so we're hopeful. (No more breast feeding, though. The most he has nursed in the past week is for 30 seconds, and my milk supply is practically gone, so I think that our breast feeding time is really over. I made it 5 months this time, not even close to the year that I had hoped for.) We're so desperate to get calories into Kermit whenever he'll take them that we've been willing to offer him food whenever he asks. And he seems to prefer the majority of his milk between 10pm and 7am, which sucks. We can barely get an ounce into him at each meal during the day, then he gulps down 6 ounces at each feeding in the middle of the night. Once he seems truly better, we're going to have to do some behavior modification on that one.

LL was healthy the whole time we were gone, then immediately came down with another cold when we got back. Not too bad, but he's coughing a lot, which keeps waking him up at night, which of course requires me to get up at night and calm him down. Between LL's cold and Kermit's weird eating patterns, I haven't slept much since we got back.

Next up: I need to get a job. Kermit turned 5 months old yesterday (an update on him, and an update on LL, since it's been a few months since I devoted a post to him, will be coming as soon as I have the time to write them). I had planned to stay home with Kermit for 6 months, so... I should really try to find a job soon. I've enjoyed being home with him, but it is obvious to me that I would not be happy long-term as a SAHM. So, resume revisions this week, and sending out a few feelers to see where I am. Ugh, I hate looking for jobs.

Flu

Taking care of an infant is a thankless, messy, exhausting job under the best of conditions. I like to think that I normally handle it with a certain amount of finesse. I can deal with the sleep disturbances, the pacing back and forth, the bizarre way that all newborns can tell the difference between when you're standing and when you're sitting, the unpredictability of it all. I do it, and I smile. But you know when I'm ever-so-slightly less able to deal with the physical and emotional demands of taking care of an infant?

When I'm suffering from the worst stomach flu of my life.

I spent most of yesterday and today silently praying that I was sympathetic enough towards LL when he was sick with this flu last week, because holy cow this really sucks! I don't blame him at all for spending three days lying on the couch intermittently crying. I wish that I could do the same. Many people have written about how one of the worst things about motherhood is that you don't get any days off, not even sick days. Still, I think that most people can at least call on some family to step in with assistance when it gets really bad. The fact that we have no family in the area always hits me hardest at times like this, because just having somebody home with me who could help to hold Kermit on occasion, even if I still had to do the majority of the work of caring for him, would make a huge difference. It would help me to avoid those times yesterday (and yes, plural, multiple times yesterday, though slightly better today) when I sat in a rocking chair holding Kermit while both of us cried, as I gulped back my instinct to yell as loudly as I could about the misery of it all.

On the breast feeding front, Kermit is indeed breast feeding a bit. I'd say one-third of his feedings are entirely at the breast, one-third of his feedings he rejects the breast completely and eats just from a bottle, and the remaining third he nurses for some brief period of time before appearing frustrated, and then I top him off with a bottle. This sounds all nice and promising, except that it means that I never know how he's going to want any particular feeding. I attempt to nurse, then I need to go make a bottle, feed him the bottle, then put him down and hook myself up to the breast pump. The nurse-bottle-pump thing means that every single feeding takes an hour or longer, and I have to be at home for every single one of them. Thus, I can never leave the house. Which is not a long-term solution, obviously.

Even with pumping after every single feeding, I have run through my entire freezer of milk and have needed to start supplementing with formula. Even with three solid weeks of ridiculous over-the-top pumping, my milk supply has not budged at all, but Kermit's appetite (thanks to some reflux medication) has gone up. The stomach flu has thrown everything into even more chaos. Eating or drinking absolutely anything makes me ill, so I'd be dehydrated even if I weren't also trying to sustain another human being. Thus, my supply has taken another hit, and I haven't had the energy to pump for the past two days to try to keep it steady.

Perhaps I'll start up again after I'm recovered, but I suspect that my supply has dipped for good. And I'm trying to make peace with that. If I can figure out when Kermit is nursing and when he's not, I can just plan to nurse at those feedings and save myself the heartache of offering the breast at other times. My current plan, I think, will also include cutting out all that pumping. I know that this plan will cause my supply to continue to drop even further, so it probably means that Kermit will stop nursing entirely within the month, but I just don't have the energy to fight it anymore.

Assuming I'm over my flu, and assuming that S and Kermit don't get sick in the meantime, we're flying to visit my parents on Tuesday. I can bring a breast pump with me, but there's no way that I'll be able to pump eight times a day while on vacation. At this point, I kind of feel like I've been tilting at windmills for long enough. So, I'm nursing Kermit as best as I can right now, to try to force as many antibodies into him as he'll take, and once I'm over the flu, we're probably going to step it down a notch and let Kermit decide how much he wants to nurse.

But first, I have to get over this ridiculously awful flu.

Timeline

My month of May so far:

Sunday, 5/1 -- Like an idiot, I write a post about how Kermit's breast feeding is going better. I mention that I live in fear of him having a nursing strike like LL did, so I'm enjoying each day that he nurses well. Then I tempt fate even further by buying two new nursing bras.

Monday, 5/2 -- Kermit starts crying in the middle of every feeding. I am determined not to lose him over to bottle-feeding, so I refuse to give him any bottles. He's fussing a lot at feedings, but he also seems content by the end, so I trust that everything will right itself eventually.

Thursday, 5/5 -- Kermit stops nursing completely. He latches on, sucks once, then cries hysterically. By midday, it's obvious that he's hungry but he's not going to nurse, and I tearfully give him a bottle, then immediately call the lactation consultant.

Friday, 5/6 -- I meet with a lactation consultant. She thinks that I have a low supply, which is frustrating Kermit, hence the refusing to nurse. She tells me to rent a hospital-grade pump, then exclusively pump for the next two days and bottle-feed Kermit. Her prediction is that Kermit will eat 32 ounces a day (normal for this age is 30-36) and I will only pump 18-20. So basically, the nursing strike is entirely my fault. I'm heartbroken.

Saturday, 5/7 -- I spend much of the day hunched over a breast pump, crying. I'm in disbelief that my second child followed my first and rejected breast feeding at a far-too-young age. Today, Kermit turns just four months old. I feel like a total failure.

Sunday, 5/8 -- Having spent two days pumping 9 times a day and bottle feeding Kermit, it seems like all I'm doing is dealing with milk. The lactation consultant was only partially right: I did indeed only pump 18-19 ounces each day, which is horribly low. BUT, Kermit only ate 18 ounces each day, despite my offering him a seemingly limitless supply. The LC revises her diagnosis: rather than my low supply being the cause of the problem, it appears to be a symptom. Kermit decreased his demand for some reason, and my supply did what it was supposed to and adjusted to meet the lower demand. So now we have to figure out why Kermit doesn't want to eat.

Monday, 5/9 -- Kermit's well baby checkup with Dr. K. His growth is slow, and he has indeed dropped growth curves since two months, but he's still within normal bounds. We think he may have late-onset silent acid reflux. Or at least, we hope he does, because it's solvable. We start him on medication for reflux and cross our fingers. I also start downing fenugreek like it's going out of style. The hope is that the medication increases Kermit's appetite at the same time that the pumping + herbs increases my supply, so that by the end of the week, we can get Kermit back on the breast and eating a healthy amount. Which is good, because pumping 9 times a day while caring for two children is not long-term sustainable. In fact, it really sucks. At dinnertime, however, I discover a bigger impediment to finding the time to pump: LL has a sudden high fever, and will need to stay home from preschool until he's better.

Tuesday, 5/10 -- I'm home all day with a fussy Kermit and a feverish LL, trying to fit all those pumping sessions into a day already filled with caring for two mildly sick kids.

Wednesday, 5/11 -- The good news: LL seems better. The bad news: Kermit's appetite hasn't budged, and neither has my supply. At 3am, even my good news disappears: LL wakes up crying, then immediately vomits all over me. Guess he's not better after all.

Thursday, 5/12 -- All hell breaks loose. Both kids spend the entire morning crying. Kermit is burping and spitting up nonstop and wants to be held all the time. LL has horrible diarrhea and stomach cramps and wants to be held all the time. No matter which one I hold, the other one sobs. If one falls asleep, they soon wake up from their brother crying in pain. No way that I can adequately care for either one of them like this, much less keep up with the pumping. I call S and ask him to take a sick day and come home to help. When he gets home, LL is crying uncontrollably and in so much pain that he can't even hold his security blanket. He violently vomits all over his room, and I decide to take him to whatever pediatrician is free to see him. He's diagnosed with stomach flu. The pediatrician urges me to nurse Kermit as often as possible, to keep him from getting sick and to keep him hydrated. I mention the nursing strike, and the pediatrician predicts that Kermit will be sick within days, and will then need to be hospitalized for dehydration shortly thereafter. I return home with LL in total despair.

So, that's where we are right now. Three weeks ago, Kermit was sleeping well and eating well and growing well, or so I thought. Now he's a fussy mess and still refusing to breast feed for more than a minute or two at a time, getting all of his meager daily caloric intake from bottles while I desperately pump to try to produce even the small amount that he's eating. LL is violently sick with the flu and doesn't know what to do with himself other than clutch his stomach and cry. Having been vomited on yesterday more times than I can count, I can't imagine how I will possibly escape getting the flu myself, and I don't know how I will possibly keep it away from Kermit. After a week of effort, my milk supply has not increased at all, and getting sick will likely drop it even further. The lactation consultant predicts that Kermit will never breast feed again.

I'd like to say that I'm handling the nursing strike better than I did with LL. When he had his nursing strike, I sank into a month-long depression that I was only able to come out of once I gave up pumping and let my hormones even themselves out. I do feel a bit more even-keeled this time, but only barely, and it's probably just because LL's stomach flu is leaving me with very little time to dwell on how heartbroken I am about Kermit. For now, I need to figure out how long I'm willing to keep up with the pumping, holding onto the hope that Kermit may come back to me. In the mean time, I have two sick kids who need my attention, and I need to keep my head in the game.

Milk Update

I'm amazed by the differences with breast feeding this time around. With LL, I had horrible problems getting him to latch for the first 3 weeks or so -- a combination of my nipples being completely inverted and LL being rather lazy. During LL's early days, I saw no less than FOUR lactation consultants, all of whom said, "I'm sure that your nipples aren't truly inverted; it's very rare." And then they examined me and said, "Wow, yours really are! Um... not sure what to do next...." None of the first three LCs were any help at all, and then I struggled alone at home for a while, during which time LL barely gained any weight. S finally convinced me to go see another LC, and she was wonderful and helped us to pull through. By the time LL was one month old, we'd worked through the problems and breast feeding was great.

Kermit has been a completely different story. With LL, getting him to latch was unbelievably frustrating, and it required three hands, which meant that S had to actively participate in every single feeding for the first several weeks. But, I never had any pain. None. With Kermit, he latched on immediately, every single time. And I was so thrilled that I didn't have to fight so hard for a latch, and I could do it without S's help, that I didn't really pay attention to whether he had a good latch. By Day 5, it became clear that he was mangling me a bit when he ate, and by the end of the first week, I was in a lot of pain. This time around, though, I knew what to do -- we immediately called the LC who was actually helpful the last time, and once again, she was sympathetic, and she made it clear that she was considering both my interests and Kermit's interests, rather than ignoring me and just focusing on the baby.

Everyone told me that breast feeding my second child would be a lot easier than it was the first time around. And indeed, it has been a lot easier. Still, it hasn't been easy, and I hadn't really thought about that distinction before. There has still been a lot of frustration, and a lot of physical pain, which is something that I didn't see coming, since it hadn't happened at all with LL.

It turns out that Kermit did a lot of damage to my right breast in particular during those first two weeks or so. The LC told me that I needed to rest it for 2-3 days, pumping that side while feeding Kermit just on the left. She assured me that my milk supply was sufficient that he'd get plenty of food from just that one side, but by the second day of that plan, it was clear that she was wrong -- Kermit was ending each meal by screaming his little head off because he was still hungry, and once I clued into that, I started topping him off with a bottle of the milk that I'd pumped from the other side. In the mean time, he had so continuously and vigorously nursed exclusively on the left for those three days that he managed to damage that breast as well. So by the end of the third day, my right side had healed a bit (but not completely) and my left side was now sore as well. I went back to nursing on both sides, hoping to let my left side rest a bit, and the very next day Kermit got inexplicably frustrated at the beginning of one meal and bit down, hard, on my newly healed right breast, re-damaging it to the point of being even worse than it had been before the three days off.

We went back to the LC at that point, who offered a few more suggestions, and things have improved since then. My left breast got better quickly, but I continued to have a fair amount of pain on the right side during each feeding, and the damage to that breast was still visible, for a full two months.

With LL, all of the breast feeding frustration felt like it involved teaching him to do the right thing, which was very very stressful, but I always felt like we'd pull through it. This time around, all the frustration was within me -- will I be able to suffer through the intense pain I was feeling at each and every feeding, 9-10 times a day, for however long it would take for the pain to go away. It was a completely different kind of frustration. The worst part was how ridiculously sensitive my right breast was. When Kermit was seven weeks old, I still couldn't sleep on my stomach, because I couldn't put that kind of pressure on my right breast. Same thing with sleeping on my right side, which is normally how I like to sleep. Sleeping on my left side was okay, but only if I cradled my breast carefully with a pillow and avoided resting my arm on it.

It was like that for a full two months, and then all of a sudden, it just got better. No more pain. Yay!

Of course, it got better just in time for Kermit to enter his I'm-too-distracted-to-eat-well phase, where he eats for ten seconds and then needs to turn his head to make sure that he's not missing something interesting at the other end of the room. (He even does this in the dark -- what does he expect to see when he turns his head?) He latches and unlatches himself a gazillion times each feeding, and I have no way of knowing when he's truly done eating. And it's sad, because the part of breast feeding that I love the most are those long, peaceful nursing sessions where the baby snuggles against my body and drinks deeply and gives little content sighs. I feel like I was in the pain the entire time that Kermit was doing that, and now he won't settle down like that anymore, except occasionally at night, so I feel like I just sort of missed that phase. I only had a very brief period of time when LL was like that, too -- just a month or two, and then he entered this distracted phase as well, and then he went on strike and stopped nursing entirely.

Indeed, LL's nursing strike is hanging over me every time I nurse Kermit. I was so heartbroken when LL went on strike because it was so sudden. This time, each time Kermit nurses, I wonder if he's going to do the same thing. What if this is the very last time he nurses?!? He had a mini one-day strike a few weeks ago, and I completely panicked that he would never nurse again. So, I'm trying very hard to relish every breast feeding session we have that goes well. I'm also being a bit paranoid about anything that might have caused LL's strike. With LL, we dutifully gave him one bottle a day, as recommended for babies that need to learn to eat from a bottle. With Kermit, he's only had two bottles in the past six weeks, as I try to make sure that he believes that all milk must come from Mommy, at least for now. We'll see how it goes. In the mean time, I'm just relieved that nursing is pain-free for now, and that Kermit is growing and thriving.

Dr. Mommy

At the end of December, I gave a quick update on the state of my PhD. At the time, two of my three committee members had agreed to sign my dissertation, while the third (AdvisorA) was refusing to acknowledge that I'd even sent it to her. I gave her one more month to get back to me (also, I had a newborn and wasn't really in the mood to deal with her) and then, in early February, I started bugging her by email. And bugging her and bugging her. She kept telling me that yes, she had edits, but no, they weren't ready yet, and no, she wouldn't be signing until after she was done requesting changes. And then she kept putting off sending me anything. After much back and forth, she finally finally finally sent me a bunch of requested edits at the end of February. And yes, that means that I was editing my dissertation while caring for a six-week-old infant. Fun times! The first week of March, she finally sent me her signature on the final signature form. Which gave me one week to run around campus with Kermit getting the other two committee members to sign the form, doing final changes, doing the format check with the Registrar's office, and turning the whole thing in before the Winter deadline.

One random observation: when you do all this final PhD work while toting a baby who is not quite two months old, just about everybody you interact with comments on it, saying something like, "Really, you're doing all this dissertation work with a newborn?!?" Don't feel too proud of yourself, though. Yes, approximately two-thirds of those people will mean, "Wow, it's really impressive that you're finishing up heavy duty graduate work while also caring for a newborn!" But the other third of the people will actually mean, "Wow, it's really sad that you're neglecting a newborn just to do some graduate work before some arbitrary deadline." Those last third of the people will look sorrowfully at the baby and ask if maybe you shouldn't be going home and doing this PhD hobby of yours at a different time. (One of the women in the Registrar's office explicitly told me that perhaps I should come back in another few weeks, and I pointed out to her that I was there to meet her office's deadline, and she just shrugged.)

But, here's the good news: Everybody on the committee signed my dissertation. All forms and documents were turned into the university. The university accepted everything, and last week, officially conferred the degree. I am now Dr. Nicky. Mommy, PhD.

The job hunt is officially on hold, because I want to stay home with Kermit for a while longer. On good days, I tell people that I am now Dr. Stay-At-Home-Mom. On bad days, I just tell people that I'm unemployed. But either way, grad school is now mercifully over. For now, I'll be sticking with Dr. Mommy.

Family Resemblance

Background information: I'm Eastern European Jewish. Pale skin, green eyes, dark brown curly hair. S is Japanese. Fairly light skin, dark olive-shaped eyes, black curly hair. Yes, he's 100% Japanese and he has curly hair. It's rare but it happens. Relatives on both sides of his family have wavy hair, but if there were a contest for curliest natural hair on a Japanese person, he would win.

One of the fun things to do when a baby is born is to play the "Who does he look like?" game. This game gets a little more complicated, however, when the parents are of different racial backgrounds. S and I have always said that LL just looks like himself. Yes, we can see tiny pieces of each of us in him (for example, he most definitely has my chin, poor kid!) but he doesn't truly look like either one of us. When he was a baby, however, S's family insisted that LL looked like me. When I finally asked some of them what specifically made him look like me, they universally answered that he looked white. (And apparently all white babies look like me....)

It's not uncommon for children of mixed race backgrounds to look more like one race than the other, and we've even seen full siblings who look like they are from completely different racial backgrounds, simply because they inherited specific features from mom vs. dad. So we were curious about who Kermit would look like.

Now that we've visited S's family, the verdict (from them) is in. In the words of one of S's aunts, "At least this one looks Asian!" They insisted that Kermit looks Japanese, with the undertones of "thank goodness!"

Okay, that's all very interesting. But here's the kicker: Kermit looks exactly like LL did as an infant! Seriously, you take photos of each of them at the same age, and I can barely tell them apart. We made a stack of photos of Kermit and intermixed them with a bunch of photos of LL at the same age, and nobody can reliably tell us which are Kermit and which are LL. In fact, when people struggle to find differences between them, the only reliable indicator that we've found is that Kermit's skin is actually more pale than LL's was at this age.

S and I have chalked it up to a case of people seeing what they want to see. We've also done a lot of joking about how S doesn't need to worry about the paternity of the kids -- if there was a mixup with the sperm at the fertility clinic, they must have made the exact same mistake the second time, too, because LL and Kermit obviously have the same parents.

I'll also note that most people truly don't think that LL is Asian at all. I think the mass of curly hair throws them off. And when I was out with Kermit today, someone asked if my husband was Mexican, and insisted that the baby looks Hispanic. So perhaps my kids just look vaguely exotic, in an indistinguishable way? Welcome to the modern post-racial world!

Looking at photos of LL from his first year, his face changed a lot over those twelve months, so we know that it's likely that Kermit will change in different ways and end up looking completely different from his brother. But for now, whenever anyone asks me and S who we think Kermit looks like, we just say that he looks like LL.

Quarter Year

Yeah, I've been blog-absent for a while. No particular reason, other than the normal newborn nuttiness. It turns out that when you're recovering from a c-section, and then everyone in the house is sick, and then your newborn is hospitalized for RSV, and then everyone is still sick, and then you visit your in-laws for two weeks, and then you come home and try to get everyone back on a regular schedule.... and then you finally have time to take a breath, your first coherent thought ends up being something like this: "Hey, what happened to my teeny tiny newborn baby, and who left this gigantic three-month-old in my house?"

Yes, that's right, tomorrow Kermit will be three months old. For the first three months of LL's life, I kept detailed notes about what we were doing and how he was developing and what he liked to do. And I swore that I would do the same for Kermit, because I really didn't want to fall into that all-too-common trap with second children where there's no record of their life even though there are volumes written about the older child. And yet... here we are. I have been taking notes, but I still feel like I've been letting him down a bit. So, here's the three-month update, and I'll just have to try to do better in the future.

Kermit is an awesomely easy baby. If his needs are being met, he's happy as a clam. The only caveat is that the needs have to be met instantly, because he goes from happy as a clam to flames-shooting-from-his-eyes angry in ten seconds flat. When he wakes up, he's cheerful but hungry. I need to feed him within seconds of waking, because if I try to do something stupid like take the time to get a clean burp cloth out of the closet first, he'll claw my eyes out in frustration. When he's done eating, he whimpers a bit, followed by one burp. Every time. One burp. And then he's ready to play.

Exactly 75 minutes after he wakes up, he's ready for a nap. At 76 minutes, he starts screaming like a banshee, so I need to watch the clock for this one. He's amazingly consistent. If I swaddle him and give him a pacifier at 74 minutes, we can avoid the screaming entirely and he'll let me quietly rock him to sleep, but G-d help me if I wait until minute 76.

For his first month, he ate more than a baby that size has any right to eat, but he stopped eating when he was hospitalized, and he has normalized out his feedings now. At his two-month appointment, he weighed more than LL did when he was two months old, despite the fact that Kermit was born weighing over 1.5 pounds less. It's kind of annoying, actually, because the first two months of breast feeding were excruciatingly painful for me (a post unto itself) yet he wanted to eat all the time. (And not for lack of supply; we did that weigh-feed-weigh thing with a lactation consultant in those early weeks, and she was shocked by how much milk he was gulping down.) Now that breast feeding isn't painful anymore, he's barely interested. He's far too distracted by the world around him to bother eating very often or for very long.

Kermit loves to be bundled. He spent most of his first 6 weeks swaddled, and still likes it for naps and bedtime. He likes being in the sling, but it's not the magic cure-all that it was for LL. If Kermit is tired, he'll quickly fall asleep in the sling, but it doesn't calm him in quite the same way. Just before two months, I started carrying him in a mei tai, and I think that he prefers that now, at least when he's awake. Now that the weather is nice, we like to go outside as a family, with LL riding his tricycle, S chasing him on his plasma car, and me walking up and down the sidewalk with Kermit in the mei tai, begging them not to get run over by cars. Fun family times! Kermit attended his first birthday party this past weekend (one of LL's friends turned 4) and he spent the entire party hanging out in the mei tai, where he could snuggle or hide or sleep or watch, depending on his mood. Love it.

Kermit's first smile was at ~5 weeks, while he was hospitalized. His first laugh was when he was just under two months old, on my birthday, though he would only laugh at S. The last two weeks, he has become obsessed with Itsy Bitsy Spider, which often gets a chuckle out of him. And he flirts with everyone. He also loves sticking his tongue out.

When he was nine weeks old, we flew to visit my in-laws, for S's sister's wedding. Kermit was a fantastic traveler, nursing and sleeping on the plane and never making a peep. He loved being passed around among all the aunties, and almost every grandmother-type had an opportunity to hold him and rock him into a happy cuddly sleep. During the visit, Kermit went to his first zoo, his first childrens museum, and his first playground. He found all three of them to be fantastic places to nap in his stroller. (He thought the same about the wedding, actually.)

Also on that trip, Kermit discovered toys. We have a bunch of those baby toys that are meant to be hung from car seats, the ones with lots of colors and rings and textures, and they crinkle and rattle and are meant to be chewed on. I never really saw the point of them when LL was little. He would watch them when they swung from his seat, but he never touched them, so I didn't understand why they bothered with the textures and noise makers, unless that was for the amusement of the adults who were trying to entertain the baby with the toy. But Kermit... wow, Kermit can't get enough of those toys! He swats at them, he pulls them, he rubs them against his cheek, he chews on them, he talks to them, he smushes them in his pudgy little hands and shakes them. When LL was little, I occasionally hung one from his car seat just to brighten it up a bit, but Kermit actually plays with the toys. Amazing!

When LL was around this age, he grew attached to a small burp cloth, and I had to rush and make him a new security blanket (the much-loved Froggie Blanket) to replace it, since that particular burp cloth wasn't safe to leave in his crib. This past month, Kermit started doing the same thing, so I made him his own Froggie Blanket equivalent, and he is already quite in love with it. (We have named it Beary Blanket, but we'll have to see if the name sticks.)

Kermit also loves to talk. He started loudly cooing during his third month, and apparently liked the reactions of those around him, because he now must join all conversations. And we've all heard him cry out "Mama!"

More specific posts about sleep, our daily routine with two kids, and family resemblances, are coming soon, along with an update on LL, who is now two and a half (!).

C-Section: The Ugly Side

This post is long long long, but I left a lot of details out of Kermit's birth story, and I need to get them written down somewhere I can read them later. (But, I didn't want them integrated with his birth if they didn't have to be, because ick! let's focus on the cute baby for that one!) Details like, in what ways did it matter that I didn't give birth vaginally? How was the c-section? Did they put everything back where it goes, or is my bladder in a subtly different place than it was before?

The answers are: Lots of ways. It sucked. Things definitely feel a bit scrambled in there.

More details? Yes, I do have more details! If you insist.

First, I'll just mention that the nurses at my hospital are clearly not used to dealing with women who do not want a c-section, despite a non-trivial number of women attempting VBACs at this hospital on a regular basis. I can't possibly be the only woman they've ever dealt with who wanted a vaginal birth but didn't get one. And yet every nurse greeted me with something along the lines of, "You're here for your scheduled c-section! You must be very excited to be having surgery today instead of going through all the hassle of a vaginal birth!" When the first person said this, I didn't respond, because my eyes filled with tears and I didn't trust myself to speak. With the second person, I informed her that I actually would prefer the hassle, thankyouverymuch, but it didn't end up being feasible for me. I'm not sure how I expected her to respond to this... probably something like, "Oh, I'm sorry it didn't work out. We'll do our best to make this experience as positive for you as we can." That would have been reassuring. Instead, she tried to convince me that this way would be so much easier and more convenient for me. Which was exactly why I was upset, so it was exactly the wrong thing to say. Anyway, that nurse must have made a note in my file ("Crazy woman wanted VBAC instead of the nice convenient surgery") because every other nurse who came into my room, even ones who were just dropping off linens, gave me a speech that started with, "So I understand that you're a little reluctant about your c-section today" and then proceeded to tell me why surgery was oh so very convenient. In a voice that very much implied that only a naive little girl would be reluctant to give birth surgically.

Blech.

I'm definitely not a granola hippie type person, and I've always shrugged off people who believe that giving birth in a hospital automatically means that you'll be steamrolled by the uncaring medical establishment, blah blah blah. That whole outlook on hospital births was nothing like my experience giving birth to LL -- I had a doctor who listened to me, provided me with well-researched information, and ultimately let me call the shots about my own care; I had supportive nurses who asked how I wanted to be treated with regards to labor assistance, and then followed through on my wishes; the default behavior at the hospital is that all babies room in with their mothers; fathers are considered on equal footing with mothers, and are thus not considered "guests," which means that they can always spend the night if they want to; it is assumed that all mothers will breast feed, and formula is never offered unless it is explicitly requested by the parents. Basically, everything that the anti-hospital-birth people complain about... none of it matched with my experience with LL. But hearing nurse after nurse try to convince me of the virtues of a c-section, when I very obviously did not want it... um, yeah, I get it now.

Anyway, once everything was set for the c-section, I managed to get myself into a good mental place where I just wanted to meet little Kermit, regardless of how it happened. The c-section was, ultimately, medically necessary, so let's just go ahead and do it. And as I mentioned in Kermit's birth story, my hospital actually does a lot of things to make it easier on c-section moms, so that they don't miss out on as much of the post-birth stuff. A lot of these polices were actually new since LL was born, so I was pleasantly surprised. For example, when LL was born, he was immediately whisked off to the nursery. The nurse held him up next to me for 10 seconds so that I could get a quick glimpse and S could snap a quick picture of me with him, and then I didn't see him for nearly an hour, during which he was weighed and examined and bathed and dressed and everything else they do during those first precious minutes. I hate the one photo I have of me with LL immediately after his birth. The nurse was holding him at an angle to get us both in the photo, but that meant that I couldn't actually see him at all. In the photo, I'm trying to smile for the photo, but it looks like a horrible grimace because I'm really attempting to crane my neck to see his face, which is exceedingly difficult to do while you're unable to move and someone two feet away is still holding your uterus outside of your body. This time around, I got to see him as he was being born. He was cleaned up ever so slightly, the bare necessity of stuff was done (apgar scores and very little else) and then he was brought immediately to my side, where I got to touch him and hold him and stroke his face for as long as I wanted. They didn't do anything else to him until after my surgery was over, so that I could take part. Fantastic improvement over LL's birth.

Before having this c-section, Dr. M had assured me that a lot of things would be better than LL's birth. Since this was a scheduled c-section, instead of an "OMG, after 23 hours of labor the baby is stuck like a big round peg in a much smaller pelvic opening and he's turning purple we have to get him out now" c-section, the surgery itself would be much easier. None of that "push the baby back out of the birth canal so we can reach him" stuff that made my recovery the first time oh-so-fun. None of the body trauma from the long labor and several hours of pushing. Easier surgery. Easier recovery. He promised.

To summarize: that was not my experience.

This c-section was definitely completely different than what I remember with LL, but not in a good way. The birth itself was very similar, but once the baby was out, things diverge tremendously. I remember feeling very little during the 30 minutes it took to close me up last time; I mostly remember being rather bored and wanting to get out of there so that I could see my baby. This time around, I was consumed with the terrible tugging and pulling going on at my lower half. It felt awful. It's hard to describe the sensation of your body being tugged and pulled in a million different directions, internally, while you're unable to move. I can't use the word "painful" because the spinal does block pain down there, but it was intensely uncomfortable and unsettling. I also started feeling dizzy, and out of the corner of my eye, I watched my own stats on the monitor to see my blood pressure dropping down down down.

The anesthesiologist offered to give me something to make me sleep through the rest of the surgery, but I declined, because I wanted to be completely alert as soon as they were done, so that I could nurse. A few minutes later, I started to experience horrible chest pain that got worse and worse. I panicked a bit because, um, what happened to not feeling any pain? The anesthesiologist added some other type of pain killer, which dulled it a bit (he promised it was referred pain, and not a heart attack, which is what it felt like) but it also made me even more dizzy, and my blood pressure continued to drop. The tugging and rummaging seemed to go on and on, as I repeatedly asked how many more layers they had to go. It really sucked. Which surprised me, because I expected the recovery to suck, but not the actual procedure. Over and over in my head was the thought that thank goodness Kermit was here and healthy, but this whole surgery thing was clearly a mistake. I just desperately wanted to be out of there.

When I finally got to recovery, all I wanted to do was to sit up and nurse Kermit. When they took my stats, though, they discovered that my blood pressure was still very very low, and my temperature was also low and continuing to drop. They would let me sit up a little, I would get very dizzy, and they would immediately lie me back down. Thus, my first nursing experience with Kermit involved me lying flat on my back with hot towels wrapped around my head in an effort to bring up my core body temperature. (It didn't work; when I left the recovery room two hours later, my body temp was still hovering near 95, which is a bit insane, and my blood pressure was barely double digits. In retrospect, I'm not sure how I was even conscious.)

I was in that condition for the rest of the day. My L&D nurse asked me what one thing she could do for me that would make my life better, and I said, "I want to get up and walk around!" Nope, not gonna happen. "How about at least letting me sit up?" And she looked at my stats, and smiled apologetically, and asked if there was anything she could do for me that wouldn't make me faint. (Side note: I'm lying in a bed with rails. Why does it matter if I faint? It's not like I'm going to fall into anything or bump my head, and I'm sure I'd come around again eventually. I'm kidding, but only barely.)

Anyway, the surgery sucked. I'm not a squeamish person; I can watch my own blood being drawn, and I have no fear of surgery or anesthesia or any of the rest of it. Yet the last 30 minutes or so of Kermit's c-section ended up being one of the more terrifying things I've ever been through, as the chest pain consumed me and my abdomen was pummeled from within and I thought I was going to pass out and my blood pressure dropped lower and lower. And the rest of that day, as I struggled to sit up despite continuing low blood pressure and low temperatures, also sucked.

The next morning, my stats were still low, but no longer in the scary range, and I was allowed to sit up and eat a little and get out of bed. After LL's birth, this was when things were just starting to suck, because the recovery from labor + surgery was long and hard. But I'd been promised that recovery this time around would be much easier, so part of me actually started feeling like maybe the worst was behind me. Except that my recovery was worse than last time, too, for unknown reasons. It does seem to have been faster -- I wasn't able to move around normally until 8 weeks last time, which meant two full months of no driving and no lifting things and trouble standing up or getting out of bed. This time around, I felt like I reached 85% recovery by the one-month mark, and I kind of ignored that last 15% and just returned to my life, so that was definitely an improvement. But that first month was much worse than last time. It's almost as if my two months of pain from last time was just intensified and shoved into a shorter period of time. Is that better and easier? Um.... not sure. I was definitely in a lot more pain for that entire month. But maybe it's just an indication that, last time, I got off easy.

I had my six weeks post-partum appointment last week, and I know that I'm definitely better now than I was at six weeks post-partum with LL, so I guess that's something. And the remaining effects from the surgery (loss of nerve sensitivity for several inches around the incision; intense pain on my lower left side when I do anything more strenuous than walk from the living room to the bathroom; extremely weak ab muscles that give out when I carry Kermit for more than five minutes) are apparently completely normal, and can be expected to continue for another 4-6 weeks.

So, overall, while I'm thrilled that Kermit is here and healthy (recent hospitalization for respiratory distress aside), and that I will eventually be completely healthy as well, I can't say that things went as I expected. And while I'm grateful that c-sections are an option -- having a c-section certainly saved both my life and LL's life two years ago -- I'm left wondering why the hell anyone would choose a surgical birth voluntarily. S and I haven't decided yet whether we will someday want to try to have a third child, but I hate beyond measure that my birth experience with Kermit is inevitably going to color that decision for us.

Kermit's Birth Story

I've obviously been distracted for a while now, what with the extra work of keeping my kids out of the hospital and stuff, but I didn't want to wait much longer to get Kermit's birth story written down. So here it is, in way too much detail, the story of Kermit's entry into the world.

We had a relatively normal morning, getting LL ready for the day. I had become ridiculously emotional the night before, and that continued into the morning. Every time I tried to talk to LL, I started crying. I'm honestly not even sure why. But I kept sitting down with him on my lap to try to explain to him what was going to be happening over the next few days, and every single time, I had to do it through tears. We'd spent the last two weeks having these conversations once or twice a day, where I would explain to him that very soon, Mommy and Daddy were going to go away for a few days, and he would get to stay home and play with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma would dress him and change his diapers and read to him and rock him and put him down for bed and feed him (even special treats like yogurt shakes and french fries!) and it would be tons of fun. And after a few days, Mommy and Daddy would come back home again, because even though Mommy and Daddy leave sometimes, Mommy and Daddy always come back home. Each time I explained this to him, he would nod his head and say that he understood, and I just hoped that after hearing it a dozen times, it would actually sink in. So, I gave him my speech one final time, through a few tears, and he nodded his head and patted my leg and asked if the baby was coming home. All good. After breakfast, my mom drove LL to Natasha's at more or less the normal time, and he waved and blew me kisses from the car as they drove away. S and I took a few minutes to finish packing up our stuff, and at 10:00, we left for the hospital.

After an emotionally tumultuous evening, I felt more and more calm the closer we got to the c-section. I still wasn't thrilled with how things were going, but I was slowly moving past the disappointment and focusing on the joy of finally meeting our little Kermit. We checked in at the hospital, got settled in an L&D room, and began all of the random things that you have to do to prepare for surgery. (Undress, sign forms, answer tons of questions in triplicate, start an IV.) The IV took several attempts by several people, and ultimately the anesthesiologist had to do it himself, and it took him two tries. One person remarked that it appeared that I did not have a circulatory system, though I assured her that I was fairly certain that I did. It reminded me of my ultrasound 3 weeks earlier, when the technician couldn't find my cervix. I had to reassure her, too, that I was fairly certain it was there, since the baby had not fallen out yet.

Eventually, S and I were left alone, as the IV pumped me full of fluids and we waited for the appointed time. I surprised myself by how calm I was by the time we moved to the operating room. Time to get the show on the road!

Getting the spinal was relatively easy, and I was shocked by how quickly it began to numb my legs. I literally felt the cold spread downwards as I slowly lost sensation. I wasn't quite prepared, though, for how much I was still able to feel. I seemed to recall my epidural at LL's birth blocking just about everything during the c-section -- even when I was warned to expect some pressure at the moment when they took him out, I only really noticed it because it moved my whole body a bit. This time, I spent the entire surgery completely aware that people were rummaging around inside of me. It wasn't painful exactly, but supremely uncomfortable and unsettling.

After 10 minutes or so, Dr. M announced that he was ready to get Kermit out. At my repeated insistent request, they lowered the curtain for me so that I could see him emerge, which was incredible. (I had asked Dr. M about this possibility several weeks ago, and he told me that it would be fine, but to remind him on the day of the c-section. I mentioned it to the anesthesiologist when he was talking to me about the spinal that morning, and he balked and said, "No way!" I sputtered a bit and tried to get him to discuss it with me, but finally just dropped it until Dr. M came into the operating room, at which point I brought it up yet again. Dr. M immediately said, "Sure, that's fine!" and told the anesthesiologist to be sure to lower the curtain at the appropriate time. Score one for speaking up for yourself!)

I didn't get to see LL until after he was washed and swaddled, so it was wonderful for me to be able to see Kermit while he was still attached to his umbilical cord, all naked and alien gray and covered in schmutz, hands clenched in angry fists and squawking in surprise. And at that moment, his method of birth didn't matter. Or rather, it mattered, but it wasn't the earth-shattering disappointment that it seemed the day before. I'm still sad that it happened this way, and I feel like I still need to mourn never getting the opportunity to progress naturally and give birth vaginally, but seeing my brand new son in his very first second of life did indeed heal the worst of the resentment.

Kermit was cleaned up ever so slightly, the bare necessity of stuff was done (apgar scores and very little else) and then he was brought immediately to my side. The nurse supported his body while lying his head on my chest, allowing me to watch him and kiss him and stroke his face with my hand and count his fingers for as long as I wanted. And S and Kermit and I got to spend quite a while staring at each other and murmuring over our perfect little baby. When Kermit was put back in his bassinet, it was only to go with S to my recovery room, where S got to bond with him undisturbed while they waited for my surgery to end. Only after I joined them in the recovery room did the nurses do the rest of the post-birth stuff like weighing and bathing, so that I could observe everything.

Meanwhile, Dr. M and his team were putting me back together. I'm going to skip over that part for now, because it sucked. I'll leave the sucky things for a different post.

When I got to recovery, I asked for Kermit to be unwrapped so that I could hold him on my chest skin to skin while he was still all new and alert, something that I never got to do with LL until an hour or so later. The nurse wanted to bathe him, but cheerfully agreed when I said that I would prefer to nurse him first. And so I got to cuddle my naked little Kermit on my chest and watch him root and twist his way to my breast, where he latched on almost immediately.

After that, we did the usual things you do post-birth. Snuggled Kermit. Called the relatives. Chose a little knit hat for him to wear in the hospital. Remarked about who he looks like (more S than me, but just barely) and what color his eyes are (steely gray) and the incredible quantity of hair (dark and curly, as expected).

The extra fun ending to the birth story: once we were all moved from recovery into the room on the maternity ward where we would be staying for the next several days, our newly assigned nurse smiled at the three of us and said, "All settled?" At which point, right on cue, we had an earthquake. Yes, an actual earthquake. I was on a wheeled hospital bed, so I thought that somebody had just kicked the bed really hard for no good reason, and I was a bit confused about why somebody would do something so mean to a woman who just had surgery, but then S looked around and asked if anyone else felt something, and we all realized what was going on. At the tender age of almost-exactly-three-hours old, Kermit experienced his first earthquake. A magnitude 4.1, for those of you keeping score at home. That number will either make you say, "Wow, that sounds big!" or "Wow, I'm surprised you felt it at all!" depending on whether you've ever lived around earthquakes and how well you understand logarithms.

Welcome to the world, Kermit! Life is full of surprises.

Home Again Home Again

Quick update: we're home, thank goodness. Kermit isn't completely out of the woods, but he was stable enough and on the road to recovery so that they discharged us from the hospital Saturday night. We had a follow-up with Dr. K on Sunday morning, where we briefly thought that she was going to re-admit him, but all is well. He's still a bit weak, but he's eating better and breathing a little easier. And the fever is gone. And his oxygen saturation is staying a bit more stable, though it's still lower than we would like. We're checking back in with Dr. K tomorrow, just to make sure that Kermit is headed in the right direction.

In a twist that would only be achieved by a newborn, Kermit began social smiling while in the hospital. I mean seriously, who smiles, much less for the first time, while in the hospital?

The decision we need to make now is what to do about our upcoming trip for S's sister's wedding. We had been planning to fly, but I'm starting to have concerns about trapping Kermit in a plane with 300 strangers and recirculated air for several hours. We could drive instead, but it's a 14 hour trip, and that's a long time to spend in a car with a toddler and a newborn. Dr. K says that Kermit will probably be well enough by then that we don't need to worry about flying. But nothing puts a mother's nerves on edge quite like several days in the hospital with a one-month-old.

Focus

Nothing quite like the feeling of finding out that you've been focusing on exactly the wrong things.

Last weekend, both my kids got sick. LL was a feverish toddler mess, but he had weathered colds before, and I figured this one wouldn't be any different. Kermit's symptoms were newer and more mild, yet he was the one I was concerned about. I knew the drill with toddler colds -- you bring them to the pediatrician, and then you listen to the lecture about how viruses just need to run their course, take them home, keep them hydrated, nothing else to be done. It almost always feels like a wasted trip. Kermit, however, was barely one month old. Surely a cold in a one-month-old deserves a bit more professional attention!

So Monday morning, I called and made an appointment for Kermit to see Dr. K. And as an afterthought, I checked with the advice nurse to see if maybe possibly it might be a good idea to bring in LL as well? I expected the "don't be a hyper-protective mother" speech, but instead the nurse rather pointedly mentioned that lying on a couch for four days without playing or eating isn't exactly normal behavior for a two-year-old, so yes, bring him along to the appointment.

When Dr. K entered the exam room, my speech to her went something like this: "Kermit has the sniffles, and he doesn't have a fever or anything, but he's coughing, and he's only four weeks old, and I'm really concerned about him. Also, LL has been a feverish mess for four days and counting, but I'm sure he'll be fine soon." And then she examined both of them, and said, "Sorry, he has pneumonia." And I said, "Oh my goodness, Kermit has pneumonia?!?!" And she gave me the oddest look in the world, and I'm paraphrasing here, but she said something along the lines of, "No, you dolt, I'm talking about LL! You know, the one who's really acting sick! Kermit just has a cold, and it'll run its course, keep him hydrated, call if it gets worse. But LL, goodness gracious, he's really sick!"

Anyway, I felt like an idiot, because the whole time that LL had been sick, I'd been focused on making sure that he didn't pass it to Kermit. And not only did I fail at that (as if there were any doubt that Kermit would catch LL's cold) but I had somehow totally glossed over how very sick LL was. I was completely focused on the wrong kid.

So, I spent the next several days obsessing over every detail of LL's recovery. Was his fever dropping? Was he drinking enough? Was he eating more? Exactly how much more active was he than he was the day before? On Wednesday morning, Dr. K called to check on the kids. And I gushed over how much better LL was compared to when she saw him on Monday. As for Kermit... well, he wasn't getting better, but he wasn't getting worse. You know how colds are, they need to run their course.

By Thursday morning, however, as I gleefully dressed LL to head to Natasha's because he was remarkably and gloriously better, I looked down at Kermit and realized that he hadn't really eaten much the night before. And he'd spit up massive amounts of milk at his last several feedings, even though he's generally not a spitty baby. And he had been fussing at every feeding since Wednesday afternoon. And he seemed to be sleeping more than usual. I'd told Dr. K on Wednesday morning that he wasn't getting any worse, but by Thursday morning, I had a sinking feeling that he actually was getting worse now, and maybe we should bring him back to be seen.

I made a follow-up appointment for Kermit for Thursday afternoon. When I made the appointment, I kind of thought (again) that I was doing the over-protective mother thing, but by the afternoon I was glad that we were going. Still, I felt a bit silly leaving the kid with pneumonia to fend for himself at daycare while I brought the kid with the run-of-the-mill cold back to the pediatrician.

Then again, Dr. K never once said this about LL, but she said it about Kermit on Thursday afternoon: "Sorry, but this baby can't go home with you today. He needs to get to the hospital. We're calling an ambulance to take him there. Right now."

For several days, I had obsessed about Kermit's cold and missed that LL had pneumonia. And I then over-compensated and fixated so much on getting LL over his pneumonia that I completely missed that Kermit had suddenly, very suddenly, gotten a heck of a lot worse. For the second time in one week, I was focused on the wrong kid.

I'm currently admitted to Children's Hospital with Kermit, while LL is at home with his grandmother. I totally didn't see it coming, but my toddler with pneumonia is at home without his mommy because, remarkably, he is not the sickest child I have. We think that Kermit has some sort of respiratory infection, probably RSV, but we don't know for sure quite yet. His oxygen levels keep dropping, so he's getting help breathing, which thankfully is giving him enough of a boost that he has also started eating more. We've been told that he will be here for at least two days, probably more. S keeps telling me that I should feel proud of myself for realizing that Kermit was getting worse and insisting that he be seen; apparently when I made the follow-up appointment, S thought I was being silly and that Kermit was just fine. And yet, I cannot shake the feeling that I'm failing miserably at the mommy-to-two-children thing, because I can apparently only pay attention to one of them at a time, and it always seems to be the wrong one.

The Good and the Bad

First, the good news:

The Packers won the Super Bowl! The Packers won the Super Bowl! The Packers won the Super Bowl! The smallest town with a professional sports team in the US has defeated the mighty Big City! The Lombardi Trophy is back in Title Town! Cheeseheads rule the earth!!!

Now, the bad news:

Our house has been hit with the plague. I mentioned that LL was feeling a bit sluggish and under the weather on Friday? He continued to spend 100% of his time with his feverish little body draped over me all day Saturday. And all day Sunday. After breaking out the animated movies Friday and Saturday, we switched to football on Sunday. This was absolutely a one-time-only, just-because-LL-was-sick sort of thing (definitely not something that I would have done under normal conditions, even with my Packers in the Super Bowl) but we watched eight hours of pre-game shows on Sunday. Eight hours! Do you know what people have to resort to in order to fill eight hours of pre-game? Let's interview every player on both teams, even people you've never heard of. Let's interview people who used to play for both teams but don't anymore. Let's interview people who have ever played in a Super Bowl. Let's discuss exactly how much of a jerk Ben Roethlisberger is, and whether anyone cares. Did you know that it's really cold in Dallas? Let's talk about that for a while. Here's the history of the cheesehead. Here's the history of the terrible towel. Did you know that the Packers coach grew up in Pittsburgh? Let's find out which team his former neighbors are cheering for! Did you know that Michael Douglas is cheering for Pittsburgh? Did you know that Catherine Zeta Jones is a huge Green Bay fan, because she really likes cheese? Did you know that John Madden, George W. Bush, and Cameron Diaz sat together at the Super Bowl? Does anyone who is not literally being held down against their will by a toddler actually care about all of this??? And then, when all eight hours of pre-game were over, we still had a full Super Bowl to watch. With commercials. All told, we watched 12 hours of football on Sunday. I am now officially footballed out.

Normally for LL, watching NFL games is a full-body sport. He runs when the players run. He falls down when they're tackled. He does all the referee hand motions. He yells, "Touchdown!" and "First down!" and "Go Pack!" But for this Super Bowl, he sat quietly on the couch with his head buried in a pillow. When the Packers scored a touchdown, we got a faint smile, but he didn't even have the energy to lift his arms for the signal. I convinced him to eat an Oreo cookie, and it was the only food he'd eaten since Friday. Really pathetic.

Also, by Sunday morning, both Kermit and I also had coughs, congestion, and slight fevers, so nobody was having very much fun. S was still healthy, so he was hiding out as far away from the rest of us as he could manage.

When nobody was any better Monday morning, we went to the pediatrician with both kids. Kermit has a run-of-the-mill cold. Except that he's barely one month old, and no cold is run-of-the-mill at that age. We're keeping a close eye on him.

LL's cold has progressed to pneumonia. And an ear infection. He's on antibiotics. We're trying to convince him that he needs both food and oxygen to survive, but he's not getting very much of either one right now.

I was told to provide LL with whatever he needs most (to sit in my lap, 24 hours a day) and to provide Kermit with whatever he needs most (to nurse every hour, 24 hours a day) and to be sure to get plenty of sleep so that I recover, too. Anybody notice how completely incompatible those things are?

And the kicker: the pediatrician suspected that this might not actually be a run-of-the-mill cold at all. She thought that it might be whooping cough. (Yes, LL and I are both vaccinated against it, but this particular vaccine is notoriously unreliable, so it was a very real possibility.) We were in panic mode until this morning, when we got the lab results that came up negative (thankfully). But if nobody's better by next week, our pediatrician wants to re-run the test, because it apparently has a high false negative rate.

But hey, at least the Packers won, right?

Trial by Feverish Fire

My mom has been staying with us and helping out since before Kermit was born. She's planning to stay until Kermit is 6 weeks old, since that is when I'll be able to lift LL again. She's been doing a lot of cooking and shopping for us, as well as helping a lot with LL. But she also promised to attend my nephew's birthday party this weekend, so she left on Thursday to go there, with plans to return to our house Sunday night. Thus, S and I would be on our own with both kids for four days, our first time ever.

The idea was for this to be a very light practice run of life with two kids. My mom prepared several meals before she left, another friend was planning to bring us dinner on Friday, and we had a small Super Bowl party planned for Sunday (Go Pack Go!) which would provide some extra hands and entertainment for LL. Still, we were a little nervous about being on our own, since we've gotten used to having my mom around to help.

Mom left Thursday morning, and the rest of Thursday went just fine. We got dinner on the table on time, and got both kids to bed with relative ease. S and I were actually feeling pretty good about ourselves! Until 1am or so, when LL woke up crying. S went to check on him to discover that he was burning up with fever. Great.......

All of Friday and Saturday have been spent trying to soothe a sick sick sick toddler while also trying desperately to keep him and his germs away from not-yet-one-month-old Kermit. For me, this has meant sitting on the couch holding LL and watching movies, then handing him off to S while I scrub myself raw to try to decontaminate myself before feeding Kermit, hoping that my breast milk has enough antibodies in it to help him to fight off the cold, then handing Kermit back to S so that I can go back to snuggling LL until Kermit's next feeding.

Before this illness, LL had seen exactly one movie in his entire life (I was heavily pregnant and exhausted and home alone with him, and it was the only way he would let me lie on the couch for 90 minutes). In the last two days, he has seen eight movies. Er, three movies, repeated several times. (Four viewings of Finding Nemo ("fish movie"), three Kiki's Delivery Service ("train movie"), and one Beauty and the Beast.) He insists on being in physical contact with me the entire time, alternating being in my lap, over my shoulder, and lying with his head on my legs. When I need to get up to feed Kermit, LL lies pathetically on the couch asking me when I'll be coming back to him. I swear I saw heat plumes rising from his feverish little body. (103.5 midday today, and that was after being dosed with Tylenol.) The only food I've gotten him to eat has been a yogurt shake that he sipped throughout the day, along with as much juice and water as I could force into him, because he's getting awfully dehydrated.

Luckily, Kermit seems happy being held all day by S. (If he were old enough to have a parent preference, I don't know what I'd do, because LL has been refusing all comfort from S and insisting on being held by me.) Unsurprisingly, I am now developing a cough and sore throat, which we're hoping will skip both Kermit and S. I'm a little fuzzy on the science, but my being sick means that there will be additional antibodies in my breast milk, which should provide additional protection for Kermit, right?

One particularly sad side effect of all of this is that we've had to cancel our Super Bowl party. The last time my Packers were in the Super Bowl, I watched the game in my dorm room and made all my friends chip in a few bucks for the meager snacks that I bought for the occasion (most of the food had been stolen from the dorm dining hall). In other words, I've been waiting a long, long time to host a real Super Bowl party featuring my Green Bay Packers. Instead, the four of us will be watching it quietly at home. If I can keep the coughing, sneezing, and feverish delirium to a minimum, it will hopefully still be a good time for all. In the mean time, we're all counting down the minutes until my mom gets back to make us a giant pot of matzo ball soup.

Go Pack!

Two Weeks?!?!

Wow, time really flies when you're on-the-clock 24 hours a day with both a newborn and a toddler!

I've been meaning to give some sort of update, and as usual, I put it off until I can write up the "full" update that I really want to write, which never happens, and thus nothing gets written. So, these here are some random thoughts that I wanted to get down, and I expect that there will be more random stream-of-consciousness-type posts over the next month as well. You do what you gotta do, you know? I still need to write up Kermit's birth story, too. Later. I promise.

Kermit:
He's an eating machine! This kiddo latched onto my breast on his very first try and never looked back. He's so loud gulping milk that it's kind of embarrassing. Babies are supposed to regain enough weight to be back up to birth weight by their two-week appointment; at Kermit's appointment, we discovered that he was a full pound above his birth weight, prompting our pediatrician to point at my breasts and ask if I'd opened a Dairy Queen in there. (S was so amused by the question that he has taken to calling me his Dairy Queen. My Wisconsin roots make it that much funnier for him.) When he's not eating, or asking to eat, or complaining that he's hungry again, Kermit is a very calm baby so far. And very snuggly. I'm very much enjoying all the newborn snuggles.

Also, not to jinx it or anything, but Kermit just might be a good luck charm for my Green Bay Packers, since they haven't lost a single game since Kermit was born. We have photos of Kermit and LL both wearing their Packers jerseys and appropriately sized cheeseheads, watching the NFC championship game, and there is much excitement around here for the Super Bowl. We normally host a Super Bowl party for our friends every year, and I've dreamed about being able to host one in which my Packers are playing, but I'm not sure if I can pull it off with a one-month-old....

Lots of family visited during Kermit's first week, through his bris at 8 days old. The bris went wonderfully, other than Kermit waking up during the naming part of the ceremony and deciding that he was hungry again, and then bawling loudly for the rest of the ceremony, until I could whisk him away to be fed. Yes, that's right, he stayed calm through the circumcision part, then freaked out during the part where he was just hanging out in Grandpa's arms listening to the rabbi. We had a much smaller turnout at the bris then we had at LL's, which was disappointing (for example, not a single friend or coworker of mine, from my job or from school, attended the bris) but I kind of saw it coming. Second kid and all, eh?

After the bris, things quieted down, and everyone except my mom left. She's been staying with us since, which has been awesome, because I don't think we'd be eating without her. Or rather, we'd be eating pizza for dinner every night. Late.

LL:
LL has been a little champ! He's very attentive and loving, showering Kermit with kisses, telling us when Kermit needs to eat (every single time he cries, apparently), bringing him blankets to keep him warm while he sleeps, rocking the bouncy chair when he fusses. If only the kisses weren't full on the mouth, and the blankets smothering Kermit's face. It's a little Of Mice and Men, if you know what I mean.

I'm not allowed to pick LL up until my 6 week appointment, which seems to be the hardest part for LL to deal with. I've explained to him that Mommy has an owie (he investigated it himself to see how bad it was; he found the incision quite fascinating) and that I can't pick him up or carry him until the owie gets better. Every day, he asks if the owie is better yet, and looks a little sad when I tell him no. And today, he forgot and jumped off a chair into my arms; I caught him, but it hurt like hell, and he could tell that I was in pain. When I put him down, he walked away, then returned a moment later to ask if my owie hurt, at which point he told me that he was sorry and he kissed my stomach to make it better. So I guess he understands the limitations fairly well.

He has also caught on shockingly fast to the new rhythms of our household. Every time Kermit cries, LL runs to me and says, "Oh Mama! Baby needs to eat! Open shirt! Open shirt!" And then he attempts to help me pull out a breast. We haven't really gone out with both kids yet, but I'm really looking forward to him doing that in public.

The toughest times for LL tend to be when he's hurt and when it's bedtime (he wants to snuggle on my lap, but I can't lift him into his crib, so he cries when I need to hand him over to Daddy). All compounded by the fact that he got his worst injury ever this past weekend, when he tried pulling his pajamas off a wooden hook wall-hanging thing and the whole thing fell off the wall and hit him in the face. I was right there when it happened, and he immediately buried his face deep into my shoulder and wailed in agony, while I held my breath and wondered exactly how much blood there was going to be once he pulled his face away from me. He ended up with a huge gash across the bridge of his nose, tons of swelling, and two black eyes. He is currently very proud of his injuries, though, and stops to admire himself in every mirror he passes, and recounts the story to everyone, since everybody has been asking him what in the world happened to his face. (I like to point at two-week-old Kermit, shrug, and just say, "All brothers fight, right?") LL is definitely more clingy than usual, and he's been acting uncharacteristically defiant towards the end of the day, but overall, things have been more smoother than I expected. (I say, confidently, after only two weeks....)

He's Here!

Our son, Kermit*, was born Friday, January 7, at 1:00pm, via completely predictable c-section. He weighed a modest 7 lbs 7 oz, he's 21" long, and he's the best eater in the world. Seriously, this kid cannot stop eating.

Everyone is doing well so far, though I still have my cough left over from the cold a few weeks ago, and fits of coughing immediately after abdominal surgery sucks more than I can possibly describe. We should be home sometime early next week, and I'll write up a full birth story then. For now, I'll just mention that Kermit's birth was so earth-shattering that it culminated in an earthquake. Literally. A small one, but the building moved, and S and two nurses and I all looked at each other in disbelief and asked, "Wow, was it just me, or did anyone else feel that?!?" at the same time. I've lived in earthquake territory for nearly a dozen years, and I've felt maybe 6 earthquakes total during that time. Yet one of them was the night S proposed to me, and another one was the week we found out that we were pregnant with LL. And now this one to herald in Kermit's birth. Nothing inflates your view of your own significance quite like the universe moving a planet to announce your major life changes.


* As with LL, I have decided not to actually include Kermit's name on the blog, but I'll leave enough clues that you can easily figure it out if you want to. For blog purposes, the name Kermit has grown on me quite a bit, so we'll stick with that for now. In real life, his name starts with a J, and means "dove" in Hebrew. The name comes from a prophet in the Torah known most notably for being eaten by a very large fish.