The Birth of The Tyke

So, he's finally here! The labor was only 8 hours long from start to finish and everything went very well.
I went to my midwife appointment on Tuesday morning (December 30th) and Peggy said it was time to think about doing some natural induction methods since I was 2 weeks past due and we were pretty sure on the dates.
At around noon Kim (the assistant midwife) came over and helped me go through the various things they do to stimulate labor. This included some homeopathic medicines, herbal tinctures, Castor oil, belly massage and a breast pump. This part wasn't much fun because you're taking these very nasty herbs every half an hour and then the Castor oil kicks in which isn't much fun at all. It was nice just hanging out with Kim and she really helped me stay on track with things which did get things going. She left around 3:30 and checked me just before she went. I wasn't dilated at all but there had been some "softening."
My mom and Pudding, who had been at the park for most of the afternoon, got back shortly after Kim left and I was starting to have light contractions and running to the bathroom all the time. Castor oil really does what they say it does. Matt got home around 4:30 and right around then I was starting to think this could actually be it. We'd had so many starts and stops with labor this time around that I was not really sure I should believe it. I called my doula Tara to see what she thought. She said she'd come by after she'd fed her kids and gotten them settled for the night.
Meanwhile I sat down to knit on our big chair with Dilbert there. We would chat between contractions and he would rub my belly to keep them going. I kept a heating pad on my breasts because Kim had said that that would sometimes help stimulate things and I was feeling cold all the time so it just felt cozy to me. During a contraction Dilbert would stop rubbing my belly and I would look in his eyes. Things were not very intense yet but I would have to think about staying relaxed and focus on my breathing. Dilbert was a big help because he didn't look worried once, that was a huge thing for me. He just looked so confident and calm that it calmed me down.
Dilbert had to head out for a while to get some prescription filled. His sinus infection was kicking his butt. I stayed in the chair knitting for a little while. Whenever a contraction hit I would make eye contact with a silly little ornament on my Christmas tree. Oddly enough, it helped.
Tara got there around 7 or so and things were starting to pick up. When Dilbert got back, we made the decision to bring Pudding to our friend Jenn's house for the night. Dilbert packed Pudding off to Jenn's house so she could have a sleep over with her buddy K. I sang her her baby song just before she left, it was kindof a bitter sweet moment because it was the last time I saw her as my only child.
After Pudding left, things started really getting down to business. I started to have to make noise through the peak of a contraction and we moved up to my room with just me, Tara and my mom. During a contraction Tara would rub my leggs and mom my shoulders to help me stay relaxed. I started really wanting Dilbert to be there and somewhere around this time we called Peggy to come too. Dilbert got there first and I leaned on him for a few contractions. Then we tried laying down under the covers so that Dilbert could hold my belly. I remember the heat from his hands feeling really good and it didn't work very well when anyone else did it.
Kim got there pretty quickly followed by Peggy and Desiree. They got everything set up and said they would get out of our way if I wanted them too. I told them I'd rather have them there, "lets keep the party going " is I think what I said.
Shortly after that I got hot all of the sudden. Tara ripped off the wool socks she'd put on me earlier and Dilbert helped me off with the silly yellow hoodie that I'd been wearing. I was pretty frantic to get them off. Soon the Castor oil kicked in (again) and Dilbert helped me to the bathroom and stayed with me because I was having pretty intense contractions and didn't want to be alone. That was a new phase of our marriage right there.
I stayed in there for a while because I just didn't want to get up. My mom said that it was great to see how Dilbert and I worked together through this part because I was really starting to loose it. I kept saying that I didn't want to do it anymore and that it hurt, I don't like it. Dilbert would tell me to look at him and tell me that I was doing great and that I was doing it and that it would be done soon. That would usually calm me down enough to stop screaming.
For a little while Kim came in because they needed to check the babies heart tones and she did the same thing for me. As good as she did, it was nicer with Dilbert because I could pull on him and not worry about pulling him over. I don't know how long I was in the bathroom but it must have been a while. After a bit the midwives said they should check me since we hadn't done that since Kim had been here earlier. At 11:05 ( they read the chart entry later) I was at 7-8 cm dilation.
The midwives got the birth stool set up (not really a stool, just a big metal frame that you perch on) and I moved over there.
This I remember being the hardest part. I was still whining my way through contractions, sometimes yelling, sometimes just saying, "I don't like this." When I got on the stool though everything felt even more intense and I started feeling like my body was pushing even though I wasn't trying to. Peggy kept checking and said that I shouldn't push yet but I simply couldn't help it. For a few contractions I kept the pushing to a minimum because I would pant my way through them but pushing was still happening though I don't think I told Peggy that. I was sortof roaring through contractions now and they were right on top of each other. I would yell as loud as I could and still wish I could go louder.
Finally at 11:30 they said I could push for real so I stopped panting and just let things go. The contractions spaced out some but they were so hard when they came that I didn't notice. One last big push and out he came with a big splash of water all over the midwives. That last sentence makes it sound easy but it was anything but, I seriously thought in the moment that natural childbirth was a stupid idea and the epidural was the way to go. However, I changed my mind very quickly because then he was there I could still feel my legs and everyone was telling me how good I'd done and that I hadn't torn much at all. I walked (assisted by several people) over to my own bed and got in while holding my baby whose cord was still intact. I laid down in bed and the midwives came over the check me out and massage the uterus (no fun). I discovered that I had a boy, no one told me that, it was mine to discover. The Tyke didn't seem much interested in nursing but he didn't cry much, just enough to let us know he was ok. We got him to latch on a little to help get the placenta out. That seemed to take a long time and I had to push really hard. When the placenta finally came out, I could see why it was so hard to get out, it was huge, bigger than the baby. The midwives said that when your nutrition is really good you get a big placenta like that and that it's very good for the baby. They told me I should be really proud of a placenta that big. It weighed nearly as much as the baby himself. The Tyke weighed in at 9 lbs 10 oz!
That was pretty much it. Peggy, Kim and Desiree tucked us in and headed out after fixing things up and Tara headed home to her family. My mom went downstairs and Dilbert, The Tyke and I snuggled into our own bed. Other than feeling sore and whatnot, I'm in good shape and The Tyke is doing so well. I definitely recommend home birth because the whole thing was so much more peaceful and I never remember feeling uncomfortable, people came into my space, I didn't have to go to theirs. It was good.

Big freakin week

Ok, so we're in the new house! Horay! It is perfect and I love it and I really don't miss the old place at all. We'd outgrown that house so long ago that I was starting to loath it by the end there.
We really did pull off one for the record books with this settlement and move here. On the 14th of November I woke up thinking that I'd be having this baby in Arlington and we'd hear about the house sometime later. That afternoon we got word that the approval on the short sale would come through on Monday.
On Monday we got the written approval and I spent hours on the phone setting up the settlement ending with a mad dash starting around 4pm calling up an old colleague I'd worked with back in my Real Estate days and begging him to turn around a settlement in just over a week. We managed to schedule settlement for the 25th and my colleague came through as did my lender, both of whom were fabulous. We had 5 business days to pull of this deal and it actually got done despite my DH being out of town for the majority of that time. We moved in the 29th and cleaned out the old place on the 30th and haven't looked back since.
In the course of 3 weeks I went from having resigned myself to having 2 kids in that tiny little house (just under 800 sq feet) to now living in the house that we've been dreaming about for so long.
We're just about all set up for the birth now which is pretty exciting especially since the last two days my body has apparently been "warming up," (i.e. having contractions that mysteriously stop after a little while). I know from the last time around that this is perfectly fine and totally normal but it does mess with your head a little. I get all ready to have this baby, I call my folks that need calling and get my ducks in a row just in case this is really it, and then it isn't. Oh well.
My midwife believes that it will probably be the next couple of days that will really get this baby going. We will see I guess. I'm hoping that "Oscar" at least holds off until tomorrow evening. I'd like to have one more day to get things done before going into labor. Wish me luck!

Your Tax Dollars At Work

So last week DH and I tried to play hardball with the government/IndyMac Bank. We told them they had a week to accept our offer on a short sale before we lowered the offer price. For a full week I made call after call after call to responsible parties at the bank and heard no response. Finally on Monday we lowered our offer as promised because the house simply was not worth as much to us as it was a few weeks ago. The next Friday, we heard that they had finished reviewing the contract and that we will have approval for the short sale on Monday.
This whole situation bugs me for a variety of reasons. Not that I'm not greatful to be getting the house we want at a great price, I know I could have bigger things to be griping about in this economy. However, we gave them all kinds of oppertunities to accept our offer at a higher price within a time that was convenient for us. Now, even though we're saving some money, we have to move during the holidays with a baby due any day. It makes things a little sticky for us. Not to mention the fact that all those folks at IndyMac just gyped the government out of $10,000 becasue they couldn't get their act together a few days earlier. Oy!
All that asside, I'm excited to be moving to our new house and have a chance to settle in hopefully before the baby comes. The house is really great and we love the location and schools so there is a lot of positive stuff here. There will be a lot more space for people to visit (a guest room!!!!) which is one of the things that we've really been wanting to offer our family. We've been really lucky that we found this place at a time when we can afford it. So, despite the bad timing of things, I'm glad it's happening at all.

What I believe

In the interest of full disclosure you should know that I am a conservative. No, I'm not demonstrating in front of abortion clinics and I don't think that gay marriage is the end of the institution as we know it. I don't agree with the craziness that many in the Right wing of politics have come up with but in general I agree with the conservative line of thought more often than not.
I just came across this on a blog not too long ago and it seriously disturbed me. If you want to read the full description of this you can go ahead and read the other blog but here's the bit that really bugged me.
Certain folks in congress are starting to chat about a second bill of rights to include most of the following.

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

Now, many of these things are things that most people want for themselves so it's not a hard sell to consider them as rights. However when you consider it your right to have a job or your right to own a home what incentive to you have to work for those particular bits of life. My husband and I have worked really hard and sacrificed many things to achieve the kind of life that we want. We don't consider a nice house a right, we consider it something to be achieved and want to pass on that work ethic to our children. Life will not be handed to you by your government, you have to do the work, no one will do it for you. So, if the folks in congress can come up with a "manifesto" of sorts I figure I am entitled to do the same, here is mine.

I believe that America is the land of equal opportunity, not of equal results. What I do with that opportunity is my business.

I believe that I have the right to an education but again, what I do with that education is my business.

I believe that I have the right to pay for as much housing as I can work for regardless of my age, race, gender or other qualities.

I believe that it is my right to pay for what health care I feel I need and not to pay for what I feel I don't need. For this reason, I don't believe that government has any business getting involved in health care issues other than outlawing things that are harmful to vast majorities of the population.

I'm very sorry to get all kinds of political on this space but a week away from an election and things like "redistribution of wealth" are being brought up but not in a bad way and this scares the hell out of me. Do we really want to live in a society where all you have to do is show up and the government will just take care of you? Do we know what the costs of that sort of thing are and are we really willing to pay them? It's not so long ago that we saw the failure of societies like this, do we really think that we can do it better? And do we really want to try?

Bad vibes

My darling nerd has a very manly love of action movies and thriller type flicks. We are currently on the couch watching "The Kingdom" which (if you haven't had the pleasure) is a FBI anti-terrorism flick complete with innocent victims getting blown to bits, brave agents being tortured and scary bad guys doing unspeakable things to people who look a lot like me.
I am not of the school of thought that believes that anything you see during pregnancy will affect your baby but as I write this now from the safety of my bedroom, I know these sort of images affect me. I also know that seeing images like these leave me terrified for months. I saw "I am Legend" shortly after I found out I was pregnant and occasionally still have nightmares about zombies. I know this about myself and I don't want my baby catching my frightened vibes. That's right, I said vibes.
I am not a hippy but I do believe that the things that you feel can be transferred to the people around you and most definitely to the person being gestated inside of you.

Other things I've learned recently

Beware all you squeamish types out there, this has to do with actually human body functions that tend to gross out the uninitiated so reader beware.
I've been reading a lot about Childbirth lately and there's a lot out there that's a lot different than what you'd see on Discovery health channel or TLC. I'm mad about it quite frankly. Not that DHC or TLC have any responsibility to me to educate me on childbirth. I'm angry that so many women are so uneducated about what there bodies are capable of.
I am not totally anti-doctor. I know many people who are but I am not inherently one of them. My wild one (2 and a half now) has been vaccinated, takes medicine when she has a cold and I don't hesitate to call our pediatrician when she's running a nasty fever at 2am. However, when it comes to any health issue, especially something as life altering as childbirth, I firmly believe it is up to the patient to know what the heck is going on and not rely solely on the Doctors advise. Doctors are people, fallible people. They do not know everything and they do not know everything about my body.
The experience of birthing a baby is far more than a medical event. It is a spiritual and emotional event on par with your wedding, graduation and every major life event all rolled into one. You are responsible for eveyrthing that happens to that child up to that point. They are in you and are your sole responsibility. Then, as the natural process happens, they become their own person, right in front of your eyes. Suddenly you don't do everything for them. They start taking over some functions that you previously did for them. It's all a metaphore for the journey of parenthood in genral. Through struggle comes further independence. The sooner a parent learns that lesson, the more adaptable they are to the challenges of parenthood.
When the doctors come in and interrupt the process by telling you that your body isn't big enough to pass the baby that you made, it isn't competent to handle the struggle of labor, it isn't strong enough to push the baby out and they have to come in and "help" with a vaccuum or forceps; they take away that lesson from you, they take away the experience and they take away the power that comes with that.
If Doctors instead told women that they were big/compenent/strong enough to handle the process that eveolution has prepared us for then maybe women wouldn't be so terrified of the things their body do. Maybe they wouldn't be so scared of the natural process and maybe they would be able to relax and let it happen instead of trying to fight against what their body is supposed to do.
What we ultimatly take away from women with all these interventions that have become so rampant with birth is the power that is inheritantly ours. The one thing that only women can do is give birth. It is ours alone. If your doctor is pressuring you to take steps to "help your body out" or making you doubt your own capabilities, go find yourself a good midwife and trust that your body knows what to do.
Yes, birth is an intense and sometimes painful (that's right I said sometimes, not all women experience pain in birth. Some even get off on it, literally) experience. However, it is what our bodies are built for. We are the product of millions of years of evolution of the female system. We are the most advanced baby-having machines out there, don't let anyone take that away from you.

Too busy knitting to write

Oy, it's been a busy summer. So sorry for the long silence. But, big news! Last time I wrote I was not but I am no, most obviously knocked up. In fact I am at 31 weeks gestation (out of 40 weeks for the uninitiated). So far things have gone very well, I am huge but not so huge that I can't move yet so, bonus.
I have been busy stock piling various baby things for the impending arrival. Most recently I finished a pair of baby mittens connected by an i-cord to each other. They are super cute and the pattern took about 10 minutes to knit (Exaggerating of course). I also finished a pair of matching baby socks.
For Mama I just completed a pair of plain old stockinette socks that I love. I used my Jitterbug sock yarn which I also LOVE!!!! Totally fun to knit with and delicious. Love the colors too.
I also completed the February Lady Sweater but I didn't do very well on that one. It's too big through the shoulder and yolk which made it too big in the arms, bust and back. Other than that It was a nice project to knit, I just messed it up. This was my first adult size sweater and a good project to work on. Pretty easy to memorize the lace pattern so it traveled well for a sweater.
Things I would add to this pattern to make it a little easier

• use stitch markers between each repeat of the lace pattern. The pattern never says to but its a good idea, I tried for a while without and had to rip back a few inches. No fun.
• Knit the arms separately and find a way to add them later. It's a pain in the butt to knit in the round with the whole sweater needing to go around as well.
• When knitting the yolk, I think it would be worth it to occasionally thread some waste yarn through all the live stitches and measure the thing around your intended recipient. It's a pain but after my experience with the shoulders/arms/bust all being too large because I kept the yolk going too far.
  

I'm sure there have been other things completed but I can't think of them all now. On the needles now I have a really beautiful silk scarf, a baby sweater that's done all in one piece with short rows and lots and lots of tiny little Christmas Stockings.

I've learned a fun new technique this fall. The two socks on one needle thing is great. I did the jitterbug socks, the baby socks and the baby mittens with this method and it goes so quickly. It totally fixes the issue of one-sock-syndrome. Lots of fun. I definitely recommend you give it a try.