Sunday, January 18, 2015
Poppy Comes Home
Because it was January and the middle of flu season, the children were not allowed to come to the hospital to meet Ivy, so they had to wait until we came home Saturday morning. We were so excited to bring her to meet her siblings, all of whom adored her at first sight. Well, really, who had adored her for months beforehand. You can see in their faces that there's nothing but love for this sweet baby sister! (Thanks to our friends Jarom and Alyssa Hunter for watching the kiddos for us while Seth came to pick us up!)
An Angel Is Born
I was so ready to be done being pregnant by the time the new year rolled around. This pregnancy felt so much harder than the previous ones, although I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was the fourth time? Maybe because I was older (though still not old)? Maybe because I was so stressed out my body just couldn't handle it gracefully? My sickness was less - I only threw up 17 times, yes I actually counted - so that was an improvement. But I did have varicose veins, which I'd never experienced before, and wow those are painful.
Still, I was not at all looking forward to the experience of giving birth again. During this pregnancy, I finally accepted the reality that nothing I could do in the way of breathing, imagery, relaxation techniques, etc. would ever reduce the agony of childbirth, because apparently my body just doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, because of my last two harrowing and drug-free labors, I was terrified to go through it again and had many episodes of fears and tears during my pregnancy because I was sure I was going to die during the birth. I honestly did not see how I could live through it again! I was planning on having an epidural this time, but being my paranoid self, I was worried about going that route too. Obviously there was nothing I could do about it, and the due date arrived just the same.
Although I didn't want to go through the labor, I definitely did want to have my sweet baby out of me. Poppy was due January 20, and as usual I was hoping she would decide to come earlier, but more than that I was hoping that just for once I could go into labor on my own. I've been induced in one way or another the past three times, after trying many recommended methods of inducing labor naturally -- walking a ton, walking uphill, spicy food, etc. -- and even though those have never ever worked, still I had to try something! So late in my pregnancy I started bouncing gently on our indoor trampoline regularly, and around week 38-39 I started drinking three cups of raspberry leaf tea every day. And lo and behold, I actually dilated to a two before I went into labor! That in itself was a miracle. It was even more miraculous when, around 1:30 in the afternoon on Thursday Jan 23, I started having a combination of contractions/pain in my abdomen. Of course at that time I was at the furthest point out on my walk around Mission Bay with Eli, and the pain started while he was playing at the playground. I continued having pain on my walk back and while we were going to school to pick up the kids. The whole drive home (about thirty minutes) I had pain regularly 4-5 minutes apart, they were excruciating even at this stage.
I called Seth to notify him that this maybe could be something, so to get ready to come home if I still had them after taking a hot shower, and sure enough, they kept coming. So he came home, and I remember I fixed pasta with broccoli and parmesan for the kids for dinner, all the while doubling over in agony every few minutes. When Seth finally got home and they were 2 minutes apart, I thought I was going to die but was trying to keep it together for the kids, while waiting for Carmen to come stay with them (bless her!) Around 6 p.m. I said goodnight to the kids and went out to wait in agony next to the car so we could leave the second she pulled up. They were so close together and so incredibly painful, it was an awful ride to the hospital. but we finally made it there and it took fifteen minutes just to get from the parking lot to L&D because I had to pause every time I had a contraction (every minute!). I was beyond ready for my epidural. The midwife checking me in suggested that it might be over fast enough to not need the epidural, and I remember saying I didn't care if it was only ten more minutes, I WANTED that epidural! After all that time and squeezing I was only dilated to a 4 so I knew I had a long way to go. It felt like an eternity before the anesthesiologist got there, but boy, was it a relief to have that epidural. It's amazing to me how my mental clarity increased once the pain was under control. I hadn't realized how foggy I had been during the thirty minutes at the hospital before the epidural, but once it kicked in, I realized I didn't even recognize the various people who had been in there -- I couldn't even identify the anesthesiologist. Crazy how intense labor is to be able to create such a mental block.
Anyway, the epidural kicked in, the intensity of the labor increased, the broccoli dinner came up (that's why I remember what I fixed), and finally the moment we'd all been waiting for arrived and our little Ivy Elisabeth slipped into the world, at 9:49 p.m.. And she was an absolute darling. I'd known she was tiny all along because even at full-term, I hadn't felt "stuffed" as is usually the case during the last weeks of pregnancy -- no baby kicking up in my ribs, no fullness and pressure in my pelvis -- but I wasn't prepared for just how tiny she was. She was 19 1/4" and weighed in at slightly under 6 lbs 3 ounces and was just as tiny and sweet as could be. No matter how agonizing the pains of childbirth are, there truly is nothing as incredibly amazing and sweet as the moment of birth, when that tiny, slippery creature emerges and is placed in your arms and makes her first tiny cries. That is an experience I could repeat a million times without ever tiring of it. It is truly a miracle. Especially with babies as beautiful as ours.
Still, I was not at all looking forward to the experience of giving birth again. During this pregnancy, I finally accepted the reality that nothing I could do in the way of breathing, imagery, relaxation techniques, etc. would ever reduce the agony of childbirth, because apparently my body just doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, because of my last two harrowing and drug-free labors, I was terrified to go through it again and had many episodes of fears and tears during my pregnancy because I was sure I was going to die during the birth. I honestly did not see how I could live through it again! I was planning on having an epidural this time, but being my paranoid self, I was worried about going that route too. Obviously there was nothing I could do about it, and the due date arrived just the same.
Although I didn't want to go through the labor, I definitely did want to have my sweet baby out of me. Poppy was due January 20, and as usual I was hoping she would decide to come earlier, but more than that I was hoping that just for once I could go into labor on my own. I've been induced in one way or another the past three times, after trying many recommended methods of inducing labor naturally -- walking a ton, walking uphill, spicy food, etc. -- and even though those have never ever worked, still I had to try something! So late in my pregnancy I started bouncing gently on our indoor trampoline regularly, and around week 38-39 I started drinking three cups of raspberry leaf tea every day. And lo and behold, I actually dilated to a two before I went into labor! That in itself was a miracle. It was even more miraculous when, around 1:30 in the afternoon on Thursday Jan 23, I started having a combination of contractions/pain in my abdomen. Of course at that time I was at the furthest point out on my walk around Mission Bay with Eli, and the pain started while he was playing at the playground. I continued having pain on my walk back and while we were going to school to pick up the kids. The whole drive home (about thirty minutes) I had pain regularly 4-5 minutes apart, they were excruciating even at this stage.
I called Seth to notify him that this maybe could be something, so to get ready to come home if I still had them after taking a hot shower, and sure enough, they kept coming. So he came home, and I remember I fixed pasta with broccoli and parmesan for the kids for dinner, all the while doubling over in agony every few minutes. When Seth finally got home and they were 2 minutes apart, I thought I was going to die but was trying to keep it together for the kids, while waiting for Carmen to come stay with them (bless her!) Around 6 p.m. I said goodnight to the kids and went out to wait in agony next to the car so we could leave the second she pulled up. They were so close together and so incredibly painful, it was an awful ride to the hospital. but we finally made it there and it took fifteen minutes just to get from the parking lot to L&D because I had to pause every time I had a contraction (every minute!). I was beyond ready for my epidural. The midwife checking me in suggested that it might be over fast enough to not need the epidural, and I remember saying I didn't care if it was only ten more minutes, I WANTED that epidural! After all that time and squeezing I was only dilated to a 4 so I knew I had a long way to go. It felt like an eternity before the anesthesiologist got there, but boy, was it a relief to have that epidural. It's amazing to me how my mental clarity increased once the pain was under control. I hadn't realized how foggy I had been during the thirty minutes at the hospital before the epidural, but once it kicked in, I realized I didn't even recognize the various people who had been in there -- I couldn't even identify the anesthesiologist. Crazy how intense labor is to be able to create such a mental block.
Anyway, the epidural kicked in, the intensity of the labor increased, the broccoli dinner came up (that's why I remember what I fixed), and finally the moment we'd all been waiting for arrived and our little Ivy Elisabeth slipped into the world, at 9:49 p.m.. And she was an absolute darling. I'd known she was tiny all along because even at full-term, I hadn't felt "stuffed" as is usually the case during the last weeks of pregnancy -- no baby kicking up in my ribs, no fullness and pressure in my pelvis -- but I wasn't prepared for just how tiny she was. She was 19 1/4" and weighed in at slightly under 6 lbs 3 ounces and was just as tiny and sweet as could be. No matter how agonizing the pains of childbirth are, there truly is nothing as incredibly amazing and sweet as the moment of birth, when that tiny, slippery creature emerges and is placed in your arms and makes her first tiny cries. That is an experience I could repeat a million times without ever tiring of it. It is truly a miracle. Especially with babies as beautiful as ours.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
A New Year! Pregnancy Pictures, In Anticipation of the Upcoming Birth; Observation From a 3-year-old
When we had our twenty week ultrasound and found out Poppy was a girl (which I already knew anyway), it took them an hour and a half to perform the whole thing because of faulty equipment. To make up for it, they did some 3D images for free. It was the first time we had had one for any baby, and it was pretty neat! She was the cutest little alien I've ever seen.
One day Eli was speculating about how they would open my stomach and take the baby out. I told him that they actually would not open my stomach to get her out, then gave a vague explanation to how she would make her exit. He promptly squatted down in front of me with a look of concentration on his face, then popped up and announced, "Poppy's gonna squish!"
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Christmas 2013: Our First Tree
Probably the most exciting thing about moving into our house was that it was the first time we would EVER have a full-size Christmas tree. And real one at that! Until last year we'd only had a foot-and-a-half tall artificial tree. We only even got that because it was given to us by a special Secret Santa (our bishop's family) in our BYU days when Seth was the EQP in the 201st ward. That was when Hannah was a year old, and we used it every holiday until last year. I think we'll continue using it on the side when we have space for two trees, because it's a special reminder of the days when we had so little but life was so simple.
We continued our traditions of gingerbread house making, gumdrop-cookie baking, visiting the temple grounds, seeing the Christmas lights on Garrison, and having a Shepherd's dinner on Christmas Eve (this time withe a tiny teddy bear in the role of Baby Jesus). That is always such a special evening. I think there are just no words to describe the feeling of Christmas with small children. There's just so much anticipation and magic and Christmas spirit (until someone picks a fight or throws a tantrum about something, but at least for a few moments in there somewhere, it's magical).
I'm sure our family looked like goons to the Santa we visited at Sea World's Snow World. Most kids, I expect, sit on Santa's lap and give him fairly common gift requests in relatively general terms, but our kids are a little unique. Joshua asked for a jetpack. Eli told Santa he wanted cereal. ("A stereo?" Santa asked. "No no, he said cereal" the slightly embarrassed parents clarified.) Hannah plopped herself right on Santa's lap and gave this discourse: "I want a Little Miracles Zebra Gift Set. It has a big blanket, a big stuffed zebra, and a little stuffed zebra attached to a little blanket. It's at Costco and it costs $14." Santa looked like he thought we were all crazy at that point as he used his foot to shove us down the slide. (Not really, but that's the image that came to mind as we left the workshop).
Another special gift came to us at Christmastime: the landscaping in our backyard! We hired a man from our previous ward, Morgan Goff, to do the work for us. Eli loved watching brother Goff work and would work alongside him any chance he got through the whole process. It was such a wonderful climax of the project see my whole family out there helping to lay the much-anticipated sod in our backyard on Christmas Eve.
We continued our traditions of gingerbread house making, gumdrop-cookie baking, visiting the temple grounds, seeing the Christmas lights on Garrison, and having a Shepherd's dinner on Christmas Eve (this time withe a tiny teddy bear in the role of Baby Jesus). That is always such a special evening. I think there are just no words to describe the feeling of Christmas with small children. There's just so much anticipation and magic and Christmas spirit (until someone picks a fight or throws a tantrum about something, but at least for a few moments in there somewhere, it's magical).
I'm sure our family looked like goons to the Santa we visited at Sea World's Snow World. Most kids, I expect, sit on Santa's lap and give him fairly common gift requests in relatively general terms, but our kids are a little unique. Joshua asked for a jetpack. Eli told Santa he wanted cereal. ("A stereo?" Santa asked. "No no, he said cereal" the slightly embarrassed parents clarified.) Hannah plopped herself right on Santa's lap and gave this discourse: "I want a Little Miracles Zebra Gift Set. It has a big blanket, a big stuffed zebra, and a little stuffed zebra attached to a little blanket. It's at Costco and it costs $14." Santa looked like he thought we were all crazy at that point as he used his foot to shove us down the slide. (Not really, but that's the image that came to mind as we left the workshop).
Another special gift came to us at Christmastime: the landscaping in our backyard! We hired a man from our previous ward, Morgan Goff, to do the work for us. Eli loved watching brother Goff work and would work alongside him any chance he got through the whole process. It was such a wonderful climax of the project see my whole family out there helping to lay the much-anticipated sod in our backyard on Christmas Eve.
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