Good morning!

Is there a way you can synchronize your kids so that if they both get up in the middle of the night, they at least get up at the same time? (No? Someone should get on that.) Mark O is a pretty good sleeper, however he is only an 8 pound human so his need to eat every few hours is understandable. Inconvenient for my REM cycle, but understandable nonetheless. Laurel has many excuses for waking up, often creative and hilarious. A few nights ago, it was not enough pillows (she had four, and wanted six. Sorry, no, we can't accommodate that request, Laurel.) On Saturday night, she fell asleep in the car on our way home from my aunt and uncle's birthday party. Around 2am, when I was nursing the baby in the rocking chair, she came marching into our room with her entourage of stuffed animals and proceded to tuck them into bed....on my side! Then she said to me, "Sorry, mom, you're going to have to sleep in my room, there's no space for you here." She was still in her party dress and sparkly tights, with disheveled hair, so it made for a particularly entertaining scene. She mimics my catch phrases now..."Here's the deal, mom...." and the lays out why she thinks she should get not just one pink M&M for going on the toilet in the middle of the night, but an entire packet. Despite the fact that she's been potty trained for half a year and isn't going to pee her pants anyway...M&Ms or not.

Obviously, with these sort of antics, I'm really cheerful in the mornings now. Ahem.

This is why children have learned to be especially cute in the morning. It's a survival mechanism to make you forget how many times they woke you up over the previous 8 hours.

Erp

"Erp" is what Mark Oliver says when he's faking a burp. "Meh" is what he says the rest of the time. He makes a lot of funny grunting noises and furrows his brow at us. This makes him look more like a disgruntled old man than a new baby and it cracks me up every time. Laurel translates for us. "He wants some milk." "His feet are cold." "He wants to learn how to walk." "He wants M&Ms."

He's 4 weeks old and growing out of newborn sized clothing. His tiny hats don't fit anymore. Laurel was never a chubby baby, and I don't imagine that he will be either, but his legs are filling out a little bit. He continues to be a very easy going baby. I can put him in the Moby wrap when we go out, or he is satisfied to sleep in his car seat. He gets a little fussy in the evening, but calms down immediately when we swaddle him. He really likes to suck on a pacifier and has taken a bottle from my mom.

I am eager to get out of the house and take some walks in the woods with him. Laurel needs the exercise, too. We've been cooped up this winter. Normally the weather doesn't stop us, but the combination of recovering from childbirth and time constraints with 2 working parents have kept us inside or using our car a lot over the past two months. We're trying to figure out how to make this work....jobs and child care and family time and money and balance. It's going to take patience and really good communication, but I think we'll figure it out.

Post-Partum Brilliance

I had the brilliant idea to stop by Target on our way to pick up M from work last week. Real quick, I said to myself. I needed some type of healthy, but not too messy, food to give Laurel as a snack. And a pair of shoes. I had just noticed when I picked her up at daycare that the soles of her shoes were literally falling off. And while you can be forgiven for a lot of things when you've just had a baby, I didn't want to get the reputation around the 'hood that we don't take care of our kids.

Or maybe it was the post-partum hormones. Who knows? I just needed to get her a pair of shoes. Urgently.

Before we get out of the car, I tell her that she needs to listen to me and cannot run away and that we can't get a shopping cart. She tells me that she wants cake. I should have known at that point that she was going to drive a hard bargain once we were inside. Girl knows how to negotiate. It's been a long time since I've had any real physical control of Laurel...I've actually seen her worm her way out of the five point harness in her carseat. She's like Houdini. So, I was going to have to rely on wits and bribery.

We go into Target and actually, it turns out fine. Laurel ended up with lace-up, pink, sparkly, Hello Kitty shoes that basically represent everything she currently wants out of life. They will probably last all of two weeks, but hopefully we can make it to a real shoe store before then. Mark Oliver, of course, slept through the entire excursion. I convinced her to eat a banana instead of cake. She only laid down on the ground once. (By the way, does anyone else's kid do this? Lie or sit down and somehow stiffen their bodies so that they are impossible to move? It's like trying to break up a protest.)

But I cannot tell you how many people approached me while we were in the store. Mostly older women who said encouraging words to me with a hint of nostalgia in their voices. I remember those days, they smiled.

So. Yes. Two kids is a lot more than one kid. Life is a little crazy. I feel kind of like we take a huge breath and then dive under water...when we are submerged, we have no idea what the rest of you are doing. And then, we come up for air and remember that the world exists and lots of people have kids and it will all be ok.

The New Sunday

I wake up to this.

"Mom! Dad! I think it is morning! Let me check."

She scrambles up on to our bed, narrowly missing stepping on my face, and lifts the blackout shade to peek out the window.

"Yup. It's day. It's morning. Time to get up! Mom! Dad! Baby boy is breathing! He is moving! He wants milk! Mom! Go and get him! Is it a school day? Can we go to the plant museum? Can I have a popsicle for breakfast? Ok, maybe we should sleep a little more."

She bounces down under the covers and curls up next to me, blonde hair spilling over my pillow. Her dark eyelashes flutter as her eyes open and close. The cuddling doesn't last long. Soon she is standing over Mark Oliver's crib, grabbing his toes and adjusting his blanket, until he is also awake. I crawl out of bed and lift him up. He looks at me through one open eye and something of a scowl on his face. The morning - every morning - is a whirlwind of chatter and making plans and arguing about what to wear or when to use the bathroom. It has been this way for a while, but now it must be punctuated by nursing the baby and diaper changes.

M and Laurel go off to the hair salon. Laurel has an appointment to get her bangs trimmed. She desperately wants to get a piece of it dyed pink or purple. I'm left alone with a sleeping baby and the New York Times. I eat oatmeal. I think about getting dressed and then think better of it. My brain is foggy from getting up twice. I remember that I'll feel this way for a while...five or six months at least, and maybe more. I'll get used to it, and then one day, this phase will pass.

For now, we're trying to figure out the new rhythm. You get that kid dressed, I'll feed this one. You cook dinner and I'll pack lunches. You sleep for an extra hour and I'll entertain the kids. Leaving the house requires precise timing and cooperation from all parties. We are late to everything. The laundry is never done. But still, easing into this life with two kids feels good and right.

How to Treat a New Mom

I am so grateful for the love that has surrounded our family during the last few weeks. From the meals that arrived on our door step to the well wishes sent from afar, every day I had a reminder that Mark Oliver was born not just to us, but to this whole network of people...friends, family, neighbors, colleagues. People that love us, and by extension, love him.

I thought that if I avoided a c-section this time, I'd be back on my feet in a couple of days. But as it happened, I needed a solid 2 weeks of bedrest to recover. I'm finally starting to feel like myself again and looking forward to getting back into a normal routine (even if the new normal means being awake at odd hours during the day and night).

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do to help a family out. Here is my list of the best things people did for us, and what I hope to pass along to others in the future.

1. Send a card. A baby is a cause for celebration! Plus, after I had been peed on twice in an hour, it was lovely to open the mail and see a cute greeting card reminding me how lucky we are to have this newborn in our house.
2. Drop off a meal. I've been especially touched at how considerate people are of my gluten-free thing. With a 3 year old in the house, it was so much easier to not have to worry about cooking and to have minimal clean up. If you aren't sure if they need food, you can always drop off a frozen dish, so they can pull something out of the freezer when needed. (Include a list of ingredients and directions for heating.)
3. If you plan a visit, offer to stop at the grocery store on the way. Or maybe just stop and pick up some fruit, or crackers and cheese or granola bars. New moms eat lots of snacks, especially when they are breastfeeding.
4. I looked out the other night and noticed my neighbor shoveling our walk. In the summer, you could mow the grass. We have very neighborly neighbors, so this sort of thing is commonplace, but I think it's an especially nice gesture to a family with a new baby.
5. Drop off some magazines. My friend just brought me a stack of New Yorkers. Nursing an infant takes up a lot of time and it is nice to have a diversion. Plus it helps with the feeling of isolation.
6. When you visit, don't stay too long. And wash your hands. Don't come at all if you're sick.
7. Bring something for the siblings. (Maybe a dvd or some kind of quiet game to play.) Or the dad. (Beer.)
8. Wait. The first 2 weeks are this blissful period where the newborn is usually not too fussy and the new mom often has help from her parents or in-laws. But when regular life resumes, sometimes that's when it gets tough. If you miss the initial rush, don't fear, all of the above would be appreciated a month or two later.

Gluten Free - for everyone?

The New York Times just ran a story on gluten sensitivity. Different from both celiac and wheat allergy, gluten sensitivity is being looked at by doctors and researchers more closely because of the large numbers of people who claim anecdotal health benefits from following a gluten free diet.

Like me.

Last year, I got really sick. After multiple ultrasounds, a colonoscopy, an endoscopy and a biopsy of my small intestine, I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I lost a lot of weight, got terrible acne, suffered migraines and sinus infections that landed me in the ER, and had every kind of bowel symptom you can imagine. In short, I was a pretty miserable mess. I looked, and felt, like crap.

I ended up on a gluten free diet after following this elimination diet. When I hit the "challenge phase" I noticed a return of my symptoms when I reintroduced gluten. I've made a concerted effort to avoid gluten since then, although sometimes it sneaks in. I can usually tell because my skin breaks out and I get some GI symptoms.

One of the things the article discusses is the use of "gluten free" foods, and how they may not be the most nutritious, mainly because they have less fiber. You may have noticed this label popping up in the grocery store all over the place. Rice Chex, for instance, has always been gluten free and makes a fantastic substitute for bread crumbs. Gluten free breads that actually taste like bread are pretty widely available (usually sold in the freezer section, I like Udi's the best). Trader Joe's has a wide variety of cheap gluten free pasta.

However, one of the changes in my diet that may have helped me to become healthier is that I increased  the amount of vegetables I was eating. Instead of toast with my egg, I made a sweet potato. Instead of pasta side dishes, I ate steamed vegetables or a big salad. Or both. When we have a lot of kale or spinach from our CSA I drink lots of green smoothies.

We've been experimenting with gluten free flour blends and can make some pretty outstanding cupcakes, muffins and waffles. However, if you eat a lot of bread, pasta and baked goods, and you simply replace your glutenous food with GF products you will 1) Spend LOTS of money and 2) probably not be healthier.

There's not yet a blood test you can take to see if you have a gluten sensitivity. Doctors urge patients to rule out celiac disease before trying a gluten free diet, since the tests for celiac only work accurately when the patient is actually consuming gluten.

I suspect that modern, genetically modified varieties of wheat might be to blame for this epidemic. Or it could be the carb-happy diet of the modern American.

I don't care if this is a fad, if celebrities are using it to lose weight, or if there's no current medical research to support it. I'm sticking to my GF ways for the time being.

What happens after....

We got good news at the pediatrician today. Mark Oliver is weighing in at a mighty 6 pounds 9 ounces, which is one ounce more than his birth weight. It is normal for babies to lose a bit of weight in their first days and when we left the hospital last week, he was just under 6 pounds. When you are breastfeeding, you don't really know how much milk a baby is drinking, so one of the ways to make sure they are getting enough is to weigh them frequently. It was especially reassuring because this is one chill baby. He sleeps about 20 hours a day and I often have to wake him up to feed him. And he is so tiny! My friend Sarah dropped off a couple of premie sized sleepers because he was swimming in the newborn stuff.

I am so grateful to be having an easy time with breastfeeding. Because my butt really hurts. I don't want to get too graphic here, but basically Mark O was pulled out with the medical equivalent of a pair of salad tongs. And then I got a million stitches. And the labor bruised my tailbone. I didn't quite realize how serious they were about 2 weeks of bedrest until I went to the doctor today and they offered a refill of Percocet. Yes, please.

Basically it hurts to sit, walk, laugh, or cough. I'm supposed to stay in bed, lying down. That's pretty easy when you have a really chill newborn who is a champion at breastfeeding and sleeping. It's pretty challenging when you also have a three year old who was well prepared for the addition of a new family member, but was not expecting her mommy to be unable to get her a snack or give her a bath. This means that M is responsible for keeping us all fed, hydrated, and in clean clothes. And entertained. Don't forget entertained. Thank goodness for Netflix and the 8,000 episodes of Diego you can watch on demand. We are blessed to have family and friends who show up with food and to play with Laurel and remind us that there is a world outside of Eat Sleep Pee Poo.

Alas, a virus has struck poor M, Laurel's first round of antibiotics did not rid her of strep throat, and I'm generally useless at everything other than nursing Mark O. Laundry periodically piles up. We run out of diaper wipes. We forget to feed Rosie the Cat and she gets mad that she has to leave her basement lair to remind us. (I'm not sure Rosie has yet realized there is a fourth human in the house, but boy is she going to be irked when she finds that out.)

In other words, life goes on. We do what we can to keep up. Every day there are sweet moments of the four of us piled into bed together, or Laurel bringing Mark Oliver something to read. Every day there are frustrating moments when everyone is cranky.

And that's what happens after you have a baby.

And then it happened....

Last weekend, I hoped to have a baby. Contractions came irregularly. I slept a lot. And then Laurel got sick, and I was distracted by that, and the weekend came and went. I took her to the doctor and it turned out she had strep throat. I started a new set of lesson plans for work, while she dozed in her bed and watched Diego on Netflix. My friend, Leah, had predicted the 23rd, but I wasn't feeling optimistic about it. Until, that is, I woke up at 4:30am on the 23rd, ravenous for my customary early-morning bowl of cereal. I had several contractions in bed and they felt different somehow. While I was sitting at the dining room table with my bowl of Chex, my water broke. I thought about what to do, and decided to wake up M. In retrospect, I might have let him sleep a little longer. But he was very excited and immediately set about getting the neighbor to come and watch Laurel and calling my mom and making coffee. Because of my VBAC status, I knew the midwife would tell us to come in for monitoring, but I also knew there wasn't a huge rush, since I wasn't in active labor yet. When we finally left home around 7:30, we decided to stop for some breakfast and went to the very empty Eat n Park in Squirrel Hill. We attempted to walk around a bit outside, but the wind chill was below 0 and we gave up on that quickly. When we got to the hospital, I had to go through the whole strip-down, pee-in-a-cup routine and they hooked me up to a monitor. They confirmed that my water broke and that I wasn't in active labor. We discussed getting some pitocin to get things started. That's when the first of the heart decels showed up on the baby's monitor. Decels sometimes mean something and sometimes don't, but in my case, they were exercising a lot of caution because it's often the first sign of a uterine rupture. The consulting OB said no pitocin and to check in and wait for a few hours to see if anything happened.

We spent a few hours chilling in the Labor and Delivery room. The midwife told us she would come back around 1. M was coding something and I was goofing around on Pinterest. Then around 10:30 am I started to feel real contractions. By 11:30, they were intense and frequent. At first I was up and about. M helped to rub my back and hold me. I asked for the yoga ball and the telemetric monitoring belt so that I could move around a little more, but they started having trouble keeping the baby's heart on the monitor and there were more decels and they made me get in bed and lie on my side. I found this to be a most unpleasant position for managing pain and I started to lose it pretty quickly. I was sweating like crazy and thinking, there is no way I can do this for the next 24 hours (Laurel's labor was very long, so I was imagining a time frame like that). The midwife finally came back and checked my progress and declared that I was at 6cm. Contractions were coming fast and furiously and we tried again to do some other positions, but the baby's heart rate kept going down, and they started to roll me back and forth from side to side in the bed.

The last 45 minutes is something of a blur. I demanded an epidural if I had to stay in bed. My contractions were literally on top of each other as the anesthesiologist was trying to explain every bullet on a very lengthy informed consent document, running from one side of the bed to the other as they rolled me back and forth. I felt an uncontrollable urge to push, which the labor and delivery nurse was trying to get me to stop because the baby's heart rate was slowing down so much. There were many people in the room, my blood pressure plummeted, and then there were hands all over my body taking my pulse in my wrists and neck and ankles (it was in the 30s). They put an oxygen mask on my face. Somebody said, should we just roll her down into the operating room and wait for the OB there. People started to unhook IV bags. It would have been scary, except I was all dizzy from having no blood pressure, so I wasn't thinking about much at all.

And then the doctor arrived. Finally. Our OB reminds me of a television version of an OB. Older, distinguished, makes corny jokes. He told everyone to calm down. He checked me again and I was fully dilated. The baby's heart rate was cranked up high, and I could hear it slow down with every contraction, as the midwife and nurse looked nervously at the screen. He said, "We're going to do this old school." I didn't care what that meant, I was just relieved to not be having another c-section. And that's how Mark Oliver came into this world. Pulled gently out of me with a pair of forceps. He cried immediately and they put him on my chest and the NICU people took a look at him and then disappeared. And slowly people started to leave the room until it was just M and me and our son. Megan arrived with my gluten free pizza and brownie. She was supposed to be another labor support person, but the whole thing happened too fast.

Mark Oliver was very alert and nursed immediately and I felt amazing and it was only 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

And that's how we had a baby.

And then there was a dance party....

The morning seemed particularly dark today. The days are supposed to be inching longer as spring approaches, but it's still January and 6 am is still very early. We ignored the alarms and woke up slow, scrolling through the New York Times on my phone from bed, waiting to hear Laurel stir. A cup of coffee for M and rooibos tea for me. A "ba-waffle" for Laurel, with plenty of jam. Lots and lots of oranges. Laurel shouted from dream-land on and off all night, but seemed to wake up refreshed. She got to wear her favorite skirt, and the fight over brushing her teeth was less dramatic than usual. For some reason, she suddenly hates the taste of virtually all toothpaste, even the sweet children's brand. I found something to wear that actually fits, good since I have two meetings to attend today.

M and Laurel set out for school and work. She blows kisses enthusiastically while I wave from inside. Yesterday she snuck a harmonica into her lunchbox when we were not looking, so I frisked her before she left. ("Only one teacher laughed, Mama. Other teachers took it away.")

And while we got ready there was a dance party. Are you reading from your office? Close the door right now, hit play, and move your body. I guarantee you will feel better after.

Nap Gamble and Other Parenting Adventures

M reads scary Norse myths to Laurel every night. "Mips," she calls them. I have a hard time following the stories myself, so I'm not sure what she's getting out of it, but it's a welcome change from Thomas the Tank Engine, and she listens in rapt attention.

Laurel did many things on purpose to piss me off today. I'm sure of it. I would say that 99% of the time I can figure out a behavior for a kid and it means something...a need they are trying to meet, or perhaps they are simply solving a problem in a way that doesn't make sense to us and it looks like a misbehavior. But there's the 1% of the time when the kid is actually looking at you, eyes all twinkly and daring, and you can tell...they just want to get your goat. For their own entertainment.

It started with stripping off all of her clothes and rubbing her butt on the couch cushions. I was able to stop her before she dumped out the paint water and paintbrushes. But while I was cleaning up, she busted into the pantry and stole a box of cheddar bunnies 10 minutes before dinner and then shoved them in great handfuls into her mouth while I chased her around the house. And by chase, I mean shuffle, because I am nine months pregnant and very slow and rather wide.

On Sunday, we had a delightful day at Phipps Conservatory. So delightful that we pressed our luck a bit and ate at the cafe and then went to the library to get some books. By the time we got home, Laurel was glassy eyed and whiny. She took a very long nap, which resulted in a very delayed bedtime and we were reminded that messing with naps and bedtimes usually has consequences that last many days and may or may not be worth it. When we were on the self-employed train, we just slept in and all was fine the next day. But now we have to stick to a 6 am alarm.

I can't do much of anything right now without wondering what it will be like with another kid in the mix. Despite all the antics tonight, I was able to throw together a delicious, well-balanced dinner (roasted cauliflower and sundried tomatoes over GF pasta and a salad). How will I keep Laurel entertained and clothed during dinner prep, while I'm nursing a newborn? We will probably just eat cheddar bunnies for dinner.