YES WE DID

i cried. peanut goes, 'don't cry! we WON!' and then i cried harder.

i don't have words yet. i knew a change was gonna come..

tangled branches of a family tree

so, we're exploring the idea that 'nammah' is mommy's mommy, just like mommy is pnuts mommy. so she's like, who's daddy's mommy? and i say, gram is daddy's mommy. and she says, well, then, who's daddy's daddy's mommy? and i said, that would be daddy's gram, your great grandma. she said or, my fablious (fabulous) grandma! or maybe my just not bad grandma.

potato. potahto.

signs you watch too much CNN

So, I'm in the computer room, working. Peanut was in the living room, watching TV. Gene was out getting dinner. Tivo switched the channel to tape the debate, and Peanut comes tearassing into the office going MOMMY! JOHN MCCAIN AND BARACK OBAMA TURNED OFF MY TEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yeah. i know.

welcome niblette! (a birth story of epic proportions)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boodafli/sets/72157606971201691/





(some gooey pix in that link--might trigger).

so. friday, my ctx were down to 2 mins apart, lasting btween 50 and 70 seconds each. i didn't feel pushy, but my mom and gene were both having heart attacks, b/c of the 'timing' thing. whatevs, i agree to go to the hospital and get checked, but tell them if i'm not at least 5 cm, i'm bringing my monkey ass home.

we go, they put me on a monitor (standard for VBAC here) and since i'm now on my back, ctx space back out to 5 or so mins apart. still strong and regular, tho.

eventually, my doc gets there, checks, and i'm only 2 cm.

she says baby looks good tho, and i decide to go home. i was already scheduled for an NST/BPP on saturday anyway, b/c that was the 41 week mark. so she said keep that appt.

go home, sit on birth ball. ctx come back, faster, but each time i check, there's no progress.

get up early, go to the chiro. he does some websters, and spends a ton of time 'opening' the pelvis. ctx stay steady, but increase in pain intensity.

head to the hospital for the tests. the NST is still picture perfect reactive, so they send us to the u/s tech. she's just supposed to measure fluid levels, but agrees to show us the baby if she can get a good view, since niblette wasn't cooperative during the 20 week u/s. so, she shows us the butt, and the belly, and the ribs, and one hand/arm, and the feet and legs. and then she's like, 'she might be too far down for a good face shot, but we'll try.' she succeeded, and there was niblette. with her arm over her head.

at least now i know why the 3 weeks of contractions never resulted in meaninful labor.

so at that point, i'm like, okay. the chances are, i *could* deliver her vaginally. they'd prolly have to break her arm or her shoulder or something, but i could do it. is it worth it to me to do that? no.

so while we're going back over to talk to the doc, i tell gene that we're going to go ahead and have the section, and he's like, are you sure there's no way to get her to move? and i was like, i don't think so. and i don't want to risk it. i mean, if her arm doesn't move--and we go for vaginal, and end up with a section anyway, how badly have we injured her arm?

get back to the doc, and she's like, 'well. your NST and AFI are fine. what do you want to do?' and i'm like, i want the section! and she's like, what?! since when? and i'm like, since her hand is all the way over her head! (i guess when they just check fluid levels, they don't note positions in the report, cuz she didn't know that. ) so my choices were that night, or wait till wed.

i'm not one of those people who's a big fan of being pregnant, so we went with saturday night. b/c i'd had breakfast, we had to wait till 6pm that evening to get the show on the road, so she let us go home for a few hours, which was nice.

so we get to the hospital, that evening, and get the show on the road. the plan is, the doc will tell gene right before she delivers niblette, so he can stand up and take pix. so, she says 'get ready!' and he stands up, and i'm waiting for the flash to go off.

and waiting.

and waiting.

and waiting.

and then i hear the doc say 'get the vacuum!' and i'm like, dude. it's a giant hole. wtf do you need a vacuum for? i don't say any of that outloud tho. and then i hear her say 'push push push' and i DO say 'are you talking to me? cuz that's not funny, yo' outloud. but it turns out she was talking to the three people who were putting their full bodyweight into pushing niblette out of my uterus. so i hear this hssssssssss pop! hsssssssssss pop! and it turns out that because niblette has a full head of hair, the vacuum keeps popping off. oy. so this went on for what seemed like EVER, altho i'm sure it was only 2 or 3 minutes. and then finally, i hear hsssssssssssssssss pop! SCREAMING crying!

oh she was pissed coming out. but out she came, via an EXTREMELY assisted c-section. 9 pounds, 2 ounces. 21 inches long. and...a 15.5 inch head.

anyway, the doc milked the cord before she cut it, (cuz she knew we wanted to let it finish pulsating, and while they can't do that in the OR, she did everything she could to keep it as close to that as possible.) and then she cut it super long so the ped could finish milking it, and so that gene could make the final, closer cut. she held niblette up over the curtain, and let me touch her face before she handed her off to the ped, and after they did the initial exam and stuff, they gave her to gene, and the drug guy took pix of the three of us together, and we were able to spend about 5 minutes together, before gene went with her to the nursery. he got to go IN the nursery this time, and he gave her her first bath, and stayed with her for the 2 hours of stitching up/recovery time i had. she was born at 7:54, and i had her in my arms by 10. (which is a far cry from the six hours between when i had peanut, and met her.)

she's nursing like a champ, and has already blown through the colostrum and brought my milk in. (srsly. she latched on at 10:30 saturday night, and unlatched around noon on sunday.)

she's sleeping well, eating well, and overall, making me fall head over heels in love everytime i look at her.

i feel like i've been run over by a bus. you can see the beginnings of some bruising where they pushed on my stomach, and taking a deep breath and laughing are still things i can only do right after the percocet kicks in, but it's okay.

with peanut's section, i felt like i had let the doctor make a really important decision FOR me. with this one, i feel like i made the decision, with the doctors help. in so much as i wanted the VBAC because i thought it would bring a little peace or closure or whatever, to the regrets i have over not being a bigger advocate for peanut--this section did the same thing, i think. because i know that, in this case, i totally made the right decision.

am i sad that i missed the wriggly gooey newborn on my belly sensation? yes. but other than the exit method, my doctor and the team at the hospital totally followed my birth plan 100%. (altho, after her enthusiastic delivery, i did opt for the vitamin K shot, because she had lots of little bruises on her head from the vacuum.)

so. i'm happy with this, all the way around.

belly shot

0522080347
Originally uploaded by boodafli

7 months.

what you can learn on the internet

it's interesting. i google all sorts of stuff (in fact, i might even be addicted to the google.) from baby soap ingredients, to amino acids for treating depression. i figure, i've learned more in a few years on the internet, than i did in most of my formal schoolin'.

since i had peanut, i've gotten involved in a few 'mommy boards', like babycenter, and mothering. (mostly mothering these days. more hippies, and a much wider selection of information.)

from mothering, i learned about researching vaccinations, not circumcising boys, breastfeeding till they're old enough to tell you it tastes like strawberries, and not beating the shit out of your kid. there, i found a community that gave voice to those things i was thinking, but never seeing put into practice in my social circle (since i was the first to get knocked up, that makes sense.)

anyway, after peanut was about 9 or 10 months old, i finally ventured out beyond the 'baby' forums. i discovered a 'dreadhead' tribe, and lurked there pretty intensely until i decided to lock. (and so now i'm getting to my point.)

today, i did a deep clean on my locks, soaking them in apple cider vinegar and baking soda, tea tree oil and lemon juice. (this gets any shampoo build up out, which is nice, since even 'residue free' shampoo leaves some reside behind.) anyway, i've done this 3 or 4 times over the lifetime of my dreds, but i've never bothered to write that shit down. so i ventured back into the dready tribe, to find the proportions to make the soak.

and here's what i learned on the internet today.

i learned that some significant others are assholes, and won't 'let' their partners have dreadlocks. or, they keep quiet during the locking process, and then make passive agressive snarky remarks about the immature locks.

i learned that even though sometimes, i want to strangle gene for being too nice (esp. when it comes to his job), i am really, truely fortunate, because i get to spend the rest of my life with someone who's biggest 'flaw', is being a sweetheart. because not only does he say nice things about my hair, he helps me maintain it, and he did all the backcombing and stuff to get them started.

so, on the internet, i learned one more reason why i love my babydaddy.

damn hippies.

so, spring has sprung, and all that. we're in the process of pulling our yard together, and raking up all the leaves from over the fall/winter. (and there are a LOT since we have like, 10 oak trees.) rather than taking all these leaves to the dump, and taking up more than our fair share of landfill, we've decided to start a compost heap. we figure, since we've got half an acre, if we do it at the back of our property, it's not a huge project, we can just, literally, make a heap. i learned today, that, in addition to fruits, veggies, and coffee, you can compost paper towels, shredded black and white newspaper, toilet paper tubes, tea bags, leather watch straps, and all sorts of other totally random stuff. which is awesome. i mean, we use a dishcloth, mostly, but for grody bits, like chicken juice, i do revert to the papertowels for wiping stuff up. so, it's nice to know that i can do that, and then compost the paper towel, thus keeping it out of the landfill. woohoo!

and my mom is back to doing some gardening, so today, she and peanut planted 3 new azalea bushes out front. peanut is turning out to have quite the green thumb. i'm sure this makes my mom happy, since it totally skipped a generation. (altho, to that end, my cacti from last mothers day aren't dead yet, and we got some more over the course of the year, plus my aloe is actually, like, bigger, and even needed to be repotted. yay!)

and in the process of learning about compost, i discovered rainbarrels. now, the commercial ones seem absurdley expensive. it seems to me, that if i can find a plastic barrel, like those old batter barrels, with a lid, then we could get a plastic shower drain thingy, drill a hole in the lid, fasten the shower drain to it, and put a spigot down at the bottom of the barrel. we've got left over caulking from the birdbath, so i'm betting we could do the whole thing for less than like, 30 bucks. anyway, the idea, is that you put the bucket under your downspout, and when it rains, the water is caught in the barrel, and then you use that for watering your plants, washing your car, watering the compost heap, washing off outdoor furniture, or whatever. since we're actually, like, using the yard and stuff, i can see the benefit of having some non-hose water to do stuff with. i like my 17 dollar water bill, and i'm all about keeping it that way, right?

plus, this last week, i went through peanuts toys. cuz, really? she had a TON of shit. i seperated out the baby toys that we can reuse with niblette, and then purged THREE giant green garbage bags of toys and books. the salvation army is going to need a whole corner, i think. the interesting thing, is now that she has less stuff, she plays more. aaaaaaand, she's better at cleaning up without step-by-step instructions now. no more 'pick up the elephant. put it in the basket.' now she knows she's got a snuggly toy basket, and a hard toy basket, and a blocks basket. and she puts stuff away where it goes! hurrah! (she does still make me play bananaphone while she cleans, tho. and so i still want to rip my ears off and stick them in a blender. but at least her room is clean.)

and, round of applause, i'm caught up on my laundry! (thanks mom!) i moved the uncomfortable-while-pregnant clothes out of rotation.

oh! and, gene's mom LOVED her flowerpots. which, now that i type that, i don't think i blogged that project. for mothers day, peanut painted some flowerpots (and we decoupaged one, but i'm attached to it, since it was her first decoupage, so i kept that one) and we went to lowes and she picked out the flowers she wanted to send to her gram. we're supposed to be going to visit them in june, so maybe she'll get to help plant them.

all in all, i'm feeling the crunchy love vibes. (and i think i'm nesting. but shh.)

so now, i leave you with a random assortment of pictures, focusing mainly on yard work, and flowerpot creation. but some cuteness has been added for good measure. cuz, who can resist that grin?