This is very long and full of touchy subjects.  It’s hard to say anything about pregnancy, birth, or babies without creating a better/worse system of judgment.  That’s not my intention – I hope none of my stuff causes anyone else’s stuff any unhappiness.

I had a textbook pregnancy.  At every appointment all the numbers lined up and checked out, and I was less and less concerned with the possibility of necessary interventions.  My “birth plan” was really a list of preferences.   I wanted a healthy baby, of course.  Beyond that, I wanted to avoid a Cesarean section.  I was also hoping to forgo an epidural because the idea of it absolutely terrified me.  Still does.  I’ve been explaining my terror by comparing it to a fear of spiders.  You know it won’t actually hurt you, but rational thought doesn’t fix the problem.  I also didn’t love the idea of being immobile and numb, but that seemed like a minor thing compared to the fear.  I had a minor grudge against pitocin, thinking that anything to enhance the contractions would make the epidural more attractive.  Spoiler: yes.

So I’d done some reading about intervention-free childbirth and tried to prepare myself to work through contractions using movement, positioning, pressure points, and even slightly sketchy self-hypnosis.  I wasn’t sure any of that would really work, but it seemed worth a try.  I’d joked with DJ that at the point I asked for an epidural he would know I really wanted one.

On Friday night the first strong contraction woke me at 11:14.  I didn’t know it yet, but the luck for my lucky baby was wearing thin.  Or maybe hers was fine and mine was back to its bad old ways, that seems more likely.  DJ woke up, sleeping lightly enough to notice the change in my breathing.  We excitedly timed contractions for an hour but I wasn’t sure it was the real thing.  They just didn’t hurt enough.  I finished packing my hospital bag and took a shower, and while drying my hair the contractions didn’t even make me wince.  DJ wanted to go to the hospital anyway but I was worried about being sent home.  They still didn’t hurt enough.  Still, I took the last set of pictures.  39 weeks and 3 days.  I made DJ wait while I ate oatmeal, thinking of all the advice I’d heard about not going to the hospital hungry.  I thought he was going to lose his mind with impatience.  That’s not something you see from him often.  I admit that I enjoyed it.

At two a.m. we were in the car under a dark snowglobe.  This is like a movie, I told DJ.  Middle of the night.  Snow.  Baby.  Giddy almost-parents.

At the hospital they handed me a gown and the nurses got to work.  I was in labor and progressing well.  I was encouraged – maybe I could avoid the epidural after all.  But my blood pressure was sky high and they were worried.  I cracked that it was because I was so excited.  They weren’t amused, it doesn’t really work like that.  A short while later I was attached to every monitor possible, immobile and unable to raise my arms to brush my hair back.  My blood pressure stayed on the ceiling.  I asked how I would go to the bathroom with all the monitors, and was told that was not possible.  Hypertension carries a risk of seizures, so I was absolutely not allowed to stand.  The nurse handed me a bedpan.  I felt trapped.  But I was still managing the contractions without much difficulty, and at the next check I was dilated to seven centimeters.  I really thought I could do it.  Even immobile.

Often there’s a soundtrack playing in my mind.  I have a silly, triumphant one for running.  The love songs I listened to while dating DJ became our ceremony and reception playlists.  I have a swingy, cheerful one for cleaning the house before guests arrive.  I thought I knew which songs would be in my mind while having a baby, but I was wrong.  I only heard one song, over and over.

There’s a palace a fallin’
There’s a smoke in the sky
There’s a boy running downhill to the lowlands tonight
And he’s catching the train to where he’s heard you have been
He’s a fool now among us, a dreamer within
Dreaming of you

I’d never met the doctor on call.  He works primarily for a different branch of my OB practice.  He, through the nurse, offered me a choice.  Pitocin or magnesium.  Pitocin to turn my strong, natural-pattern contractions into perfect sine waves and faster labor.  Magnesium to reduce the risk of seizure.  Magnesium causes muscle weakness and a  lot of other weirdness, so I knew the next thing would be pitocin either way.  So I took the pitocin.  I’d been in the hospital for three hours and in labor for six, making excellent progress for a first labor.  I still don’t understand why the pitocin was ordered.   I felt like I didn’t have any good options left.  I didn’t, but I didn’t know the extent of it yet.

And on that day there was snowfall in the street, yellow light
And they cleared the bill and rails just by those dark shimmer eyes
In that land there’s a winter
In that winter’s a day
In that day there’s a moment when it all goes your way
And you know it’s a lion’s heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When he’s coming down the hills for you

The pitocin did its job, and although my contractions didn’t change much on the seismic printout the perfect sine waves certainly felt different than the earlier jagged breathable peaks.  The nurses noted that the baby hadn’t descended.  In fact, she was higher than she’d been in weeks.  They started talking about a Cesarean section.  I was immobile, in pain from the artificial contraction pattern, and now talking about a c-section.  The next choice was to have an epidural or risk an emergency c-section with general anesthesia later.  I took the epidural.  It wasn’t a silver bullet.  There are no silver bullets.  I stared right through DJ as the anesthesiologist worked, battling two fears at once.  My legs went numb and dead and I spent the next two hours staring into space.

But can you still now remember who’s been hiding up there?
Through his howling at twilight all his songs of despair?
Do you remember the caller of a black and white crime?
Well he lives by that memory and falls from his mind
And you know it’s a lion’s heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When he’s coming down the hills for you

The OB didn’t want to talk to me before surgery, although informed consent requires it.  I refused to sign the consent form without speaking to him.  After a while he came in, impatient, and curtly agreed to put me back together in a way that I had a choice for future deliveries.  The nurses wheeled me into the operating room, leaving DJ in the hall.  They strapped my arms straight out from my sides and I felt a pathetic scared tear roll down my cheek.   The anesthesiologist worked on the epidural, asking if I could feel this, this, this.  I couldn’t, but I could tell I didn’t have a blanket over my body and I wished the doctors chatting nearby would look at my face before they cut.

Well he’ll walk in the city forever
Oh, walk in a time to be gone
Well there’s no real goodbye if you mean it
So I guess I’m forever alone

DJ was allowed to sit by my head with a blue drape between us and my body in surgery.  I felt several tugs and a push on my abdomen then heard a loud sobbing wail.  12:33 p.m., eight pounds and six ounces.  I suppose that was the moment to remember, the one when I could hear how strong she was.  After a long moment of rustling and quiet conversation among the nurses DJ was allowed to ceremonially re-cut the cord.  That cord had been wrapped around her neck, body, legs, and one foot.  Keeping her from descending, making the c-section the right and only thing.  We just hadn’t known.

Several minutes passed and I was shown a bundle of blankets.  All I could see was her forehead, crinkled up in a grimace under a knit cap.  Then she was gone to the nursery with DJ close behind and I was collecting layers of stitches and glue.  While washing his hands the OB said over his shoulder that I could have my next baby any way I wanted but that I should have a smaller baby.  As if her size had been the problem.  I felt my face twist around another tear and the nurse patted my shoulder.

Now he’s a stranger among us, he will die in the park
Where he hides from the statues and the weather remarks
In that land there’s a winter
In that winter’s a day
In that day there’s a moment when it all goes away
And you know it’s a lion’s heart
That will tumble and tear apart
When it’s coming down the hills for you

The recovery cell was curtained off like an ER bay.  Sometimes the curtain was closed, sometimes I could see the door swinging open as people went in and out.  They were treating my body on the gurney, adding painkillers to my IV and pushing on my empty abdomen.  DJ came back just in time for them to change my dressings, and that’s the only part of this story that has already turned funny.  Everyone worries about poop on the table during delivery.  I had that worry.  Oh, I had no idea.  DJ has now seen things that no one should ever see.  The next day he helped me step into the mesh hospital underwear after a shower.  That too was terribly intimate in all the wrong ways.

Still on a gurney, they wheeled me into the elevator and I heard the lullabye they play after every birth.  I wondered how much time had passed.  I still hadn’t seen my baby.  Finally, after two and a half hours apart, DJ lifted her out of the bassinet and put her in my arms.  He arranged my still-dead legs so I could hold her.  I snuffled her head a little.  She made kitten noises and curled up against me.

I’m not sure why I was trying so hard not to cry.  I could have.  I did later.  I did on Tuesday, the first night at home in my bed.  I did on Wednesday night too, with DJ snoring next to me.  I tell the story fast and short when I tell it, letting post-baby hormones take the fall for any lumps in my throat.  I am unreasonably sad about the things I feel I missed.  But you have a healthy baby, everyone says.  I do, and my selfishness is embarrassing.  She got what she needed, but I wanted something different for both of us – but mostly for me.  So I take deep breaths of her sweet-smelling little head and try to think only of how lucky we are, still.  You can get so used to having it all that having almost all feels like a loss, I suppose.  Almost is really good.  Almost is what we needed.  Almost is not everything, and that’s where I’m stuck.

If you look closely you can see that DJ and I are reading children’s books.

Reilly wasn’t supposed to be in this picture, but as soon as I sat on the floor he scampered over for some attention.  I liked the corgi-bomb so much I ordered prints for the grandmas.

This one is just a little bit smug.  Hardly at all compared to the rest of the set.  I kept trying to stop smugging and mostly made it worse.

I just barely got my wedding band on for this shot.  For a tense minute I thought it wasn’t going to come back off, but it did and I’ve been too scared to try since then.

At the end of our wedding reception Kim got down full sprawl on the dance floor to take a picture of our feet.  This thing is like that thing, now with tiny pink sneakers.  Both pictures are now hanging in the nursery, which I’ll get around to showing off eventually.  Right now it has a tiny person sleeping in it.  That happens a lot, fortunately for me.

I debated sharing this last one at all although I did frame it for the  nursery.  I’m sure some of you could do without seeing my bare stomach, so it’s behind the break.  Kim had to convince me that it would be ok – I’m not usually one to go around with my belly showing, even otherwise fully clothed.  But I’m glad she did, it’s a beautiful picture (if I do say so) and looks the way I wanted to feel about being pregnant.  Being pregnant was ok.  I thought being pregnant would be wonderful and taking care of a baby would be the drudgery and that’s not how it happened at all.  I do feel nostalgic about it now and then, but having that baby snuggled up to my chin is absolutely the best.

For the last few months DJ and I kept her name a secret.  There were a few reasons.  One, we didn’t want anyone to tell us they didn’t like it.  That seems to happen less often once the baby is born and named, so we waited.  Two, there was a possibility that we’d change our minds.  Right up until the day she was born there were two other names we seriously considered, and if when we saw her one of those names jumped out as hers – well, we didn’t want to correct ourselves.  Three, we didn’t keep any suspense going through my pregnancy.  We “told” early because of the timing of a winetasting vacation.  We told everyone she was/is a girl as soon as we knew.  It was nice to have one new thing to share in that first phone call to the grandparents.

Her name was chosen during the long walks DJ and I took in the fall along one of my old running routes.  We talked about a lot of baby things on those walks, but almost always came back to names we liked.  I suggested Harper because we both love the one book Harper Lee wrote, and a while ago I was reading about her and found a quote that made me like her even more.  Answering a question about why she never wrote a second book, she replied “I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.”  I think that’s a great statement.  So although we considered other names, we kept coming back to Harper.

Her middle name was a little harder.  We had many options, but none of them were exactly right until I was thinking about the family I’ve found by choice instead of origin.  My daughter has quite a few people in her life that aren’t genetic relatives yet are family as much as anyone could be.  If we had given her a name from each of them she’d have a dozen or more initials.  Then I remembered some family stories from my mom’s childhood.  My maternal grandmother, also a Julia, married late and had children very late for the time.  Her mother was anxious for grandchildren and disappointed not to have them.  She was terminally ill at the end of her life and gave my grandma Julia a hard time about not having children while she was there to meet them.  Julia was a little feisty (and maybe sensitive about not being married yet) and said her mother should feel bad for dying and leaving her future children without a grandmother.  My great-grandmother had an answer for that – she had asked her best friend to step in as acting grandmother.  There are some wonderful stories about that friend, Mother Wells, who apparently did very well filling that role.  A few months ago I asked my mom to re-tell some of those stories, and in retelling them to DJ we realized we had a middle name that recalls all of our chosen family.

So if you’re reading this and you think Harper Wells might be named for you, you’re probably right and we’re lucky to have you.

Harper Wells was born on Saturday, January 28th.  Eight pounds and six ounces, 21 inches long.

We think she’s spectacular.  It was, for a few reasons, a rather extraordinary Saturday.

I might have even paid the world for it after the obsessive search, except it only came in one size and that size was much too large.  Still stubborn, I went looking for custom basket weavers.  Several days and many e-mails later I found Theressa at Creatively Woven.  She shared my enthusiasm for the idea immediately, but explained that a molded basket actually does cost the world for a reason.  She offered to do something similar with her usual technique and a custom cut solid wood base.  Handmade takes a while, so I waited.  We exchanged e-mails every now and then so the wait didn’t seem so long.

Oh, it was worth the wait.  The very custom basket arrived last week, and even with oversized shipping it was only about half the world.  Then it took me a few days to make a changing pad and sew a few showercap-style flannel covers.  My sister pointed out that this is a place where Very Bad Things will happen and a fancy place to change diapers is probably foolish.  She may be right, but I’m excusing my foolishness as first-time mom naivete because I really love how it turned out.  Now all I need is that baby.

(The empty/missing frames are for maternity/baby pictures.  Kim of Bowtie Photography spent an afternoon after Christmas dealing with my smug gestating self, but that’s a different story.)

On Tuesday, wearing a fitted shirt, I stood up from my desk and caught my side view in the dark window.  I was shocked.  This is Wednesday’s side view, much the same as Tuesday’s.  38 weeks.

I am reading about infant sleep habits.  I am rolling over in bed by cradling my belly and moving it from one side to the other, feeling the squish at the apex where her little body compresses mine.  I am rubbing her back when she has the hiccups.  I am taking new prenatal vitamins; the prescription ones taste and smell unbearably like fish and I can no longer tolerate them.  I am parking in a reserved space at work and hearing the surprise in my boss’ voice every morning.  I am breathing again, now that she’s moved away from my lungs.  I am nesting, but not cleaning much of anything.  I am contemplating the end of this and the beginning of that and already wistful for all of it.

Last weekend I finished the gift baby sweater, just in time for this weekend’s baby shower.  I’m not entirely happy with the crochet edging, but that’s my own fault.  I have never actually learned to crochet and it shows.  After several mediocre attempts I decided it had that made-with-love look and left it alone.  I do a lot of “yay, look what I made!  put it on the fridge with a gold star!” but they aren’t all home runs.  Even when I really want a gold star for effort.

As long as I’m complaining, I wish I’d done better with the lighting in that photo.  The story there is that I was awake at 3:30 with heartburn, Braxton-Hicks, and a touch of carpal tunnel.  So while it wasn’t the best light to take pictures I’m claiming a gold star for effort.

The little striped pants are not made by me but bought from Gymboree like a normal person.  Apparently the babies who don’t wear pink or blue wear a lot of yellow and green, which is convenient for matching.  DJ’s contribution to the package is a black onesie with “n00b” printed on the front.  I get that this is slang relevant to his IT professional brother, but I still think it’s funny how clear it is who chose what.

Filed under: babyloaf, projects ]]> http://ordinarysaturdays.com/2012/01/07/more-for-the-littles/feed/ 2 julia::ordinarysaturdays IMG_3915 http://ordinarysaturdays.com/2012/01/04/2069/ http://ordinarysaturdays.com/2012/01/04/2069/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:21:49 +0000 julia::ordinarysaturdays http://ordinarysaturdays.com/?p=2069 ]]>

I am really enjoying tiny girl clothes.  A little bit of shopping, a lot of making.  Did I ever mention wanting to dress this little girl like a very fancy Dickensian urchin?  Not full-time, but often – as long as she’ll allow it.  Well, this thing is that thing.

I knit this little dress a while ago and just got around to making a smock to layer under it.  People with babies know it’s ridiculous to spend hours and hours knitting handwash-only alpaca for a baby.  It is, and I can’t really defend that.  But it’s so fun.  The smock underneath is at least cotton and washable even if made from a hard-to-obtain French pattern.  (Those Citronille patterns are excellent, though.  Elegant and simple.)

This baby enterprise has not made me any more reasonable about my projects, I think that’s unfortunately obvious.

We watch Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant.  I’m not sure why, although I think the two are excellent cautionary tales.  Several times an episode one of the young women will say something about hoping an experience will change the baby’s father in a positive way, and I inevitably yell back at the television Choose your babydaddies wisely!  The young men don’t seem to change, on the whole.  The decent ones seem decent, if immature.  The awful ones stay awful.  The women get sad around the edges.  I don’t think any of them change much outside of life experience.  I don’t think anyone changes much, not without a great deal of effort.

DJ would always have been a good father.  Even if we’d had the worst luck as teenagers.  Even if we’d had unfortunate timing as struggling twenty-somethings.  In our thirties it might not always be easy – but let’s say easier.  I think you can tell a lot about parenting potential long before there’s a baby.  Or an embryo.  The trope about how a man treats his mother is telling.  Also the one about waitstaff.  But what you really want to know is how he treats you, and that’s more than romance and holidays.  Several winters ago I noticed that my windshield was always mysteriously clear after snowstorms.  DJ shrugged and said he was waiting for his car to warm up anyway.  He thinks his best qualities are the acceptable minimum.

I’ve been telling people that this pregnancy is like being a Roman emperor without the bloodshed.  DJ has found a million ways to make my life easier, from changing our sheets by himself to bringing me water while I recline on the sofa.  He’s read as much as I have about baby having and raising.  He’s doing a good job of making me feel the most important without making the grandmas feel unimportant.

There’s that other trope about showing your daughter you love her by being good to her mother.  I have, in my life, found the opposite to be true as well.  So, really.  Choose your babydaddies wisely.  They don’t change much.

Almost exactly a year later I was trying to decide if I could get away with wearing a non-maternity sweater to work and snapped the photo below.  Baby house at thirty three weeks, four chins hidden by the flash.

Perspective.  Now I think that minidress looks pretty good, and wouldn’t I love to have those legs back.  I mean, I still have them.  Somewhere.  Haven’t seen them in a while.