And If You Got 10 Sticky Fingers...

Like most 4 month olds, Bo has discovered hands. He loves to watch my hands do things and he puts his hands on mine when I'm buckling him into his car seat or stroller, like he's helping. He doesn't really stare at his own hands so much as suck on them all day long. He tries to get both fists into his mouth at once sometimes. He'll also sit playing with his tongue and chewing on his fingers at the back of his mouth, where his molars will eventually be.

Anything else in the general vicinity of is face will end up in his mouth too. He's starting to figure out how to grab things and anything he manages to get into his hands goes straight to his mouth. He chews on my shoulder when we're walking around and he even got a handful of my hair in there today (because the hair is excellent for grabbing and holding onto, apparently. I really need a hair cut btw.). Bo will grab Frank's thumb and put it in his mouth and go to town. He'll even take a break, pulling Frank's thumb out and then putting it back in. He does it with the pacifier too.

Even though this is all normal developmental stuff, my baby is a genius. No baby has ever figured out how to put things in his mouth as efficiently and smartly as my boy. And the drool is just proof of his incredibly giant and brilliant brain. SHUT UP, he's a genius.

I'm a little concerned though, because he's sucking his thumb a lot. He's pretty much given up the pacifier in favor of the thumb. He'll actually spit the pacifier out so he can suck his thumb. Mostly I'm unconcerned. Except for a little bit. Because I don't want Bo to be a thumb sucker and he's already displaying some of the behaviors of one. He sucks for comfort when he's feeling upset or stressed, he sucks to get himself to sleep and to get back to sleep if he startles himself awake. I have visions of him being one of those 6 year olds you see at the mall, still in the stroller, sucking away. And well, ew.

I'm unconcerned because he's only 4 months old. This isn't a hard and fast habit he's developing here. Right? RIGHT? The other thing is, it's so damned cute. He gets that fat little thumb into his mouth and sucks like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes his enormous head falls forward into his lap because he's so intent on getting as much of the thumb into his mouth as possible, he can't expend the effort pick that melon up.

I'm trying to get some sort of schedule going with this boy (and oy, talk about sucking), part of which is getting him to sleep before 11pm, on his own, without nursing himself into unconsciousness. The trade off is the thumb. Am I setting myself up for a fight down the road? Is there going to be a pepper on the thumb showdown in our future? If I discourage the thumb in favor of the pacifier, isn't it really just the same thing?

No really, I'm asking you.




Because I'm a marshmallow when it comes to this boy.


Do you see those legs? Those legs are so FAT that they get stuck in the Bumbo. I pick the boy up and the seat comes with him.

17lbs.

SEVENTEEN POUNDS!


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two posts in two days. you have to be impressed. I'm just saying.

So Much To Haaaaate

Forgive me for the sputtering incoherence of this post.

Have you seen this train wreck?

Seriously.

I'm unfamiliar with the whole dating reality show genre. I've managed to avoid every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette purely out of disinterest. This show however, sucked me in by having the time slot directly following Hell's Kitchen. I love me some Gordon Ramsey.

This show annoyed me from the jump with all its damn commercials about "real women" looking for love. All the stats about the average size of the American woman versus the average size of the reality dating show contestant. I'm sorry, are the women on all of those other shows cartoon characters? Are they figments of our imagination? And come on, skinny women aren't really the biggest obstacles to reality on any of these shows.

Given the setup, I was fully expecting a whole, "big girls are beautiful, we're here and we're curvy sodealwithit" love fest. I was expecting a group of women confident in their own skin, having a great time, fighting for the affections of some dude. That would have been something.

Like I said, I'm unfamiliar with the genre. I wish I still were.

These women are so saaaad. And the show totally takes advantage of their self esteem issues and filters their entire life stories through the lens of being overweight. Rather than portray the contestants as confident in their bodies and comfortable with themselves, the show does everything to make it clear that "fat" and "pathetic" are basically synonymous. It almost seems as if the more they talk about their weight and body issues, the more screen time they get. It's even obvious during some of their narrative interviews that the producer sitting there is prompting them to circle everything back to weight. It became painfully clear after the first episode that these women hate themselves and every episode is going to pick at the open wound of their self-loathing. On top of that they've layered the promise of Mr. Wonderful and the happy ending of a marriage proposal. Because, you know, marriage totally makes everything easier and better. The wedding is the end of the story.

And they're so young. One woman is only 21 years old (!) and while she's the youngest, I would guess the average age is about 25 or 26. They're talking about how they've never experienced real love and that they've waited "their whole lives" for someone like Luke (Mr. Wonderful) to accept them for who they are and not what they weigh. Really? How is it possible that they think this show is going to be about anything other than their weight? When we first met these ladies, climbing out of their limos and walking up the red carpet to Mr. Wonderful, they were captioned with their name, age, height and weight. Who exactly is accepting them for the wonderful person they are on the inside?

Why are we even calling this a reality show? We all know there's nothing real going on here, right? Do these women know it? I'm just asking, since more than one of them claim to have never been on a date. Do they know that private jets to Vegas, horseback rides, gondolas with sparkly lights, dinners in rented out restaurants, and diamond effing promise rings are not standard dating procedure? Do they know that none of these excursions are Mr. Wonderful's idea? That he's a giant puppet (and I mean giant. Homeboy rings in at something like 6'5", 330lbs) being manipulated by the producers? They keep swooning over how no guy has ever been so romantic or imaginative and how thoughtful Luke is to come up with these wonderful experiences. While he seems like a nice enough guy, he's obviously not long out of the frat house. I'm guessing if left to his own devices, date night would be sucking down beers and wings at the local sports bar with all his buddies.

The last episode was all about Mr. Wonderful presenting them with dresses and taking them to the "prom". In the set up he talks about how he's sure most of these girls had negative experiences with their proms and probably didn't get to go and so he wants to make it up to them. And they're all so excited to go the prom because they never went to prom or their prom sucked or they went with a big group and without a date. And of course all of the bad prom experiences resulted directly from their weight issues but it's all better now because Luke's taking them to prom. Right. Because there's nothing creepy about waiting around to be told what you're going to be doing and then being told what to wear to that activity, when you find out what it is. And you're calling hanging out with some dude and 8 other women "a date".

There's so much that is wrong with this show. Reality television in general is a disaster but this is just awful. I wonder if these women knew what they were getting themselves into. I wonder if they're sitting at home watching this fuming that they're being portrayed as blubbering, needy messes. I sincerely hope that they're angry that every scene and episode shows them eating or making references to food. I mean, there are close up shots of them biting into some kind of beef on a stick and sometimes it's just a close up of the food. Like, let's see what the fat girl is eating. Alcohol doesn't seem as prevalent on this show as others but there seems to be food everywhere. This show is objectifying these women just as much as all the other shows do to thin women, despite the protestations to the contrary in the commercials.

I'm gonna keep watching though. I admit I'm hooked on the spectacular awfulness and even though I'm fully aware of how contrived and manipulated every situation is, even though I get that these women are being reduced to caricature, I'm interested to see what happens next.

I'm so weak.

Toys

Babies have a lot of stuff. Ok, my baby has a lot of stuff. Lots of stimulating, brain engaging, fun time toys that he only wants to play with if someone is right there, playing with him. And by someone I mean me.

We have a Bumbo sitter



We haaate to lay down. We must be sitting up at all times. But only if you're sitting next to me. Why are you up there and not down here, entertaining me?

We have a bouncy seat



Which isn't so much for bouncing as it is for spazzing out and talking to the animal friends dangling in front. But don't walk away please. And do NOT turn on that jerk vibration feature.



There's the play gym mat thing whose rightful name I do not know.



Which is not nearly as interesting as your upside down face behind me, Mommy.



And do not even think of putting me on my tummy, lady or I will cut you. Or at least cry.



This mat lives in the pack and play when not in use because the monster of a cat that lives here turned it into his personal kitty bed ten minutes after it hit the floor. And Bo hates the pack and play. Will not lay in it. If I put him down in it after he's fallen asleep, he immediately wakes up and starts screaming. So I use it to hold stuff, like blankets and extra clothes and the play mat thingy. I'm tidy.

We have rattles and stuffed animals and loveys. We have books and videos and a Sesame Street Subscription on YouTube. All of this is fantastic, fun stuff. As long as I'm right there, playing along. And if the game can take place in my lap, even better.



It's a pretty good gig.



*And yes those are green monkeys. They're pajamas people.

**You may notice nail polish on my thumb. It's only on my thumb. And half chipped off.

***What? I'm not letting myself go...

****The pacifier? I'm not worried about nipple confusion. This boy will suck on anything happily, including my shoulder and Frank's nose.

Because This Stuff is Hard

I've been wanting to write this post for months now. It's been banging around in my brain this whole time but the longer I've waited, the more perspective I've gained. There's a distinct possibility that my terminal smugness may have contributed to some of the issues I had with breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is haaard. And at first I was very angry that, amidst all the literature and commercials and general beating over the head you endure while pregnant that breastfeeding is best, nobody wants to talk about how hard it is. And how it can really suck. I find the photos you see of a mom staring lovingly down at the child at her breast silly and misleading but also guilt inducing. Like I'm some kind of bad mother already because I don't enjoy the wonderful bonding experience of nursing my son. But now I realize some of the trouble I had could have been avoided if I would have taken a minute to climb down off of my stupid high horse and listen.

I paid very little attention to the information about breastfeeding that was available to me while I was pregnant. I took it for granted that this was something I wasn't going to have a problem with. There had to be some reason why I'd been carrying around a freakishly large rack my whole life. I didn't bother taking a breastfeeding class (then again I didn't take a childbirth class either. Not so much with the being prepared over here) and when I read about it I pretty much glossed over the war stories of cracked and bleeding nipples, engorgement, and incorrect latching or not latching at all. In my own defense, I did pay close attention to the descriptions and directions on how to get the baby to latch properly but reading about it and doing it are so not the same. And the baby? didn't read any directions.

Everything was fine in the hospital - before my milk came in. The baby was latching on just fine and while it wasn't a pleasant sensation, I wasn't losing any skin in the deal. The nurse gave me some lasinoh and I was religious about using it and everything was great. I was nursing every two hours exactly, waking the boy up to do so because of his jaundice and weight loss. My mom was visiting while I nursed and she said that I looked like a natural with the baby. That was some high praise from a lady who had 7 kids in 9 years and nursed us all and it only increased my bloated sense of self-satisfaction. There was a breastfeeding class on the postpartum floor the day after Bo was born and I turned my nose up at it with the attitude of "I'm too busy actually feeding my baby to bother with that." Also, "Sissies". I was also trying to prove that I was saner than my roommate who dragged the lactation consultant back to her bedside after the class was over.

Then day two of Bo's life dawned. He decided to wake up to the world around him and he was hungry! Clusterfeeding is not an adequate description of what ensued. He nursed nonstop for hours. He would fall asleep on the boob and wake up 30 minutes later ravenous again. We were leaving the hospital that day and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get him off long enough for the ride home. I asked the nurse for a pacifier just so he could suck on something. At some point that day my milk started to come in for real and that's when the fun started.

There are a lot of things that happen to your body after you have a baby that nobody really talks about, perhaps because it doesn't happen to everyone or it's different for everyone or it's one of those things that go fuzzy after time. There's an outside chance I just didn't pay attention to those bits of information in my research'. At any rate, up until the milk came in, I was going braless at night and it was totally fine. The engorgement started in the middle of the night, along with the worst night sweats I've ever experienced in my life. I woke up soaked, shaking and shivering. I had to change my pajamas it was so bad. The sweating made me have the chills too which left me sore and achy. On top of the soreness and ache of having just given birth. Awake during one of these bouts, I rolled over and wondered when someone put a ten pound weight on my chest. Oh wait, those are just my boobs! I had to get up in the middle of the night and fumble around for a bra because oh.my.god. My boobs had become rock hard and even bigger - which dear God, how is that even possible.

I don't know when exactly my nipples started bleeding but let's just say things went from bad to worse rather quickly. Bo couldn't latch on anymore. It was like trying to suck a softball. Or a honeydew. So he would cry and scream and get on there any way he could. Then I would cry, first from the frustration of not being able to feed my son and then from the extreme pain of his latch which I wouldn't break because the poor child finally got on there and was getting some food. Meanwhile, he's going to the doctor every day and his stupid bilirubin numbers kept climbing and the doctor is suggesting we supplement with formula until I establish my supply. Dude. I've got milk coming out of my ears. Supply isn't the problem here*.

After about 3 days of this - which felt like my whole life - I swallowed my stupid, stupid pride and called the lactation center that the doctor recommended. I was very leery of the lactation consultant after hearing stories of how mean and strict and fear inducing they can be. Thankfully, this was not to be my experience. That lady saved my sanity. She helped me with how to hold Bo in a football style so that I wasn't covering his entire face with my boob. She told me to get rid of the Boppy because it positioned Bo too high up and made the angle all wrong. She watched me try to nurse him and helped me with finger placement and all that stuff. Turns out I had interpreted the directions and diagrams wrong and was doing it wrong.

Shocking, right?

At this point I was so engorged that my fingers were leaving dents, dents behind and it was just too difficult for the baby to get his tiny mouth to latch on because it was too hard and smooth and he couldn't get any traction. That's when Collette, the lovely lactation angel, gave me the tool that saved everything. She said maybe we should try a nipple shield. And then there were rainbows and unicorns and a chorus in the background. The boy was able to latch on to that and suck away happily. It also sort of slowed down the flow so he could swallow without choking. As a bonus, it really did work as a shield, putting a barrier between his vigorous sucking and my poor torn up, bleeding nipples. They healed in about a week, around the same time we got into a rhythm of supply and demand and the softballs went away.

But I still am no fan. And I feel guilty about it and then I'm mad that I feel guilty about it. I know it's the best thing and what nature intended and blah blah blah. I'm doing it, ok? I'm sticking with it as long as I possibly can stand it. But I think a disservice is being done here in the effort to reverse the formula trend of the 70s and 80s and get women to breastfeed. It's irresponsible to say that breastfeeding doesn't hurt. It does hurt, especially in the beginning. As Collette said to me, we're talking about very sensitive erectile tissues being pulled and tugged and freaking chewed on all day long. That shit hurts. Even now that the baby and I are a well oiled machine and I can nurse him in the dark, it sometimes hurts. And that's with the nipple shield. He bites.

It makes me mad that the breastfeeding propaganda machine makes me feel like a bad mom for saying that it sucks. It makes me madder that there are girls out there who just can't do it and they're made to feel lazy or weak if they don't stick with it. Some people just can't do it and we need to recognize that and support those women. There are no medals or merit badges for breastfeeding. I grant that it's the best thing for baby and it's what nature intended and all that and it should at least be attempted. Sometimes nature fails though, and in the past when nature failed, babies used to die. We need to give each other a break. Being a new mom is stressful and hard enough without the added pressure of trying to make your body do something it's just not going to do.

There's nothing wrong with just wanting your body back, either. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth (no matter what kind), and new motherhood beats the hell out of you even if you don't breastfeed. At some point you want to feel less like a milk machine and more like a person again. We should support that too. The whole business of pregnancy and parenthood is intensely personal. That needs to be respected and honored no matter what form it takes. As long as the baby is loved and cared for and safe and well fed, the rest of it is nobody's business.

And now I need a drink. All the shouting from up here has made me thirsty. Maybe my horse needs a drink too.

*Bo was back up to his birth weight - over it actually - by the time we went and got help. Supply was certainly not the issue. Stupid pride was.

Getting My Feet Wet

We joined a pool this summer - a swim club. No, not that swim club. We actually were careful to check that this pool didn't have such membership requirements before we joined. It would've been a deal breaker for us for sure. You have to be careful when you start joining organizations that designate themselves as "clubs" for that very reason. We narrowed our search down to two pools and picked the one that allows alcohol on the premises. Gotta have priorities.

The pool is lovely. It's leafy and cool, with lots of sunny spots and shady spots. It totally takes me back to the pool we used to go to when I was little. There's a snack bar and a baby pool and a deep pool with two diving boards, a one meter and a 3 meter board. When I was little the 3 meter board seemed skyscraper high. It was a terrifying thrill to jump off of it and a major accomplishment - worthy of screaming at my parents to watch me! - to dive off. It's funny to look at this board and think that it can't possibly be as high, the old board must've been way higher.

I haven't been off the dives yet. I haven't even been in the pool yet. Bo finds the pool extremely uninteresting and spends most of our days there sleeping, either on a blanket in the shade or in the stroller. Much like his attitude towards the bathtub, he doesn't really care for the pool. We got him in gradually up to his butt and that was ok but there was no splashing or laughing, just bewilderment and lots of squinting. Getting him any wetter resulted in lots of screaming. It's a process, I understand. So we sit in the shade and watch all the kids race back and forth from the pool to the playground to the snack bar.

And man, there are kids! And moms! There are lots of moms with babies right around Bo's age, maybe a month or two older. There's a mom I've seen there twice now with a baby that looks to be about 6 weeks old. I could maybe be friends with these women if I, you know, talked to them instead of silently appraising their strollers/post baby bodies/children's behavior. It might be nice to have some mom friends in the general area since I left all my friends way far away when we moved up here (this is Philadelphia, moving 30 minutes up the Schuylkill is like leaving the state). Someone who could come over for coffee and a fake play date that's really for us and not our kids.

But making friends is not my strong suit. It never has been. I'm weird and shy. Not painfully unable to function in society shy or freak you out when you talk to me weird. Just not the girl who's going to strike up a conversation with the person the next blanket over. It makes me seem snobby and standoffish but I'm really not. Just shy. And weird. It's like I'm the new girl at school and everybody already knows everybody. They all stand in the baby pool with the kids on their hips or in the water and they're chatting and gossiping and I just watch from my chair in the shade, unsure of how to get into the conversation. Or even what I would say.

But look! I'm a mom too! And my boy is cute. Wanna be my friend?

Bring the Noise

One of these years I'm going to learn how to stop being so damned smug. Either that or the universe is just going to keep smacking me in the head every once in a while, especially when I'm so obviously asking for it.

I just couldn't stop talking about what a pleasant baby Bo is. How happy he is all the time. How even with the reflux, he's still bubbly and giggly and how he'll projectile vomit and then laugh. My baby is the best baby in whole wide world. So there.

Right. Except for the screaming.

We took Bo to the doctor yesterday for his 2 month checkup* - he'll be 11 weeks old on Thursday - and during our conversation I asked for tips on how to make bath time easier. I think my exact words were how to make it not a living nightmare. Because, seriously**. The doctor suggested switching bath time to the mornings if we find that Bo is in a better mood. I said that might be a good idea since Bo is a miserable, screaming disaster from about 6 - 9pm every night and he said yeah, that's colic.

Colic. When I'd been mouthing off all over the place about how my boy is so great and do babies even get colic anymore? What the hell is colic anyway? Bam. Here's some colic. Shut up smug lady.

It's so sad, the screaming, and there's nothing I can do about it. He just screams and screams, his little tongue curled back in his mouth and his face all red. He screams so hard he stops making any sound and then coughs and hacks and screams some more. He screams so hard he makes his skin all blotchy for hours afterward. I walk him and talk to him in low tones and sing to him and do that obnoxious shushing noise but there's really nothing to do but wait until he feels better. Sometimes he'll rip a few killer farts and that helps. Yesterday and today we had scream fests in the morning too. Today he did not take one nap that lasted more than an hour.

And then I get scared. Today he wore himself out screaming but he wasn't sleeping. He was just sitting in his swing and sort of staring into space, without really blinking, which was totally freaking me out. Then he fell asleep and I couldn't leave him sleep in the swing because he just looked so strange; the look on his face was not one I'd ever seen before and it was unsettling and I get scared when I see things like that because the specter is always there. The specter of SIDS that never fully leaves my consciousness. So instead of leaving him nap in his swing I picked him up and stretched him out on my chest to nap. I wasn't going to get any laundry done that way but I would be able to feel every breath he took and thereby keep breathing myself.

I know it's upsetting for him too because he just wants to be held. He will not be put down when he's awake on a day when he's feeling especially screamy. Interestingly, today he was fine as long as he could see me. He was cool in his swing while I puttered around and fought the never ending war against animal hair (tumbleweeds of pet hair blow across your path around here) , but as soon as I was out of sight, the bottom lip would poke out and the whimpering would start. He cat napped in his bassinet this afternoon while I fought the Ikea dresser from hell one more time but again, as soon as I was out of his line of sight, instant whining. He'll tolerate the sling but he has to be in the mood for it, and that hasn't been recently.

It's exhausting and there are moments when I think I may actually go insane if the screaming doesn't stop Right. This. Minute. It's not the noise. I'm impervious to the noise. It's the fact that there's nothing I can do and he's so upset and I can't fix it for him and he can't tell me what's wrong. There are days when I want to hand Bo off to Frank as soon as he gets home from work because I just need a damn minute to maybe walk around the block and regroup. But it's not like Frank just came home from a day at the beach and it's not fair to thrust a screaming, writhing boy into his arms when he's just getting home from a long day of his own.

It's not the worst case in the world. He doesn't cry for consecutive hours. He takes breaks and short naps - because he wears himself the hell out - and he's still cheerful and happy and smiley. He still smiles and gurgles at me when he wakes, even if he screamed himself to sleep twenty minutes earlier. And he's still the best baby in the whole world, colic and reflux be damned.


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* For those of you keeping score, Bo came in at 15lbs 7oz and 25 inches long. He's a frickin' moose. All of his development is right on track and he's even a little ahead of the game in that he's already recognized himself in the mirror and cracks himself up making faces and talking to himself. Because he's a genius.

** I may never bathe this child again. Today I decided to take advantage of his very cheerful mood to give him his first bath since last Wednesday. Frank was all ready with the video camera and as soon as Bo's foot touched the water, it was over. The screaming and the writhing began. If Bo had better motor skills he would launch himself right out of his whale of a tub, I'm sure. This screaming really gets me because I'm doing it to him and I'm causing him to be that way. It's so not worth it.

How dirty could he possibly be getting anyway?



My boy doesn't actually have freaky colorless eyes without pupils. It was either this or red, demon eyes. This is the best I could do with the red eye reduction tool. His eyes are still the dark, crystal blue they were at birth.

Boaz's Birth Story

You know why it's taken so long to write Bo's birth story? Because it's boring. And a little anticlimactic. It's not boring to me, but out of the pool of interesting birth stories, this one is definitely wearing swimmies in the shallow end.

I did manage to piss off my roommate on the night Bo was born with this story but in my defense she asked and I was high on the adrenaline of the whole experience and she asked and how was I supposed to know her own experience may not have been so smooth and she was a raving lunatic*?

Anyway, I'm telling the story because I never get sick of it. I don't think it's boring and it's within my rights as a mom to regale any and all with it's awesome unremarkableness.

We went to the doctor for my regular 38 week appointment on April 16 fully anticipating that he would decide to just send me across the street to Labor and Delivery for an induction. Even though we were totally expecting it - my hospital bag had been in the car for weeks - I tried to downplay our excitement. I kept saying that the doctor may decide that I'm not ready and send us home for another week. Frank said either I would be admitted to the hospital that day or the doctor would. After weeks and weeks of contractions and bed rest and false alarms, we were ready to get the show on the road.

Thankfully, after checking me the doctor declared that I was 100% effaced and even though I was only about 1 1/2cm dilated he thought it was best to get me admitted and induced because he wasn't going to be on call over the weekend when I would most certainly go into labor on my own - to which we said woohoo! He stripped my membranes a little - which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - and sent us across the street. He called ahead to Labor and Delivery with specific instructions to admit me directly (without an exam) and that the midwives were not to come near me until he got onto the floor in the afternoon. He didn't want them waving sticks over my head and reading their tea leaves and neither did I.

We got to the hospital and got settled into the delivery room which freaked me out a little because there was the scale and the warmer and all the tiny hats and blankets. Like a baby would be in this room soon. It was just suddenly so real. We had been waiting for him for months and months, getting more and more impatient every week and then it seemed like it would be so soon. The feeling of excitement and anticipation (and not a little panic) was overwhelming.

They hooked me up to the pitocin drip and we tried to get comfortable. It was about 12:30 and we weren't expecting to see the doctor again until around 3pm. Frank had been up since 4am for work and I hadn't really slept in weeks so we tried to nap but it was all too exciting so we emailed and texted and made phone calls and updated our Facebooks to let people know it was for real this time.

Right around 3:30 the doctor came in to see how I was doing and I didn't have much to report. I was having contractions but they weren't any worse than the ones I had been having for months and I wasn't uncomfortable so I hadn't asked for the epidural. The doctor broke my water - such a weird sensation, like a fountain is all of a sudden coming out of your business, a fountain you have no control over - and then suggested that I get the epidural. Unless I wanted to know what active labor felt like. I was not interested in that experience and agreed to just get it. It had been my plan all along to get it as soon as possible. Getting the epidural and avoiding pain was pretty much the extent of my "birth plan". The doctor left to order the epidural and the little anesthesiologist came in right away. Getting an epidural is a strange and not terribly comfortable experience as you sit there with your back exposed all the way down to your ass and you receive injections and a catheter into your spine but it wasn't really that bad, especially when your anesthesiologist is a little Italian man right out of central casting who talks to you about Pedro Almodovar and Spain the whole time.

The epidural had an almost tranquilizing effect on me. I was finally able to really relax and sort of sleep. Frank was starving but didn't want to leave my side in case he missed something. I promised him I was only going to sleep for a while and that no babies would be born while he was inhaling a cheeseburger. He eventually left to get some lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I just kind of drifted in semi-consciousness for a while, not really sleeping and watched TV. The moms showed up around 5 or 6 and we chatted and waited. We listened to the Phillies game on Frank's Iphone because it wasn't on the hospital television. The nurses kept jacking up the pitocin a little at a time and I felt nothing. Frank kept watching the contraction monitor and asking, "you really can't feel that?". I felt nothing. Not even pressure.

What I did feel was effing hungry because even though I knew I was most likely having a baby that day, I didn't bother to eat any breakfast before leaving for the doctor's office. Because I'm a genius.

Eventually, maybe around 8pm, Bo's head came all the way down and I could really feel it. There was about an hour of skull on pelvis, bone on bone, pain. I tried breathing and staring at a fixed spot (the polka dots on my boppy), but that was some intense pain. There were tears and some serious squeezing of Frank's hand. The nurse came in and saw my face and called the doctor. He came in ordered some kind of epidural booster shot. He said he'd give it 10 minutes to work after which it would be time to push, and either the booster would work or I would just have to push through the pain. Thankfully, the booster worked like a charm and I was back to blissful numbness. So much so that the doctor had to put my legs in the stirrups for me because I couldn't feel them to move them. It was like they were asleep. It was awesome.

Then it was time to push. It was really more of a conversation interrupted by occasional pushing. We talked about how we love Disney World and drinking a beer in every country at Epcot. Push. How Frank puked on the grass in Epcot during Illuminations last summer. Push. The doctor told funny stories about women pooping on his shoes during delivery. Push. This went on for about 45 minutes and then Bo was out.

There were some small issues after he was out but I can't really remember. He didn't breathe right away and the cord was around his neck one time. but then he cried and screamed and everything was wonderful and perfect. They put him on my chest and I cried and kissed Frank and stared at my son. And holy shit I had a son.

The rest is kind of a blur as the pediatrician came in and they cleaned Bo up and weighed him and gave him his Apgar tests (8 and 9). Frank hovered around the edges, taking pictures and listening closely to the language the doctors and nurses were using. Meanwhile, I was getting sewn up from the medium episiotomy the doctor performed to get Bo's giant head out.

After we were all fixed up and presentable, they let the moms back in. They could have stayed for the delivery. Hospital policy allows three support people in the room but I didn't want anyone there but Frank. My doctor, in his awesomeness, kicked them out for me. I didn't even have a chance to ask the nurse to get them, they were practically beating down the door to be let back in.

After about a half hour of phone calls and pictures and tears, they took Bo to the nursery to get cleaned up for real and they wheeled me to the postpartum recovery floor, which is the only part of the story that sucks.

It's a very busy hospital all the time because it has a high standard of care and a good reputation, especially for maternity. It's also one of only two hospitals in the Philadelphia metropolitan area with maternity wards so it also draws moms without health insurance who use the emergency room for prenatal and primary care. On this particular day it was super busy for having babies. They had women in labor in the hallways because they were so short on beds. So of course having a recovery room to myself was not going to happen. Added to the indignity of having to share a room in the first place, the bullshit is that when you have a roommate, your partner/support person can't stay the night and has to leave by 10pm. "Hi, brand new mom and dad! Congratulations! Get out." Since it was almost midnight by the time I got to postpartum, they let Frank stay for a half hour. Bo wasn't even back from the nursery in that time.

A little while after Frank left they brought Bo in and gave him to me. They also gave me a turkey sandwich and some graham crackers which may have been the greatest food I ever ate in my life. I ate it with one hand, holding and staring at the boy the whole time. That night, I couldn't sleep. I was too exhilarated by the whole experience. I just held Bo and stared at him and cried off and on and watched the sun come up. The first of many sunrises we would see together.




*The roommate gets her own story because DAMN.