Novel Place

A traditional review highlighting the main events of the year would yield mostly -itises (tonsil, mast, blephr, gastroenter, etc.), which just isn't fun to read about. So I won't trouble you with those icky tales of discomfort and will instead just let you know where I am right now, which is somewhere I don't recall ever being before at any time in my adult life:  healthy and content.

Olivia is an absolute, untempered joy.  Six and a half suits her.  Her school suits her.  She loves her brothers; she shares with them and watches out for them.  She writes "seekrets" in her diary and notes to her friends; she does gymnastics--badly--and enjoys every minute of it.  Then there's Josh: a cross-eyed, temperamental, delightful guy of five who can't keep his energy contained and has found friends who share his exuberant sensibilities and precocious sense of humor; and while he may not always listen to us, he usually does when it counts--and he never holds discipline against us.  And of course there's Dominic, a baby who reminds me of nothing so much as a 1930s cartoon: his exaggerated toddle, his six-toothed grin, his babbling and clapping and comical expressions.  Now that (as of Saturday) he has started sleeping through the night, the last major item on my wish list has been crossed off.

Jeff is well and lovely as ever, always supportive and thoughtful.  My father is still alive, if cantankerous.  Work is beyond hectic and it's not precisely fun but it's not actively terrible and only rarely do I wake up in a panic.  I have mostly accustomed myself to the aging process--though I do curse those awful gray twigs that pop up from my part--and I have some lovely life-long friends nearby, a luxury I haven't always enjoyed.

I am not wishing for anything, hurting for anything, filled with vague longing.

In short, it has been a good year.  I am in a good place.  I hope you are, too.

Unjust

I learned recently that my boss and his wife, whose beautiful young son died without warning last year, have had two recent IVF cycles fail.

If I am ever tempted to feel sorry for myself again, I will think of this.

Proud Moments in Parenting, continued

And what miracle did today bring? I'll tell you: dried blood in baby's projectile vomit, found only hours later when attempting to re-wrap him in the same filthy swaddling blanket.

Thankfully, the blood appears to be coming from his nose--which has taken a pummelling due to the vomit projecting from all available means of egress--and not his gullet.

Proud Moments in Parenting

Yesterday, I managed not to leak bodily fluids onto any piece of upholstered furniture.

What miracle, I wonder, will today bring?

Now with 100% more baby

False alarm after irritating false alarm left me highly skeptical when some mild contractions started up just before midnight on Wednesday. Ignore them, I said to myself. Nothing to get excited about. I tried to go back to sleep but they were just uncomfortable enough to keep me grudgingly awake.

At 1 a.m., one came on that was actually painful. In a fit of optimism, I woke up Jeff and told him it was probably nothing and to go back to sleep, but maybe, just maybe, this was the start of labor. He popped up and started packing toothbrushes while I sat and hoped for more pain. About an hour and a half later, contractions got going in earnest and I got my wish: painpainpainpainpain. Called the doctor, woke up Jeff's parents (who have been staying with us, patiently awaiting the big day, for almost a month), kissed the kids goodbye in their sleep and headed for the hospital.

During the twenty-minute car ride, contractions went from 8 minutes to 3 minutes apart, and from yeeowch to motherofgodmakeitstop. Got triaged (which took a ridiculously long time given the circumstances--why do they make women in obvious labor--not to mention agony--go through this process?), got to the L&D room and waited with growing impatience as a novice nurse tried to get an IV started. A blown valve, a call for assistance and another six or eight miserable contractions later, a new nurse managed to hit a vein. (At this point, I was enjoying "camelback" contractions, if I remember the nurse's description correctly: sets of two, no break between, followed by a brief downtime and then another set of two. This seemed somehow unfair.)

Finally, an order for drugs was placed, and within a few contractions, the fentanyl was taking much of the edge off. The anesthesiologist was called, and when he arrived the only hitch was timing the epidural placement between the contractions, which were coming so fast and furious that he finally opted to start as one was tailing off and continue come hell or high water. Fortunately, he was quite expert and I received a most outstanding epidural: within two contractions, nearly all pain was gone, but I could feel pressure just fine and could even have walked if necessary.

The nurse told me to get some rest and left the room for a moment, at which point my water broke with a rather spectacular popping sound. She returned a moment later, checked and, somewhat to her surprise, found me complete. (For the record, I was not surprised, as I had been telling her for some time that I felt like this was going really fast.) OB was paged--coincidentally enough, my very own OB happened to be the one on call. One minor episiotomy and four pushes later, our little boy was born.

Dominic Noel
11/3/11
6:36 a.m.
8 lbs 3 oz
21 inches