Overflow

I'm still way too busy with school (for T minus one month, YAY!) to really sit down and write like I've been desperate to, but last night and tonight I've been bursting with subject matter, so I'm going to cough it up on here so I can come back and remember what I wanted to discuss when I finally have time to discuss it.


My wonder and awe at God's creation. I've been astounded lately, and I think it's for three reasons: I'm getting older, hitting the developmental stage where you realize the world is so, so much bigger than you; I've got two amazing works of God that my body carried, built and nourished, and they're growing, developing, just like billions of other babies have, and it's amazing that that can just...happen (also, what I think about when it doesn't just happen); and the things about the human body and mind I've been learning the last two semesters - I feel like my worldview is coming together. I could write a book, but it couldn't be one with pages. This would have to be some kind of three-dimensional (maybe four) book, with arms and fingers and webs and tangents.


My views today vs. a few years ago re: childrearing, life, music, cooking... I love my mom, and I want to say "I'm sorry for everything I ever said." I think this is a developmental stage, as well.


I want goats and chickens. Did I mention we cloth diaper? Haha.

Baby Machine

All this reading for OB/Maternal nursing is stirring a deep, physical desire in me to be pregnant again. And over and over. Everyone wonders what Michelle Duggar is thinking, but she's just in nursing school!

Really, though, as I memorize Leopold's Maneuvers for assessing fetal position, I want that fetus in the pastel textbook graphic to be MY fetus, turned head downwards and curled up in MY abdomen, ready to be birthed by MY body and kissed by MY mouth. As I type this I am feeling tiny movements in my stomach, which I'm sure is just intestinal rumbling, but my heart imagines it to be another little baby.

This is dangerous. I fear I'm addicted to the "Mama Thing." No one tell Justin.

Things I Love

I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time being jealous. Coveting. Telling myself how awesome things will be when I'm out of school and have a real job and we can have health insurance and perhaps a new car. And I can go to Target and get what I want. And we can have a bed with a headboard, and different couches (the cushions kind of slide out when they're sat on and it drives me more insane than it should). 

But last night on Baby Center, someone posted a thread simply asking 'what do we love?' Genius. She transformed my day of stressing over money into a great night of remembering the little (and not so little) things. I started listing and kept listing.

I love...

Our beautiful old Blue Ridge Mountains, the New River, kayaking, sleeping in hay lofts, the smell of grass, beer, making bread, making cookies, making pies, listening to crickets, kittens, the color green, going on walks, seeing snow fall, having money in savings, giving birth, breastfeeding, cuddling my babies, having conversations with my two year old, kissing my husband, baby cheeks (they're so soft!), vacuuming carpets (I'm weird), reading a good book, hot baths, camping in the summer, getting a good haircut, weddings, board games, ironing (I never do it anymore because we basically own nothing that needs ironed, but my mom used to pay me $0.50 per dress shirt of my dad's and I LOVED IT), Reader's Digest. Jeopardy. Singing classical music and sounding good, worship music too, shows on ABC, baseball caps, football season!, health food stores where you can buy flour, grains, spices, etc. by weight and put them in the little bags, natural remedies, chicken wings, nursing school even though it's tough, cutting my kids' fingernails (but not my own, I bite them), Netflix, taking pictures, coffee. 

I'm sure there's much more, but the reading would be ridiculous. BTW could you tell I can't wait for warmer weather?

The Only Words I've Heard Today Are My Own.

Even though about half the time they're my own words repeated back to me by an almost-two-year-old with a distinctly Mexican flavored accent. Seriously. Kid is blond and blue, never been out of Virginia, and he speaks like his middle name is Jorge. "I did it" turns into "I deed eet" and "it's broken" is "ees brokeen." Anyone who knows my mother knows she's Senora Ribbe, Spanish teacher at GHS. Grady might need to spend more time with his other grandparents...

But I keed, I keed.

Poop

Yes, that's right. There is just so much of it. If it's not one, it's the other. And as I'm sitting here and Grady's pushing his red truck back and forth across the room I'm getting whiffs that can mean only one thing...

And while he'll come up to us (typically in the middle of dinner when he's already pushed his food away saying "all done plate, all done fork" and gotten down from the table, which is happening more and more lately since he EATS NOTHING BESIDES PRETZELS, but that's another story), anyway he comes up to us in the middle of dinner patting his bottom and saying "is poopin diaper?" I insist that he immediately sits on his potty, but since I'm usually incapacitated by a nursing baby (and need my meat cut up for me...I feel like I'm back in the nursing home from last semester), Justin gets the pleasure. Of course Grady has yet to successfully eliminate in an approved receptacle, so by the third time last night that he informed us of his need to "poop in potty" Justin flat out refused. Kid's only manipulating us for marshmallows, which is what I give him when he tries on the potty, because otherwise he just wants to use it as a little chair to sit in and read magazines. ONE TIME he peed 3 drops in it, but that was over a month ago. Sigh. I'm really trying not to rush him, since I know kids need to be ready before any effort on my part will produce a result.

Moving along to a more savory subject, the boys' room is almost finished! Gwen, JB and Topher came over on Monday, sacrificing a snow day to help paint. One wall is dark brown and the other three are a sky blue, like a September day blue. Justin is kind of unsure about the contrast, and honestly so am I, but I think once I get the car and truck decals up and the furniture moved where I want it (and where is that? It's like a Sudoku, I have an idea of the goal but my mind just can't put the pieces together) it will look much better. MUCH better than the "sand" color it was before, thanks to Gavin. Our house is quite...colorful...if you've never been here. The kitchen and dining room are a pale cream yellow, but the cabinets are RED. The bathroom is ORANGE (seriously, it was called Harvest Spice and it looked great on the card when Meaghan and I picked it out). The living rooms are a nice, light Ralph Lauren brown, our bedroom is green (Tea Leaf or something) and the boys' room, well, you know. It's got personality! Speaking of which, Grady just stumbled up to me wearing Justin's sweatshirt backwards, like with the hood covering his face, crying for me to take "Daddy's shirt off." Time to go.

This One Somehow Turned into a Birth Story

The last two nights we've put my tiny boy Grady to sleep in his big boy toddler bed. Each night I tell him "now you stay in your big boy bed, you don't get up, OK?" to which he replies "Otay mommy." Melts my friggin heart. Last night, after we sat on the couch listening to him list his family members in a little song that goes "Mommy, Daddy, Keaton, Beba, Beba, doggies, Anna, Mommy, Gran-Gran, Seth, Daniel, bye bye Daniel" or something like that, I started crying. Crying! With hormonal mommy emotions! Ridiculous. Never thought that would be me. I told Justin I was just so sad that he couldn't roll around and kick the back of his crib like he has done while falling asleep since he was like 8 months old. He's always been the best baby to put to sleep. I can count on my fingers the times he's actually cried in his bed. Excuse me, I guess I shouldn't say baby. We've got a new baby, which means Grady is a boy. I can't say kid yet. He still sucks his "pasheesh" for goodness sake.

Birth Details Alert

I've been staring and staring at Keaton lately trying to make myself appreciate this baby time. It's not that I hate it, despite my occasional complaint about his little baby demands. I'm more terrified that he'll be my last baby. I loved pregnancy with Grady - so easy, what do these women complain about? Pregnancy with Keaton wasn't difficult, per se, but when we got the news of my Anti-Kell status around 10 weeks gestation, and my Googling and maternal-fetal specialist visits began, so did the stress. It wasn't until 24 weeks, when I finally gave in and got the amniocentesis that told us that, hallelujah, he was Kell negative like me meaning I could have a normal remaining pregnancy, that I could justify complaining about the little discomforts like a normal pregnant lady. Before that I just felt guilty. But by the end of my pregnancy, with my symphysis pubis creaking at every step, and my bladder with a capacity of two teaspoons that wasn't terribly understanding of the trip I had to make down the stairs to empty it, and how frigging impossible it was to just take a breath, I did my fair share of complaining. I was just. so. tired! I was sure he was going to be a giant baby, due to the new stretch marks that joined the ones from Grady, which had only recently faded. And then, of course, he was transverse! C-section, OMG. Thank the Lord he turned head-down by the midwife visit at which they were going to try to wrestle him into position. But oh difficult child! He was posterior at my 39 week check! OMG back labor! Pain! Possible C-section! So I did my research and bought an exercise ball, religiously rolled and swayed my hips on it, bent forward to rest my arms on it and let my belly hang, because the websites said that would help his little body spin into position so he would have a chance of coming into this world correctly. I didn't even get to go back to the office before, several days late, I realized I was in labor on a Friday night while sitting on the exercise ball watching "2012" on instant Netflix and timing my irregular contractions on some handy dandy webpage. After Justin got home around midnight, I decided that was the time to vacuum and mop the downstairs rather than to sleep. If you've ever met me, that was a more definite sign of labor than water breaking. I don't choose anything over sleep. I joined Justin in bed for a couple hours, but a really good contraction woke me and I was UP. I soaked in our teeny bathtub while rereading my favorite parts of Ian McEwan's "Atonement." I took a long, hot shower, but had to eventually sit down because standing through those contractions was rough. After I got out, I called the Birthing Center, got answered by a lady in my nursing classes who paged my midwife Phyllis and had her call me. It was 5:30ish am. Although the contractions were still pretty far apart, she said get ready and come on in. So I went upstairs to rouse the baby daddy. I told him "we've got to get ready to go," and, like an 8th grader on a Monday, he said with his eyes still closed "It's Saturday, I don't have to go to work." I sorted his shit out. Grady was still sleeping, so Mom and Gwen met us at the house, Gwen stayed there with Grady and Mom followed us to the hospital (after slipping on the ice, glad that wasn't me!). When I finally changed and settled in, the nurse checked me and said "wow, you're already 6 or 7 cm, I'm going to call Phyllis and make sure she's almost here." Hooray for me, BUT the problem was I had tested Group B positive, like I had with Grady, and needed IV antibiotics during labor. They started it right away. I labored all Saturday morning, got in that fantastically large hospital jet bathtub, sat up in the bed, laid down in the bed, lavender oil foot massages, Mom brushing my hair, heating pack here, heating pack there, but NO PAIN MEDS.

That's right, I did it au natural. I was fully dilated when my water broke - POW- like a busted water main straight across the room. Justin almost died. Phyllis told me I had to hold my pushing til noon when the IV drip would be over or Keaton would need additional testing to make sure he wasn't infected with the Group B Strep. Eek. So I asked them to turn up the drip. There's no way I could wait that long to push, but there was also no way I was allowing them to traumatize my newborn. They turned it up and I tried to just let the contractions flow through my body, head back to avoid pushing. When the drip finished at 11:30, I could finally push! It was such an amazing experience, and so very different from the intervention-ridden purple pushing I did when Grady was born (which I fully believe was due to the minimal amount of Pitocin, that evil stuff). No one told me when or how long to push. No one even held my legs back. Everyone sat in silence while I and my body cooperated. I pushed as much as I felt like through about 3 contractions and right through that "ring of fire" (it does suck) before little Keaton Philip Locklear arrived crying at 11:42 am on November 6th.

He was placed straight on my chest to latch on almost immediately (I might add I had stripped all my clothes off about an hour before. No shame). I got to hold him and nurse him while Phyllis stitched up my one little first degree tear, which, although it seemed to take forever, was far better than the millions of stitches I received after my second degree episiotomy with Grady. The nurses gave him the Vitamin K shot, heel stick, and eye drops all while he nursed so he barely flinched. And after all those new stretch marks, he weighed exactly the same as Grady - 6 lbs 12 oz. Every nurse we had for the rest of the stay told me that my labor and delivery nurse had been telling them all how beautiful of a birth it had been. Beautiful, maybe not, but lovely, I'd say so. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I want another.

Butterflies

Today I feel the need to swallow my boys up whole, keep them safe and sound back inside me where the big bad realities of life can't get to them. I was blessed to have two uncomplicated pregnancies (with the exception of the antibody/antigen scare with Keaton). What's scary is that that doesn't mean even close to everything in regards to the health of an infant. Grady has Optic Nerve Hypoplasia - it's not severe or life threatening, it's not genetic or caused by anything that happened in pregnancy (so we were told). That almost makes it more difficult. I feel like most of us mamas shake our heads at crack babies or FAS babies or babies with health problems because their mothers are 14 years old. We hurt for the poor babies, we do, but secretly we feel secure and somewhat self-satisfied with the fact that, since we did everything right, our baby will be fine. I'm sure Scarlett's mama felt that way, too. But baby Scarlett Grace has a 10 x 7cm brain tumor that, according to her neurosurgeon, is almost certainly malignant. I hear heartwrenching stories during the 30 seconds of human interest on the news every day, and though I will admit, since procreating, I do cry at the St. Jude's commercials, I had always thought they were pandering to the more hormonal among us. And that is probably true, stated evidence taken into consideration. But Scarlett's story struck close to home for me, as she is not even a month older than Keaton. Her mama is also a Baby Center member, just as I have confessed to being. Her parents love her and took very good care of her from the beginning. Lightning can strike anywhere.


Please keep this family in your prayers. Read their blog here to stay updated on Scarlett's condition.