A Few of My Favorite (Postpartum) Things

1. Babywise. But perhaps you already knew that.  Except for one rough night last night due to a severely stuffy nose, Theo is sleeping well, only waking 2x a night, going 3-4 hours at a go (at night).  It's such a gift to be able to meet his needs and help him (and all of us) sleep well.   
My Brest Friend-- seriously, the way this nursing pillow locks around the body with a buckle... I love it!  And is just the right height and firmness for supporting baby... It blows my mind. SOOOO much better than the Boppy or just doing it myself with a pillow. It allows me to focus on getting a good latch and nothing else.  Cheesy name aside, I truly love "my Brest friend". 
3. Bellefit corset with zipper - yup. I'm loving it. Especially having diastasis recti since baby #1, I am completely astounded at how fast my stomach is looking like a normal stomach post-delivery. I'm so glad I bought two of them... One (a large) with a zipper for post delivery, and one without a zipper (a medium) for once I lose some weight but still want the extra toning. 
4. BabyNursing app-- this app is so helpful for tracking how often baby is eating, how long they eat, and (my favorite) which side they started on last. I love the ease of this app-- and it's free!!  :). I interrupt this informative post to unabashedly ask you to admire the preciousness of my 11-day-old Theo.  Isn't he just exquisite?
5. MyFitnessPal app-- they give you extra calories for breast feeding (you enter it like a food, FYI) and its definitely helping me to make thoughtful, deliberate choices on how to spend my calories each day.  
6. TakeThemAMeal.com-- this has been SUCH a blessing for the last two weeks... Every church should do this. And I love how they list out what everyone is bringing so that participants can bring a variety of dishes and really bless the receiving family. We have truly eaten good the last two weeks and I'm so thankful for our church family that has done so much to encourage and support us during this time with our new little guy. 
7. Paternity leave. yup. Doug and I have enjoyed having time together as a family during all his newness. :)

Our New Little One

Our 6th child and 5th son was born Wednesday at home.  He weighed 8 pounds, 7 ounces and was 21  & 1/2 inches long.  Our 2nd biggest baby, and my 2nd longest labor, Theo has more hair, and darker hair, than I think any our other kids have had. 

He is precious and much-adored by us all.  I'm recovering well but still limited to using Internet on my phone, so won't be blogging much more than this until we figure out a solution. Blessings to you & your family, from me & mine as I snuggle in and nurse this beautiful boy God has given us. 

Birthing Children, part four

This is the birth story for our 4th son, born in March 2008. I've previously written out birth stories for our first and second sons. I happened to type out this story to share with friends today, so I just copied and pasted it here even though I haven't actually written out my third birth story yet. So this is part four even though I haven't shared part three yet. Enjoy. 

PRAYING FOR AN ALL-NATURAL BIRTH EXPERIENCE 
With #4, I had been praying the entire pregnancy that God would let me go into labor naturally. At that point, I had always experienced some kind of intervention- pitocin had played a significant/central in the previous 3 labors. 

It's not that I believed there was anything magical or holy about having a natural birth. I just was 4 pregnancies into our family and really just wanted to know what real contractions felt like. I wondered, can my body *really* do this baby thing on its own? 

WALKING HILLS
A labor and delivery nurse friend of mine indicated that the only two consistently effective labor-inducing methods she knew of were (1) lots of sex and (2) walking briskly down steep hills in a way that continually brought the baby's head in continual contact with the cervix. 

I'm not going to share about our experiences with her first suggestion :) , but as for the second, I walked like crazy. Istanbul has these wonderful hilly places and so I would walk hard down the hill in our apartment complex. It was crazy steep, and so I'd walk with firm steps so his head would engage with my cervix, and then walk slowly back up the hill, breathing through the contraction the quick downhill walk had brought on.  This had produced contractions for about 36 hours straight, but while they were consistent and good and firm, they weren't yet painful, and they would fizzle out after a while. 

EGGPLANT
A friend of mine (Megan, do you remember this?) sent me an eggplant parmesan recipe that she swore had sent her into labor... So I got all the ingredients, got things ready, and decided to make it one night. It was a fairly arduous recipe and I didnt have access to convenience foods, so I started making it maybe around 3:30/4pm. Pretty soon, the contractions were coming on. I was on my feet nonstop, chopping, frying, boiling, layering, grating... By the time I got it in the oven for the final bake, I was having to bend over the counter and breathe through them. 

So while it baked, we called friends to come stay with the kids, called my mom to let her know but my dad had already dropped her off at the airport (she would arrive the next morning).

I pulled my culinary creation out of the oven and served it up to each person in the family and was about to take the first bite when WHAMMO, the strongest one yet hit me and I immediately, without thinking, went down on all fours onto the floor. This was about 6:45 and my friend arrived to watch the children so Doug got the final bag together and we left in the taxi.

AT THE HOSPITAL
When we got to the hospital it was about 7pm and I was dilated to a 5.  Until that point, I had never dilated to ANYTHING without pitocin. I was so excited!! 

They admitted me and I labored another 30 minutes or so when my doctor got there. She had been at a dinner party and I apologized for pulling her away from it. She said, "oh this is no problem. You're a fourth-time mom and this will take no time at all. I'll be back to the dinner party in no time."  I wasn't so sure but sure enough, when she checked me, I was at a 7 or 8.  She offered to break my water or not, it was up to me. I waited another 15-20 minutes and decided, sure go on and break it. Within 20 minutes or so I'd dilated to a 10 and was ready to push. I don't recall exactly how many pushes but I think it was 2 or 3 and he was out. 

SILAS JAMES ARRIVES!!
He was born at 8:36. Such a wonderful night. And while it all started with and revolved around eggplant, I never did taste a bite of that miracle recipe that "sent me into labor". 

Waiting and Cleaning and Preparing and Imagining

Yup. That's pretty much what I'm doing these days.

I cracked my computer screen :( so that's why I haven't blogged in the last couple weeks. It's just too much "ma fan", as we said in China. Too much trouble, that is, to blog on this tiny little phone screen.

WAITING
But I thought I'd give one last shout out here pre-delivery.  I'm 2 weeks from my due date (the 18th is my official due date), and I've tended to go into labor within a couple or three days on either side of due date.  The only difference this time is that I think my actual due date might really be the 13th, based on when I had a positive pregnancy test. So we shall see. Mentally I'm trying to focus on the 18th but preparations-wise I'm keeping the 13th in mind.

My 6 year old daughter also has it on her mind. Almost non stop here lately. :). She drew a picture I wanted to share on here but blogging on a phone is no picnic and I can't get it to add the picture. Sorry. :(

CLEANING
As I've confessed here before (and now my houseguest Cate can attest to), I am no neat freak. I struggle to keep tidying as a priority but am doing better and making strides of improvement each year. That said, here lately I've felt the urge to "nest". I've implemented some Pinterest ideas (like that brilliant one about the cotton-perm-juice-catcher-rolly-thing being soaked in bleach and then left against the mildewy caulked edges of the bathtub--so smart and effective!!!) and am generally working more diligently to keep things up, at least cleaning wise, even if clutter still abounds.

PREPARING
This is my first home birth, and it's decidedly different from preparing for a hospital delivery. No bag to pack and no "which door do I go to if I go into labor at 3am?" conversations to be had, but there are things like mattress covers and a ready supply of towels and clean sheets... So I'm pulling all that together into one spot in our bedroom. Our midwives provided us with a list so that's the equivalent of the packing of the hospital bag, I suppose.

I'm also rereading Babywise, as usual, and have pulled out the ole trusty copy of the "Nursing Mother's Companion" for my bedside table. Those are my two must-have newborn books so I keep them close once delivery is imminent.

For those of you who might remember and wonder, I did end up purchasing the Bellefit postpartum girdle, so that should be an interesting difference this time around, to see if my stomach shapes up quicker.

One thing hasn't changed: I'm still working on stocking the fridge with a ready supply of meals for post-baby. But that is much easier here, in convenience-food-land than it was when we lived in Turkey.  :)

IMAGINING
Probably the thing that I'm having the most fun doing is imagining... Wondering what his sweet face will look like- with all five of our other babies, we had numerous sonograms. The first two, we had three each, and for the last three babies, we had sonograms at every doctor visit (standard procedure there). So to have only had one sonogram this go round, and have him be face down, has kept his face, his profile, everything, a mystery to us! I am so excited to see what his face will look like!! :)

Also, the thing I'm most excited about is this: no one will take Theo from me. At no point will he have to go to another room. With every other baby, within 2-30 minutes, I watched someone wheel my newborn baby away from me-- the one I'd carried for 9 (or more!) months and worked so hard to birth. But with Theo, as long as he and I are healthy and well, it'll be the first time I'll just be able to hold my baby for as lot as I want to, inspect every inch of him and even give him his first bath myself and dress him in the outfit of my choosing.  I am super excited to meet him and get to experience all of this in our own peaceful home.

I asked my mom if she could watch our other 5 children for 48 hours, to give us a little time with Theo.  She has generously arranged to take off a full week to watch them.  And a fellow church member has a garage apartment that our houseguests can stay in for a week. So for the first time ever,  Doug and I won't be hosting anyone in our home after having a baby. It will just be he and I and Theo. :)  We are super super excited to have that special time together.

So that's what I'm up to. I'll try to write something once I have Theo but am not promising anything. :). See you on the other side.