The Wee One just finished her three week growth spurt and I’m amazed at how much she has grown. She’s already too big for the sleeper she wore home from the hospital, and I notice the difference when I’m holding her for nursing. She’s more alert now, which is fun for the whole family, and she’s sleeping really well, usually for at least 4 or 5 hours at a stretch after she goes to “bed” at around 7 or 7:30pm. Pretty soon we’ll be moving her out of our room into her own room, which will mean three baby monitors creating static and popping noises in our room all night. As Mrs. Carl Sagan says, it’s kind of like sleeping at Norad.

I’m doing great too. Yesterday I drove for the first time and everything was fine, and today I walked all around the block with all three kids, on my own. I’ve been off of pain meds for more than a week and helping with the other kids, dinnertime, and cleanup pretty much like a normal person. I’m still avoiding going up and down the stairs when I can, but I can go up and down them now without too much trouble. Pretty much the final frontier is carrying around Gal Smiley, which she really can’t wait for.

Speaking of her, the transition to having a baby in the house has definitely been the hardest for the Gal. She gets cranky when I can’t play with her because I’m nursing the baby or holding the baby during naptimes (as Sir Monkeypants has already pointed out, the Wee One prefers to sleep in a lap, rather than her bassinet, during the day — a little annoying, but at least I’m almost all the way through Season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance now). Plus we are trying to toilet train Gal Smiley before she starts preschool in September, but she insists that she is a “baby” and wants to wear diapers, so that is causing a lot of butting of heads. I’m sure we will work it all out soon, and at least she doesn’t ever take out her frustration on the Wee One — on the contrary, she loves to help with changing her, bathing her, or “feeding” her (don’t ask).

The Captain is handling things in stride, but he’s always kind of enjoyed playing by himself, and he looooooves having his Dad at home, so it’s kind of like a big party for him, anyway. He is constantly coming up to the Wee One and giving her kisses and telling her that he loves her. Aw. On the other hand, she was really wailing today when I had to put her down for five minutes while I grabbed a pee break and a glass of water, and I returned to find him holding his hand over her mouth. Oops. Guess we will have a talk about that one!

And as for Sir Monkeypants…he is his usual totally awesome self. He’s really doing an incredible job around here, taking care of everyone and reorganizing the office and building new furniture for the Wee One’s room, all at the same time. Plus he remains relatively chipper about the toilet training process. All this on five hours of sleep a night! Amazing!

A couple of nights ago, I was trying to settle the Wee One down for bed, when she had an enormous poop that leaked all over. I brought her into the bathroom to clean up, and just then, Gal Smiley had a big poop, which Sir Monkeypants took the lead on, and then the Captain had to poo, so I talked him through the process of wiping his own bum while I cleaned up the baby. And everyone was stuffed in the bathroom, some were chattering and some were screaming, and in general there was chaos and a ton of noise, and you’d think I would find this situation really stressful. But instead, I felt total…joy. Because our house is now nutty and insane and loud, but it really feels like home. Our family feels complete, and we’re all in this together, and during the three-strikes-of-poo event, Sir Monkeypants and I were laughing, and the kids were all okay, and it was all good. And I was so happy to have such a great family.

Things that make use of your lower abs, as highlighted by a recent C-section:

• going up and down stairs
• washing your hair in the shower, and other activities that involve reaching over your head
• closing your car door, and other activities that involve twisting
• getting up out of chairs, out of bed, and off the floor
• coughing, laughing, or sneezing
• supporting the weight of a 2 and a half year old girl, as she decides to use your arms as a vine, while demonstrating how she is exactly like a giant monkey

But luckily, sitting on the couch is a-okay.

Most of my family left town this morning, and LittleSis is leaving tomorrow morning. We’re a little scared to see her go, but actually, I think we are going to be okay. The Wee One is doing very well — still not in any kind of sleep pattern, which sucks, but she is nursing really well, growing great, and in general is a pretty happy baby. She’s getting lots of hugs and kisses from her older brother and sister, which warms my heart and seems to interest Wee One as well. So cute.

I’m doing okay — even better than okay, actually. I’ve cut my pain meds in half and even then, I’m still walking around and getting up and caring for the baby pretty well. I can help with little things like clearing the table and doing chopping at dinnertime, and I’m getting up out of bed by myself. We’re actually finding it hard to find the right balance between me helping out, and me resting — we don’t want to push it too much, so I have some freaky relapse, but at the same time, I want to help out as much as I can, especially once Sir Monkeypants is left to handle everything around here by himself.

In any case, we’re hanging in there :).

This week, LittleSis had booked off of work for vacation. But instead of doing fun things with her 18-month-old son, HMan, she volunteered to come and stay with us, to help after the c-section. She’s been doing most of the cooking and meal planning and cleanup, as well as taking our older two kids to the park every day and colouring with them and playing games with them and generally being awesome. I am so grateful to her that I can’t really think about it too much, as my milk is in and I’m all hormonal and thinking about how great she has been only leads to crying jag number 345 of the last four days.

FameThrowa has also been fantastic, coming over almost every evening to clean our kitchen, and make muffins and other snacks, and to do our grocery shopping. Tonight she’s coming over to make dinner for everyone, and now I’m on to crying jag number 346.

Last night my mom arrived in town, with my grandmother, SocialButterly, and SocialButterfly’s two teenaged kids. They’re staying at a hotel to make things easier on us but still are helping as much as they can with the child care around here. I’m so moved that everyone rushed in to help out, and although it’s really really hard for me to just sit around watching Tour De France coverage while everyone else works, I contribute as much as I can through grateful crying.

The coolest part is that it has been a few years since me and my three sisters were all in the same place at the same time. Plus, this is the first time ever that all of my mom’s grandchildren have been together in the same place. Of course there are the usual family squabbles associated with a big reunion, but I’m just so happy to have everyone here that I believe it is time for crying jag number 347.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

2am: I wake up with a fever and chills, and throw up in the bathroom. I figure I have some sort of flu or intestinal bug.

4am: After suffering with stomach cramps (but not contractions) for two hours, I finally wake up Sir Monkeypants for help. He very kindly helps me throw up some more. I feel a bit better so we decide to get some sleep and see how I’m feeling in the morning.

6am: My fever is down a bit, although I’m still having stomach cramps. Sir Monkeypants wants me to go in to see a doctor, but I’m still convinced it’s just the flu, so I send him off to work.

10am: I realise that I haven’t felt the baby move since I threw up at 4. So, I do what always works: have a chocolate Instant Breakfast and sit in our rocking chair. But the baby still isn’t moving, at all, which is really unlike her, plus my stomach is still cramping and painful.

10:30am: I call the hospital and calmly explain the situation, and ask if I can come in to have the baby checked. They say sure. Then I call Sir Monkeypants and I’m totally, completely hysterical on the phone — I still cannot believe he understood a word I was saying. He calls Rheostatics Fan to come over and then rushes home himself.

11am: Rheostatics Fan arrives to take care of the Captain and Gal Smiley. Someday I predict she will write a book about this day entitled, “The Longest Nine Hours Of My Life.” Meanwhile, Sir Monkeypants and I rush off to the hospital.

11:30am: I’m hooked up to a monitor that shows that the baby’s heartbeat is fine. With rest and some chocolate milk, I even feel a couple of small movements, so everything is looking good, according to the nurses. I’m also having the occasional contraction, about once every half hour.

2:30pm: We finally get a chance to see the OB on call, who turns out to be my very own OB, Dr. Anderson. She is surprisingly worried about the baby. She doesn’t like the fact that my ongoing stomach cramps are right in the location of my placenta. Also, she isn’t impressed that my post-dates checkup ultrasound won’t be for another whole week. She asks us to stay and have an ultrasound in the hospital today, just to make sure.

4pm: Sir Monkeypants wheels me down to the ultrasound clinic. While we are waiting, we notice that my contractions have stepped it up, and are now coming every five minutes or so. Inside the ultrasound room, the news isn’t too good. The baby’s heart rate and breathing rate are elevated for no apparent reason, and she isn’t moving at all — not even wiggling her fingers and toes in response to “stimulus” (i.e. poking her with the ultrasound wand thingy).

5pm: Back at the birth unit and back on the monitor, it’s clear that I’m in labour, but also that the baby’s heart rate has zoomed to a dangerously high level. Dr. Anderson is really worried and you can tell she’s already thinking C-section. But, because Gal Smiley’s labour was really fast (4 hours start to finish), she decides to break my water and give me an hour to get dilated, before making the call.

5:30pm: Water broken — it’s full of meconium, which is baby poop, and although it often happens that an overdue baby will poop before birth, it’s not the greatest thing to be swimming around in, and another sign that the baby needs to come out NOW.

6:30pm: After an hour of fairly regular contractions, I’m still only 2cm dilated, so it’s time. Dr. Anderson says the baby’s heart rate is still too high, but also, dropping off dangerously with each contraction and not recovering, so we have to operate. I must say, having a C-section is something I really did not expect, or want to see happen, but at this point, having barely felt the baby move all day, I just want her out and healthy.

7pm: To the OR! Having a spinal is AWESOME. It totally took care of my annoying contractions, which by now, were coming about every 2 minutes apart. Sometimes I wish I had asked them to check me again at this point, because it seemed like I was accelerating quickly and maybe could have had a natural delivery within the hour. But as Dr. Anderson pointed out several times, you never know, and it was much better to be safe than sorry.

7:30pm: The Wee One is born! She immediately complains about being removed from The Warm Place, and that there is no latte waiting for her immediately, and that this place is very poorly decorated, and that they are using tap water instead of Evian to bathe her. Really, the nerve of some people! Sir Monkeypants takes her off to the nursery.

Meanwhile…having a C-section is not my favourite thing in the world. Turns out they removed two kilograms — that’s more than four pounds — of meconium. My reaction goes like this:

1. Gross!
2. GROSS.
3. No wonder the kid was in distress, she was swimming in poo!
4. No wonder some people thought I was having twins…I was, and one of them was made of poo!
5. Groooooooooooosss.

8:15pm: I’m moved to recovery and I get to hold Wee One for the first time. She gets her latte, and she’s like, “Finally! Five more minutes and everybody would have been FUCKING FIRED.” She likes her latte so I’m still on the payroll.

And that’s it! Wee One is perfectly healthy and doing great, eating well and sleeping not too bad. I’m recovering not too badly either — it’s painful but at least I can walk around, get to the bathroom by myself, and care for Wee One mostly by myself, while does everything else around here. Thanks, Daddy!

Still no baby, but there has been an exciting new development — I’ve picked up some sort of stomach bug that kept me up half the night barfing. Yay! Just what we needed!

So this morning, both Sir Monkeypants and I are feeling rather ill and tired. At this point I’d have to say that a day or two of rest and recovery would be well worth it — so I’ve decided that a few more days before labour would be best.

Of course you know, that means the baby will probably arrive this afternoon!

[Edited to add: And indeed she did.]

Like many preschoolers, my kids only like to watch movies that they’ve seen many, many times before. I guess there’s something comforting about a movie where they know everything that is going to happen, and also, the more they watch it, the more they pick up on what is going on, so it’s a learning process. Anyway, for the past year or so we’ve basically only ever watched three movies: Cars, Toy Story 2, and Winnie-The-Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. I’ve seen each of them at least 20 times.

We have Toy Story and Heffalump on DVD, but in all this time, we’ve only had a downloaded version of Cars to watch over our XBox. I’ve been meaning to actually buy the DVD for ages now, though, because we watch it so much it seems like we should pay for it, and also, having a portable copy to take on long car rides is well worth it. So last week, when I was looking for something extra to add to my Chapters Online order, to qualify for free shipping, I bought the DVD.

It arrived yesterday and we put it in, and man, it was like seeing it for the first time. I am intimately familiar with every scene, every line, every sound in this movie, but it was just mind-blowing how much clearer the visuals were, and how much more detailed the sound was. Our surround sound system was in heaven and our big TV was having a field day. I could definitely have watched it all day — those Pixar people really know what the hell they are doing.

The baby ignored yesterday’s thunderstorms, but today is, as promised, wickedly humid — the high is 30, with a humidex of 38 — and more showers and thunderstorms are called for, so we can still have our gothic birth situation. I saw my OB this morning and nothing is going on in the important areas, so it’s not looking too promising, though.

I must say, this “overdue” thing is something I feel completely unprepared to deal with. I was so sure I’d have the baby last night. My OB wants to know how I feel about being induced, and I’ve never had to even think about it before, so I just don’t know. For now I told her I’d wait at least one more week, as long as the baby is doing okay. In the meantime, she’s booked me for a couple of non-stress tests on the baby for this week, and an ultrasound for early next week, to make sure everything is still okay.

Until then…I’m pretty tired. And hot. You may have heard. Hopefully I can get some rest today and relax a little bit.

Well, today’s my due date, and my email newsletter subscription over at Babycenter is announcing that the “Baby Has Arrived!” which, as it turns out, is a little premature. Sir Monkeypants has pointed out, though, that my due date did fluctuate quite a lot between the 9th and the 10th, so I’ll give it until tomorrow evening before we get serious with the raspberry tea and the mowing the lawn.

We’re now in the zone where our parents are calling every day, sometimes twice a day in my mom’s case. That isn’t a complaint at all, though — I’m really happy they are getting excited. We had heard from other friends of ours with three that the third one, although you love it just as much as the others, doesn’t get the lavish attention and interest from the rest of the family that the first two did. I’m happy to say that that doesn’t appear to be true for this little one — both our moms are really excited about the event and are planning trips to come up and meet the new little one as soon as we are home from the hospital. It’ll be busy but quite nice to have their support.

In the meantime: today’s thunderstorms are raging outside, so we’re stuck inside playing PlayDoh and watching videos. So any time now, kiddo, would be good!