Frustration

Eli is working on learning to crawl. He does a push-up type move and can get up on all fours but is unsure what to do once he's there.  He can only push himself backwards which puts him farther from the toys he sees in front of him. When I come back after leaving him on the floor he's usually a few feet back from where I left him and his squeals have gone from delighted to frustrated.

The beginning

I started writing this post months ago and just got around to wrapping it up. This is my attempt to document Eli's birth.

Remember how I said that blog posting would pick up once the baby arrived? Hahahahahahaha...well,  clearly I was out of touch (clueless?) about the reality of taking care of a newborn. I've been promising myself I'd sit down and write about his birth and the aftermath since we got home from the hospital. But a very difficult recovery and an even more difficult adjustment to having a baby have rocked my world so much that I'm still not sure I am ready to do it--not to mention that I don't have enough uninterrupted time to really be able to put into words what I've been through and how life has changed since Eli was born.

Pregnancy was relatively breezy. I had some discomforts and annoyances but overall I felt good. I was able to exercise up until the very end. I started having contractions off and on during the 39th week and started to get antsy for the real event. The day before my due date was a Saturday. Paul and I were running some errands in the morning and I was having contractions that were beginning to build. We finished up, got our hospital bags and got in the car to pick my mom up from the airport. Everything was ready and in order. I'd finished my list of things to do before the baby arrived and felt prepared. When we got out of the car in the airport parking lot my water broke. I got back in the car and sat on some towels while Paul went in to try to find her. After a few minutes I called his cell phone to tell him that I thought we should go on to the hospital without her since we didn't know how long it would take her to get through customs and get her luggage. We left her a message through the paging system to take a cab to the hospital.She arrived about 20 minutes after we did and found us in OB triage. At that point, Paul and I commented about how smoothly things had worked out: my water broke and labor started at a time when Paul didn't have to scramble to get back from wherever he was working and Mom made it into town at just the right time.

Well, that was essentially the end of any sort of smoothness. I was only dilated to a one when I arrived at the hospital so we anticipated a long labor. It was about noon when I was admitted and late in the evening around seven or so I decided I was ready for the epidural. I had waited, not wanting to slow things down. It took the anesthesiologist an hour and forty five minutes to get to me. He'd been called out on an emergency of some sort.  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning I developed a fever that spiked to 39.5 and wasn't responding to antibiotics or tylenol that the nurses gave me. The fever made me shake for hours and left me feeling drained. The nurses tried to use a cooling blanket but they didn't seem to know how it worked and were calling down to the ICU nurses to ask for instructions. In the meantime, Paul got a basin of ice water and cloths and iced me down which finally eased the fever. When the sun came up the next morning I had some juice and tried to rallied to get the strength and energy to push. I pushed for two and a half hours but Eli was posterior and over ten pounds and was not coming out. Once that became clear the only option was c-section. They gave me some pretty intense meds but I do remember hearing him squawk loudly and that the pediatrician brought him over so that I could kiss him.

Because Eli had been exposed to the infection I had (called chorioamnionitis) he would have to spend a week in the NICU to receive IV antiobiotics as a preventive precaution. It was a traumatic week. I was in a lot of pain recovering from the c-section but wanted to be down in the NICU to nurse him. Those three hallways between my room and his in the NICU were agonizingly long. Trying to learn to nurse a huge, wiggly baby who had the IV placed in his head was challenging. We were thrilled to leave the NICU behind and take him home at the end of the week

Taking Eli home from the hospital

Monkey goes to Gymboree

I took Eli to a Gymboree class for the first time today. I wasn't that surprised to observe that he was by far the loudest, wiggliest baby in the room. But he also seemed to be the strongest. He showed off the rolling over onto his tummy trick and even astonished the teacher by scooting/crawling a little.

Update

In a previous post I naively predicted that once Eli was born the blog posting would pick up. I couldn't have been more wrong about that one. Not only do we have very little uninterrupted free time but I'm stifled by the pressure of feeling like I have to do chronological updates starting from the beginning of his life.  That's just not going to happen. So, I'm going to ease back into this blogging thing with some non-chronological, random tidbits about our little monkey.

Sometimes Eli has sudden, unpredictable mood swings.

 

Eli's room makes its debut

This is where he's going to sleep (hopefully).

This is where he's going to eat.
This is where he's going to get his pants changed.
And this is where his toys are kept.
The bulletin board has pictures of people who love him--Mom and Dad, 3 sets of living grandparents, and of course, Jesus. Don't be sad if you didn't make the cut to be featured on the 'people who love him' bulletin board. Between my 5 siblings and their 10 kids, Paul's 8 siblings and their 31 kids he has lots of aunts, uncles and cousins. The bulletin board is too small!

Final picture is a close up of the mobile his crazy Mommy made herself. I hope it doesn't make him scared of birdies.

Bulging belly

38 Weeks

The other day I walked into the locker room at the gym on my way to join the grandmas for water aerobics and a woman looked at me, gasped, winced and exclaimed. I laughed and said, "That must mean that I'm about ready to have this baby when people are alarmed at the size of my belly." She laughed along with me and tried to soften the blow by saying, "No, you look good, it just looks like you're getting close." Part of me was thinking, "Whatever lady, don't try to back pedal now. I already saw the look of shock and horror on your face." Giving her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she wasn't expecting to see such a pregnant belly at the gym.

A few months ago it was all solidarity and empathy. I would pass another woman on the path as I was walking and hiking and I'd hear, "You go, girl" or "Bless your heart!" Now people are just cringing.

Brace yourselves. Here are some belly shots for posterity:


Both were taken at 37 weeks, 1 day. Kinda hilarious how my belly button has stretched out to the point of almost disappearing, no? Paul is disappointed that it didn't pop out and go bing like a turkey timer. He was looking forward to that.

Best News Ever

Travel arrangements have been made for my mom to come when the baby is born! I couldn't be more excited and relieved. My parents are serving a two year temple mission in Asuncion, Paraguay. They left right after Paul and I got married. We knew (well, thought we knew) from the get-go that if we had a baby before they came back that there was no possibility that my mom would be able to come help me out afterward. Well, happily, we were mistaken.

She found out that it was a possibility kind of coincidentally. They were at dinner with the other American missionaries serving at the temple and one of the sisters asked my mom how I was doing and so she was telling her that I was doing well but was nervous because besides it being our first baby there's a chance I could have complications from ulcerative colitis made worse by the fact that I'm not able to take the medication in the third trimester. Well, the temple president's wife overheard this and said, "Well, you should go." My mom kind of laughed and said that of course she'd like to but thought it wasn't an option. The temple president's wife turned to him and said, "Well, she can go can't she?" They all kind of laughed again because she put him on the spot a bit but he responded that as far as he was concerned she could but that she'd have to apply for permission and submit the application to someone in the temple department in Salt Lake. Long story short, the application was submitted and a few weeks later word came back that she was good to go. Ticket booked!

I'm not sure who is more excited, me or my mom. If wiggling is any indication of excitement, the baby is REALLY excited, too.