We were reminded today that Noah had previously signed up for a professional conference that starts… Friday. It goes Friday-Sunday. So! Uhm. This’ll be festive. Would anyone be willing/able to come hang out with me and the girls for some of that time? Right now I am not completely bed ridden at this point but I’m a little nervous about being the sole grown up for that long.
So I talked to my aunt tonight. The very very very short version of the latest shit from my family:
-my uncle got turned into the county for his property being such a dump. They have to clean shit up. No one is helping my 70-something year old aunt and her two disabled 50-something year old sons do this clean up (oh, one of them is a paraplegic). None of the people my aunt has supported over the years including my mother and my sister…
-my mother and my sister apparently went and got a house together with my sister’s two kids. The kids are the only ones working. Neither my mother nor sister have jobs. I don’t know how they are paying the rent. I suspect my mother is living off the proceeds of selling her trailer (bad long-term plan there) and I suspect my sister is dealing. Oh, and my sister dumped the boyfriend who was supporting her. He didn’t want to continue supporting my sister’s menagerie of stray ‘kids’. My mom made her kick them all out though. Excellent timing there.
-my cousin had a daughter about two months ago. The baby has cystic fibrosis. 🙁 All of her medical care is currently being paid for by some sort of charitable program Stanford has because my cousin and his girlfriend have no money.
And my brother pinged me on facebook today. He wanted to talk about grieving our brother. He said he has many days where he is still nearly non-functional due to grief. Our brother killed himself more than 12 years ago. My surviving brother seriously needs some counseling but he won’t go.
I feel more and more sane and functional all the time!
Since not long after marrying Noah I have met my own qualifications for being fat. It makes sense with how he feeds me. 🙂 I don’t have a problem with this. I don’t think I am gross or ugly or even particularly unhealthy. I don’t use the word in a self-hating way 95% of the time (though I admit I have very rare moods where I’ll add that word to every other hateful thing I say about myself). The main thing I mind about being fat is that I can’t wear most of my awesome dress up clothes. Not really a huge complaint in the scheme of things. I’m in fact slowly acquiring awesome clothes in larger sizes and not worrying about it.
I have a problem with the knee jerk reaction of “Oh, you’re not fat” when I make reference to being fat. Uhm. I can’t buy clothes in ‘regular’ stores. According to the BMI I’m obese (I think that’s bullshit though). According to the last sane/rational doctor I talked to I have been ~40 lbs above my optimal weight for years. Uhm, that’s fat, folks.
That said, it’s hard to tell if I currently have postpartum hyperthyroidism popping up or if I am just not able to consume the 4,000 calories I need to maintain stable weight with two nurslings. My midwife suggested postpartum hyperthyroidism because I’m dropping weight so quickly. I’m 8 lbs. below my pre-pregnancy weight as of this morning. I have 4 lbs. to go before I hit Shanna’s pre-pregnancy weight. I gained weight with both miscarriages. I’m not especially worried about the weight loss in either case. Postpartum hyperthyroidism cures itself after a while (and you usually gain the weight back pretty quickly) and more generic weight loss when I am eating like a horse is ok with me. So neither is worth much concern. I am so not going to be on anything resembling a diet anytime in the near future if ever again.
So I’m reaching the nebulous point where I start questioning my own usage of the word fat. Once I start shopping in ‘regular’ stores again, once I hit a point where my own view of my body is, “Ok I still have chunk -here- but mostly not so much” then I start feeling like I shouldn’t use the word. Mostly because I think it is no longer accurate, but at least partially because when I use it people seem to take it as a judgment of *them* and that’s a mixed bag. I really wish I could describe myself using terms I feel are accurate and have people just accept them as is. I don’t hear people arguing with me when I say, “I’m a brunette” and I wish that fat had about the same impact. For me it’s absolutely about word reclamation. Probably similar to how I use queer.
And I can feel my brains being sucked out of me by a nursling. I’m going to lose all coherence now.
We had folks come over with bagels this morning and that was a nice visit. And I pinged Alex and told him that yesterday was my birthday so he has to take me out to dinner. The day is looking up. 🙂
I’m feeling fussy that there is a faire IN MY TOWN and I can’t go because it is too much walking. I’m so fucking bored I could scream.
I forget things really easily. It’s actually one of the biggest reasons I use livejournal the way I do to babble constantly. Like today I was feeling bad because I couldn’t remember what I did for Noah’s birthday so of course I assumed that I didn’t do anything. (This came up because my birthday is tomorrow and he has zero plans.) So I was thinking it was reasonable that he had no plans for me. So then we had the brilliant idea to check livejournal because of course I would have made a record of what I did! Oh wait. I took him out for the weekend to Half Moon Bay and took him to the Peter Beagle show he really wanted to see. I don’t suck!
But maybe he does. 😛
I’m a bad invalid. I’m feeling better all the time, but I still have to be careful not to walk too much or I’m dizzy enough to fall down. So I’m feeling great and energetic while I’m sitting… but I’m writing checks my body can’t cash. SUCK! So the assumption that I will have to be in bed for at least two weeks was apparently founded. Damnit. Ok, I have actually left the house twice. And the whole next day if I tried to walk for more than about two minutes I slammed into walls as the vertigo hit me. So if I push it I need several days of recovery. I’ll eventually slow down enough to let myself fully recover.
Calli is a sleeper. I feel like I don’t know much of anything about her personality yet. I figure there’s time. 🙂
And then on to the gross body TMI (don’t read if my bowels are over the top for you):
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So I’m currently running Linux Mint. It’s… very green. But! It works. So I grovel before Noah’s mastery of my computer.
My computer is currently a brick. I won’t be online for a bit. Noah’s having trouble fixing it. I don’t know how long this will take.
So this new netbook is having issues. The 75gb drive is completely full. Like, it fills up no matter what I delete. I haven’t added data to this computer. What I did add I have since deleted. I never added my music/pictures/documents/whatever. It’s still full. I can’t figure out what is filling it. Noah has helped me hunt around and we just can’t find what is killing the hard drive. This is incredibly frustrating. The computer keeps threatening to shut down because of lack of space. I’m really not in the headspace to be patient with this right now. I’m seriously tempted to throw this piece of shit in the trash, which really sucks because it wasn’t that cheap. 🙁
The wonderful people who have been bringing us food have brought enough that at this point we are moving stuff to the freezer because there is no way we can go through it all fast enough. This is such a wonderful problem to have! We don’t need any fresh influx for at least four days. I’m going to be a little surprised if we are running low then. We are so incredibly lucky! The only thing I’m going to add is we need to pick up some super spicy Indian to go with the home made yogurt we were brought. The home made yogurt made with half and half. It’s so good it’s insane but it’s kind of overwhelming just by itself. 😀
I’m feeling so much love right now. 🙂
Today is our fourth anniversary. Obviously we will not be going out to celebrate. So instead my wonderful, considerate, thoughtful husband made me breakfast in bed. Not just any breakfast in bed! He went to my favorite tea shop and got my favorite tea and their spectacular home made lemon curd and we had scones with all the trimmings and cucumber sandwiches. I feel so loved. 🙂
Hoo boy. All the people who said that going from 0-1 is way harder than 1-2 must not be talking about the first week. The first week with just Shanna was pretty damn blissful. We all hung out on the bed together and didn’t do much. We alternated who was napping and it was awesome. Uhm… it’s not like that this time. Shanna has So Much Energy. And keeping her from jumping on the bed (HELLO! Healing from internal wounds here!!!) is difficult. Other than that she’s just pushing boundaries slightly more than usual but really she’s not being out of line at all. So yeah. We aren’t as patient as we should be, but we are both working on it. She is quite in love with Calli. 🙂
Thank all the stars in the heaven for tandem nursing. Given how much the rest of me hurts I was about ready to flip my lid when my boobs started hurting last night because my milk came in. So I called my trusty, always hungry, toddler over. Insta-relief. (Yes, there is still plenty of milk for Calli.) Every minute of discomfort while nursing through pregnancy has already paid off. 🙂
We are trying to figure out a sleep schedule that will allow me to heal as quickly as possible. It’s a challenge. I have so much going on in my brain that it takes me forever to fall asleep, nearly an hour after each wake up when I can normally fall asleep in under five minutes, so that’s extra challenging.
I sorta went against orders and took a shower today. My stench was seriously bothering me. For those of you who are childfree, when you have a baby you then have basically hot flashes for a while as you sweat out a lot of the extra fluids you have been carrying around. This is not pretty. But a shower (ok, I sat in the tub with the shower nozzle on because I can’t stand and being submerged isn’t a great plan yet) felt decadent. Huzzah for hygiene.
We have a rather remarkable number of people bringing us food. I cannot express properly my gratitude. I think that I will karmically owe food to every newly delivered mother I ever hear about for the rest of my life. It feels really awesome.
Noah is the most amazing, supportive husband I can imagine having. He has earned so many brownie points that it will be decades before I return them all. I guess I’m going to have to stop whining about his night off. He’s earned several years worth of them recently.
I’m tired and my physical recovery is predictably slow. Walking to the bathroom is easier. Returning a plate to the kitchen is still a stretch and if you’ve seen how small my house is that’s pretty sad. I could not stand long enough to dry off after the shower. After not standing during the shower. Ugh. I’m not feeling patient with this. But it’s only been three days. I need to give myself a lot more time. I feel perkier while I am sitting in bed. Once I am vertical my bravado is revealed.
Calli is… mostly asleep really. 🙂 But she’s sweet and we are already fond of her. Yay hormones.
Apparently catnapping in a super uncomfortable position is what I get to do tonight. Calli already has views about how she wants to sleep which delights me because she fits right in. So I babble at you, dear lj, my safe home on the internet.
This was quite the intense experience for me in a number of ways. As you are all well aware, I have ‘mother’ issues and those have been especially hard just lately. She hasn’t ever actually called, for which I am grateful, but I have been longing for her fiercely all week as I went through this painful experience. Like many abused/neglected children I’m very very loyal. The thing that finally kept me from calling her is the knowledge that she would welcome me back with open, sincere love… and I would abandon her again and hurt her very badly because she is a toxic person. I don’t actually think she deserves that roller coaster ride. It’s just not fair. So I spent a lot of time crying and wanting her. I think that was a big part of the constant contractions being so stressful. I really couldn’t relax.
I woke up at about 6:30 unable to find a comfortable position at all through the contractions and feeling kind of frantic about it. I had Noah check me and I was a hair shy of 4cm so I decided that it really and truly was active labor and I called my midwife. It takes her a while to get up here and she’s been very afraid of me having a super fast labor once things got really going. So much for that. 🙂 I was very happy to have her here. In an amusing twist of events my doula was at a different birth so I got to see one of her partner doula’s instead. After that mess. oy. She was helpful and gentle and fun so things were great until my original did show up hours later. It worked out fine.
During the early hours I spent as much time laughing between contractions as not. It was very intense and took a lot of processing, but if I kept up a steady patter of talking during the contractions I stayed very calm and centered. Most of what I was saying was variations along the lines of, “We can do this. Come down baby. We can handle this together” and other things in the same vein. It was very calming and centering. I would go so far as to say most of that chunk was even fairly pleasant because I was so excited to be finally making progress and I felt like things were going really well.
Side note: most of my in between contraction conversation was talking about bdsm stuff and porn. I was getting the biggest kick ever out of educating my birth team. 🙂
Transition was flat out terrifying. I more or less went into shock and I felt like I was dying. At that point the contractions couldn’t be managed anymore and my leg muscles were twitching and cramping on their own regardless of what I did. Noah and Sunshine sat with me and very very gently and delicately talked me through it. I have no idea how long it went on, but I think probably only 10 or 15 minutes. They were really wonderfully supportive in exactly the right ways.
Then of course I hit pushing. Woof. Having to force myself to stay in very uncomfortable positions because those helped me make the most progress really sucked. I could mostly do it though. I went back in the tub and oh boy was that the right call for me during pushing. It took noticeably less than two hours to push her out but I’m not sure how much more than one hour. By the end I was crying and begging the baby to just hurry up already. It was amazing how pushing was psychotically intensely painful in one minute and then just uncomfortable in the next breath. (This was while the head was uhm not fully through and I was stretched around her head. She doesn’t have a small head.) Once she was out we did immediate skin to skin and no one bothered to look at her gender for quite a while.
As it turns out we were too busy getting me out of the tub fast because I was losing a lot of blood and it was hard to tell how much. So from what I can tell I had a minor hemorrhage. By minor I mean I didn’t die. But we were all pretty scared for a few hours because I needed a lot of oxygen and Pitocin injected and I really really wanted to go to sleep in a way I probably wouldn’t have woken up from. Obviously my midwife stayed and was incredibly attentive for many hours. I have zero complaints about her professionalism and care. She absolutely earned her money and then some. I was weak enough during this time period that Noah was cuddling Calli because I really and truly couldn’t. Yeah, I think that is maybe the closest I have ever come to dying.
I am 150% glad I had a homebirth even with the scary part at the end. Sunshine did everything right to keep me alive and she allowed me to have the empowered decisions about everything every step of the way. I have a very minor tear that didn’t need suturing. I feel pretty ecstatic about the fact that I was allowed to go with what my body needed and when. It wasn’t a short labor by second timer standards and I suspect it would have not gone well in a hospital strapped to a bed. I moved from the tub to walking to rocking on the floor to the toilet to the bed as I needed to for pain management. It was really awesome to just do what my body needed.
At this point I am even weaker than average after birth. The blood loss is really a big deal. I can’t stand and walk to the bathroom. No really, I can’t. I would probably pass out. So I’m crawling if it is important but mostly I’m lying down because even sitting is not great. This is going to be a longer than standard recovery. Thus I throw aside all hints of pride and say we will accept any and all help people want to offer. Noah is pretty worn out from the harrowing pregnancy and labor and he is going to have basically all Shanna care and a lot of Calli care for a while. And I… can’t even sit up well. It’s worth it though. Looking at my daughters is enough to make me weep with joy. I will recover. This will be a blip. I get to have these wonderful people forever.
After 9 days of contractions active labor began at ~6:30 this morning and our new daughter Callidora Lyra was born at 2:52. She was 8 lbs 12 oz, 21″ tall. She was born in the water in our home and she is completely amazing.Ad
So this morning I had four solid hours of contractions every 2-6 minutes (I never seem to get perfectly regular). There was cervical progress (Noah was checking–he’s so awesome). It seemed like time to really get excited! If you are planning a hospital birth they tell you contractions every five minutes that last a minute and go on for an hour. I PASSED THAT MILESTONE BY A LOT!!
Then it stopped.
I’m really frustrated.
I have been having steady contractions for 8 days. They are never more than 30 minutes apart and sometimes are as little as 2 minutes apart for hours on end. All of this is not part of the labor tally because I am not yet 4cm. As the kids would say: FML. I don’t really have a lot of choice about the matter so I persevere. Last night was one of my worst nights of sleep in a while and my lower back is super achey this morning. Hopefully that’s a good sign but at this point I don’t know that I believe anything.
I called my doula yesterday. I’m… far less than pleased with her reaction. I don’t feel like she takes it very seriously that she screwed up. Her ‘apology’ sounds very flippant and teenager like. And I had to call her and bitch her out to get it. Uhm. Yeah. On one hand I sort of feel like I should just fire her and not deal with the drama. But I hired her because I like her and other than one stupid comment she has done her job extremely well. I spent a while angsting last night at people and realized that if she was my friend I would absolutely let this go. She was tired, hungry, and cranky–I have some sympathy for that. But she’s not my friend. She’s someone I’m hiring to do a service and I’m not sure I should be accommodating her mood swings. I have a few more hours to decide. Maybe. Depends on how this back ache goes.
I am more pregnant than I have ever been before. So much for second kids coming earlier.
My midwife called me a little bit ago. She thought we should process. This was a good thing because she opened the conversation somewhat neutrally and then she accepted complete responsibility and apologized. She explained that she has been feeling really bad and trying to figure out why she didn’t suggest the test to start with. She said that she thinks that it was an emotional reaction because she didn’t want me to feel like she didn’t believe me. I told her that I would have jumped on the chance to know for sure because I don’t want to be put on a timer. She acknowledged that in retrospect she knows that and she is really sorry she made the call she did.
We also talked about child care logistical issues at great length. We figured out a compromise that I hope is going to work out well–she also doesn’t have a whole lot of good options for childcare (which in my opinion is a bad thing for her professionally but that’s a different matter). That was very useful.
We talked about her ambiguous feelings about driving this far and how it is obvious she is irritated with driving up here. She feels like every single time I have called her it was 100% appropriate and she wants me to continue calling her for the things I am calling her for… but man she hates the drive to Fremont. I get that. But it means she is sending mixed signals that feel bad for me. This overall part of the conversation was left at the place of–she is glad she is doing this for me because she cares about me but she needs to never get herself in a position like this again. This is just too far for her to really handle for work. So it’s not the best situation but we need to work with it for now and make the best of it and she is going to try and check her irritation.
We talked about the 180 degree behavioral change she has between her office and showing up here to check stuff for potential birth. I told her that my logical brain feels that she is more casual in the office because there is less pressure on her to ‘perform’ and when it comes to showing up for births she has to be more clinical and distant so that she can potentially make decisions that have serious weight so she doesn’t read as ‘friendly’ any more. I pointed out that I feel like I can read her body language pretty well in the office to know when she is having different moods/reactions but in my house it feels like trying to read a brick wall and that’s hard. She said she will reflect on this and see how true it feels for her and decide what to do about it. That’s perfectly valid and fair.
I brought up the parting crack from my doula and she agreed that she was pretty shocked and unhappy with that comment. She agrees that I need to have a serious conversation with V because that just wasn’t ok. I didn’t do anything wrong at any point and I didn’t deserve that.
So yeah. I’m feeling significantly less pissed off. I feel that my midwife calling today was a really good thing and absolutely the best thing for figuring out stuff between us. I feel that I was really brave in laying out my issues the way I did (God it was hard) and I feel like she totally validated me and listened and was supportive. I feel that she did a really good job of listening to constructive feedback that was probably more than occasionally uncomfortable without being defensive. I don’t think I can ask for more than that. She continually stressed that she really wants to work with me. She really wants me to keep calling her early. She really thinks that I have done everything right. I needed that.
I’m really happy with how she has chosen to deal with this conflict. I’m not completely ‘over it’ at this point but I’m most of the way there. It’s good because I don’t really have a lot more time to be fusstastic before I’m probably going to really need her help.
ETA: If you give me any fucking advice or ‘next time you should’ in any way shape or fucking form I will delete the fucking comment and ban you from ever commenting again. I’m not sure I can express how fucking foul my mood is.
Today has been a fucking horrible day. So I spent most of the day trying like mad to induce labor. It’s a hard thing to do. It’s often painful and never fun. My doula was here for most of the day with us because she brought over a pretty powerful abortifacient that often, but not always works. I was taking it every fifteen minutes for hours an hours and it was certainly causing gnarly strong contractions. No cervical progress. At some point in the afternoon my midwife showed up and when she got here with her kid and the whole circus… the contractions stopped. The noise, the distraction, just EVERYTHING was too much. I asked for her kid (and my doula’s) to leave. So they arranged childcare and it was a couple of hours before both kids could be picked up. At some point in here I finally got my midwife to sit down and talk about what was going on with my labor–or lack there of. She told me that in her opinion I had ~24 more hours before she would call it and I had to go to a hospital anyway. Given the clusterfuck that would be having to deal with transferring childcare around I asked her if we should just go today and she said that was probably a good decision.
The circus moved to the hospital. We got there, checked in, did some exam stuff… then comes this startling revelation! They can tell if my water has broken by doing a super quick swab then wiping it on this little piece of litmus tape. Literally a fucking 30 second procedure and there is no god damn reason in the world that my fucking midwife should not be able to perform this procedure. The doctor said it is very possible that I did have a high leak because they often reseal themselves but at this time I don’t have a problem and I should just go home. (Then there was fuss with him being called out to deliver a baby RIGHT NOW and I wasn’t allowed to leave until he officially came back and signed me out. This was annoying because the nurse required me to stay on the table with the monitors.)
Then my doula says that she wants to go and she leaves me with the parting crack of, “And remember the next time I see you it should be real labor–five minutes in between contractions, for at least a minute for an hour.” Wow. Awesome way of giving me a smack for wasting your time. My midwife bailed at that point too. Fine. Then Noah and I wait around for a while and get a lovely little lecture from the doctor and nurse about how when my labor actually starts I should just come straight back to the hospital because what I am planning is a bad idea.
This whole fucking day is fired. Most of what I did today was unpleasant or flat out hurt. And it all could have been fucking prevented if my midwife had done a god damn 30 second long low-tech test.
I got all gross and graphic so I’ll be polite and put this behind a cut tag so that folks who are squicked by thoughts of the goings-on in my crotch can skip it. 😛