15 Days And Counting...

I have 15 days left before I go back to work. I'm officially back as an employee February 8th, but I took that week off with my overabundance of holiday time that I've racked up. It's meant as a transition time for me and Hubby, but what it's turning into is a week of me trying to get last minute stuff done.

BabyL is growing by leaps and bounds. He's crawling faster each day, and is pushing himself up to sitting, kneeling, and if the prop is low enough (like my legs when I'm lying down), pushing himself on his feet. I don't think it'll be long before he learns how to pull himself up and starts cruising around furniture.

What I'm not looking forward to is not so much taking the bus to work, but the fact that I've chosen to go back to work at the beginning of Olympics. Where I work is actually an Olympic venue, so I really have no clue how nutso traffic will be taking the bus. We'll see what happens...

My kid is 9 months old!

Hard to believe that I have a 9 month old baby! My kid is growing into a really neat and fun little man. He loves jumping, jumping while being held, playing airplane, babbling, screeching and plain looking and touching EVERYTHING! One thing about BabyL is that whenever he's in a new environment, or encounters a new person, he will just sit there quietly and take everything in, process it, then get comfortable being himself.

So far he:

• Can roll from back to belly and belly to back
• Has four teeth
• Can get on all fours, but only pushes himself backwards, so no crawling yet
  
• Eats a lot of different types of solids foods
• Babbles a lot
• Screeches a lot
• Is still teething like crazy.
  
• Is a pretty good sleeper (so far, fingers crossed)
• Loves bananas

It's neat to see the world from his point of view, but parenting is exhausting at the same time, and I already have lots of help. One of my biggest pet peeves when talking with other parents, especially when I want support and/or ideas of how to deal with something relating to BabyL is I get the response, "It's a phase, it will pass like all things." Yes, I know that, but I don't find that helpful at all, and I do find it extremely frustrating when told this. I need a sympathetic ear, and I would like ideas as to how to deal with it now. Telling me that it's a phase, just means, to me, that I need to to tough out. What I typically do is take in all the information and try to figure out what works best for us and for BabyL. Not having any good ideas as to what may work just makes it harder for me to make good choices as a parent, and makes me more frustrated and tired. A tired mama makes for a cranky mama, and not a very good parent to BabyL. Anyways, rant over.

Happy New Year!

So I've been quite busy the last few weeks, hence, the lack of posts. 2009 has been quite busy, and 2010 will be even busier. To recap the last couple of months:

• BabyL has been growing leaps and bounds. He has 4 teeth, and is still teething like mad, drooling and chewing everything. Last weighed in at 17.5 lbs and measured 68cm.
• BabyL also has been a solids eating champ, has a repertoire of food he can eat (but still a short list of foods he can't eat yet, boo), and has graduated to lumpy food.
• Christmas came and went. Gifts given were pretty much 99% for BabyL
• Bought snowshoes, hopefully will get the rest of the gear soon so we can go snowshoing this winter!
  
• FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it turned 4 on Dec 27th.
• I still haven't found any daycare for BabyL. Will start to panic sometime early March.
  

I normally don't do resolutions at the beginning of the year. Instead, this is a list of goals I wish to achieve by the end of this year. Hopefully these will actually come to fruition.

• Read the bible every day
• Go to the gym at least twice during the weekdays, and once in the weekend
• Blog at least once a week (I need a hobby after all!)
• clean the toilets weekly (sounds easy, but more challenging than you think!)
• eventually cook half the meals during the week - Hubby is really looking forward to this one!
• Continue greening my household
• Other than the exercise thing, take care of my body, both inside and out
• Redo my wardrobe, it's just stuck. Sigh.
• Get some regular couple time with Hubby, and without BabyL, at least once a month.
  
• take up knitting (maybe)
  

Some things to look forward to in 2010:

• Returning to work in Feb 2010
• BabyL will learn to walk
• BabyL will turn 1 in April!
• Trying to achieve a good work/life balance, especially with BabyL in tow. Yikes!
• Look for daycare.
  

Happy New Year Everyone!!

Lefty!

We have noticed that BabyL has been using more of his left hand than his right hand, and think that he may be left-handed. Being a lefty myself, I'm perfectly okay with that. After all, I think that if I have to live with two males in the house, then Hubby gets to live with two lefties, ha.

Some interesting Lefty facts and myths (aka Why I'm so misunderstood)

What's been happening lately...

This past month has been interesting. Here's a lowdown of what's been happening.

Cruise

I was quite looking forward to the cruise. We visited New England and Eastern Canada. Specifically, Boston, Portland (Maine), Halifax, Charlottetown, Quebec City, Sidney (NS), St John (NB). We started and ended in New Jersey, with a quick stop into New York City for a few hours before heading back home.

Eating. Well, the day we left Vancouver to drive down to Seattle was the day BabyL decided to have teething issues. By that I mean his gums were so sore that he refused to suck. Period. He wouldn't suck on the boob, he wouldn't suck on the bottle and he wouldn't even suck his own finger. We ended up spoon feeding him breast milk, formula and solids. I think once or twice we even use a medical syringe. I was so stressed that this was going to go on for the rest of the vacation, that I wanted to cry. Fortunately, this only happened for two days. BabyL either got used to the pain or it had lessened, but he started sucking again.

Sleep. The plan was to keep BabyL on PST even though we were in EST/Atlantic time, because I'd realized that once BabyL went to bed, we had to go to bed. Sleep went into the toilet because BabyL was in a strange environment, and despite the fact that I tried to keep the same routine, it wasn't enough for him. For the entire trip, someone had to hold him to sleep, so Hubby and I didn't get as much sleep as we wanted to. My mom offered to switch rooms with us one night, and even though I ended up sleeping on a crappier bed, I had the best sleep during the whole trip that night.

Bingo. About the third or fourth day, I played bingo. And won the big prize. Normally when they play bingo, they allow all players to check their cards against the numbers, and not take the first person who yells bingo, so sometimes there are more than one bingo winner per game. Well, this time, we couldn't share the big prize, so we had to play a tie-breaker game between the five winners. You cannot believe the shock I felt when I was the only one standing. And the prize: a free upgrade to one of the Royal Suites on the ship (it's the second largest stateroom on the ship). So we went from a 200+ sq ft room to a 700+ sq ft room, with a separate large bedroom, walk-in closet, large bathroom with jacuzzi tub, living area, dining area, a balcony with yet another hot tub and a butler! Whoo hoo! However, as much as we enjoyed the suite, it really helped us out with the sleep situation. We could put BabyL down for naps or for bedtime, and still allowed us to move around the suite without waking him up.

Fame!
Although there were a few people on board under the age of 18, BabyL apparently was the only baby on board, so it's safe to say that EVERYONE noticed him, particularly since he's so cute! We had people come up to us to pinch his cheeks or play with him. Both crew and passengers alike recognized him. They only recognized us as "the family with the baby who one the Royal Suite at bingo" because I was asked a few times how the suite was. It was a constant "Hello Baby!" or "Hey BabyL!" from everyone. BabyL certainly loved the attention!

All in all, despite all that, and the semi-crappy weather we had in a few of the cities, we had a pretty good time. I swear that BabyL grew an inch during the trip, even one of the passengers who sat next at the table next to us at dinner commented on it. I can tell you though, I was never happier sleeping in my own bed, and BabyL didn't have any problems falling asleep on his own like I feared once we got back home. He also has a tooth to show for his teething pains too!

Illness

Unfortunately, after we got home, I got sick. I had some GI thing, and an ear infection. Both Hubby and I had a bit of a cold during our trip. Hubby was allowed to take drugs. I couldn't take drugs, except for regular Tylenol, because I was breastfeeding, so I was left to suffer. My ear infection was probably from the cold. It took close to a week for it to clear. In the meantime, I had to contend with puking, feeling rotten and having the room constantly spin.

While this was happening, life kept marching on outside of my little bubble I was apparently living in. We came back to news that they had already started H1N1 vaccinations. I was bombarded with news of ever shifting priority lists, and 3 hour waits at clinics. It took me a few days before I had gotten myself together enough to call BabyL's doctor; apparently he didn't have enough vaccines, so that meant I had to go to a clinic. I was prepared for the worst, but apparently, the big rush happened the first couple of days. We were in and out within 45 mins. I'm just glad that BabyL never got sick amidst all this craziness and people constantly touching him, I don't know how I would have handled a sick baby.

Life marches on...

6 months old!

Today my baby turned 6 months! I can't believe he's already half a year old! I could talk to you about how he loves to watch EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE. Or how he loves to jump. Or how blowing very wet raspberries is one of his favourite pastimes. Or how great it is to watch him giggle and laugh. Or how he's already a solid-feeding champ.

All those things are great, yes they are. But I will tell you how he decided to mark the occasion. He pooed. Now that's not a big deal in the long run, but this is solid-log-type poo. He pooed three times. The first and third time were little poos, and they didn't bother him. In fact, I didn't even know that he pooed until I opened the diaper.

However, the second poo was HUGE! I think because he was experiencing a big solid poo for the first time, and because he was tired (I was getting him ready for his nap), it scared him, and he cried and cried. He also peed, but he's already peed over everything. I was more worried about the poo as this was something new for me, and throwing in cloth diapers into the mix made it much more interesting.

I saw some poo in his bum, then he had a meltdown. As I was trying to take care of that poo, I dropped it on the floor. BabyL kept crying and pooing. Then he started peeing. And continue pooing. I grabbed the flushable bioliners that I had and just caught the poo that way. It was a lot of poo. Finally, when he slowed down, I flushed what I had in my hands down the toilet. Going back to BabyL, he was still at it! And crying. And there were little puddle of pee everywhere. I caught the rest of the poo, and flushed it down the toilet, washed my hands, then cleaned up BabyL and mopped up as much pee as I could, washed my hands again, and put him in a clean diaper. Then I proceeded to put him down for his nap. After that, I brought out my antibacterial cleaners and gave the floor a good scrub.

Priorities people!

Solid poo really changes everything now. Yikes!

Solids! Finally!!

We've just started BabyL on solids. Yesterday was his first day on rice cereal. Organic at that. So far so good. Hubby tried a bit today, and he says it tastes like nothing. But BabyL is swallowing it. We know because it's showing up in his spit up, ha. In a couple more days, I'll introduce another food. Very exciting, and something I've been looking forward to for a long time (except for the solid poop that's going to come with it!)

In other news, my Grandma has been in the hospital for a few days. She had congestive heart failure due to a mini-heart attack that she had earlier. But she's on the mend and doing well. The doctors are amazed at her speedy recovery, especially considering that she's 96 years old. Go Grandma! Hopefully she will be discharged sometime this week.

Mr. Nosey

I was going through some pictures of BabyL when he was just a newborn. BabyL was such a wee little thing. And with all newborns, he only expressed emotions through crying. I remember saying that wouldn't it be neat if he could at least smile so that I had some idea if I was doing things okay with him.

Well, BabyL's been smiling since after his 1 month birthday, and within the last month, has learned how to laugh. He also babbles a lot, and will give a very huffy sigh when he's bored. I also have a pretty good sense when he's frustrated with something. He still cries though, and with the crying, there are tears. He didn't have tears when he was born.

BabyL is also a very curious little boy. He likes to look at EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING. He will get distracted when he's feeding, when I'm trying to put him to sleep, when we're out and about. He's been like that since day one, but now that he's able to hold his head up pretty well, he will spin left and right and left again to look at EVERYTHING. He will tilt his head at the most uncomfortable positions (well, uncomfortable-looking to us) to see his world.

Sometimes we try to figure out what he's looking at. It could be a brightly-coloured object. It could be some interesting pattern. It could be the way that light shines on something. The other day, Hubby and my mom went for a quick walk before BabyL's bath. They noticed at one point that he kept on looking up, up, up. It turns out that he was looking at the tall trees that lined the trail where they were walking. Like I said, he looks at EVERYTHING!

(I would have entitled this Mr. Curious, but apparently the Little Men Series only has a Miss Curious, go figure. Mr. Nosey was the next best thing!)

Crawling out of Newborn Hell

As you can see, I haven't been blogging here for almost 3 months. Baby L has been keeping me busy. While it has gotten easier being a sleep-deprived mom, I wanted to jot some things down that have been rattling in my head before I forgot. I've labelled the period between the time Baby L was born and about the time when he was about 2 months as "Newborn Hell". This was my Newborn Hell as I remember it.

I was told that before the baby starts crawling was a great time to go out and bring the baby with you, as he's "very portable". This is sort of true. However, no one told me about feedings or more precisely, when babies are to feed. I knew that babies fed all the time, but before having Baby L, it was a fuzzy notion at best.

A typical textbook baby would feed once every three hours. What that means that if the baby starts feeding at 12pm and feeds until 12.30pm, the next feed is at 3 pm, not at 3.30 pm. They time feeds by the beginning, and not the end. My kid for the first 6 weeks fed from 1.5-2.5 hours. He also took about 45-60 mins for one boob. Keep in mind, that this is within a 24 hour period. Newborns don't have an idea of what day and night are, so they will wake and sleep whenever they darn well feel like it.

Cluster Feeding. If you don't know what that is, look it up. The longest cluster feed the kid had to date was one Friday evening during Week 6 where he fed for seven hours straight. I kid you not. What they say about cluster feeding, when it starts in the evening, it's only an average, and keep in mind that every kid is different. My nipples were also raw meat afterwards.

Sleep. My kid also was not a great sleeper at the beginning, he still isn't. The only way he would be put to sleep is if he's held and patted to sleep. It took a while for us to even put the bugger to sleep, let alone have him sleep for more than 1-1.5 hours. I was told that all I had to do was "put him down" when I saw signs of tiredness, and the baby should fall asleep. Well, I saw signs of tiredness all right, but my kid is also vastly curious abut his environment, and will not sleep on his own if put in his crib. For a while, he wouldn't sleep anywhere except in someone's arms, or on a flat surface (like his crib or our bed) if I was nearby. Let me tell you my kid is somewhat high maintenance from the get-go. He still needs to be patted to sleep.

Anyways, if you put the comments so far about sleep and about feeding together and do the math, I maybe got 1.5 hours sleep at any one stretch. Sleep deprivation at its finest. They say that I should nap when he naps. What if he never napped? or if he was sleeping when I was holding him? Needless to say I wasn't sleeping very much. It was also quite hard to go out as I had to plan everything around his feeds, plus I had to bring out a whole whackload of baby stuff.

I was also told that they could sleep in the car seat, or a sling/wrap, in a swing or bouncy chair, or give them a pacifier to soothe themselves to sleep. My kid has good days and bad days with the car seat, and when we do go out, he's too busy looking around everywhere to sleep. I've also learned that if we bring him to a very stimulating environment, he may not sleep in the car seat, even if it's a long car ride. My kid also hated being squished, so slings and wraps were out, and he hates being too hot, so wraps were again out. To date, I've bought four different pacifiers, and he hates all of them. I think he just hates the taste of cold plastic in his mouth. He will take a bottle, thank goodness. He still isn't fond of the swing, and for almost the first two months, he hated the bouncy chair, mostly because I think he was such a wee little guy and the bouncy chair was just a vast thing for him to sit on. That and it didn't provide the same comforts as a human body.

Breastfeeding. Let me tell you, I hate, hate, hate breastfeeding. I will do it because I want my kid to have the best, but up until a few weeks ago, I was really struggling. Breastfeeding was something that I thought I wouldn't hate, but I do. I had popped about 10 blisters up to that point. Yes, ouch! you can get blisters on your nipples. Breastfeeding was very painful (I still have my moments). Then I finally found out about the free breastfeeding clinic my community had and I went right away. I found out (or had confirmed) that I have a forceful letdown, and probably an oversupply of milk, which probably was causing a lot of the problems. Baby L instinctively was trying to adjust to this, which led to the blistering and callouses on my nipples. The other reason why I hate breastfeeding is because I'm force to sit in one location for almost an hour. Not fun. By day three, I was so bored that I asked Hubby to buy me an iPod Touch. I wanted it mainly for the Wi-Fi capabilities, and so I can feel at least connected to the outside world.

I suppose it was a combination of all of the above that really drove me up the wall, that and the sleep deprivation didn't help me cope well. Also, I feel that much of my own identity has been stripped away. What I used to rely on to be self-confident, well, that's pretty much gone. I felt very trapped, still do some days. Trying to get an infant to sleep when he won't and when you're so sleep deprived is very hard. I've had several meltdowns, and I even once called Hubby sobbing on the phone, telling him to come home instead of going somewhere else he was planning on going to after work. I'm always trying to think and plan ahead, hard to do when you have a demanding infant whose schedule is still a little loosey goosey. I sometimes still need to plan when to brush my teeth or eat breakfast.

It was very hard to hear that some people's babies were sleeping through the night already, or they were able to go to the gym, or they could still do this and that, and I wasn't able to do any of that, not without feeling sleep deprived or that I couldn't pull myself away for too long. My time is definitely not my own right now, not until he start being a little more independent. The loss of my independence is really tough on me.

People tell you that it "gets easier". I have no idea what that means, and for me, it was a very empty platitude. I'm a big picture kinda person, and I at least needed to know what the end result may look like, even if it may not be true for my baby. So here's how it's "gotten easier" for me from 2 months onwards:

• It's easier to put him down for naps, most times, and he will sleep for 30 mins and often longer. On his longer stretches, I actually nap with him. His longest nap to date has been for 3 hours, although he's averaging about an hour or so for naps.
  
• He now eats off of both boobs in the same time it took for one boob at the beginning, in that he's a more efficient eater.
• Even if he's hungry, I can make him wait to be fed for at least one-half hour or more, and he won't cry (at least not too much). I can get some stuff done, like eat or go pee.
  
• He sleeps longer stretches at night (2-4 hours between feeds). And on a very rare occasion, more than 4 hours!
  
• I'm actually able to get in a bit of exercise and am able to pump some days. For me, this a big thing.
• I can actually take a shower most days (if I remember)
  

Some things I've learned since then:

• It's okay for me to put my kid down and pee, especially if he's crying his head off. The kid won't remember it and certainly won't be scarred for life.
• Always let other people take care of your kid if they offer. I know I did at every opportunity. I love my kid, but I value my personal space very much, so having even an hour reprieve was a godsend. Hubby and I already went on one non-Baby L afternoon date, so to speak. We're aiming to do this at least once per month, and more as he gets older.
  
• I had to learn about my little dude's likes and dislikes, preferences and whatnot. He is, after all, another human being. Hence the reason why he likes being held, hates the bouncy chair, hates the swing, hates the wrap, hates the sling, and hates pacifiers is because he's got discerning tastes. I think he's picky like his father, ha.
• Just like an adult, his preferences and tastes can and do change, so what may work now may not work a few months down the road. Especially since he still physically changing and developing all the time.
• If I want to get anything done, I'd have to make a list. And it will get done, just at different times throughout the day. I'm lucky if I can even check one thing off of my to-do list each day.
  
• This parenting thing is really, really, really hard. I knew it would be hard, but it's harder than I thought.

Do I like being a mom? Ask me again in 18 year's time.

Baby L is Here!

So on April 8th, I became a mummy to Baby L! I wanted to record the events and my thoughts surrounding all of it before I forget.

April 4-6
I first noticed that I started losing my mucous plug. This went on for the next couple of days. It turns out that it was my cervix that was being effaced, or starting to thin out.

Monday April 6th
Started to feel unwell in the early evening. I tried to go to bed later, but was feeling quite uncomfortable and getting painful localised abdominal pains, and got no sleep that night.

Tuesday April 7th ~ 3am
I felt a sharp pain in pevic area and contractions started. My contractions felt like really, really bad menstrual gas pains. The contractions were already lasting a minute, but were irregular. The contractions lasted through the night and into Tuesday all day and night and Wednesday morning. The midwife told us previously not to call until the contractions were fairly regular, and about 3 minutes apart from each other. My contractions never made a steady progress like many w omen's do, so there were times when it was 10 min apart and other times when it was as close to 4-5 mins apart. But my contractions fluctuated the whole time, they were never regular. Eventually, I could feel the labour pains in my lower back. I'd called my midwife close to Tuesday evening when I was worried it wasn't progressing the way it should have.

Wednesday April 8th
After another sleepless night and a couple more calls to the midwife, she told me to head to the hospital. I had been labouring at home about 30 hours at this point, and had no sleep for the last couple of nights. Because she was already with another patient at a different hospital than where I was going, she asked if I wanted her to find a bed at the hospital where she was at, or to go to my original hospital, but have another midwife (whom I had never met), do the delivery. I chose to go where my midwife was.

We got to the hospital at around 9am, and got admitted. My midwife assessed me, and told me I was only 1 cm dilated. I was about to cry at this point because I'd been labouring for so long already, and I thought for sure I was further along. My midwife decided to break my water and do a bit of a stretch and sweep to help speed things along. She commented that the membrane sac was thick as she had a bit of trouble breaking it. A nurse, who was showing Hubby and my mum the placenta afterwards, noticed the same thing, LOL! After the midwife did the stretch and sweep, I was 3-4 cm dilated. My midwife was very encouraging about the effaced cervix, she told me that it's in a good place as it's like wet tissue paper and it would be much easier for me to dilate. Because I was GBS positive, I was put on antibiotic IV right away. I sat in a bath for about a 1/2 hour. Although we got one of the nicely renovated rooms at the hospital, because some moron was doing some drilling in the floor below us, we had to move rooms.

My midwife still wanted to wait for my contractions to become more regular and become closer together. That never happened, although we waited several more hours. They then gave me some saline with sugar water (I think) to give me some more energy, especially I had been up the previous two night without sleep. After a couple more hours, my midwife could see that things weren't progressing as it should, I was only 6-7 cm dilated, so she suggested that we do an augmentation (similar to an induction, both procedures uses pitocin), to speed things along. Because my midwife couldn't prescribe the pitocin, she had to find an OB to do so, and I guess it was policy that the OB come in to do consult. I had asked my midwife how much longer it would take, and she said it can be anywhere from 1/2 hour onwards before I become fully dialated. This OB woman came in to talk to me about the pitocin prescription, I had no idea why she was even there. I asked her how long it would take for me to be fully dialated, and she said 3-4 hours or longer, it was pretty demoralizing to hear. My midwife was annoyed and cut her off, and pretty much pushed her out of the room. Hubby was ready to strangle her.

So I was on the pitocin for maybe 1-2 hours, and things were progressing a lot faster. I found it really hard to handle the contractions at this point as they were coming on strong and increasing frequency, and I was really getting tired and unable to handle the pain coming on so quickly and intensly. The nurse that was with us suggested laughing gas, which I gladly took. It was hard to deal with the laughing gas as it started making me feel ill as I was breathing more and more of it because of the increased frequency of the contractions and there was less time for it to disperse from my body. And although I was getting ill from the laughing gas, I stuck with it because the alternative was to have an epidural, and I didn't want to go down that road. I was actually cracking jokes at this point. I think I remember saying at the beginning "Boy this stuff's good. Is this what it feels like when you smoke pot?" and "After this is done, I want chocolate ice cream!". I also asked if they were going to check me to see how far dilated I was (Hubby still makes fun of me about that comment!)

Finally, I was 9 centimeters, and my midwife suggested that I go pee. I had been pumped with a lot of fluids by now, so it should have been easy for me to go pee, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't go pee. I think I told Hubby at that point that I couldn't do it any more, I was so tired and exhausted. At this point, my midwife told me to come out and I would start pushing. I was to lie back, with my legs up in the air and towards my chest (there were people there to help me push my legs back), pelvis down and start pushing with the contractions. Let me tell you that was the hardest thing in the world to do. Not only was this not one of the positions that they had taught us in our prenatal class as one of the better ways for delivery, but I found out later, from my aunt who is a community nurse, that this is how they did things in the "old days". I was too exhausted to care any longer, I just wanted this kid outta me! So I focused all my energies on pushing.

My midwife was encouraging me, and letting me know how far along the head was coming out. Hubby was sitting beside me and encouraging me, which helped tremendously. My mom (who came to the hospital with us) was actually pushing one of my legs, the nurse was pushing the other leg. I remember thinking at one point that I could feel myself tearing, and I thought, screw the "no tearing" thing, I want this kid outta me! I think everyone refers to it as the ring of fire. All I could think and focus on was getting the head out, so I put my pelvis down, and pushed hard with each contraction. I swear, it was like having the biggest poo of your life, only I could tell it was coming out of the wrong hole. But that's how I was treating it. It started annoying me how everyone was talking about the head was "almost" out, and I was thinking (and I
may have vocalised it) to stop telling me that it's almost out and to tell me when it's actually out! So this went on for about 45 mins, and Baby L's head popped out eventually.

The rest of his body slid out quite quickly after that. Once Baby L was out, I looked over to my right, I could see Hubby tearing up, and my mum already had her camera out and taking pictures! They had placed Baby L on my chest, and I asked if it was a boy or a girl. My midwife picked him up and show me his boy bits. Finally they delivered the placenta. The midwife told me that I had a couple of small tears that she had to sew up. I actually wowed my midwives. They were so impressed that I'd managed to push well and have the baby out quickly without an epidural, and despite the fact that I had no sleep for two nights straight. I told them that I had two thoughts in my mind: tenacity - I really, really wanted this baby out, so I focused on that and nothing else. And because I'd be doing all the exercising during my pregnancy, I actually focused on using those particular muscles to push. Even then I was thinking how glad I was that I did all that exercising and allowing myself to really be in tune with my body. I think that helped the pushing a lot, that and I didn't have an epidural to interfere with the pushing. The whole labour and delivery was about 40 hours in total.

Afterwards, I was talking with my midwife, and she told me that Baby L's umbilical cord was wrapped very tightly around his neck, and that the cord was shorter than usual. She surmised that was the reason why my body had such a hard time progressing forward through the labour, and if the labour had proceeded as it normally should have, Baby L could have been in serious trouble. I suppose that our bodies just sometimes know what to do, even if we don't always understand why it's doing what it's doing. In any case, this experience had validated our decision to go with midwifery care, I suspect that it may have gone very differently if I went with my GP or an OB. I probably would have had a C-section, which was the absolute last thing I wanted. Hubby and I were very glad that things turned out well, despite all the chaos, and confusion.

My midwife was awesome, and she made me feel that I could do this from the very beginning. Hubby was also a huge help, I don't think that I would have been able to last the 40+ hours without his help and encouragement.