Yes, I Did Give Birth At Home

I can't tell El's birth story without also telling Av's - they are really one long story.  It's my story, really, the story of how I gave birth to two perfect children.
 
The first miracle is the fact that I got pregnant at all.  It was even more miraculous the second time.  I have been blessed twice, and within those two big blessings are several sub-blessings.  Let me explain.

In 2004 I got cancer.  And I had chemo, which is notorious for causing infertility, by way of early menopause.  But I was lucky - the treatment protocol I was on was kinder to the ovaries than other types of chemo, plus I took a drug called Lupron during treatment that shuts down the reproductive system and supposedly helps protect it from harm.  As a result of this, or maybe as a result of good luck, I did not immediately have fertility problems and became pregnant with Av six months after chemo ended, before I was even aware that I was ovulating again.  Wow, wow, wow.  I felt like I'd won the biggest lottery ever.  Even Wayne, who had been so nervous about having kids, was totally psyched.  We were so lovey-dovey during the whole pregnancy, we made everyone around us want to vomit.  It was very cool.


I had some worries, though.  I didn't know if having had chemo would somehow change the way my body grew a baby and/or gave birth.  No one else knew, either - there's been so little research on the subject.  Very few chemo patients go on to have babies afterwards, because most chemo patients are beyond their child-bearing years.  Unfortunately, however, more and more young people are getting cancer these days, and fertility is slowly becoming a much bigger issue within that population.  I imagine that down the road, there will be more research and more focus on developing chemo treatments that preserve fertility.  In 2005, however, when I was fast approaching my due date, I had very little to go on.  For that reason, we went ahead and had amniocentesis.  I was entitled to it anyway, due to my "advanced" age (35), but it wasn't my age I was worried about.  The amnio showed no problems, and confirmed that Av was a girl, which we already knew from the ultrasounds.  I went ahead with the rest of the OB maternity care rigamarole, until I decided I wanted a natural birth and took a Bradley class.  Somewhere in the middle of that I switched to a nurse-midwife.  I was hoping I could give birth without pain medication, and I fantasized that I could do it without being hooked up to any machines and without any grotesque procedures, like episiotomy.  What I didn't know, however, was that if you give birth in a hospital, overseen by medical personnel, it's extremely unlikely you'll be left alone to do it naturally.  Our midwife was based at the hospital, and so was limited by hospital policies and ultimately beholden to the doctors.   I was also unaware at the time that the only alternative to a hospital birth in my area was a home birth, with a home birth midwife.  I thought that having the nurse-midwife would protect me from intrusive and unnecessary birth interventions.  Much later, I learned that this is only somewhat true, and only if certain conditions apply, such as the condition that you go into labor no later than a few days after your due date, and the condition that your labor goes quickly and smoothly, with no deviations from whatever is considered the norm by the hospital culture.  My pregnancy did not meet the necessary conditions.  At one week past my "due date," I was showing no signs of going into labor any time soon.  The midwife insisted we have a non-stress test and an ultrasound, which we did.  The doctor on call came in to discuss the results with us.  The baby appeared fine, no signs of stress, but my amniotic fluid was "low," my blood pressure was slightly elevated, and the baby was measured by the ultrasound as being well over 8 pounds, so there was a "danger" that she was "too" big to fit through my pelvis.  I was aware that late-term ultrasounds for measurements are notoriously inaccurate, and I said as much, but the doctor busted out the big guns: he told us the ultrasound also seemed to show that her heart may be enlarged, although he admitted that this was not necessarily a reason to induce labor.  He was more worried about my supposed lack of amniotic fluid.

"Hello, Plain Jane's Baby Factory, How may I direct your call?"

GW's good friend from Kentucky tends to call about 9:00pm, because he correctly assumes that by this time the kids will be asleep, but we will still be relatively awake and sober ourselves.  One night, however, he was the unfortunate recipient of my self-pitying sense of humor. 

"Here at Plain's, we sow 'em, grow 'em, and stow 'em.  How can I help you?"

A two-second pause, while Lex's considerable intellect grasps my mood and swiftly rises to the challenge of playing along.  "Oh, uh...I heard
"Ah, yes.  Which department would you like to speak with?  The sowing department has unfortunately closed. Permanently."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.  Would that mean the growing department is also...?"

"Defunct, yes." 

"Well, that kind of limits my choices..."

"Yeah."

"I might want to file a complaint."  He is a lawyer.

"The complaint department is only open from 6 to 7am on Sundays. You're welcome to call back during that time, although we don't answer the phone until

Twenty Dead Spot in a Cooler

*You really can't scare Av with this kind of stuff.

*El spelunking in the toilet.  Again.

Day started with El helping herself to a healthy piece of chocolate from Av's trick-or-treat stash.  She ate the foil wrapper, too.


Termite fears

Advent Spiral - Av walked it, got her candle lit, chose a place for it on the spiral herself, grabbed an apple, went back to her seat and started eating it.

Uncle Max Pays A Visit

smoking is "out of fashion"

campfire, smores

Star Wars

I Can't Keep Up

Ah, there are so many things to report from the past month, so I'm not even going to try to put them all in one post.  This is what happens when you don't keep up with your blog.

So there was Christmas, in which Santa Claus was quite generous to a certain big sister who put up with a lot over the past year.  El enjoyed digging through her stocking and pulling out all the little bits we put in there for her to root through.  We spent the day putting together toys, playing, installing a toilet (me & GW's tres romantic gift to one another).  Then there was the PA trip - lots of fun, lots of drama, lots of yummy junk food.  Av had a real blast with her cousins.  Two sleep-overs with cousin R.

I Think It's Time For Me To Be More Rejecting of Other People

And this is for the other blog.  Just wanted to tag this idea so I can elaborate later.

El, One Year

*Can climb off the couch by herself - has learned to "turn around" and go feet first

* Is smaller than her Piglet doll.

*Is really into her gutteral, French-sounding vocalizations

*Reaches up and says "Up!" when she wants picked up.

*Isn't walking yet, and that's just fine with her parents.

It's So Cool To Be Five

Why, you ask?  Well, pull up a chair, friend, and allow me to enlighten you!!

On your fifth birthday, you'll probably be in a really awesome preschool where you got to be the teacher's aid on your birthday.  Your dad took the day off work just to be with you and the family, and he helped keep your baby sister occupied so you could do all the fun stuff you wanted to do, without interruption.  The fun stuff you wanted to do included dressing for the day in a beautiful pink-and-red sparkly outfit designed by you, helping your teachers set up the classroom, building huge castles with cardboard blocks, making paint with flour and salt and water, serving Cheddar Bunnies and clementines to your friends for snack, and making "Bad Guy Soup" on the playground with your best girlfriends.  Your teachers and classmates would participate in a special ceremony for you, in which you held an Earth ball and walked around a table with a lit candle (the "sun") one time for each year of your life.  Each time you walked around, your parents told the group all about the things you were doing when you were that age.  For example, when you were one, you'd been walking for a month, and you said about ten words.  When you were two you loved to play in water, bounce, talk, paint, and wear bandaids.  At three you begged, pleaded, bugged and harangued until Mom finally got the message that you wanted to go to school, and a few months later you started at PCP.  At four you became a big sister.  At five, you're practically ready to take over the universe.

Beach!

Okay, so there are some nice things about living in the South.  One is that you get to go to the beach in March.  The water's icy, but the sand is pleasantly warm, the air smells incredible and the sun and blue sky make you forget there ever was a winter where the kids were sick every other week for five months.

Today was really El's first time on the beach.  Last time she went was at age 2 weeks or something; she was an infant barely peeking out of the sling.  So today was big.  For Av, too - first beach trip of the new year, not to mention Nanny is here visiting which makes it extra special - she was so excited to go she was beside herself.

House the Meester, the Fish

Nuff said.

Kindergarten is Great! Well, Except For...

...."it's boring most of the time, and we have to sit and listen to the teacher talk, and I already know the stuff they're teaching me, except for Spanish, which is kind-of hard but not really, and also I'm really tired and I don't want to go to school today so can we just go home?

Camping Night In The Backyard

We've got hot dogs, we've got graham crackers, we've got chocolate and marshmallows  We've got a cool tent bought on the cheap, courtesy of more experienced camping friends.  We've got air mattresses, a radio, and an old pine stump that needed another good burn anyway.  It all went well until the toddler spilled a drink on the laptop, finally killing it for good, and until Av decided that the great outdoors was just too creepy at night and went upstairs to her own bed.  Yay for practicing camping in the backyard.  We'll practice some more, and hopefully at some point it'll get less creepy.

Language Explosion, pt.2

Can't keep up.  She's now at the stage where she imitates everything anyone says, so it's hard to tell sometimes which words are actually "real" words and which are just parroted syllables.  But some of the ones I have "proof" of are:

Pumpkin ("punk - ken!")
Nurse!
Thank you ("bink yoo")
You're Welcome ("Erwelk")
Dress
School ("Gooo!")
Knee
Bandaid ("Bend-end")