C'mon!

I mean, seriously.

Belly button privacy

Linus doesn't have any of the usual transition objects. No blankies, binkies, stuffed animals, nothing. He doesn't suck his thumb, or twist his hair, or pull his ear.

What he does have is his belly button. It's his comfort touchstone. He will rub it if he's in need of comfort or reassurance. If he comes into a room full of people and noise and commotion, he'll stop a little ways in, rub his belly button, and watch what's going on before he decides whether to join in or not. If he finds a situation upsetting, his hand finds his belly button immediately. We were watching "Robots" the other day, and during the sad scene at the train station where Rodney says goodbye to his parents - finger on the belly button. He'll also rub his belly button when he's nursing - the complete Comfort Package.

I find it to be completely endearing.

His abdominal focus doesn't end there. He likes to press his belly against things, especially another person's belly. Often while he's nursing he'll decide that it's time for belly contact. He'll lift his shirt and arch his back, trying to press his belly against mine. If I lift my shirt and press bellies for a second, he'll smile and continue nursing happily.

It gets nuttier. He'll walk up to things and press his belly against them. I'll be fixing some food in the kitchen and he'll come in, lift his shirt, press his belly against the fridge, or one of the cabinets, turn around and walk out again. I freaked once when I saw him going bare-belly-first towards the oven. I let out a little shriek, which took him by surprise, causing him to stop, drop his shirt and rub his belly button while looking at me with concern. I needn't have worried - of course we have a modern oven with adequate insulation, so the door was cool to the touch. I just had visions in my head of 2nd degree belly-burns. How awful would that be?! I even saw him try to belly-press the cat. Didn't go over real well, but I can see the appeal of the warm, fuzzy cat belly.

I think this is an example of the kind of thing that's really cute when a baby does it, but it would be totally creepy in an adult. Imagine one of your co-workers pressing his naked belly up against the water fountain or the copier machine. Nuh uh. Not charming.

All of this means that onesies aren't too popular in our house any more - no belly button access. It's really quite sad when his pair of onesie pjs makes it up in the rotation. He'll be rubbing around for a couple of minutes searching for access. I usually take pity and unzip them down to the waist. You can just see him relax when he finally finds that navel. Aaaah.

And he's almost as interested in your belly button. If you lift your shirt, he'll poke a finger in it. This really cracks him up! However, this is where I've drawn the line.

I have declared my belly button OFF LIMITS.

I will participate in the belly press, no problem, but I will NOT have fingers in my belly button. I don't like it. I tried to be game for awhile, but I just decided, "nope."

I don't have a whole lot of physical boundaries these days. I will nurse him. I will take a bath with him. Closed doors are upsetting, so he can come into the bathroom when I'm showering or using the toilet. In fact, he really likes to hug me while I'm sitting on the toilet (I think I'm just at the right height). Fine. He sleeps with us and sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and he'll be plastered right up against me. So? Sometimes when he's nursing, he'll feel every bit of my face, or he'll want to investigate my teeth. No problem. He likes to pull off my socks when I'm sitting on the couch and consider, and have a discussion with, each of my toes. You bet. The cat likes to sit on my lap while I'm watching TV, while the dog likes to sit on my feet. Ok. I will have intimate relations with Orion. Great!

But my belly button is PRIVATE.

I hope we can still be friends.

My little nutjob

It goes without saying that Linus is totally effing cute. Like, melt-your-face-off cute.



See? Of course, he's not as cute as your kid, that goes without saying, but only yours. Everyone else's kid pales in comparison.

So, he's cute, but also... total nutjob. That is, in fact, one of his nicknames, "Nutjob" (it's overtaking "Peeps" as Most Commonly Used, as he doesn't peep anymore).

What's that? You doubt me?

Allow me to elaborate. He is, of late, completely enamored with two things; pretending to blow his nose, and throwing away tissue. Well, there are others, but these are the ones we're talking about today. He often combines his two loves. He's watched very carefully whenever he's seen someone blow their nose. Apparently, he thinks what we're actually doing is sniffing the tissue before we throw it away. I don't know if he's come up with reasons as to why we're doing this, all that's evident is he wants to do it too. If we leave a box of tissues within his reach, he will take one out, sniff it, and throw it away, over and over again, until the entire box is gone. Same with a roll of toilet paper. Sometimes with the toilet paper, he'll forego the sniffing and go right to the throwing away part. And he's not constrained to throwing things away into the garbage. He'll often "throw things away" into a drawer, or a box, or my shoulder bag.

Over, and over, and over, and over.

I have evidence. Video evidence! If you click on the link below, it will take you to a page with 2 short video clips. You have to click on the images to get the clips to download before you can play them. Be patient. Depending on how much server traffic there is it can take awhile to download. In the top one you will see the Sniff, Throw Away, and in the bottom one you'll see the Throw Away Not In The Garbage.

See the videos here.

I love how in the second one, if you look closely, you can see that the drawer is already full of wadded up tp. He'd been at it awhile.

Now tell me that isn't nutty!

Labor amnesia

I realized after posting yesterday that I really don't remember all that much about my labor. I guess I have that labor amnesia that women get so that they'll be willing to go through it again. Evolution rocks! I mean, obviously I remember quite a bit about it, but not as much as I'd expect given that it was pretty much the biggest single event that's ever happened to me. I have no idea what filled those 54 hours. I remember being in the tub, breathing through contractions, blah, blah, blah, but I was in labor (and awake, mostly) for that first night, a whole day, another whole night, ANOTHER whole day, and well into another night. That is a LOT of time, but I have specific memories of about 6 total hours of it.

And I remember things at a distance. Like, I remember thinking near the end,

"I'm never doing this again."

"Nope."

"Not a chance."

But I don't really remember why. Or, I remember why - I was tired and it was painful and I was tired of being in pain - but I certainly don't feel that way now. Now I'm like, "Eh, wasn't that bad."

Some of the amnesia happened immediately, it's not just the passage of time that's muted the memories. I had no idea that 2 days had past, even while it was happening. I think it's a pretty common experience - you go into this primal, non-linear mode. You're so focused internally that external stuff doesn't register the same.

That limited world view stuck with me for quite awhile after Linus was born, but my bubble expanded to include him. I was all Gweneth Paltrow, "I don't care if I never make another movie again." But, eventually I read the screenplay for "Infamous" and decided I was interested in the outside world again.

Aaaaah, I miss the babymoon.

Birthed

Well, I'd apologize for not posting for so long, but it seems no one reads these posts, so it's not even like my apology would fall on deaf ears (blind eyes?). Ah well, saves me from feeling guilty about it.

So, to finish the labor story. I labored for a long, long time. This baby was taking his time. I was progressing, just really, really slowly. Once the contractions started in earnest, or really, once the baby moved down to a certain point, I couldn't keep anything down. Every time I'd try to lay down, he'd apparently hit my vasovagal nerve and I'd suddenly throw up. You know this nerve - remember when Bush swallowed a big piece of pretzel and passed out? Same nerve at work. Sometimes even when I would turn a certain way it would happen. It was totally sudden and disconcerting. I think I've said before that I rarely throw up. And, it's not like I was continuously feeling nauseous at all. Just, get in the wrong position - Boom! Gross.

This led to an even more irritating phenomenon - heartburn. I have a low-grade, chronic acid reflux problem for which I take a certain purple pill every morning. On the purple pill, fine. Forget to take the purple pill and by about noon I have the worst heartburn. I was in labor for a total of 54 hours, during which time I neglected to take any purple pills. I wasn't planning on being in labor that long people! So after a day or two of throwing up at regular intervals and no purple pill, my esophogus was burnt. Should I ever be in labor again, I will have a designated Purple Pill Person. It will be their job to make sure I take the purple pill, and to have on hand a supply of low-acidity beverages. Fran had told me to have a couple quarts of juice on hand. I did. I was ready. I had about 5 quarts of juice on hand, weeks in advance. Are you kidding? Give me a list and I will have every item crossed off by the deadline. I was juice-ready. I was well-supplied with orange/pineapple, grapefruit, and cranberry juice. Yeah, that's right. All my favorite juices, to be sure, but not so good with the heartburn. Look, I had no idea, that I was

a) going to be throwing up all the time.

and

b) going to be in labor for 54 hours.

Why didn't somebody go out and buy different juice? you might ask. Yeah, I don't know. I think when I decided that I could keep something down it was very late at night. I'm not sure, honestly.

Anyway, all that aside, I labored, and labored and labored. I spent quite a bit of the first two days in the tub. We had a lovely old claw-foot, cast iron tub in that house. The side where you sit back was angled at the perfect angle. It was quite deep as it was, but Orion also caulked around the fixtures so that you could fill it to the rim if you wanted to. I spent hours in there. I even fell asleep a couple of time between contractions on the second day.

*sigh*

I miss that tub.

Throughout this long labor, the baby was fine. We'd listen with the doppler and his heart rate was perfect. Turns out, he was facing sideways. Once he got down far enough that Fran could feel his head, she announced that he was facing to my left. This is probably why the labor was progressing so slowly. In retrospect, I was having typical labor for a baby in this position. I would have one strong contraction followed by one or two weaker ones. I had lower back pain, whether I was having a contraction or not. Classic signs, apparently.

After about 40 hours, we had a discussion about whether I should go to the hospital. Heartburn aside, I was feeling pretty good, and the baby wasn't in distress, so we decided to stay at home. Fran gave me some herbs to slow the labor down temporarily so that I could try to get some sleep. I guess I did sleep for a couple of hours before the contractions woke me up again. I really hated that feeling, being woken up by a contraction. I wish I'd had someone with me monitor when I was about to have a contraction and then wake me up before it did. It was one of the few times I felt overwhelmed by labor, waking up in the middle. It made me resist falling asleep.

After another 12 hours or so of labor, Fran said we should talk about going to the hospital again. She was concerned that I was becoming exhausted, after 2+ days of very little sleep and nothing except a little bit of honey to eat. She said that if the doc at the hospital could turn the baby's head with forceps, he'd probably pop right out. I didn't really want to leave home, but we'd always said that if things pointed in that direction, we'd go to the hospital. I still felt like I could work through it, though I was pretty tired. By this time I could feel the top of the baby's head with my fingers, which was exhilarating, but I also really, really wanted to be done. Like, a lot. Seriously.

Maggie'd told me months before that if for some reason I needed forceps help, to not let anyone except Dr. Bruner near me. She called him "The Wizard With Forceps". Apparently, they don't really teach the proper use of forceps in OB/GYN schooling anymore. Nowadays, anything goes slightly out of the ordinary and *bang* you get a C-section. Dr. Bruner was older, had been well-trained, and knew what he was doing, by all reports. It was about 10pm by this time, so I had someone call the hospital to see who was on-call for deliveries. If it was anyone else, we were staying home and would just work through it, but as luck would have it, Dr. Bruner was the doc on call, so we decided to go ahead and go in.

That was a seriously uncomfortably car ride, though thankfully a brief one. I was still having regular contractions, and I'd progressed enough that these were the pushing kind. It was a slow walk into the hospital with regular stops for breathing through contractions. I told the nurses on duty how far along I was, but they totally didn't believe me, probably because I'd just walked in. They were a bit patronizing, like, suuuure you are, pat my hand. They led me into a small exam room to check me out, felt the top of the baby's head, and kinda freaked out. It was pretty funny. I felt a contraction coming on and got up so I could deal with it standing (my preferred position at this point) and one nurse was all, "You can't stand up! We don't want the baby to fall out onto the floor!" Hah. I just looked at her and got up. I reminded her that I'd been pushing for hours and if the baby was going to come out that easily, we wouldn't have been there. She came to her senses and was like, "Right, ok."

We all moved into a big labor and delivery room. Dr. Bruner arrived about 10 minutes later, checked out the scene and said I was lucky it was him, for all the reasons I've already enumerated. There was a brief discussion about whether or not I wanted an epidural. I asked him if the forceps were going to hurt. He said, "Not any more than regular contractions." Total. fucking. lie. I don't know what I was thinking, trusting someone who'd never been in labor, let alone had a forceps delivery. Orion stepped forward and said that I didn't want an epidural. This was one of his jobs. We'd talked a lot about it before and I made it clear that I did NOT want anyone sticking anything into my spine. I'd had a lumbar puncture in the past, and until The Procedure, it was the worst physical experience of my life. I'd asked Orion to advocate for me because I might not be able to do it myself. I'm glad I did, because I was seriously considering it. I was tired, and tired of being in pain, but I didn't really want an epidural. He was a champ.

Now, having said all that - If I had known how much the forceps were going to hurt, I would have demanded pain meds. I'm not kidding. I felt every bit of those forceps the whole way. I'm glad, in the end, that I didn't have an epidural, but I would never go through that again without some pain relief. Fortunately, it was quick. Forceps in place. Turn in one contraction. About 3 more contractions and the baby was out. From begining to end, my labor in the hospital was about half and hour long. Of course, Linus was all red and gooey and squishy and half-baked-looking. We toweled him off, I popped a boobie in his mouth, and he nursed away for quite awhile.

So, I ended up giving birth in exactly the position I didn't want to be in - that is, feet up in stirrups - but I don't really care. I'm glad I labored at home. I could do what I wanted, and I was surrounded by the most loving and supportive crew. If I'd been in a hospital the whole time, there is no way they would've let me labor that long. I would have ended up having a C-section. No doubt. As it is, I had a drug-free birth and the baby came out healthy and alert - pretty much just as I'd hoped.

If I ever get pregnant again, I plan on trying home birth again. The only thing I would do different is spend more time walking in my ninth month, and a lot of time on my hands and knees in the last weeks of pregnancy, to lessen the chances of the baby being in the wrong position again.

Oh yeah, and have different juices on hand. Maybe, apple?