Our big girl! Her eyes seem to have decided to be green. She sits up well now. Laughs riotously at the cats, then becomes frustrated at their audacity to walk away from her. Still idolizes her big brother. Her all-purpose words are "oog" and "ng-uh." Able to feed herself a cracker. Able to feed herself a grocery list. Each day I can't imagine loving her more, and then the next day I love her more.
Some thoughts about da Roo:
We have made some little trips lately, and several people have asked us about da Roo: "Is she always this happy?" We think, we blink, and we respond "yes." Of course there's the RDA of fuss, but it's usually short-lived.
People sure do come up with some funny things to compliment. We used to laugh about the descriptor "alert" for babies. It seems to be reserved for when people can't think of something else nice to say, such as "cute." So I say we used to laugh about it, and then we started hearing it a lot about da Roo. Now don't get me wrong, I think she's the cutest baby since, well, da Shmoo. I am not objective at all, and I couldn't care less about whether others think she's cute or not. It's just funny. The other one I've heard on several occasions is "she has such a perfect head shape." Head shape? Way to go, Roo!
OK, but really, da Roo is the next Mary Tyler Moore. Because she can turn the world on with her smile.
Rambling while I have the chance.
I also used to think "preschooler" was a funny category of kid. "Infant" and "toddler" make total sense. Couldn't there be something more specific for 3- and 4-year olds, like "verbalizer" or "staller" or "no of course I don't need a nap. I'm not sleepy at all-er" or "must torment, startle, and otherwise bother baby sister every moment of every day-er." But now that I have a preschooler, I realize how apt a descriptor it is for this age. The kid is defined by my needing time away from him. To send him somewhere else for several hours of the day. Yes I love him. But holy. He can drive me crazy.
(Evolution has also been very wise in making children look so sweet and angelic when they're asleep. It has no doubt saved multitudes from being smothered in their sleep.)
Da Shmoo also has so many moments of awesomeness. He cracks me up and has such fun observations. When we can get beyond his stubbornness and my annoyance, we can really have a good time. Like last week in DC when he was supposed to be napping and instead was putting on a show for da Roo, who was also supposed to be napping. I just laughed, got them in their swimsuits, and went to the pool.
Shmoo and I were discussing Bob L'Eponge recently. He asked me where sponges live and I said "Well, they're sea creatures, so they live in the water." Astute Shmoo responded. "Sponges don't live in the water. They live in the sink!"
We had broccoli recently, and I asked Shmooie whether he wanted Parmesan cheese. He did, so I brought out the green cannister. When he saw it, he said "where's the cheese?" It took me a moment, but then I realized he thought I was offering Parmis-on-cheese. So I got out a slice of muenster.
We went up to visit Nana this past weekend. (Nearly two years after that post, she is just now declining rather rapidly.) Shmoo was attentive, gentle, and loving with her. She would speak with us for a few minutes, but kept falling asleep. We let her rest, and then a nursing assistant wheeled her from the dining room back to her room. We were about to say our farewells and we told Shmoo that Nana was very sick and that we were going to let her know we love her. After she was situated, Shmoo walked right over to her side and said "I love you, Nana."
I hate it that I haven't updated in ages. As you can tell from HPR's recent post, every moment is full. By the time the momentum stops, zzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
Sorry, must have nodded off there. Where was I? Ah, yes, despite the drawback of no spare time, I am loving the two-kid gig. Shmooie's, um, adjustment behavior has evened out and Roo is set on the course of no-turning-back development, including a predictable schedule. Can I hear an amen?
Roo actually ept-slay through the ight-nay last night. I'm sure it was just a fluke, but it's nice to know that it's possible. Other Roo tidbits:
She is smiley, chatty, and sociable, but at the same time content to hang out by herself in her crib or kick around with some toys.
She is a thumb-sucker! Like both her parents were, but unlike her brother. I love the self-soothing component of thumb sucking, although feeding can be a challenge.
(We're not doing much more than tastes of solid foods at this point, despite the photo above.)
She is very sensitive to sound. Loves music, hates crowds.
Her favorite people are her dad and her brother. I'm lucky that I have the goods, otherwise I'd have no way to compete with the guys.
Speaking of the goods, Roo has nearly tripled her birth weight. Her jowls rival this guy's. Shmooie fondly calls her "Little Fat Face."
Her baby-pattern baldness is being replaced by downy platinum blond hair.
Her eye color has yet to be determined.
She still has prominent "stork bites" on her nose and eyebrows. When we take her out, well-meaning strangers point out how cold she must be because of her red nose. We're going to start responding, "No, she's just drunk."
Her first week of daycare (four half-days) was a bit rough. Bothered by the cries of a couple of her contemporaries, she didn't sleep well. The second week went much better.
The second week of daycare was also exciting, in that I'm pretty sure she was given someone else's milk. A bottle mix-up. Her care provider denied it (worried about her job, I'm sure). I didn't make a big deal out of it, but the next day I put a note on the fridge requesting all parents label their bottles. We're about as earthy as they come, so we're not too upset about it as long as it doesn't happen again. And Roo got to do what few American babies these days get to do: sample another flavor. It will be fun to get to know the baby room parents better so we can have a good laugh.
I have handed off the Roo-baton to HPR. He is home with Polly until the end of January and, in addition to my return to work, I have taken on the role of Mommy Sherpa for da Shmoo. Although we live and I work in West Philly, daycare is near HPR's work in Old City, so this means I will be logging many hours on our fair transit system. Shmooie likes to be carried. It's faster, so I usually acquiesce in the form of a piggy-back ride. He tips the scales at 40 pounds. I am going to be cut by the end of the month.
We have typically used transit tokens and have thereby stuck with the trolley/subway combo to take advantage of the free transfer stations. But because I will take 4 trips a day through January, I bought a monthly SEPTA pass. With the pass, we can throw options like the bus into the mix, much to the delight of my motor-head son.
Here's the typical weekday schedule.
I nurse da Roo when she stirs in the 6 or 7 a.m. range.
7ish: We get up whenever da Shmoo awakens. I never thought I'd see the day when he'd rise so late. (Thinking back to those awful days when he would wake up for the day at 4:30 a.m.) HPR wrangles the kids while I dress and primp. I drink some OJ while I get ready.
Ideally, Shmoo and I would leave the house by 7:50, but it was closer to 8 this past week. We take a bus north to the El station. We try to sit/stand at the very front for the poor man's roller-coaster.
We arrive at daycare at about 8:30-8:40. We are at the mercy of the transit schedule. I try for a quick drop-off, then run back to the subway station. I get to work between 9 and 9:10. I can read page proofs for the Shmoo-less legs of my transit.
I eat breakfast and drink coffee at my desk. I pump at about 10:30. When it's lunchtime I eat at my desk. I pump again at 2:30 or 3. At 5 sharp I pack up the refrigerated milk and catch the subway to Shmooie's daycare. I get there around 5:30. With either subway/trolley or subway/bus combo, we get home at about 6:20.
Wednesday, Jan 2, was the first day of the new routine. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself during the day, but then HPR uttered the six words a woman loves to hear: "What would you like for dinner?"
I'm glad it was a three-day work week. Polly-roo was literally attached to me from 6:30-9:30 Wednesday night. Thursday night she woke up during each of the hours between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. Wait, she didn't wake up from 2-3 but Shmooie did. They both woke up during the 4 o'clock hour. Thank God for caffeine and adrenaline, which got me through the day Friday.
In the evenings we divide the tasks of kid wrangling, dinner clean-up, and lunch-packing, although HPR has done more than his half of these tasks. I have had to shower in the evenings, too, because the morning schedule has been too tight.
HPR got Polly on a routine on the very first day. He credits her for being easy and malleable, but he also deserves credit for knowing her signals and working with them. She has taken the bottle well. (We learned from our mistakes with Shmooie and kept her to one bottle of my pumped milk a day since the beginning.)
I already have a few SEPTA stories to tell, but they will have to wait for another post.
I have to say that I'm enjoying this 2-kids gig. The house is a mess and tasks that might normally take 2 hours stretch into 5 days, but man, I love these kids.
Polly-roo is now big enough to wear some of her brother's hand-me-downs, which evokes a lovely nostalgia in me. (Nostalgia is a difficult word to type one, handed, fwiw.) Today she's sporting a dark blue terrycloth number with a truck motif, a welcome break from all the pink and ruffles. (The pink is fun, too, but I prefer some variety.)
So that I don't curse myself, I won't really say the following: She is a sleeper. Can you believe that? A baby! Who sleeps! I didn't realize they came that way! She is also content to hang out in her lounge chair for actual lengths of time, not crying to be picked up the moment her butt touches a non-person surface. Not that I've ever known a kid like that.
She is just over a month old and has started smiling. They are the elusive Mona-Lisa type smiles, but they are all real. You'd think, since this is my second go-round in babies, that a little smile wouldn't get me all teary. But then you would be wrong.
Of course it's not all rainbow unicorns jumping out of heart-shaped clouds. Girl knows how to get her fuss on. My mom said we should have named her Porsche since she can go from zero to 60 in 5 seconds. She rarely latches on without the requisite kvetching about the service in this joint. Five p.m., when other people are enjoying happy hour, is her time to fart through some rage.* Ten-thirty to midnight is baby witching hour (but not every night! She likes to keep us guessing). But we're picking up on some of her cues to learn what works well to avoid these jags, and they're not terribly long-lasting.
Shmooie is adjusting as well as can be expected. He asks several times a day to touch his sister and in his enthusiasm nearly squishes her every time. He regresses in play, pretending to be a baby human or fish or seal or cat, and we indulge him. My mom the social worker thinks that he has worked through lots of emotional things by role-playing in this way, and it's probably part of why he has nailed the potty stuff (finally!). I haven't talked about the potty stuff much here out of respect for him (he has become self-conscious when we talk about him), but I can't help sharing something we heard over the monitor when Shmoo was supposed to be napping:
Shmoo: 'Tink,** do you want to come out?
Shmoo, impersonating the 'tink in a high-pitched 'tink voice: No!
Another overheard gem was in the bathtub. Out of the blue, he exclaimed "I'm naked, so I'm having fun!" Now there's a motto to live by. I should design a t-shirt with that - oh wait, never mind.
Shmooie's daycare teachers asked him where he would like to go on a school trip for his birthday next week. Without prompting, he chose the library. I'm so proud.
I was explaining the concept of subtraction to him the other day.
"You had two of the yellow sponge capsules, and we used one. Now there
is one left. So two minus one equals one." He looked at me and said
"Mommy, are you speaking Spanish?" So, um, I guess we have another language/literature geek on our hands. We should let him know there's more money in engineering.
I can't post this without giving a shoutout to my fabulous HPR. He is so in love with Polly-roo and it's adorable. And he and Shmooie have had their share of bonding time, capers, and hijinks. And he is weathering the stress a newborn brings to the house, leavening it with humor. The other night after he changed a diaper, he asked me to reswaddle da Roo. I grumpily said "you really have to learn how to swaddle." His response: "I can't manage to wrap a gift; why would I be able to swaddle an infant?"
Oh, and Halloween.
Me: Do you want to be a train driver for Halloween?
Shmoo: No.
Me: How about an engineer then?
Shmoo: Yes!
Polly-roo went as an acne-ridden, milk-breathed, incontinent freeloader. Cha cha cha.
*I'd love to take credit for this turn of phrase, but I think I first read it on byrneunit.
**Our family word for poop.
I have a zillion things to write about and only one hand available for the keyboard. Whereas HPR can manage this:
This is about as good as I get:
Grandma doesn't even bother with the electronics. Smart cookie.
Same with Shmoo:
So you can see where the focus of the household has been.
Shmooie didn't get to meet Roo right away. (Did you catch that? How I sneaked in a new nickname? I decided she needed a nickname that rhymed with Shmoo, so that we can sing our household standards like "Embraceable Roo" and so on.)
Before Shmooie made it to the hospital for a visit, Roo had already been transferred to the NICU. Only people aged 4 or older can visit the NICU, so he didn't get to meet his baby sister at the hospital. Shmooie was impressed, however, with some balloons in my hospital room. He was most interested in the sand-filled balloon that weighed them down. He became obsessed with opening the sand balloon. We told him that he could open it after we brought Roo home.
As you know, Roo was discharged 4 days after I was. Shmooie mentioned the sand balloon perhaps once during that time, but seemed to forget about it.
On the day when we finally were cleared to take Roo home, we were delayed by one thing or another at the NICU until 5 pm. Shmooie was at daycare, so we got in the car and drove across town to pick him up. I told him his baby sister was in the car. "Nooooo! I don't WANT her to be in the car!" was his initial response. When he got in the car, however, you should have seen his huge grin (one of the greatest things I have experienced in parenting). He spoke to her in a high-pitched voice and asked "can I touch her?" He was elated, and so were we.
We told him that we were bringing her home, and he immediately said "can I open the sand balloon?" We laughed at his obsession and priority, and said yes, we could do that when we got home.
He went to the balloons right away when we got home. HPR grabbed a mixing bowl and scissors and the long-awaited moment had arrived. When we dumped out the balloon, we discovered it was filled with cat litter, not sand. Anti-climactic. Shmooie went on to another activity.
The next morning, as the guys were bustling about the kitchen making celebratory waffles and I was nursing Roo, I heard a telltale scritching of claws and an abrasive and plastic.
Loki cat had christened the mixing bowl.
And that, my friends, aptly sums up life with a newborn and almost-3-year-old.
We are so blessed.
Before I return to our harrowing tale, gentle readers, I must announce Polly's name.
Joni.
She is named after my mom, Joan. We are still fine-tuning the middle name: a version of Mary after HPR's Nana and also one of my mom's sisters. I think I will continue calling her Polly on my blog.
Also, congratulations are in order to the winner of the Polly due date pool, the kilowatthour. K, how do you do it? She was also the winner of family isoglossia's baby pool back in January. Perhaps it is somehow linked to gestating and giving birth to an amazingly cute son. For birth weight, it was my sister, although, zoicks, her guess is still 2 pounds over. Two pounds. It's still sinking in to me what a tiny, tiny baby my girl is.
Anyway, back to my story.
We sat in the ER in frustration. It was obvious where we needed to go. The refrain of my thoughts: Get me up there. They're going to have to cut this baby out of me. I'm down with that, just so she's OK. Please just let us go up to the labor floor.
Seriously. Why did it take 15 minutes of waiting?
At labor triage they put a fetal monitor on my abdomen right away and - to our huge relief - Polly's heart beat was fine. They did an ultrasound to check that the placenta was in place and not blocking the cervix. They checked me and determined I was 4 cm dilated and 90% effaced. Therefore labor could proceed w/o need of an emergency c-section. They would watch me and Polly extra carefully, because the blood was probably an indication that the placenta was pulling away from the uterine lining a bit.
We were cleared for transfer into a delivery room, and found out we were bumped ahead of 8 others. (We found out later that a woman gave birth right in labor triage that night.) At first, there was no bed in the delivery room, but they rounded one up quickly. I think this was around 1:15. Contractions were coming frequently and HPR was at my side through each one, letting me squeeze his hand. We met our awesome labor/delivery nurse, Elizabeth. We briefly met a resident and the on-call doctor from my OB practice.
At around 2:00 (I think? Details are already starting to fuzzify.) I inquired about an epidural. Elizabeth left to try to round up the anesthesiologist. It was a busy night, so she was gone a long time. She would pop back in and leave again. (The entire experience was so different from Shmooie's delivery, where at least 5 people were in the room at all times.) By 3:00 I pushed the nurse call button and asked whether I could see the anesthesiologist. I think they assembled and we got it put in by 3:30.
But I could still feel contractions on my right side. Elizabeth tried to get the anesthesiologist back in, which took a while. When he came back in he pulled the catheter back a bit to see whether that would help distribute the lovely numbness. It never really did. And the down side to the epidural taking the edge off some of the pain was that it also blotted out my adrenaline from dealing with the pain. As a result, it really hit me how exhausted I was. Jury's still out whether a half-assed (ha - literally?) epidural is better than no epidural at all.
I labored away. HPR tried to rest a bit, since the epidural was helping somewhat. The plan was for the resident to break my water now that I was (mostly) numbed. She did so. There wasn't a lot of fluid, so we think my water had indeed broken back at home. She checked my dilation, and I was up to a 7 or an 8.
At about 5:00 I started to feel a really sharp pain in my right side. I started moaning. Elizabeth wondered whether that meant it was time to push. She said: "Don't push. I'm going to get the doctor." Everything happened quickly from this point. The doctor checked me and determined I was ready. Elizabeth and the doctor pulled apart the bed and put my feet in the stirrups. I got the go-ahead to bear down.
With the first push HPR, Elizabeth, and the doctor declared in unison "We can see her! She's right there!" I asked if I should keep pushing and Elizabeth said "with the next contraction." (One upside of the half-assed epidural was I could still feel the contractions, which I couldn't with Shmooie's epidural.) One more push and she was out. They put her on me right away. Back to giddy: I stared in disbelief. Here was our daughter.
Postlog
A routine blood draw yesterday determined that Polly's red blood cell level was much higher than normal, so they had to do a saline transfusion - where they take out some of her blood and replace it with saline to get the levels down to normal. This means that there was probably something minor wrong with the placenta - not enough to be detected during my prenatal care, but enough so that her body made the extra red blood cells for extra oxygen absorption (this probably also explains why she's so little). The transfusion was last night and she is in the NICU. She's also under the strong lights for biliruben to prevent jaundice, her platelets were low so they've given her some blood product (mine were low, too, although I guess they're not worried about me) and they gave her an antibiotic. She can't eat for 48 hours after the transfusion, so she is on an IV and I am pumping/expressing. She will have to stay a bit longer: I leave tomorrow; she'll probably be discharged sometime between Wednesday and Friday.
So, not exactly the way we wanted things to go. But they have stressed to us that this is just a short-term issue, that she is healthy. It's also encouraging that she nursed, peed, and pooped like a champ during the first day of her life, before she had to go into the NICU.
She seems very strong. I can't wait to get her home for major snuggling, feeding, love, and settling in.
HPR and I are feeling well. Just tired and emotionally drained. . . . Shmoo came to the hospital today, but isn't allowed in the NICU. He
is home with HPR now and will have his normal daycare routine this week.
When we left off (before the cute newborn photo), HPR and I were alone in our house, the on-call Shmoo tamers had just left. We turned in at about 10 p.m. I was still having contractions, some of which woke me up.
At 11:45, I was awakened by a contraction, then I felt a gush of fluid. I woke up HPR and told him that my water had just broken. I was giddy - this meant we got to go to the hospital - things were truly underway, not just a false start.
I grabbed up the beach towel from beneath me on the bed and ran to the toilet . . . where I discovered it was blood, not amniotic fluid, flooding out of me. (After the fact, I believe it was in fact both mixed.) HPR had noticed, too, and called to me from the hall that we had to go NOW. I wasn't operating well with the quick succession of my feelings from giddy to surprise to shock, but HPR really kept it together. He asked me what clothes I could put on and I didn't know. I knew I couldn't just walk into the hospital with a beach towel scrunched against my crotch. I told him to get the skirt I had worn earlier that day, which I pulled over my head and partway down over my hips. I had the presence of mind to grab a grungy blanket to sit on in the car. We took off right away.
HPR told me to call my doctor from the car. I had a number in my cell phone that I had called earlier that day. I got through, but didn't really know what to say other than blood was gushing and we were on our way in.
We arrived at the ER at midnight. Urban ER at midnight on a just-past-full-moon Friday. Yeah.
We waited a 15-minute eternity for someone to take me in a wheelchair up to labor triage.
Ay - I didn't mean to hit "publish" yet. But I can't hit "unpublish." So I'll edit this later. Right now I'm going to try to catch a cat nap.
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