Are You Kidding Me?

Just finished reading the online article about the guy in Sweden who collapsed after more than twenty exhausting hours of... online gaming.

(taken in my twenty-second hour of labor)

Now you know why men aren't the ones who give birth...

Worth a Thousand Words...

...but let me add just six more:

 I'm so proud of you, Mimo.

In only his second-ever attempt at making a pie crust from scratch, my housemate Mimo made a gorgeous (and yummy) lattice-top apple pie. Eat your heart out.

When "Got Your Back" Takes On A Whole New Meaning

 

A couple nights ago, one of my roommates was describing how he'd been out for the evening but was suddenly struck by a longing to be home hanging out with the rest of us... especially with my son (who turned THREE this past weekend, if you can believe it!). 

It made me smile, for reasons I'm sure you understand -- even though the financial and ecological benefits alone make living in community a brilliant idea, it's a much more rewarding experience when we're able to engage emotionally and socially rather than just fiscally. What's more, in an age where fewer and fewer children have even one good male role model in the home, mine have a whole host of them... and even if we didn't save a lot of money by living as we do, that would be benefit enough. But I digress...

In the middle of that conversation, my not-so-Little Man came in and climbed onto the roommate in question, who was lying on his stomach across the couch. My son lay down on his back like a baby monkey and gave him a big hug.

Then he sat up, pulled up the waistband of the unsuspecting roommate's shorts and underwear and peered in for a moment before announcing, "No poops!"

Overheard

...in the back living room of the Abbey a couple nights ago:

Mister Nygren: Did you guys read that twenty-three percent of Texans surveyed still believe Barack Obama is a Muslim?

Roommate from Oregon: only twenty-three percent?

Roommate from Texas: (dryly) He's not?

'The Happy Ending They Hoped For'

The title of this entry, found on the front page of the Dallas Morning News the day my daughter arrived, really does sum it up nicely. So does the picture.

The short version:

Late Friday night, after thirty-three hours of labor -- yeah, you heard me -- my daughter was born. She's ten pounds, twenty-two inches long and, to no one's surprise, gorgeous.

If you're into birth stories, keep reading. If not, skip straight to her Daddy's blog to check out the pics.

*     *     *

Pretty funny the way it worked -- Wednesday I had the forewarned conversation with my doctor described in the previous entry, where he told me by Week 41 I'd need to schedule an induction. By 1:30 the next afternoon I was in active labor, having contractions five minutes apart that lasted the better part of a minute. I waited several hours and had a nap to see whether they'd dissipate, lest I start making phone calls in undue haste. By five o'clock, I was beginning to suspect this was not a drill...

It was odd to be overtaken by such electricity and still feel so at peace. I had my glucometer, my blood pressure cuff, and -- thanks to the generosity of Brenda, a doula friend -- a handheld Doppler with which we could monitor the baby's heartbeat throughout labor. Yes, I know those proverbial women delivering in rice paddies do just fine without these things, but they provided us with a lot of reassurance.

I took one last tour of the house and then started calling the Birth Squad: my mom, my good friend Ami (usually identified here with the words "crunchy granola mom") and my husband. I finished setting up candles in the room with the labor tub. I straightened up just a bit more in the living room. None of them were surprised when they arrived to find me at the stove cooking dinner for all of us.

Over the next twenty-eight hours -- almost twenty-nine -- I did things most pregnant women would never imagine: namely, laboring in my own clothes, in my own [kitchen] [big ass inflatable tub] [backyard] [living room], listening to the Fourth Circle album, getting in whatever position felt best, eating and drinking as I felt the need, making whatever movements and sounds got me through each contraction. I can't remember ever feeling more alive.

Besides a healthy baby -- obviously-- my hope was to be able to say at the end that I hadn't let fear keep me from laboring at home as long as I wanted, and I hadn't let pride keep me from going to the hospital as soon as I needed. By the end of that last hour, though, my support team told me I was showing signs of not only physical but emotional exhaustion. Mister Nygren reminded me that we'd agreed we'd go to the hospital once we didn't think I could safely make any more progress at the house, and suggested that I consider it. Ami and my mom nodded.

"Would you like to take a minute and think about it?" he asked me. I shook my head and stood up. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm getting my shoes."

At the hospital, I discovered that my doctor wasn't in town (yes, again) and the on-call OB was on her way... to give me a no-questions-asked cesarean. (God bless the nurses -- all four of them on duty came filing into my room to warn me of her intention, to let me know I could decline, and to tell me they thought I had a good shot at a VBAC if I wanted to try for one.) When the doctor arrived, she found I was nine centimeters dilated and fully effaced -- which, for the uninitiated, means your body's almost ready to push. The confrontation with the doctor was no less a challenge than I anticipated. She cited medical studies about the perils that might await my "mammoth" baby if she got shoulder dystocia in the delivery process; I cited back the studies that showed neither size nor any other factor could be used to predict its rare occurrence in labor. We went back and forth like that for nearly twenty minutes (while I was still having strong contractions every two or three minutes) until she conceded to let me labor a bit longer... but only if a) I signed a handwritten addendum to her release form that freed her from liability when my selfish, selfish decision inevitably caused permanent harm to my innocent child, and b) I agreed to get an epidural in preparation for a possible surgery, which she still intended to do if I hadn't dilated that last centimeter within an hour.

We were agreed and the hour was underway. When she had been gone an hour and I was anticipating her return, I told my husband, "I need you to agree with me on something in prayer: that if I've fully dilated when she gets back, I can take that as a go-ahead to labor and not worry about complications... and if I haven't, that there's a reason I should let her do the cesarean." We prayed. Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

When she returned a full two hours later, I was still only dilated to nine.

Mister Nygren and I looked at each other for just a moment. I wasn't about to throw down a second fleece. I turned to the doctor and told her, "We're done."

In the operating room, the surgery was well underway when the doctor said, "I'd like to show Daddy something. Will he pass out?" (Mister Nygren's smirk could be heard if not seen from beneath his mask when he replied, "I watched the whole thing last time.") She'd brought him over to show him I had a "window" -- what they call it when a section of the uterus (in my case, my previous c-section scar) is stretched thin enough to make it absolutely transparent... and much more likely to rupture. Scalpel entirely unnecessary, he tells me she had only to run her gloved finger across it to split it wide open.

All the pieces came tumbling into place:

If I had tried to deliver at home, I'd have ruptured, the baby and I would both likely have been lost. If Dr. D had been in town, he'd have let me keep trying... and I'd have ruptured. Ditto for if the on-call OB had been less stubborn. Ditto for if I'd let my doctor induce me. Though our odds of survival would have been far better at the hospital, the roller coaster and emergency surgery to follow would be more frightening than I'd wish on anyone. No, I'd been given the opportunity to go into labor on my own and go through the labor process my own way... and then, not a moment too soon, I was also given the kind of delivery I needed in order for my story to have a happy ending.

So after thirty-three exhausting, glorious hours of labor, my daughter made her long-awaited debut. We've named her Moira Josephine Grace -- which means "to bitterness God adds grace."

...and indeed He does.