Goodnight Mom

This is part two of Introducing Nico to the World, read part one here ! I will warn you up here that I will talk about the surgery. So feel free to skip this post, or just fast forward to the delivery section if you get creeped out!  Leaving the hospital together Surgery I was most nervous about the process of being anesthetized for the operation. For cesarean sections, you receive a “spinal”: an anesthetic is injected into the fluid surrounding the nerve that runs along your spine. This is different from an epidural that many women receive during labor. The spinal injection is deeper, closer to the nerve and works almost instantly for a finite amount of time (1-2 hours). Epidurals take 10-15 minutes to kick in, and are often set up with a catheter so that that medication can continue to be infused (like having a top up!). In the UK the spinal procedure had taken a long time and at one point I felt a pain run down my back and into my left butt. I alerted them to this, and they had ...

Part One: It’s Happening! In the weeks leading up to Nico’s birth, I kept thinking about what it would be like to go into labor. How would contractions feel? What’s it like to have your waters break? Would it happen somewhere embarrassing? Like, out in public! If I did go into labor, would I still go through with a planned cesarean, or would I suddenly decide to ride out this trial of labor? (You can read my thoughts about having a trial of labor vs. vaginal birth after c-section here , and here ). I had dreams as well. In one dream, my sister-in-law had the baby for me. When I woke up, I let her know by text. She replied, “No thanks!” In the week running up to his birth, I was thinking about it a lot. With hindsight, I think I was experiencing some different symptoms. The pressure in my cervix had changed quite a bit, and more frequently Nico’s head was hitting a pressure point that sent a jolt of pain down through my vagina - known as lightning crotch.  Preparing for the unknown ...

There’s a lot of body pain and exhaustion in the first few days/weeks of postpartum, so celebrating the things that feel good is important to me. Even if they seem strange! This post is going to be deeply personal and very real, so I hope you’re ready!  Little Nico's hand on my thumb in the wee hours of the night. Full Bladder Having full use of my bladder again is a beautiful thing. I feel like it slipped away slowly as my pregnancy advanced. It was like, one day (or one middle-of-the-night, as it were) I realized my bladder is so squished up I can hardly hold anything anymore. I had to always pee before going anywhere, and if I sat down for a while it was guaranteed I’d need to pee again as soon as I stood up!  A few days after Nico’s birth, I was on the toilet and was just amazed at the amount of urine I could pass in one sitting. A full, thick stream for a good half a minute. It physically felt so good! It really did. It wasn’t like I was holding it for a long time either....

This post was drafted a few weeks ago, in late January. Going into the final month of my pregnancy, I found it challenging at times to get excited about it, which I think is what people expect. It can be exciting. It can also be daunting and generally exhausting. I definitely was looking forward to no longer carrying around a heavy baby in my belly, and the aches and pains that came with that!  But getting excited about having a new baby was not as accessible.  A fun photo from our NYE party As we draw closer to meeting baby#2, some friends, and even Steve, have asked me what I’m excited about. I found this question particularly difficult to answer in this past month. It’s not that I’m not excited, but there has been so much else to think about that my ability to get into a place of excitement has been a challenge. At the start of the year, we grappled with the decision over our dog Porter’s end of life. Max had an exposure to COVID-19 again from a daycare buddy (thankfully, M...