Goodnight Mom

It’s been three and a half months since we welcomed Nico into the family. Not a long time, really. We’re still all adjusting. Things ebb and flow between easy and difficult.  Easy: Nico eats well.  Difficult: Nationwide formula shortage is scary right now. Easy: Max loves being a big brother and has been nothing but sweet to Nico.  Difficult: Two babies sometimes demanding attention at the same time.  Easy: Nico sleeps through the night. Difficult: Except for when he doesn’t and he wakes up crying multiple times. Easy: Steve and I are enjoying time in the house together on parental leave.  Difficult: Somehow we still feel like we don’t get much time together, not alone time anyway.  Before Nico was born, I was especially worried about going from parenting one baby to two. So many people said two is much harder. The work doubles, they’re at different stages developmentally and so they have different needs and interests.  Steve and I would sometimes lie ...

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....