Six Days In

We're sitting here together while Nicholas is feeding, and realized that we hadn't updated the blog (except really for photos) since he'd arrived last Tuesday. Things have been one step removed from utter chaos, and yet even so, some patterns have begun to emerge, and Nicholas has already grown and changed quite a bit.

Everything hasn't been quite as smooth sailing as it was in our heads. Nights have been kind of rough. One night he did really well, taking two-hour long naps and feeding at regular intervals, but most nights he's done something that's called "cluster feeding," which basically means that he eats on and off for four or five hours. Sarah does not like cluster feeding. Out of desperation, we've already broken one of the cardinal rules of breast-feeding: I gave him a bottle of formula today so that he would go to sleep, and so that Sarah could rest. He seems no worse for it though, and is thriving quite nicely.

Each day brings a little more alert playtime, which are the moments that get us through the rough patches. They are also the moments that we document with photographs (obviously). He's really gotten the hang of breastfeeding, which we'd been told might take two weeks or more. He can follow a toy (or, this evening, his grandma Kathleen) with his eyes for a minute or two. And yesterday he was able, while on his tummy, to pick up his head and turn it. Oh, and he's discovered how to suck his thumb. We may hate this last skill in about two years, but for now, it's a nice developmental step.

Even though there have been moments of great exhaustion and frustration, we wouldn't have our lives any other way. Besides, the hospital told us they had a strict "no returns" policy.

Finally, this weekend Nicholas met his other two grandparents, two more uncles, and one great-grandmother. He has quite the large family, this one!

Nicholas Meets More Relatives

More photos

Just a quick note that I've added several new photos to the album of Nicholas's first few days, including his first car ride home!

PEANUT IS HERE!!

We've had an exciting week here -- Peanut has arrived!

Nicholas John, as he is now known, was born yesterday, May 26, at 1:31 am. He is 21 inches long, and weighed 8 lbs., 6 oz. at birth. He's doing great, Sarah is doing great, I'm doing great -- we're all on cloud nine. Well, Nicholas is having to make some adjustments (imagine if you'd never seen a bright light and then people started shining them on you incessantly), but is doing fantastically. He even got a perfect score on one of his hearing tests!

More importantly, we've posted some photographs of Nicholas with his mommy and daddy, an uncle, and one set of grandparents. There's a video in there too, to see him in motion. Enjoy!

Nicholas Is Born

A host of names

You all know about our most common nickname for the baby, Peanut, but since Peanut is more the baby's in-utero name than a nickname, we also have a whole host of nicknames that we use. Munchkin and Sweetpea are the most common of these, but we also have been known to shorten Munchkin to Munchie and on more than one occasion Peanut has morphed into Nutso. All of this affectionately, of course.

Snippets from the other room

Okay, I swear I'm going to stop blogging soon and do real work, but I have to share what I'm overhearing in the next room. Joe is looking up things that happened on the dates in the next week and a half and every once in awhile I overhear excited exclamations like:

"Oh! May 24th was the birthday of Queen Victoria AND Fahrenheit"

"May 23rd was the birthday of Linnaeus!" This one led me to call back, "Who in the world is that?" Apparently he is the one who created binomial nomenclature. And while I appreciate genus and species as much as the next girl . . .

May 28th is apparently Rudy Giuliani's birthday--the only date so far that has elicited a negative reaction.

And his favorite? May 29th. He already had a soft spot for it knowing it was JFK's birthday, but discovered it was also Patrick Henry's birthday and the day Bing Crosby first recorded "White Christmas." This sparked the comment, "It's fate." We'll see.

Super-secret project

After the chaos and exhaustion of last week, I spent most of Sunday and Monday curled up in bed, alternating between sleeping and watching TV, trying to recover from the zombie-like state I had reduced my body to. But by Tuesday I was faced with a dilemma—I was bored but was having trouble getting up the motivation to start on a big project like a chapter, not knowing how much time I had to work on it. So I started working on some of the discrete projects that I needed to do this summer—things like compiling teaching evaluations for job applications and drafting syllabi for survey classes. None of these are urgent, but have to get done eventually and psychologically were much easier to tackle than anything directly linked to the dissertation.

And last night I was bored enough that Joe finally convinced me to work on a super-secret sewing project for Peanut that he had commissioned me to do months ago. I had been putting it off because it required some engineering, a type of thing I had never made before and that I don’t have a pattern for. Normally in these situations I rely on being able to call my mom for suggestions, but obviously the super-secret nature of this project closed off that option. But I was desperate, so I pulled out the fabric and my sewing machine and in less than two hours it was done! It isn’t perfect, but pretty dang close given that I was making it up as I went. The biggest problem was actually that my thread kept breaking and I couldn’t figure out why since all the tension settings were exactly as they had been every other time I used the machine.

Yes, this post is just taunting, but I promise to post pictures in a couple weeks of said super-secret project. :)

A Model of Good Parenting

Joe has already taken to bribing Peanut. There have been numerous incident along these lines in the past week or so, but here are a couple I remember:

-“Do you want to ride in the new car? You can ride in the nice new car in your fun car seat, but only if you come out.”

-(As Peanut is bopping around to Joe’s singing) “I’ll sing to you all the time, but you have to come out first.”

The list goes on and on.

False Hope

We had been assuming for the past month or two that Peanut would come sometime in the week or so after the due date (so next week or early the following week), and were okay with this, mentally prepared to not begin anticipating it until May 22nd had come and gone. But then last Wednesday at our doctor’s appointment the doctor found all the signs that labor was imminent and told us it could be any day and she wouldn’t be surprised if it was within the next week. While this was exciting, it was awful timing because it made our car search all the more harried. It was not the week we needed the added anxiety. We each slept about 2 hours Thursday night after bringing the car home, terrified that I’d go into labor before we had a chance to finalize the loan paperwork, get our mechanic to look at the car, and tie up all the other loose ends.

But, obviously, Peanut didn’t come in that week, and when we went to the doctor’s yesterday everything was exactly as it was a week ago. So in theory Peanut could still come any day, but is no more likely to do so than a week ago. It amazes me that with all our medical technology doctors have no way to predict when babies will be born, even to within weeks.

So now we’re looking at exactly the timeframe we were originally, with Peanut probably arriving sometime in the week or so after the due date, but after a week of completely unnecessary anticipation and anxiety.

Priceless

We have the best mechanic ever. If anyone in the Baltimore area is looking for a mechanic, let us know. We stumbled on ours (who is the owner of our closest gas station) soon after moving in when we had a problem with the purple car that made us scared to drive it any further than the half mile down the road. When he tested it and took the time to explain the details of why what we thought was a problem actually wasn’t, and all for FREE, we knew we had a winner. We trust this mechanic so much that we felt comfortable going in last year and saying of the silver car, “The tires are over 5 years old, so probably need to be replaced, but we aren’t sure if we need 2 or 4 new ones—do whatever you think is best.” And, being the amazing guy he is, we picked Katia up with 2 new tires. Seriously, who voluntarily makes less money than they have been given permission to?

Even though Carmax has a pretty good reputation, we knew we’d feel better if we had our mechanic take a look at the Accord and just make sure there was nothing wrong with it. He wasn’t in last Friday, so we took it in this morning. We just picked it up (with a perfectly clean bill of health—yay!) and the charge? $0!!!! I think that was a special favor to us, either because he felt bad about the Civic being stolen or because we lost our discount card with the car, but still.

Between the car being stolen and dealing with the insurance company and car dealers, it is so easy to get jaded, but there have also been so many reminders in the past week that most people are good. From all the offers of help from friends and family to our awesome mechanic, I feel very lucky.

What a week

We’re exhausted, but considering everything the week has thrown at us, we’re doing well. And we are so very grateful for all the positive thoughts and offers of aid that people have sent our way. There was a point yesterday when we both snapped and the frustration, disappointment, and just sheer exhaustion (combination of lack of sleep, spending hours upon hours upon hours walking around used car lots, the emotion of the week, and being 9 months pregnant) overtook us, but we finally got some sleep last night and have been able to spend the last couple hours today relaxing, and are feeling back to our old selves again.

And we now have a car with a car seat, the insurance mess has been started, we ordered new glasses to replace Joe’s that decided yesterday was the perfect time to break, and I made the final changes to my article and sent it off to get it in the queue for publication. So it has been a successful week, even if most of what we accomplished were things that were not on our original to-do list.

And so, Peanut, you can come whenever you’re ready. There are suddenly a lot of things on our to-do list for Monday as well, but I’ve decided that I give up. I’m sick of pleading with you to wait until we cross some other line because obviously something new is going to pop up every time we think we’re ready. So come whenever and it will be fine. We’ll make it fine.

Deep Thought

Do you think Sarah would let me name the new car Barack?

Car Saga

I'll give you the end of the story first: I drove home tonight frightened that I, like my father had done 25 years ago, would total a new car on the drive home from the dealership. I can't print what was said when the car arrived on a flatbed tow truck, but let's just say my mother wasn't particularly concerned with my father's well-being at that moment.

Anyway, with that as preface, we have purchased a car. It's a 2006 Accord, with under 26,000 miles on it. About the only fault with it is that it has an automatic transmission instead of a manual. We both enjoy driving stick-shift, and so this is rather disappointing, but the car is really quite nice in every way, and we didn't want to wear ourselves out searching (potentially in vain) for a manual Accord.

Even so, we're pretty exhausted. We've spent much of the past two days car shopping, hopping from one dealer to the next, and dealing with all manner of bad salesmen. From the one who insisted that we could get a car seat into a 2-door coupe, to the one who thought we'd spend more on a Ford than a brand-new Accord, we have seen just about everything. But we're done.

As long as we can get loan paperwork signed with our bank before labor starts. Tick-tock, tick-tock ...

Progress

That really is the word to sum up the day, on all fronts. Peanut is making progress in the process of getting ready to be born and we are making progress on having a car to bring the baby home in.

We had a doctor’s appointment this morning and the doctor referred to Peanut as “the perfect baby.” Already a mother, my first thought was “sure, for you.” But we’re thrilled with her reasons for this statement: I’m measuring right where they want, Peanut is about 7-7 1/2 pounds, and Peanut and my body are working together to get the labor process started. Before you get too excited, they have no idea when Peanut will come and it could still be 3 weeks, but at least there has been progress.

We also started shopping for a car today and although we didn’t find anything we wanted to buy, we’re feeling more optimistic about the possibility of finding something that works for us. We’ll go back out tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, we pick up a rental car in the morning (the insurance may be screwing us on the actual car, but at least they cover a rental for a month) and we bought a replacement base for the car seat and installed it in the purple car.

The silver lining of the awful timing of this whole thing is that we’re so busy that we’re distracted from both getting too antsy about Peanut’s arrival and from wallowing too much in sadness or self-pity about the car. I haven’t cried at all today.

Goodbye, Katia.

Well, Katia was all ready for Peanut, but she’ll never get to meet the munchkin. This is bad. It is bad in so many ways and on so many levels that I can hardly believe it.

There is the obvious financial. We had dreams of a new car to replace the purple car, but knew that it wasn’t practical financially right now. We now have to buy a car and so will be out the money and stuck with car payments, and yet still only have one car that can accelerate well enough to go on freeways. And it is looking like we’ll be lucky if the insurance money covers taxes, title, and tags. Great. And we have some unknown period less than 3 weeks to pick and buy a car. No pressure.

Then there is the fact that this completely screws with our long-term car plan. The plan was to replace the purple car with a larger sedan in a year (or as soon as one of us had a job offer), then once that was paid off in a few years, replace the silver car with a minivan. Now we’ll end up with two car payments at the same time (because that purple car just can’t last much longer) and the dilemma about whether to buy a minivan before we need it or have to trade in one of the sedans in a few years. The best laid plans . . .

And then there is the sentimental. I am sad. So very very sad. Every time I picture the car I start to cry. Okay, sob. I knew I loved that car, but I didn’t realize quite how very much. I don’t even want a new car—I want my car back. It was my first car. I bought it at 21 and worked so hard to pay it off. I taught myself to drive stick shift for that car and eventually got good. Then I taught Joe to drive it and he now loves driving stick. It was always so good to me, never requiring any repairs or giving me any trouble. It was 11 years old and had 125,000 miles on it, but it ran perfectly. If the police had needed a detailed description, I could have given it, from the indent down the driver’s side where I backed into Peter’s car while I was still figuring out how to drive stick to the host of blue parking stickers on the front that is how I identified it in parking lots (I was joking the other day about how well the carseat matched, with the gray and blue), to the bird poop currently on the driver’s window. And I keep picturing the back seat with the car seat base sitting there. I miss my car. I loved that car. It physically pains me to think of people tearing her apart for parts, which I know is what is happening. They’ll get a couple thousand dollars from her parts, but they have no idea how much more that car was worth to me.

Career Options

If academia doesn’t work out, I have a new backup plan—selling bitchy third-trimester maternity shirts. These will be large enough to actually cover a 9-month belly fully (I can’t really be the only person whose maternity shirts stopped fitting properly, can I?) and will preemptively address the million stupid things people say. Some of my current thoughts:

- No, the baby isn’t due for three more months. Why? (Or, along the same lines, “It’s triplets.”)
- I don’t care which of your relatives have birthdays around my due date.
- Yes, we know what we’re having. A baby. Tests suggest it is human.
- If I actually “pop,” you better stand back.
- How much weight have you gained this year?
- Actually, I hate children.
- Thanks for the warning, but it’s a little late now.
- Warning: Pregnancy is a valid defense on assault charges.

Yes, these are the things I sometimes wish I was gutsy (or rude) enough to say to people. Everyone warns that the ninth month is the hardest, but I thought it would be from physical discomfort, not idiots harassing me every time I go out in public. I’m considering self imposing bedrest just so I don’t have to deal with people anymore.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sarah is a mom for holiday purposes, as far as I'm concerned, even though we don't yet know Peanut's birth date.

So Peanut and I would like to wish Sarah (Mommy to Peanut), and Grandmas-to-be Kathleen and Alice (and all the other mothers out there) a very happy Mother's Day!

Priceless

We decided on a pediatrician! Oh, but it's not just anybody with Disney photos on his wall. We found a Jewish pediatrician who's married to a Catholic with an art historian daughter and another daughter who is, in his words, "anal."

And he makes jokes comparing Jewish and Catholic guilt. We are so golden.

Preparing Katia

There are only a few things left to do on our “Preparing for Peanut” list, but since it has rained for most of the last six weeks, anything involving the car kept getting pushed off. But thanks to a couple short breaks in the rain, these have now been checked off.

Installing the car seat took a grand total of 3 minutes. Since our cars are too old to have the latch system, installing the base for the infant carrier consists of the complicated process of wrapping the seat belt over it and pulling until tight. But when we put the carrier onto the base we realized just how tiny our car is. We put the car seat in the middle for safety reasons, but it turns out it has to go there anyway because it won’t fit behind the front seats. It seriously sticks out between our seats! And we got the smallest version of the infant carrier. I swear car seats are made for minivans and SUVs.

While we didn’t realize just how small our backseat is, we were well aware that our trunk was too small to accommodate the amount of baby-related stuff it will need to haul. (Keep in mind we live on the third floor, so things like the stroller are going to have to live in the trunk.) To increase space in the trunk we decided to finally remove the CD player that hasn’t worked in 4 years. That took about 15 minutes (although it did require Joe to climb in the trunk to reach one bolt, and no, I didn’t close it on him) and I’m now not sure why it took us 4 years to get rid of it.

So Katia is now ready for a new little passenger:

Blood Pressure

I think I may be the first pregnant woman ever whose doctor recommended a high salt diet to raise her blood pressure. Normally the concern in pregnancy is high blood pressure. And my blood pressure has been higher for most of the pregnancy than it was pre-pregnancy. But the past couple weeks I’ve started getting dizzy again. And not recovering from it as quickly, leading me to give up last week and just sit through all of mass. And, sure enough, my blood pressure has been lower at the last two appointments. Not so low that it is actually a problem (and they would much prefer low to high), so don’t worry, but raising it a little would reduce the risk of randomly passing out.

My doctor’s explanation: I’m too thin. I almost laughed out loud at that one. Seriously? I can’t fit in most of my maternity clothes anymore, I’m seeing numbers on the scale I’ve never seen before, and the most frequent comment I get from people is about how huge I look (thanks for that, by the way). But all of that is apparently due to Peanut’s size and the way Peanut is situated in my belly (how I'm carrying, in pregnancy lingo). I don’t understand the science behind it, but apparently fat somehow helps your blood circulate. And so, lacking enough of that, my body is currently having difficulty forcing the blood back up my legs and past the placenta with any rapidity.

So I’m supposed to eat salty foods, drink lots of water (I swear, I’m trying), not stand still for long periods of time, and just stay sitting in church. But I’m hopeful that her little demonstration of how she couldn’t find any fat on my belly to pinch will mean that I have a chance of fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothes again. Although maybe not if I continue making a chocolate cake every other week. But the one I made tonight is particularly yummy, if I do say so myself. :)

Patience

We saw the doctor this morning, and everything is a-okay. As I noted in the office, Peanut's heartbeat is getting strong enough just about to break the speaker on the little doppler machine!

Anyway, the point is that Peanut is not yet in any hurry to get out (except Alien-style through the front), and the doctor today told us that the most likely date is four days after the due date (so May 26, for those keeping score at home). That's the average for first-time pregnancies.

I know I'm getting antsy, and Sarah is too, just out of pure excitement to get started. As we get closer, the wait gets more and more agonizing. But apparently we need to practice some patience. And try not to get anyone's hopes ups about imminent arrivals.

17 (Days) Again

Today is seventeen days before Peanut's due date. Why am I telling you that? Well, because I was born seventeen days early, way back in the dark ages when due dates were still calculated using a sexton and an abacus. But the point is that Peanut seems to not be taking after its father just enough to hang out in utero a little while longer.

In other news, Peanut's grandpa thought it would be funny if Peanut were a boy named Crystal Alexis. I think it was mostly because he thought he might slip an 80s pop-culture reference by me. No such luck. But I was amused to learn that the "official" website for the TV show "Dynasty" is shoulderpads.net. Seriously.

From the “Bad Mommy File” (entry 2)

Sometimes I wish for Peanut to come early because I want an excuse to stop working on this chapter.

Stacy's Dream

For your entertainment, here is part of a gmail chat conversation with Stacy:
Stace: i dreamt about peanut last night
it was a fun dream :)
Sarah: tell tell
Stace: i was at your apt and peanut was born and i was playing with peanut on that fun activity mat thing that you have
matt was there too...i think in my dream, it was around the baptism time
and Peanut just was making everyone so happy by smiling and giggling
Sarah: awww
I want Peanut
Stace: Peanut didn't have red hair
in my dream
lol
Sarah: I read that to Joe and he said "that doesn't sound like my child"
I reminded him that it is my child too
Stace: lol
i hope Peanut smiles!
and plays
and laughs
it would be very sad otherwise
Sarah: me too! I've decided that if Peanut is like Daddy, I'm just going to have to hug the grumpy bubble out of it. Just like I did with Joe
Stace: lol
i'll help out on that
Sarah: I think Joe will too--he now loves hugs
Stace: he just needed to know what he was missing
Peanut was a hugging-type kid in my dream
hopefully it was realistic
oh, and i forgot the best part!
guess what Peanut was wearing?
Sarah: what?
Stace: one of those fun carter's sleepers with the dogs on the feet
Sarah: awesome!!!
Stace: that is totally possible to be realistic...therefore i conclude that the other parts of the dream are also lol
Sarah: Peanut doesn't own that one yet, but if we have money left on a babies r' us giftcard in a few months, I may go buy that entire line--I just love the feet

Baffling

Insurance baffles me. As though all the intricacies of in-network and out-of-network and referrals and different levels of deductibles aren’t enough, our insurance company has now decided that if a doctor charges more than they think he/she should, they just don’t have to pay. Do we have that option too?

We finally got the bills for our hospital adventure in New York a couple months ago (You can read about it here) and the grand total actually came out to just about what we had randomly ballparked as our expectation. Great, right? However, looking at the bills we learned that all of the essential stuff (6 hours in the hospital, a bunch of tests and lab work and monitoring, IV, medicines, doctor, nurses, etc) combined to only 1/5 of the total, so dramatically less than we had guessed. The other 4/5? That was the surgeon who came in for 2 minutes completely unnecessarily and did nothing. The insurance company decided he charged more than “other doctors in the area” (as though we had a choice in the ER!) so only covered a fragment of his cost, and that at a reduced rate, leaving us with the rest.

And I know I shouldn’t complain because the total is around what we expected, but it is just so frustrating! And I feel so helpless.