Transition Part II: Siblings

I have a hard time beginning the story of my children as siblings.  The past few weeks have been challenging for me as a mother, more emotionally than physically.  Yes, I am sleep deprived, but that's nothing new.  While I knew that this enormous change in our family would require patience and a period of adjustment, I feel unprepared.  Some things are easy, others hard.  We have much to be grateful for: healthy, thriving children; loving family and friends; a beautiful home.  I try to keep things in perspective when things get hard.

My infant son is so, so much easier than my memories of Abigail's early weeks.  I distinctly remember falling asleep in a tub of hot water during one of the few moments when Abigail was not requiring every ounce of my attention, and startling myself awake when I heard a phantom baby cry.  

Elijah sleeps.  A lot.  He cries when he's cold, which really only occurs when his diaper is being changed and at bath time.  He can be rocked to sleep in 5 minutes, but you can also just put him down mostly awake if he's swaddled and has a pacifier and he'll put himself to sleep.  I read in one of the many sleep books I've purchased in the past 2 years 10 months that this is possible, but my experience was never consistent with this supposed truth.  As it turns out, some of them do fall asleep on their own.  He smiles at me when his belly is full of milk and he's resting against my chest.  His big, blue eyes try ever so hard to focus on me during his waking moments, and he melts my heart.

Relaxing with Mom

They are only this small for such a short time!

Abigail is adjusting.  She is truly sweet with her brother.  She wants to check on him when he's sleeping.  She wants to hold him any time she sees him, and she plants big wet kisses on his cheek any opportunity she gets.  Today she just started pushing her cheek against his lips and proclaiming proudly, "he kissed me!".  It's sweet and adorable.  Of course she borders on smothering him every time she hugs him, and she can't be trusted not to stick her finger in his eye.  She races across the house to "check on him" and I race after her, to protect him from her well-intentioned love.  These days I can hardly get over how big she is, by comparison, to her baby bro.

With Ariel at Disneyland

Running errands with Da da ("credit card" in hand)

The part that's been challenging is managing (or lacking to manage, truth be told) the emotional roller coaster that is Abigail Wiener.  When we came home from the hospital it was immediately evident to me that my daughter was a ball of raw emotion.  Happy, sad, angry, confused, excited, loving, frustrated....all of these emotions were so obviously cycling through her being that it broke my heart.   I thought that getting her back into her routine of eating and sleeping would help, but I think she just needs time.  These past three weeks I've sometimes felt like a milk machine -- feed the baby, hand him off to Jake, and devote 100% of my attention to Abigail.  Of course it's a double edged sword.  I feel guilty for spending less time with Elijah than I did with Abigail when she was a baby.  I feel sad for every little smile that I might be missing (though I'm comforted by the fact that they are being bestowed on Jake).  I feel guilty that I can't give Abigail what she needs, what she's used to, what she knows as her world.  And tomorrow Jake goes back to work.  So we are going to have to find our new normal.  I just hope there are more smiles than tears.  Wish me luck.

Transition Part I: Birth

On April 9th at 8 o'clock in the evening my water broke.  I felt a massive baby kick, followed by a gush of fluid, and then, over the course of the next hour, I changed clothes 5 different times, put my sweet 2-year-old to bed while lying on a large stack of towels, called my good friend down the street who was willing to put her toddler to bed on my couch, called my sister who was willing to drive 2.5 hours to be in my home by the time my girl woke up from her slumber, and headed to the hospital.  It had begun.  

I do not like childbirth.  To some this statement sounds silly, of course I don't like childbirth, who does?  But others still find this sentiment limiting and dangerous.  If I embrace what my body was biologically engineered to do, then it will all go smoothly.  Babies are meant to be born naturally.  The thing is, I agree with both parties.  People are meant to die, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.  On the other hand, the intervention of medical techniques to make childbirth more controlled clearly leads to higher surgery rates and other medical procedures that I certainly want to avoid adding to my childbirth story.

So while my big girl was at home, being happily indulged and distracted,

I was trying my damnedest to birth this child without medication.  My active labor was slow in coming, and we tried to get some sleep.  In the early hours of the morning, we were walking the streets of Hillcrest, stopping occasionally to feel my pressure waves wash over me, and working the relaxation angle, in an effort to produce a more tranquil childbirth experience.  We walked up and down the 13 flights of steps inside the hospital at least a dozen times, looking at the helicopter landing pad from above, and things were progressing.  Once I was deemed in active labor, intermittent fetal monitoring, lots of breathing, and burying my head in Jake's chest were all the world had to offer.  Everything escalated quickly, my wonderful doula mother told me I was surely in transition, and this was a good thing.  I vomited on the bed and couldn't stop shaking.  After 24 hours of labor the midwife checked my dilation.  This was the FIRST and only time I would be checked, due to the fact that my water was broken and they did not want to risk infection.  I was dilated to 4 cm.  Let me repeat, 4 cm.  For those of you who don't know, I needed to reach 10 cm to give birth to the baby.  When I came to the hospital with Abigail I was 5 cm dilated upon admission.  I was crushed.  Beyond crushed.  I knew in that moment that this was not happening.  The "release" that I needed, the relaxation that I had practiced pretty diligently, was not forthcoming.  Contracting muscles is something I am good at -- relaxing them, not so much.

My mother and sister worked tirelessly to make this experience go smoothly for me and Jake.  My husband, bless his heart, accepted and participated in every aspect of the relaxation techniques that I chose to practice and executed his role beautifully.  Naturally, I felt like a failure, and worse yet, the baby was still inside of me.  So within an hour of having my dilation checked they administered an epidural.  I wish I could say it was a relief, but this time it was not.  Uncontrollable, awful shaking ensued, followed by vomiting and nauseated tolerance of a very uncomfortable situation.  Still, literally 20 minutes after the epidural, I was at 10 cm dilation.  They turned the epidural off, so I could feel the contractions to push, and 30 minutes later I was holding my little man in my arms.  Vaginal birth, no tearing.  Those were actually my goals the first time around.

Elijah David Wiener was born at 9:17 pm on April 10, 2013.  He weighed 6 lb 7.5 oz and was 18.5 inches long.  He didn't cry until they sucked the fluid out of his mouth, just like his big sister, and he latched on to nurse within 5 minutes of being born, like an old pro.  He came into my world from inside my body, and the intensity of my emotion is not something I can express in words.

There's no complaining about the path when this is at the end of the road.

Ten minutes after birth

Lean and long

The next day we started our journey as a family.  My sister Debi had devoted herself and her boys to Abigail's comfort for the past 2 days, and she brought Abigail to the hospital to meet her baby brother.  Clearly tentative, Abigail said hello to him and touched his head, then proclaimed that she was "all done" and ready to go home.  

We were in the middle of his hearing test when they arrived, but we probably should have taken the sticker off.

First family photo

And now we embark on Part II of our transition from three to four family members, incorporating an infant into our toddler world.  Thank you to all of my loved ones and friends who helped me birth this baby.  I could not have done it without the support and love that was poured over me.  I am a very, very lucky woman.