Home alone

Today was the first day I was home alone with Anna. (Cue music.)

We took Mike to the bus stop at 7:15AM, came home and ate and slept and ate and slept and ate. And then Anna slept some more, and since it was 2:00 PM and I felt nearly caught up with sleep, I stayed up and tried to get some cleaning done. I managed the dishes, and I got all the dirty laundry from upstairs to the main floor, but I never made it down to the basement. Anna woke up and was not happy.
Speaking of, I hear her now. It's exhausting to be on boob patrol 24/7.

Oink, oink

As of Monday (yes, I'm a little behind- or a lot behind), our little fatty weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz.

Yes, you read correctly. She put on 15 more ounces in 7 days. At this rate, her car seat is going to last us about 3 months before she exceeds the maximum weight. Oy.

It's a girl!

Meet baby Anna.

6 lb. 14 oz. and 20" long at birth, arriving March 8.

I have so so so so so much that I want to write about, and every few hours I'm struck with some new wonderful thing I want to record so I always remember how I felt in these first days and weeks, but I just don't have it in me. I should start dragging the laptop around so I can write when inspired, but every free moment I have is spent sleeping or mentally recovering from the demands of... I don't know what. I guess the demand of just being awake all the time. Other than that, it's not so hard, but it's exhausting nonetheless.

I guess what I want to remember most is that I love my baby girl. She's just right. Sure, it'd be nice if she'd open her mouth a little wider to nurse, and if she'd not fuss when she can't get any part of her little fist in her mouth, but I wouldn't want any other baby in the whole world.

Also, for those keeping track: she's thriving. At her first doctor visit today, she was weighed. Now, babies lose weight after they're born, usually from 5-7%, sometimes as much as 10% of their body weight. They have typically regained that weight and returned to birthweight by the 10th or 12th day of life. At 5 days old, our little piggy actually weighs 6 oz. more than her birthweight, 11 oz. more than when we left the hospital!! What a freak. (But this is a very, very good sign. Not such a good sign about weight issues in adolescence, but we've got a while to go.)

The first three babies

It occurs to me that before this baby comes, and I start posting picture after picture of the adorableness of the little thing, I really should give our cats some love. I'm worrying often about how bringing home the baby will affect them, and how they will become second-class citizens. They have been our babies for years, and they will always be my special babies. But they won't be as special as this baby, and that makes me sad. So, before it's too late, I will blog the kitties, while they still rule the roost.


Cole
This is #1. He comes first because he's in charge. He's not really oldest, since two of them are technically twins, but he just seems oldest. He's certainly the crabbiest. And I'm not ashamed to say it: he's my favorite. We have a great mutual respect for each other. If I'm not in the mood to be messed with, I scowl at him, and he stays away. If he's not in the mood to be messed with, he plants himself firmly at my feet, scowling at me, and yelling (really, how does a cat yell a meow?? But he does..) if I make eye contact. He's my "trusty grey cat," always there when I wake up, when I'm cooking, when I'm on the toilet, when I'm reading or crying or blogging. He sits and watches me intently, and I love him.

Jameson
This is #2. He's the classic middle child. I feel bad that I'm not more doting towards him, but he's just so... aloof. He's very hot-cold. For several days, he's passionate. He can't get enough of you, and he cuddles on the couch, and he's everywhere you are. And then for a few days, he is nowhere to be found, and he doesn't want to be talked to or touched in any way. But when he's loving, he is loving. He's the closest thing we have to a lap cat, but unfortunately, it's only Mike's lap he goes for. And only if he's in a good mood. But it has been happening more and more often, so I think he knows something's up. He has to work hard to get on our good sides before the real baby comes home. I do love Jameson very much, and the two times that I really truly thought we lost him (he's an escape artist, by the way,) for more than a week, I was inconsolable. And he's the most handsome cat we have. I think.


Benny
And this is the little guy, #3. He's the youngest, the obvious misfit. This is Mike's cat, literally and figuratively. Mike picked him out at the Humane Society, and I thought he was crazy! This freakish little kitten was trying everything in his power to get away from us and hide under anything, but damn, he was cute. He still is. He is a very handsome cat, but I think he's just a man's cat. I prefer my floofy grey babies. And now that Benny's all grown up, he knows which side of the bread his is buttered on, or however the hell that expression goes, and he is his Daddy's cat. He runs into the room when Mike comes home, head butts his legs, and then runs away. But don't pick him up! Benny is a schizo-cat. (And I mean that in the most respectful way possible.) He's scared of his own shadow. He flinches at every. little. thing. You could drop a paperclip and he'd jump a couple inches off the ground. When he's eating, just don't make any sudden movements. So when you pick him up to give him a hello kiss, he reacts as if you're trying to jam his head into a blender. We're working on it. But he is one charming little guy. As long as you're sitting in the living room, he is all over you. He licks your head clean for you! When I'm getting ready in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair, he runs up behind me, stands both front paws on my shoulders, and nuzzles my neck. It's a sweet start to the morning. And then he hears the coffee pot downstairs beep and he bolts under the bed because LOOK OUT! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!! Sweet cat.

Anyhow, those are my babies. So far. I already jokingly call the real baby #4. And I hope that I always love the kitties as much as I do now. My sister reports that since she had her son, she hates her cats. She used to love them, and they were her everything, but now they are just stinky, hairy pains in the ass.


Okay, one bonus picture. I absolutely adore these pictures of the grey cats. They really are twins, from the same litter (they were the last two left in the humane society cage that day, and I didn't have it in me to break them up. Thank God there weren't 4 or 5 left that day!!) But it's just so precious how they act like twins! Very, very often, where you find one grey cat, you find two grey cats. And they are often posed alike, and they're just too cute for words, don't you think? I have pictures of them lounging on stairs, sprawled out identically on two adjacent steps, and curled up on the bed, identically resting their little heads to the side.

And the moral of the story is: I'm in big trouble if I'm this big a sucker for the real baby.

Contractions

Baby is on its way. It may not be until tomorrow, but I think it's pretty inevitable at this point. (As if it wasn't inevitable at any point...)

For posterity's sake, I'll journal how it started. I've been having increasing aches and soreness, and especially lower back pain, for 2 days. But the back pain was pretty low grade, and it would last for a while. And my uterus never got hard. Never! The doctor who briefed me on How to Know When You're Really in Labor said that contractions are when your uterus is as hard as your forehead, and nothing else. Contractions are NOT pain, and even if I'm in debilitating pain for 60 seconds every 4 minutes, if it's not hard as a rock, they're not contractions and I better not call and bother him. More or less. So it was really bothersome that I was having no hardening. My uterus used to harden often when I'd have Braxton-Hicks contractions, but it hasn't done that for the last month or so.

Also, as for the other pain I've been having... well, there's no nice way to describe it, so I'll go for accurate. I know it is hard to imagine exactly what your cervix feels like (especially if you don't have one), but once you feel it, you just know it. And my cervix feels like it's been dilating more, which is great. Sure, it's a little uncomfortable, but I like feeling like we're making progress. But every now and again for the last week, I've had these sudden, shooting, very uncomfortable pains that feel exactly as if baby is shoving a fist right through. And it hurts. But those certainly didn't have accompanying hardening, and I know they weren't contractions. I think it literally was just growing and stretching pains in my cervix. But they were happening so frequently and I was so upset that I wasn't having anything even remotely like a contraction ever, Mike started trying to convince me that they really were contractions. But I knew they weren't.

And now, I am having contractions. They're weak, and my uterus hardens only with some of them. But I fell asleep a little before 11PM, and I was up at midnight to pee, and I was pretty uncomfortable, but I thought I was just having residual back pain. And then I slept very lightly, and had bad dreams in which I was in a lot of pain, and then I woke around 2AM to find that I wasn't dreaming, and I was having sudden, sharp bouts of lower back pain that was radiating into my abdomen, and viola!, they are contractions! So I tried to guesstimate how far apart they are, and it was happening every 10 or 15 minutes, but as 3AM approached, it was happening every 8 minutes. And then I decided to give up on sleeping, and to let Mike sleep so that at least one of us is rested tomorrow. And I figured I'd journal what's happening to me so that the next time I am just beginning labor, I can recall how it happened the first time.

(Naive, don't you think?? I haven't even endured one bit of the misery I'm going to endure over the next 24-48 hours, but I'm planning on the second delivery about 2 years from now.)

Anyhow, I also wanted to remember to journal before the baby's born just how thankful I am for this baby. And this pregnancy. And Mike. Ignorance is bliss, and I am blissfully ignorant of the misery of having to suffer to create a child, or worse, not being able to at all. I read a lot of blogs that just happen to be written by infertile women (many of whom have persevered and now have children), and at times I feel inordinately guilty for making a baby on our first try. But I try to remember that it is normal for my body to work, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I don't feel that I was handed this baby because I'm just a lucky sonofabitch, and I hate it when that thought creeps into my mind. Because it makes me feel like I don't deserve it. Like if I didn't have to work hard for it (like some of these infertile women, whose stories just crush the spirit), then I'll never appreciate it enough.

But I will, and do, appreciate what I have, and I'm totally bowled over with love every time I even picture our infant child, swaddled carefully, resting in my husband's arms. I'm just very, very, very thankful.

maybe kinda sorta, a contraction??

I think I had a real contraction last night. It was certainly debilitating, and like none of the other various aches I've felt. But the funny thing was, I laughed through it. I didn't want to laugh, and it wasn't funny, but I couldn't help myself. I was standing in the bathroom when it got stronger and stronger, and I gripped the sink, and I hunched over, and I tried to breathe, but all that would come out was a sick, demented laugh.

Have you ever had that? Like, in the past, I've laughed when I had charley horses (spelling??) even if it hurt like a bitch. It's an involuntary thing for me, something I got from my mom. It makes me crazy.

Anyhow, back to the contraction. So it felt a lot like what they said a contraction would feel like, except it was only in the right half of my abdomen!! That kind of freaked me out and it made me wonder if it was really what I thought it was. But I think it was. It felt like a sharp muscle pain, then it got bigger until it was most of the muscle hurting, and it was rock hard (at least that half was), and I really couldn't walk; I just had to stand there hunched over, and it passed in less than a minute.

So now I'm just biding my time, waiting for more of them.

1 centimeter dilated

As of Tuesday, I'm not really any more effaced, but I am 1 centimeter dilated! I rock.

And the doctor said there is a pretty good chance that I will deliver early, or at least by my due date. Sweet.