It's a Birth Story, Baby Just Said Yes

WARNING: Possibly graphic/disgusting information follow.  Read at your own risk of visions burned on the insides of your eyelids.

This is getting long, so it'll be colour coded.  Blue is background information.  Purple is early birth story.  Dark red is actual birth story.  Black is just nonsense/other.  Why do you read this blog anyway?

I knew what to expect and I didn't know what was going to happen.  It was an odd feeling, going into labour the second time.  I was more aware of what happens in my body, having already experienced the most deep and horrendous pain imaginable (and that's saying something. I've had some painful times before childbirth).  Seriously, if it wasn't for the baby at the end, birth would suck.  Knowing that that pain is coming back is not a delightful wait.  You lie to yourself a little.  "Maybe it wasn't so bad.  Maybe, I'm stronger and I'll be able to do this without any drugs at all! Maybe I'll sneeze and it will all be over."  No. That's not how it works and I have one word to let you know why.

Posterior.

For weeks leading up to my second son's birth, I had terrible back pain.  I couldn't sleep well which made life very difficult especially when our elder son (hereinafter "big fellow") was having extremely painful times and difficulty sleeping due to cracking a mean ol' molar.

One moment whilst I shake my head in an attempt to organize my thoughts.  I'm still a wee bit tired and decaf don't help.  Yeah, I said don't.  I appear to have lost my ability to write.  Sad.

I was tired and worn out, in constant pain.  Backache is pretty standard in pregnancy and I assumed that the extreme backache was due to sometimes carrying my 13+ kg son, big fellow, around.  When he hurts, he sometimes wants a bit more cuddling.  Me too, actually.  I'd had one pregnancy massage and was keen to go for a second, booked for next Tuesday.

I was impatient, waiting for my sister to give birth already after being in labour for a week.  Really, I was upset that she was constantly in pain and (at the back of my head) worried that I would get stuck in labour for a week too.

I woke up at 1 am, on Saturday the 8th.  My back was incredibly sore.  I assumed it was due to the usual, plus running around like a crazy person, trying to get ready for the baby and make three soups for the workshop on that day at the church.   I was in so much back pain, I couldn't sleep.  This was pretty standard.  There was a different kind of pain attached this time and it seemed to come and go.  "Oh, dear," I mused, "I think I'm labour."  They weren't bad contractions, though so I attempted to sleep, hoping they'd stop.  I was awake until 4 am.

I finally fell back to sleep and the day started.  Big fellow is an early riser.  We got everything over to the church for the workshop.  I realized that I still had a lot of set up to do and I gleefully did it.  It felt good to be running around, organizing and setting things up.  I ran to and fro our house, getting supplies until everything was ready.

At lunchtime, I took our son home for nap.  Whilst there, I had a bloody show.

If you know what a bloody show is, I don't need to explain it and if you don't, you probably don't want to know.  Needless to say, my theory is blood + pregnancy = going to the hospital.  So, we pulled a friendly friend from the workshop and Adrian and I went to the hospital.  Sure, enough, I was in labour, but only one cm.  I could feel contractions but they were very mild and infrequent.  It made me wonder if last time I'd been in labour much longer, but just hadn't noticed.  Now, being more in tune with that sort of thing, perhaps I was picking up on it earlier.  The midwife sent us home.  It was kind of nice.  I had the chance to shave my legs and get some things done at home as well as spend some good quality time with my eldest.  That was good!  

That evening, Adrian had decided to go to youth group and I decided to fold laundry.  Approximately three and a half minutes after he left, my water broke.  As last time was fast, we decided to get to the hospital.

We had attempted MANY times that day to get ahold of the lady who had volunteered to watch our eldest whilst our youngest was being born, but no dice.  This is a nice example of how God blessed.  Because I'd gone to the hospital earlier in the day, pretty much every lady who was at the workshop offered to take or watch our eldest!  We asked one to come stay at our house, as our eldest was already asleep.

At this point, I was three cms and contractions were probably 7 minutes apart.  They hooked me up to the machine and it seemed on the machine that they were more like 4 minutes or less apart.

Oh, yes.  It's always awkward when someone checks dilation.

We stuck around and by 11, the contractions got quite intense.  Active labour probably started around midnight.  Between contractions, I was making jokes.  It got harder and harder to joke and I started climbing the walls. Not literally.  I did climb the bed though.  It was like an aerobics class with the amount of position changes, wandering and climbing I did.

Labour hurts and I wanted to do it without drugs.  My back felt like it was going to break in half constantly.  They gave Adrian a massage tool to use on my back and I got him to press incredibly hard.  He was shocked as I usually prefer gentle massage.  The next day I had bruises all over my back from the massage tool, but at the time that was relief!  The one midwife tried to heat a hot bag for me and ended up setting it on fire, so the labour room smelled like burnt wheat.  It kind of made me hungry.  They kept me drinking water, so I kept going to the bathroom.  It seemed like the toilet and my uterus were in cahoots as every time I went there, I had the worst contractions, many of them in a row.

My water broke again.  Apparently it had been the hind waters before and now the fore waters broke.

I was in so much pain.  Gripping things seemed to help in contractions and I grasped at the edge of the bed, the rails, chairs, Adrian, everything that was in reach.  I needed to bite things.  I bit the bed.  Adrian (but just the once), Adrian gave me his clean hanky.  I gnawed on that poor thing.  I bit his belt (it was leather and seriously, I was in odd positions, throwing myself about the room, on the birthing chair, the bed, a ball, walking).  The leather was good to bite.  Around 2:30/3, I'd given in and asked for gas, but for the first 20 minutes it wasn't working.  It turned out that it wasn't on.  By 3:30, I was fully dilated and felt the need to push, but it just wasn't happening.  Last time, I was so excited to get through transition, but this felt worse.  I needed to push, but I could feel that my child wasn't moving.  It's like he was stuck.  The midwives moved me around the birthing suite, trying different positions.  I wanted to quit.  I was done.  My back felt broken and then further abused with broken glass or barbed wire.  

It turns out that he was stuck.  In a posterior birth, the child's spine and the mother's spine rub against each other and cause the most terrible pain.  Much, much worse than my first birth.  Then his head did get stuck as the position causes the neck to go back, not tuck under.  All the time they moved me about the room, they were trying to jiggle him free.  Eventually he did turn in the birth canal and come out the way he was supposed to - without any modelling on his head!

Pushing and pushing and pushing. It felt useless and frustrating with little gain.  Eventually, they started seeing the head, but it still felt slow.  Then the head was at the point for little pushes, after an hour of pushing, when suddenly BOOM! There was an explosion.  And it started from me!?!  

Part of the amniotic sac had gotten twisted up with fluid and as my youngest's head started to come out (finally, thank God), the sac got compressed and exploded, shooting across the room.  It was an odd feeling.  And then, oh, the best feeling.  I pushed his head out, then his shoulders.  Our second son was born and all of the pain vanished.  All of the frustration and confusion and feelings of uselessness as that beautiful child was on my chest.  He's so beautiful. So wonderful.  My heart expanded and life felt great and even greater when the placenta went bye-bye (I think it had been in an uncomfortable place too).

Adrian was so helpful and wonderful during the whole thing.  The one midwife commented on how good he was to me, how we worked together.  God blessed us in many ways, including when the cild was born, less than a day after his cousin.  Because of the workshop, there was a visiting pastor and Adrian didn't have to lead service exhausted beyond belief.

Through the labour, there got to be points so bad, that all I could do was pray for mercy.  And I did.  And God is merciful.  And then, with our son on my chest, all I could do was say thanks.

I'm still saying thanks.

Fear of the Known, Part Two

It's funny, but even though I'd done it before and there were some similarities (coming home with a little boy, etc), it turns out that it really wasn't a known.

Painful, though.  Birth will always be painful.

I'll post the actual birth story another day.

But yeah, don't fear the known, because after all, what do you really know?

Fear of the Known

I'm not going to lie, as excited as I am about baby number two - who could arrive anytime really as we're just over three weeks from the due date -, I've gotten scared too.

In this I am not alone.  I've heard from many mothers that the second child is a bit scarier.  You are going into this knowing just how hard it is sometimes.  You know what sleeplessness feels like, you've held and cajoled in crankiness, sickness and all sorts.  You know that teeth are a cruel form of punishment.  You know how much labour really does hurt.  You have a better appreciation of things that are happening and therefore a greater knowledge of all that can go wrong.

Last week, we went into the hospital to check things out.  All's well, we just wanted to make sure.  One very good thing came from that visit.  The fear went away.  Sitting in the hospital with a rather excited husband (he was suddenly hit by the thoughts that come with the joy of a new baby), I knew that it was all going to happen.  So what if I'm not ready? So what if it's hard and our well working schedule goes bye-bye?

This is an adventure and a fantastic thing that is happening.  Our baby is a blessing from God and He will sustain us through all the sleepless nights, the frustrations and woes.  One look at my eldest, grinning at me is enough to remind me that it's certainly all worth it!

Belligerent Parenting

In the past, I've been apprehensive about posting on parenting.  All parents feel judged by other parents, and with good reason: all parents are judged by other parents.  This is not to say that all parents are judgy, but I'm pretty sure that all parents have a moment where they think to themselves, "I wouldn't do it that way!" I know I have on occasion and I don't like that about myself.

What it comes down to, I believe, is belligerent parenting.  That is to say, parents develop a belligerent shell about the choices that they have made in raising their children for the sake of their sanity.  There are so many books on parenting out there, so many options all say "pick me, pick me, I'm the best!" and they can't all be the best as they often contradict each other.  Counter-contradict?

All children are different and none of them come with manuals.  There are manuals, however.  Plenty to choose from and buy.  Not one of them is perfectly tailored to any given child other than the one being written about.  When you do learn/discover the things to do for your child from these manuals, advice or trial and error, you're willing to fight about them (the things that work, I mean).  I'd like to tell you about some of them.  (Adrian and I are on the side of attachment parenting, which is intense, but we think has many benefits.  That is to say, we do a good deal of attachment parenting, but not all.  We aren't co-sleepers except in cases of sickness or upset.)

Sleep
When our son was very, very young (when you count growth in days, not even weeks), I read a book that implied, heck it blatantly said that babies can all put themselves to sleep with no help from the get-go.  I'm the youngest and had never spent that much time trying to put newborns to sleep.  This sounded genius.  But it didn't work.  And I must admit, I never actually allowed little fellow to bellow and shriek for 10 minutes to go down.  Handily, my mother was around at this point and she helped me realise that rocking little man was a good thing.

We really did try everything that we were supposed to:  watching for sleep signs, putting him to bed right away, getting a schedule in place, rocking and patting, standing near and singing.  He needed more help.

During that very trying time, I have read some books that have really helped me understand baby sleep.  They said that some babies just need a bit of help to get to sleep.  And that's okay.  I could be belligerent about my son needing help to sleep when people looked askance at us rocking him, holding him, "coddling" him beyond the "appropriate" time.

He sleeps well now.  He still wakes up at night for a few reasons.  Wet bum.  Teeth hurt.  Bad dream.  Wants his parents because a) he's lonely, b) he's scared, c) he's a sinner.  I go to him.  If I'm exhausted, my dear husband goes to him.  He settles easily.  It's the choice we've made as parents.  It's not always easy.  And he can (and has) sleep (slept) through the night.

Feeding
Our son received nothing else to eat except for breastmilk, directly from me from newborn to 6 months.  Sure, it was difficult.  I could never be away from him for more than a few hours, and it had to be around the feeding schedule.  I've never pumped and dumped.  I don't actually understand how breast pumps work.  We have no bottles.  He was comfort fed at times, though I did generally pay attention to the clock.

Even when he was 6 months and had "started" solids, he wouldn't really take any rice cereal in 'til about 7 months.

We very slowly started him on different foods.  I tried to do the whole new-food-every-three-or-four-days thing and wasn't always successful, so while most of his friends were eating plenty, he was still learning about fooding.

It hasn't stopped his appetite and now you wouldn't know the difference.  Except he hates pasta.  Who hates pasta?

Weaner
I wanted to feed him until 18 months or so, but didn't think that through and when I got pregnant realized that I didn't want to put myself into a tandem feeding situation.  Plus, I was eating all day long to maintain livingness and was still losing weight.

We waited til after we got home from Canada to wean him.  Then I cut out day feeds and then night.  Comfort feeding and night snuggling made our travelling much easier.  It made flights less painful for his ears and was an easy remedy.  He got a bad ear infection while we were there and sometimes that's all he would eat.  It was really hard on me, but I'm incredibly glad that we did it that way.

He was weaned at about 14 months.  Adrian would go to him at night.  Sometimes that would work, sometimes it wouldn't.  But now he's quite done being fed by me and we can cuddle again at night or in the day, no problems.

Toilet Training
Watch this space.  Haven't gotten there yet!  We're in the preliminaries (sitting on the cool cars seat before bath.  But he doesn't seem to know why.)

These are things that we do with our son.  This is how we are raising him.  Sometimes we'll learn something new or read something which will change our thinking about something.

I'm not saying that we have it right and you have it wrong.  This is what works for us, and I'd probably fight for your parenting choices too, even if they contradict mine if someone was attacking you.  Parenting is hard enough without all the backlash and fear of judgment from other people.  Be firm in your decisions.  Know why you are doing them.  Do what is right for your baby and your family.  And if you're interested in any of the books I've read (and partially ignored, I'm sure.  I've even thrown a few out that I didn't like at all) feel free to ask.

Food

Okay, so I've talked about food and cooking a lot as of late.  There are many reasons for this:

1. I'm hungry all the time as I'm pregnant.
2. Cooking/baking is my main hobby.
3. I enjoy this hobby and try to not complain on the internet about things I don't like doing, so you hear about it.
4. It's an adventure to see what the small child will eat and when.  He has no problem with cheese or fresh vegetables, but it's interesting to see which meat will be okay.
5. I find it interesting to read about food and find recipes, so I think I should share them, but mostly I share that I'd like to share them.

Today, that last reason changes.  Here are recipes (and some pictures) of recent food projects in the house.  The kitchen really.  Where I spend much of my time barefoot and pregnant.  Although, to be fair, I'm pregnant everywhere.  Barefoot too.

There are a lot of similarities to these foods as they are an attempt to get vegetables and meat into one small person.

Sausage Rolls

Sausage mince (that's the filling for traditional sausages)

Zucchini

Celery

Carrot

An egg

Breadcrumbs

Seasoning (I usually use herbamare)

Mustard, dijon or hot (optional)

Puff pastry (about 4 sheets, but it really depends on the amount of filling you've made)

Grate the vegetables finely, add the mince, breadcrumbs and seasoning to achieve a dryish texture, add the egg to bind it all together.  Cut puff pastry in half, and make ropes of sausage which you lay across the middle.  Then roll them up into cylinders, cut in half and bake at 200 C for 20-25 minutes, until pastry is golden brown and meat is nicely cooked.

You can also throw in a can of peas, carrots and corn or whatever other vegetables you're trying to hide.  I just love celery, carrot and zucchini.

Perogies

A very wonderful lady called Odesa gave me this recipe.  Odesa, nothing compares 2 u.

Easy dough

A container of sour cream

Flour 

Add flour to sour cream and knead until you achieve a nice stretchy dough.  It was around this point when I thought, hmm, I don't have a lot of dough for the amount of filling I have...

Filling

Fried onion, 1 cup before frying

6 Potatoes, I used 3 royal blue and three white

Fried bacon, crumbled

Grated cheese

Frozen spinach blocks

Boil potatoes and spinach.  Drain off water, add other ingredients and mash, mash, mash or blend, blend, blend.

Cut the dough into circles, fill to full and stretch the dough to close, pinch firmly.  Drop in boiling water.  They should float soon.  If they don't float, they aren't fully closed and are turning to gloop.  Rescue them quickly.

After they have all boiled and dried, fry in butter and serve with sausage and sour cream.  Or in my husband's case, hot sauce.  I ended up having about three times as much filling as needed, so made puff pastry circles and baked those perogies, rather like pasties.  And with the leftovers, I made mashed potato patties.

Left, pergoies. Right, pasties.

Homemade Pizza and Garlic Fingers

I got the recipe from here and aside from hand kneading and using 2 cups of whole wheat flour and one of white, I followed the recipe.  It really does work well.  I made pizza from scratch again last night and my son clapped when it came to the table.  That's good for one's soul.  For toppings, we use any and all of the following: salami, green olives, grated/chopped zucchini, grated carrot, sliced capsicum (red), fried tomatoes, basil leaves, swiss brown mushrooms, bocconcini balls, mozzarella, leftover roasted vegetables, etc.

Garlic Cheese Fingers

Yorkshires

This is not my recipe to share, but I had to show them off.  They popped out of the pan while baking and I thought they might amuse Vanessa who gave me the delicious recipe to begin with.  It was a nice night with roast beef and vegetables.  Little fellow even ate a yorkshire!

They look more like popovers than when I made popovers, oddly enough

Chicken Nuggets

This is the little fellow's favourite, so I make them every week.  I try different things sometimes, like crumbing them in polenta, but apparently we all hate polenta.

General breading mixture

Panko breadcrumbs

A pinch of salt and pepper

Italian herbs

Cut two chicken breasts into small pieces.  Dip in flour.  Dip in beaten egg.  Dip in breadcrumb mixture.  Pan fry until golden brown on both sides and cooked through.

Chicken Nuggets.
On the left they are dipped in panko crumbs, the right, wholewheat crumbs

Back in the day, I would have used a similar breading (but with paprika) on beaten chicken breasts, to be used as schnitzels or (once fried) topped with freshly chopped tomatoes, onion and garlic, more seasoning and a bit of pasta sauce and heaped with mozzarella and cheddar, baked in the oven for half an hour.

I do miss grown up food sometimes.  I could really go for some spinach cannelloni today.

White Fish, often Snapper 
Ruby is the best, but Queen's good too.  Okay, Orange Roughy is the best, but I'm not allowed to have it.
This is another breading mixture I use a lot.  It started as a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Breadcrumbs

Extra virgin olive oil

The juice and zest from a lemon

Salt and pepper

Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Dip, dip, dip, fry.  Make tartar sauce.  Yum.

Rissoles/ Hamburger Patties
500 grams of ground beef (beef mince)
Finely chopped broccoli florets
Grated carrot
Finely diced onion
Breadcrumbs
Egg
Seasoning

Mix all together.  Shape into patties.  Pan fry or barbecue until cooked through.  The little fellow ate these on Tuesday.  It was the first time he'd eaten hamburgers or rissoles.  Felt like Christmas.

And that, my friends, is that.  

(The photos aren't great, I usually take them really quickly when we're half done as I remembered that wanted to put them up.  Plates by IKEA.)

Tas-mania: Hobart

The view from over there, looking towards Hobart

When we stayed in Tasmania last October, we stayed in a suburb called "Lindisfarne" (possible pronunciation, "Wooster").  It was just on the other side of the bridge from Hobart.  It was a lovely place (Possums), up a ridiculously steep hill that I would hate to attempt in a standard.

We loved our time in Hobart.  It was such a relaxing time.  It's a lovely little city, with buckets of history and tiny brick buildings meant to keep out the wind and the wet.  We took ourselves on a walking tour, which started in Battery Park (I believe that's the older section).  Our walk took us past tiny cafes and bakeries and we put our holidaying spirit into gear, stopping at as many as possible so we could try all of the local flavours.

May I just say, very much yum to the local flavours.  We ended up going back to this one bakery a couple of times.  Everything looked amazing and the coffee was spectacular.  Hey, I could drink coffee then...

Our walk took us through Arthur Circus, which is a roundabout with tiny little houses on it.

Arthur Circus

We walked to Princes' Park and ended up at the bottom of a hill at the Salamanca gardens.  Maps are great, and I'm a pretty good navigator, if I do say so myself, so we'd planned out the walk before we got down there.

Salamanca Market

As it was a weekday, the markets weren't bustling, but the shops were still interesting and varied in their style.  Tasmania seems sort of old world and special to me, so I was hoping for a souvenir that reflected that, but would you believe old world and special is also expensive?

We headed back up the hill to rescue our car as the parking time was almost up.  As we walked up the hill, we tried to remember exactly where we parked it.  And what colour it was.  Good times with rental cars.

It was found easily and we moved over to the CBD, which was not far at all.  Hobart is built right next to the harbour.  We happily walked most of the day, sadly losing our squeaky friend Sophie somewhere.  Adrian's glasses had busted and a man from Seattle fixed them.  He and I agreed that the best salmon is from Seattle, but Tasmania's is pretty good too!

Oh, the fish... we ate fish our first night there, just fish and chips takeaway and, my! it was delicious!  Flounder, I think.

I can't remember where this was

We went to Mures one night as well, which I highly recommend. Everything that we ate had been caught that day and fresh fish is incredible.

Fish and chip wagons

They have these cute little fish and chip wagons which are actually boats.  Unfortunately we ran out of meals before we managed to eat at one.  Next time.

I'm sure I had more to tell you, but I've forgotten.  It's been awhile.

Oh, we couldn't find little fellows socks the first morning and he had to brave the cool temps (15 C) wearing his mother's.  Upon taking a wrong turn, or as we navigators call it "the scenic route", we stumbled across a baby store and fixed that, only to find many of little fellows socks easily when we got home.  We'd also found coffee and to my knowledge, there is not bad coffee in Hobart.

We went to a cheese factory for lunch the one day.... Just a moment while I remember what eating brie is like....  Soon.

Mount Wellington

(That's the thing to look forward to with birth, right?  The food that you get to eat after?  Except not anything that could hurt baby's belly.  I have a dream day.  I wake up at 10 am, have three coffees, 2 margaritas, eat olives and soft cheeses and then go back to bed.  I told this dream to a single male friend of ours and he didn't understand.  He said it sounded like depression.  Not depression, it's deprivation.  Anywho...)

Cool rocks up high

So go to Tasmania and experience the delicious and beautiful place for yourself.  Be swept up in the mania!  And go to Mount Wellington.  We did, but I'm not writing about it.   It was lovely (and cold! Hooray!).

Hobart from Mount Wellington

[First joke, stolen from D. Barry.  That is to say, Dave, not Diana as she is fictional.]

Tas-mania: Richmond

(Given that the Tasmania visit was nearly a year ago, I should probably finish the posts...)

The Bridge in Richmond

We didn't spend much time in Richmond, so I can't tell you too much about it.  I can tell you that it wasn't a goth living in the basement, helping with IT.  Like much of our Tasmanian adventure, it had a beautiful pastoral feel and we drove up to it via a windy road between green spaces and tempting (but ignored) wineries.

In Richmond is the oldest continually used Roman Catholic church in Australia.  There's also the oldest still used bridge, and handily they were beside each other.

The Catholic Church and Bridge

Adrian spent some time getting good shots of the lovely views, little fellow and I sat around (and given that he was solely mommy-fed at the time, probably he ate).

There was also a very pretty Anglican church there.

We didn't get much time there; it was at the end of an already long day but it was worth the trip and, I think, worth a second trip to see all that Richmond really has to offer.

The Inside of the Catholic Church