Things You Wear

No, this is not an answer on the $25,000 pyramid (or a farce of the pyramid). Rather it's a theme that's been coming up a lot lately. This morning Kelly announced to Grace that we needed to find her something to wear for the day (or maybe for a quarter of the day until she craps all over it and we replace it with just a t-shirt) and then subsequently announced that we should go for the all-in-one outfit. I was jealous. I had to put on 8 things this morning (undershirt...kills the dress time) and none of them easily snapped at the crotch. And speaking of crotches (nether segue!), what I will almost never wear again is boxer shorts. I wore my penultimate pair of boxer shorts this weekend and this morning tossed the overly stretched elastic into the trash (yes, I said "weekend" for the duration of the wearing and Monday morning was the time I took them off; don't judge me!). I'm down to my last (and loudest) pair of boxers, which I noticed were in the dryer. I'll let Kramer explain the demise of boxers in our household.

And jumping from my nethers to Kelly's baby sustenance providers, we bought a breast pump over the weekend. More accurately, I walked into Babies R Us by myself with a 20% off coupon (thank you Wallettes!), waited in line surrounded by women, had a mother of 3 swear by the pump I was buying and then left $300 lighter and adequately emasculated. But no matter -- now Kelly can pump hands free and be an on-the-go gal like the lady on the pump's box suggests.


But as the boxers go away since they clearly had no bearing on fishy count as the story goes (read this, I esp. love the "Another tip" at the end), and the pump becomes part of the Kelly outfit calculus, the biggest evolution in the things GRAPE JELLY wears involves Grace. Her wardrobe is constantly changing due to weather and to (mainly) growth. She hit 9 lbs 5 oz at the pedi 1-month appointment last week and was trending totally average (a phrase never to be uttered again about my SPECIAL daughter!). So we will probably never again see her in this fleece number as the weather warms.


Those outfits go into the "who knows?" pile whereby a maybe sister could wear them again, or a might-happen brother has to slip it on when the laundry is running high. And that's as much fun/as terrifying to think about as the summer clothes that await Gracie in the next drawer down. But alas we shall focus on the one baby we DO have now and her burgeoning vision and voice that she showed off under the mobile this weekend.

One Month Old!

Gracie is one month old! We almost can't believe it. Here are a couple of videos of milestones - her first bottle and one of her first baths (videographer credit: Papa Bob). She's growing up right before our eyes!

Happy St. Patricks Day

And Happy Bracket Buster Day! But before we tear up the brackets and tear down the nets, last night it was Gracie's first "holiday." We celebrated with gusto, although Gracie did not unwrap a present on her first "holiday." Instead we unwrapped a present of hers that was wrapped around her waist. And what was in it was colorful for sure, but alas not green. Anyway, on to the festivities.

Gracie enjoyed some green grass outside . . .


some time in Nana the namesake's arms a few days ago on Nana's birthday . . .


and then hunkered down with us for a night in on St. Pattys. We tried to capture the call-Child-Protective-Services-now family self-portrait with Gracie holding a Guinness bottle but she was having none of it:


So we let her hang out while mom and dad chowed down (in very green shirts) on a bountiful feast that Kelly prepared oh so well. Corned beef with potatoes and carrots, along with a horseradish-mustard sauce that was as divine as it was nostril-flaring-spicy. And of course there was the booze. The spread makes you salivate, no?


And even though our black-and-tans were more just blacks (how do those bartenders do it?!), we toasted a night well done and capped it off with a viewing of "Couple's Retreat" (some good lines but not the best).


So, yes, not exactly bars, green beer, beads and vomiting. But pretty good times with a 3-week-and-1-day old. Now, let's get the Sony fired up and watch Vandy tumble, the Bears roll and Butler make an early exit due to the "Gonzaga Syndrome" whereby a team that was traditionally a poor seed and made many runs over a few tourneys finally gets a pretty good seed and then promptly falls on its face. Heeyaa!

Finally!

Gracie's umbilical cord stump fell off! We have a belly button, ladies and gentlemen.


What do you think of this development Gracie? Surprised?


Indeed. Next step: full on head stability (and the related bonus for dad to have an extra hand free so he can swig and hold at the same time . . . my Fat Tires are missing me)

Tough Act

I'm finding it tough to compose a post after Kelly's below. I always planned to write up a post about the world according to dad that would be bookmarked by any expecting dad (or second mom . . . let's just say the "birth partner" from now on) as the gold standard of birth partner advice. "Yes! Exactly! He really gets it!" they would say in the Bay Area, Denver, Chicago, DC, NYC, Pitt, Columbia, Nashville, Birmingham, KCMO, Austin and the world over (after my post about friends around the world I got some flack about leaving out amazing destinations of amazing friends. Alas, I've probably failed again but I thought I would at least try more places). Anyway, then Kelly knocks it out of the park and I'm left to offer up the sloppy seconds. Well, here's your sloppy JoJo.

Our friends summed it up pretty well already. The main thing you do is ask endless questions about how this person who started from zero is going to get to 1, 5, 18, 22, 50, 113 and what surprises she'll have in store for us. Early walker, early talker? Tomboy? Pink-obsessed? Shy or no? What's more, you are starting your parenting life from zero too. I've surprised myself (and I'm sure Kelly too) constantly. I gagged and vurped the first week after we first got Jasper when I would pick up her poop. But then first night at the hospital while checking a diaper: boom! Grace starts pushing out a log that's been in her stomach for nine months and is dark, tarry and uber sticky. I don't bat an eye and haven't since with any diaper. But then my middle back and forearms ache from holding an 8-pound baby. F--k man, get it together; be a burly man and juggle the baby while fixing dinner and giving Kelly a foot massage . . . generally be more like the guy in the Old Spice ad.

The sleep is tough but you can adjust. First night in the hospital with all the interruptions from nurses and scheduled weighings at freakin' midnight was brutal. I woke up that night when Grace started crying and was completely out of my mind and disoriented, asking Kelly "what role am I supposed to play?" The Office baby episode really nails it, actually. But then when we got home and got our routine established, it was easier to catch sleep in chunks and learn to get to bed quicker. Last night I was dreaming in 10 minutes, I swear.

Another thing that's tough is not having the physical ability to literally bond together with your daughter. You can have "skin-t0-skin" contact that people stress as good, but when she's bonkers for boo-boo juice I can't help her. Turns out Gaylord Focker is wrong: you can't milk anything with nipples. I've tried and failed. Aside: yes, I've tried Kelly's breat milk (as has Jasper); I see why baby is happy when that stuff comes around. Anyway, still, you feel bad not being able to totally comfort her the way mom can and it's hard when she's still this little and unaware of her surroundings because I have great baby faces and voices ready to roll. But at this age, she's not responding to my material. Just wait, though. It's gold I tell ya!

But the good is so much more. First of all, you see her look like this. I mean, come on!


The one other thing that struck me before I get to the real treat of baby Grace herself was the birth experience. Let's get one thing clear. Nurses rock. I was completely in awe of the nurses and what they did for Kelly & Grace before, during and after the delivery. Holy shit. Don't read into this . . . it's just a jokey statement . . . but if the nurses got paid like all these bailed out morons (not you Sean), we'd all be better off. They deserve it. The physicality, the 12-hour shifts, the fluids going everywhere. And yet calm, consoling, and truly caring. I love them. The fact that the most wonderful day of our lives is just a day at the office for them is truly mind-blowing. I know you, the reader, may not realize that reading this sentence. But having lived it, I really can't comprehend how they do it. Nor how anyone in the medical field (doctors, nurses, general office workers, even the cafeteria people who probably see new dads, grandparents, widows wandering through for coffee) does it, quite frankly. Our experience was so great and such a high note -- I can' t imagine seeing that and not getting emotional as a medical worker. Let alone the flip side that we thankfully did not experience (but certainly dreaded tacitly) that medical people must go through. Anyway, God bless them for it.

Having said that, now that we've moved back home and I've gone back to work the magic is clearly watching and playing with Grace. Example (her 1 week "birthday"):


She dreams and squeaks and you wonder what it is she's dreaming about? What life experience is there to dream about? The one where she gets cold? Or the nightmare where the boob runs dry? And yet she does. And even though you were just completely unawakable 2 minutes ago when you were rocking her back to dreamland, you spare a couple minutes to look at her before you collapse in bed again. That's what's been so great. Any annoyance (which, I will not lie, do start to mount now and again) is completely offset times 100 when she makes a smily face at you. Even though it's probably a face she makes when she's filling the diaper...you take it! Basically, the fact that I'm writing this gushy paragraph is testament enough. I was not a baby holder up until Grace arrived. I feared visiting friends & family with newborns. 6 months+ was OK, but itty-bitty babies were terrifying. Now I get excited to be Grace's personal gondola ride through the house looking at such "amazing" things as the ceiling fan, windows, and lamps. Sure we miss the dining out, the happy hours and the personal date time (and poor Jasper!), but stripping yourself back down to such a level of innocence and simplicity can be quite a thrill too.


Night, night readers!

What a Difference a Year Makes

Many of you know that I had a miscarriage about this time last year. It was a painful emotional experience, and one that is unfortunately incredibly common (based on statistics and from several women I know, especially among women over 30 who have been on hormonal birth control for a long period of time). One of the things that got Jason and I through that tough time was the knowledge that we could have a baby in our arms in a year. Little did we know that would be such a literal prediction!

I’ve been doing some processing of the pregnancy and birth experience, and wanted to share some thoughts, answer some “FAQs,” and offer some advice for those of you who are embarking upon the same journey. Fair warning: if you know me you know that I either go all out or don't do it at all. This is a long post.

Be positive. Our OB was unfailingly confident that we would be able to conceive again and have a normal pregnancy, and she was right. Miscarriages are common, but conceiving and having a normal pregnancy is even more common. Same goes for all those screens once you’re pregnant – they can be nerve wracking but freaking yourself out in advance isn’t going to help.

Get in touch with your body. I think Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler should be required reading for all women, whether you are trying to get pregnant or not. You don’t actually have to do all the temperature recording and stretchy mucous stuff, but it’s good to know how your body works all the same.

Be true to yourself and what you want for your pregnancy, birth, and afterwards. If you don’t know what your preferences are (I sure didn't at first), do some research. Talk to other moms about their childbirth experiences. Read. Surf the web. Take childbirth classes – perhaps more than one. Here are some references that we used:

General Pregnancy:

• www.babycenter.com - great weekly email updates that compare your baby’s size to various fruits and vegetables (“your baby is the size of a large rutabaga this week!”)
• Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy – good all-around pregnancy reference. I heard too many bad reviews of “What to Expect” so I never touched it.
• 40 Weeks +: The Essential Pregnancy Organizer – we took this to all of our prenatal appointments to record questions, notes in classes, etc.
• Baby Bargains, 8th Edition: Secrets to Saving 20% to 50% on Baby Furniture, Gear, Clothes, Toys, Maternity Wear and Much, Much More! by Denise Fields – this is a fantastic reference once you venture into the completely overwhelming world of baby stuff

Birth Preparation:

• Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block – excellent journalistic account of the modern birth “industry”
• Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful: Experience the Natural Power of Pregnancy and Birth with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation by Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa. Gurmukh is a yoga celebrity yoga guru, but this book is actually quite nice. Quick digestible tidbits for throughout pregnancy and labor. And Cindy Crawford did the introduction!
• Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation by Pam England and Rob Horowitz. A little goofy, but it did have some good visualization tips and pain management planning for natural childbirth.
• The Birth Partner, Third Edition: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions by Penny Simkin. This was Jason’s reference, he read it on subsequent trips to DC for work. I personally think he did it to be a chick magnet on the plane…
• The Business of Being Born – documentary about natural childbirth/home births. Not for the squeamish. Kudos to Jason for watching Ricki Lake give birth in a tub…

Work/Life Balance:

• Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett – insightful research about women with high-powered careers and how their plans for having a family are often sacrificed along the way

Baby books:

• Baby 411, 4th Edition: Clear Answers & Smart Advice For Your Baby's First Year by Denise Fields and Ari Brown – awesome reference for all things baby. We have pretty much read this constantly since Grace was born. And Ari Brown is a practicing pediatrician in Austin!
• The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two by William and Martha Sears – the attachment parenting bible. Probably more complete but not as user-friendly as Baby 411.
• Touchpoints: Birth to 3: Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development by T. Berry Brazelton. Brazelton is a famous child name in child development – if you want to read up on the developmental milestones this is a good reference.
• Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott. Lamott is a terrific writer of all sorts of nonfiction. This is a narrative account of her first year as a single parent of a demanding baby with colic – I thought it was a terrific introduction to how hard, crazy and wonderful parenting can be.

Classes: we probably overdid it, but I did appreciate attending classes that had different angles and perspectives. We took:

• Childbirth classes (“Lamaze”) through our OB office: 6 hours. Surprisingly good – helpful overview of birth process and pros/cons of various medical interventions
• Yoga for Labor and Delivery workshop at YogaYoga with Alice Duffy: 3 hours. Highly recommend to anyone who lives in Austin. Alice is a great teacher and this class gives you tangible skills/poses for labor.
• Childbirth preparation with our doula, Summer Greenlees: 8 hours. More on the benefits of a doula below.
• Breastfeeding class: 3 hours. Arguably the most useful class we took. As Jason remarked, “learning how to feed your baby is pretty important.”
• Baby care basics class: 2 hours. Overview of diaper changing/swaddling/bathing/etc. OK, but you could probably find UTube videos that would provide you with the same information. As Jason scrawled on a note during this class: “$40 for a video and to practice putting a diaper on a doll?!”

Find a health care provider who is a good fit for your preferences. Once you know what you want for your birth, make sure that your health care provider will honor and respect those preferences. I really can’t stress this enough. Ask them open-ended questions at your appointments (e.g. “Under what circumstances do you induce first-time moms? What positions can I give birth in? How often will the fetal monitoring occur and can I walk around during it?”). If you don’t like the answers to the questions you’re asking, shop around.

In Austin, there are basically three options for giving birth: 1) hospital, 2) birthing center, and 3) home birth. While hospital births are overwhelmingly the most common option (something like 95% of all births), many people have strong preferences for the other two options. You can do a tub birth at the birthing center or at home (hospitals rarely allow this), and midwives are in general more supportive and comfortable with natural birth. On the downside, if you or the baby has any serious complications you would have to be transferred to a hospital. Also, you only stay at the birthing center for 4-5 hours after the birth compared to a couple nights at the hospital with lots of people to ask questions of. Some hospitals do allow midwives to attend hospital births.

If you’re the type of person who is uncomfortable in hospitals in general, you might want to consider other options. I, on the other hand, have always been pretty at ease in the hospital setting (dating back to volunteering in the ER during high school, I guess?). And maybe I just like being taken care of, but I really appreciated the few days of room service and tlc in the hospital afterwards.

Stay active. Other than genetics, which you don’t have any control over, I think this is probably the way in which you most influence your birth outcome. I highly, highly, highly recommend finding a prenatal yoga class, even if you haven’t done yoga beforehand. It really helps with all the aches and pains, and can be a great way to connect with other pregnant mamas. Shiva Rea’s Prenatal Yoga video is also good. My main cardiovascular exercise during pregnancy was swimming and walking (lucky for me Austin’s climate allows for year-round outdoor swimming). Do your Kegels religiously. And get an exercise ball. It was the only thing I was comfortable watching tv on during the last month. I also used it a fair amount during labor.

Have fun and pamper yourself. We did “Monday Movie Nights” during my first trimester in the summer when it was too hot to do much else. Regular massage therapy (with someone trained in prenatal massage) really helped keep my sciatic and back pain at bay during pregnancy. And at the end of the pregnancy (especially during those last two excruciating weeks), I did whatever I could to relieve boredom and anxiety and to try to get the baby moving. This included two sessions of acupuncture (interesting and relaxing, but can’t say it worked for induction purposes), getting a pedicure, eating out at any restaurant I was having a craving for that day, watching Olympic curling, catching up on Oscar nominated movies, and reading Twilight and New Moon (which I loved... I’m currently waiting on a 10-year old to finish Eclipse so I can read that next). OK, so I’m good at pampering myself!!!

Write a birth plan. This is the next step to complete after you’ve figured out all of your preferences. Keep it short and simple. Although I had heard stories that birth plans don’t always get read by the hospital staff, I was pleasantly surprised that our doctor and the nurses were in tune with our preferences and stuck to our plan during and after birth.

Don’t have any expectations that your labor will go according to your birth plan. The above being said, I think the danger of creating a birth plan is that you rigidly set in your mind a vision of how your birth will occur. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned through our experience as well as several other women I know who gave birth around the same time, it’s that there is definitely a Murphy’s law of labor and delivery – whatever you plan for won’t be what will happen. I was progressing a month before my due date and my doctor thought for certain that I would go into labor early, but I ended up being two weeks late. Other babies come much earlier than expected. Planned inductions can fail. Emergency c-sections happen. So know what you want, but also be prepared to be flexible and to weigh your options when things don’t turn out the way you expected.

If you want to go natural, hire a doula. I could not have made it through a natural birth without a doula (birth coach/assistant), especially as a first-time mom. Let me repeat with emphasis. There is no way in hell that I could have had a natural birth without a doula. Doulas aren’t medically trained, they serve as support for both the mom and dad during birth. We hired Summer Greenlees as our doula and she was exceptional. Different doulas have different strengths. Summer is a licensed massage therapist (the one I went to for prenatal massage) and quite frankly the best massage therapist I’ve ever been to. She’s also a trained yoga instructor and infant massage teacher and in general just knows a ton about natural childbirth, “somatic” childbirth preparation and attachment parenting. It wasn’t just her presence at our birth, which was incredible (she earned her fee just by knowing how to operate the hospital barf bags), but I have to say all of the preparation and visualization we did with her before the birth was invaluable to prepare me for the actual experience.

Other random questions:

• Did it hurt? Yes. Although it is the most productive pain possible. I mean, after you pass a kidney stone they don't hand you a baby. So the memory of the pain is totally different than anything else. I think maybe all those mommy hormones have something to do with this, too...
• How long was your labor? It depends on what you mean by labor. Looking back I was experiencing signs of early labor for a month or so. But in terms of active labor (e.g. painful contractions), really only about 4 hours after they broke my water in the hospital. I attribute this solely to genetics as both my mom and sister also had relatively quick labors. But I have to say, 4 weeks of early labor and 4 hours of active labor is not such a bad deal…
• Did you yell at Jason? Not really. I did ask him to stop breathing on me once. I also told him to change the music when a super cheerful old timey bluegrass song came on. I also may have muttered a few choice expletives during the worst of the contractions, but they weren’t directed at Jason (e.g. I never said “You did this to me, you @#$#%$!" Really! I didn’t.).
• Are you going back to work? Yes. I am on maternity leave through the end of April. I will go back full-time the first week in May and Jason is going to take part-time leave starting then. Nana Grace (bless her heart) will be helping out with child care during that time, so luckily we won’t have to worry about day care for at least 6 months.
• Any other advice? Take as many of those mesh panties home from the hospital as you can.
  

And for those of you who actually made it to the end of this post, here is a reward (we know what you really want, after all...)

Grace TV

Greetings all! It's Saturday night in America (and Sunday morning in Geneva) and I'm sure our peeps in Austin are throwing back suds at the Draught House, Dog & Duck, Ginger Man or Poodle Dog (well, hopefully not there). San Franciscans are probably hitting up Dragon Well, Nick's Crispy Tacos, or some such delectable place. DC wonk friends are hitting it hard at the Brickskeller (or are they? does anyone still go there?). And hopefully a bunch of seniors are ordering their fifth $4 pitcher of swill at the Palms in Lexington, VA. But here at the ranch, we have just bathed Grace for the first time, watched her spit up for the first time, thrown her into her ducky pj's, eaten some leftovers and neither of us have showered in days (just kidding. . . just a shout out to E.Large). Yeah. It's probably the most fascinating Saturday night of our lives. Eat your heart out!

But, anyway, I digest. The point is, if you're out and about at one of these establishments with momentary boredom between drink orders and you're checking your Google Reader, here's a video that pretty much sums up the Gracie birth a few days ago. Enjoy.