Lux et umbra vicissum…

Four coldy females equal one tired daddy. Poor Joel has been trying to take care of all of us. Thankfully, my cold isn’t debilitating, just annoying and tiring. Alexis has her first ever ear infection which is loads of fun. She really isn’t complaining much, but she got a moderately high fever with it and now she’s on amoxycillin. She’s coughing pretty badly with her cold this time, too, so we’re doing four albuterol treatments a day as well as her normal two Advair treatments. Branwen’s on the same schedule though with Flovent instead of Advair. We’re also doing the whole cold arsenal at night… Benedryl, Tylenol when needed, vapo-rub, DelSym for coughing, saline, petroleum jelly under noses and on lips, plus a humidifier in their room. There’s probably something else that I’m forgetting as I type. It takes forever to get them to bed when we’re doing all that prep.

Charis has the cold, too, so we have to keep an eye on her since she’s still young enough to be susceptible to RSV. She’s doing ok for now, though she is coughing a little bit. Suctioning her is oh-so-fun. 😛

Time to go feed the baby. At least my having the cold means she’s getting some antibodies from me so her little body can fight her cold more easily. It’s one of those times I’m glad I stuck with the nursing through that initial time when I was bleeding and it hurt so badly. Thank you, Lord, for the strength to get through things and for the ability to help my baby who’s otherwise too young for most medication.

We’re getting there. Joel finally went back to work today after working from home for a few months. So far I’ve survived. 🙂 The way we worked it out this morning, Joel worked for an hour from home, then drove Alexis to preschool and went on into work. That way I don’t have to get all three girls ready to get out the door in time to get Alexis to preschool, and Joel misses most of the rush hour traffic. It worked out pretty well, so I think we’ll be following that pattern for a while. Once the baby isn’t nursing so often it’ll be easier for me to manage things in the morning.

Charis already sleeps beautifully at night, so that’s a blessing. She slept from 10:30 last night to almost 6:00 this morning. My alarm was set for 6, so it was good timing. And she doesn’t even need a binky to fall asleep like Branwen used to. 🙂

Oh, and I think both of her tear ducts have opened up now, so it looks like we may be able to avoid that surgery for her. That’s very nice. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience we went through with Alexis.

Alexis is loving preschool. She’s learned to write all of her letters now, though she has a little trouble with some of them. (“M” looks like a couple of hills with a valley in the middle, and “Z” sometimes gets turned backwards and looks like an “S”.) She’s reading very well… she can read letters to me and has no trouble with pretty much any of the books on the kids’ bookshelf in our living room. She even started reading our Bible Study book to me one day. She had no idea what the author meant by some of the things he said, but she read the words anyway. 🙂 I’ve started teaching her to play the piano, too, and she’s loving it. She bounces up and down on the bench as I try to show her how to hold her hand, etc. She’s been reminding me that I need to let her practice every day.

Branwen wants to do everything Alexis does, and she gets upset when she can’t. She and Alexis both love baby Charis, but I think Branwen is suffering a bit from the fairly natural jealousy that comes with suddenly having your parents’ attention divided. At least she has Alexis to play with. She isn’t having as much trouble dealing with the situation as Alexis did when she was 2. Mostly she’s fussing more than usual. She’ll stand in front of me sometimes when I’m nursing the baby and cry. “I want my mommy!” she’ll say. Thank goodness she doesn’t do it every time I nurse!

Charis is giving us some beautiful smiles now, and she’s trying to coo though the noises she manages so far are usually pretty gutteral. She was strong from birth, and she already has very good head control. When it comes right down to it, she’s a fairly easy baby. We’ll see if she gets more difficult when she has more awake time during the day. 🙂

Time to go watch the snow with Alexis. She’s loves quality time with her parents and, what with the new baby needing attention fairly often, she doesn’t get it as much as she used to. I’m just thankful she’s a reasonably laid-back kid. In some ways at least. 🙂

Maybe I’ll be able to blog again occasionally now. I want to post an update about Vedat, too. Things are all lined up on this end, but we’re still trying to get his papers in order on the other side. More on that later…

Life has gotten pretty busy. A friend told us that we’re now on zone defense since we’re outnumbered by our children. 🙂 In any case, we haven’t quite figured out the new “normal” yet.

I had a rather difficult pregnancy this time. It started with severe morning sickness, then moved to pretty sharp ligament pains and debilitating back pain. I was put on limited bed rest because I had a lot of trouble walking, I wasn’t allowed to lift, bend, or twist which rather limits a person’s activities, and Joel started working from home since I couldn’t effectively take care of Alexis and Branwen. We were all looking forward to the end of this one, and we’ve already decided that we’re not having any more biological children until I can get my back fixed. (There’s a disk replacement surgery in the process of FDA approval which may be available in a couple of years.) Adoption will still be an option theoretically if the Lord supplies the funds for it.

Beginning at 39 weeks, I had my midwife check me each week to see my progress. We had determined that if things were far enough along for it to work, we might try castor oil to start labor like I did with Branwen. Normally I wouldn’t be too keen on going through that again, but the baby was already big at that point, and the bigger it got, the harder it was on my back. Also, I was concerned about Joel because he wasn’t getting much sleep between taking care of the girls during the day and getting in some extra work hours at night. When my midwife checked me at 39 weeks, I was only one centimeter dilated and 45% effaced – not far enough along that the castor oil would be likely to work. The following week, I wasn’t any farther along dilation-wise, but I was 65% effaced. At 41 weeks, I was still 65% effaced, but I had dilated to 3 to 4 centimeters in the outer os of my cervix, and the midwife was able to stretch the inner os to about 2 centimeters. At that point, castor oil may have worked, but I was farther along than I had ever been outside of labor, and Joel and I decided that it was worth waiting a little bit to see if I’d go into labor on my own. My next appointment was scheduled for October 26th when I would be 42 weeks.

On Monday October 24th during the night, I was awakened after 3 hours of sleep by strong contractions. I started trying to time them, but they were highly erratic. Sometimes they were only 4 minutes apart, but then they’d space out to 12 minutes apart, then I’d have a more mild contraction at 8 minutes, etc. I didn’t call anyone because they wouldn’t get regular and they weren’t getting stronger (though they certainly didn’t feel like the braxton hicks I’d been getting for weeks). These contractions continued to some extent all through the day on Tuesday, never becoming completely regular or any stronger.

Joel and I went to a parent/teacher conference at Alexis’ preschool Tuesday evening and then went on to Bible Study. On the way there, Joel was starting to tell me that he was kind-of hoping I didn’t go into labor that night so I would have a chance of getting a decent night’s sleep… but he reached out to touch my hand as he said it and I snapped back, “Don’t touch me!” I was in the middle of a contraction, and thankfully, Joel was amused. 🙂 I decided to call my mom to see if she wanted to come and stay with us since I was pretty sure the baby would be coming within a couple of days whether it was on its own or by a castor oil push.

I wasn’t able to stay for the whole Bible Study time because I was so tired I was feeling woozy, not to mention the contractions were every 9 minutes while we were there. They weren’t all strong and weren’t getting stronger, so I still didn’t have any illusions that I was in labor, but between the tiredness and the at least occasional pain, I really just wanted to go home. We got home around 8:30 and my mom arrived around 9. God granted Joel’s desire that night – I didn’t go into labor, the contractions petered out, and I was able to get about 10 hours of sleep. I was much better rested the next day and I was ready for my next prenatal appointment.

Wednesday afternoon, October 26th, my midwife came out once again to check on me and discuss what I wanted to do. When she checked me, we discovered that all of those contractions had apparently been doing some work – I was now about 80% effaced, 4 to 5 centimeters dilated on my outer os, and a full 5 centimeters on the inner os. This was beautiful news for a couple of reason. First, it meant that I was probably going to have another quick labor (my first labor was 4 1/2 hours, my second was 6 1/2). Second, it meant that my midwife was able to strip my membranes, separating the amniotic sac from the uterine wall as much as possible to try to jump start labor. She told me that if I didn’t go into labor that night, I could try a castor oil compress on my abdomen since that was a much gentler push than taking it internally, or I could try taking dark Karo syrup which would work like castor oil but might be a little less harsh on my system. I figured I’d take things in steps if need be, but I didn’t go buy anything in preparation because I was still hoping the membrane stripping would set things off, especially since I was so far along to begin with. I did have Joel prep the bed with the shower curtain liner and old sheets, and I put on the nightgown I had planned to wear in labor just in case anything started in the night.

That night, Joel was trying to do some work downstairs after the rest of us had gone to bed. I called his cell phone at about 10:30 and told him I was having strong erratic contractions again and I’d appreciate it if he could come up and just hang out with me for a while. He came up and, being quite tired, fell asleep on the bed next to me while I battled the contractions. He’d wake up every so often and ask how things were going, and each time I’d tell him the contractions weren’t regular at all and were about the same strength as when they’d started, much like they had been on Monday night. I was getting up every half hour or so to use the bathroom, partly because I had been drinking so much water and partly because the contractions tended to put pressure on my bladder, too. At about 12:45, I went in to use the bathroom, and suddenly the contractions started coming hard and fast, one on top of the other. When I was able to get out of the bathroom, I tried to get Joel’s attention from the doorway without waking the rest of the house, but Joel isn’t always easy to rouse. 🙂 I ended up saying, “Joel!” in a loud, commanding voice, at which point he was immediately out of bed and saying things like, “What is it?! What can I do?!” He helped me to my rocking chair and I told him I thought we should call the midwife and get things started on our end (like the crock pot for the warm compresses and the heating pad to warm up the receiving blankets and baby hats). I also asked him to run warm water in the bathtub for me because I was cold and I thought it might help to labor in the tub for a bit. He handed me the phone to call our midwife at first, but I put it down pretty quickly as another contraction hit, and once it passed I told him I thought he should call. 🙂 He did, and she headed our way as fast as she could.

Once I was in the bathtub, I did warm up nicely, but apparently I wasn’t in a wonderful position. The contractions did slow down a little bit (which the midwife told us is normal and was probably a good thing at that point), but I also started to feel like I was hyperventilating every time I had a contraction. It was odd, because I was focussing on my breathing and didn’t feel like I was doing badly with it, but perhaps it was just the way I was leaning that caused the sensation of dizziness. Anyway, not long after I started feeling that way, I also began to have an urge to push. Between the two, I decided it would probably be best to get out of the tub, so Joel helped me out and got me dried off and moved to our bed where the contractions once again picked up. I did find that laying down I didn’t feel the urge to push like I had in the tub. (Once the birth was over, we all agreed that I may have been “complete” and could have pushed earlier than I did, but since the urge went away when I laid down I wasn’t sure.)

Our midwife called now and then on her way to the house to see how I was doing (she lives about 45 minutes away), and Joel kept giving her updates that made her rather worried that she was going to miss the birth entirely. When he told her that I had said I wanted to push in the tub, and that since then I had said that I couldn’t do this much longer (a pretty good sign that labor is nearing an end), she said, “Hang on! I’m almost there!” She asked if my mom could meet her at the door to help her carry things upstairs since she wanted to get things up as quickly as possible and wouldn’t have her birth assistant (who lives 2 1/2 hours away) with her. (The birth assistant arrived about an hour after the birth… oh well!)

As Joel put it afterwards, the midwife arrived and came in the room like gang busters. 🙂 Joel’s first thought was, “Can’t she see that Andi’s in the middle of a contraction here?” I was moaning through my contractions, so it was pretty obvious when I was having one. He realized pretty quickly, though, that the midwife was feeling rather rushed and was trying to be ready to catch the baby whenever it came out. She got there a little bit before 2 AM.

Since the midwife didn’t have her birth assistant with her, she had to try to do both of their jobs. This wasn’t too difficult while I lay there laboring (it mostly involved taking some vital signs of me and the baby), but things got a little crazier around 2:20 or so when I asked her to check me to see how far along I was. She got her gear ready to perform the check, and announced that I had a bulging bag of waters and no cervix, so I could push whenever I was ready. Well, I was ready!

Joel helped get the pillows in position so I could be propped in the bed, and he and the midwife got the bed lined with a bunch of underpads fairly quickly. I remember having one contraction while I was sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the pillows to be in place, and I commented on how much nicer it felt when I didn’t have to try to hold anything in. 🙂 I got into position, and as they were finishing up their prep work (note: I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to them at the time), I gave my first good push. Apparently it was a nice strong push, because my bag of waters practically exploded, and amniotic fluid shot past the end of the bed hitting the midwife squarely in the legs. She started laughing and said, “Um… anybody got a pair of pants I could use?” She ran into the bathroom between my contractions and changed into a pair of Joel’s sweats (which were very long and baggy on her, but when you need a dry pair of pants….). 🙂

Unfortunately, things went downhill rapidly from there. With both of my other children, I had won compliments from the midwives on how well I pushed, so I was fully confident in my pushing ability. This time, however, I gave a good strong push… and nothing happened. The baby didn’t budge. It seemed odd to me, but I thought maybe I had done something wrong, so I tried again. PUUUUSH… nothing. I was getting discouraged and beginning to panic slightly, and then our midwife (who was still doing the job of her birth assistant as well as her own job) said, “Ok, we need to get this baby out. Its heartrate is dropping.”

At that point I really started to panic. I told her I thought she should transfer me. I was becoming convinced that I couldn’t push the baby out, and now I was afraid that my inability would kill my child. She said, “The baby doesn’t like the position you’re in. Let’s try a different position, and if things don’t improve we’ll call 911.” What she didn’t say at the time was that she didn’t think we had time to transfer… she just wanted to get that baby out as fast as possible.

To try to get a better position for the baby, the midwife had me roll onto my side. This wouldn’t have been a problem in and of itself, but I had been having ligament trouble in my side for most of my pregnancy, and laying with my stomach hanging off to the side was very painful. Now I was battling pretty intense panic and pain, which didn’t put me in a very good mental position for pushing. With each contraction, I would try to push but I’d be screaming my head off at the same time. The midwife had Joel help me hold my leg up and help hold my stomach up, partly to try to alleviate my pain and partly because the baby was hanging at an odd angle. Lifting my stomach got it into more of a straight line with the birth canal. My panic wasn’t at all alleviated, though, and I was still in pain even with the support, so out of my helplessness and fear I continued to scream with each contraction. The midwife yelled, “If it’s coming out your mouth, you’re not using it to push out your bottom!” but I only felt more helpless. I said the only thing I could manage at the time… “God help me!”

And He did. Joel heard what I said and immediatley started praying. He said a prayer of thanks and of praise, he asked for strength for the baby and for me, he prayed for safety and health. Almost as soon as he started praying, the baby’s heartrate went up. I didn’t hear the heartrate change because I was too focussed on Joel’s prayer. As I listened, I felt myself calming down. Within a minute or so, I was breathing deeply again and was feeling more focussed. I waited through one contraction to give myself a chance to gather my strength, and then I pushed. Finally, I felt the baby move down. The midwife told us that she couldn’t keep monitoring the baby and be ready to catch it at the same time, so I was going to need to push the baby out quickly. She went down to catch it, and on the next push the head was crowning. She told me she wanted the head out on my next push, so I gave a prolonged push (push hard, take a quick deep breath and push hard again…), and out it came. Charis Joy was born at 2:35 AM on October 27th after less than 2 hours of active labor and only about 5 minutes of effective pushing. She had the cord wrapped tightly around her neck twice, but the midwife unwrapped it right away and Charis began breathing on her own. She weighed in at 9 pounds, 4 ounces, and she was 20 1/2 inches long with a head circumference of 14 3/4 inches.

God gets all the glory for this one without question. He was the one who prepped my body to the point that my labor was a length that I could manage it even with a bad back and weak muscles from lack of exercise. He was the one who kept Charis from being in the birth canal for longer than she could handle with the cord wrapped around her neck. And it was very obviously He who brought her heartrate back up and calmed me at a point when I could never have calmed myself. And He pushed her out… I had already tried, and I couldn’t do it. May God be praised.

Now I have a beautiful two-week old baby. She sleeps well, which is an additional blessing. My back muscles are recovering from the pregnancy, and the ligament pain is, of course, completely gone. I did have to have a few stitches where I tore when I pushed her out so fast, but they never bothered me this time like they did with my first two births, and by now the tear is completely healed. We’ve had a bit of a struggle with nursing because Charis is so sleepy and tends to slip off and make me sore – she had me bleeding for several days – but we’re getting past that now.

Our midwife, who was in some way involved in each of our births, commented that we simply can’t have a boring birth. Well, hopefully that won’t extend to an adopted child, too. I wouldn’t wish an “exciting” birth on anyone. My prayer for my pregnant friends will now include requesting a boring birth for them. Having a new baby is exciting enough without the exciting birth story to tell afterwards.

Morning sickness is a terrible thing, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Things have gradually been getting better and I actually have decent moments now. I’ve been able to take care of the girls by myself while Joel is at work (something I wasn’t able to do for a while, so Joel was pulling double duty), and I have a recognizably worse part of the day (evenings) which means the other parts aren’t quite as bad as they were before.

Another October baby. God has a sense of humor. We fought the good fight to get Alexis into a 4-year old preschool class this coming year (and thence Kindergarten the following year) even though she’s 10 days past the school cut-off date. I was so stressed about the whole thing that I announced to Joel one day back in January that we were not having any more October babies. Ha! Two days later I had a positive pregnancy test. My cycle was way off. I didn’t think I could have been pregnant that month. God had different plans, I guess! At least this one will probably be late October and I won’t have as much trouble just putting them in school the year they’re supposed to go in… not that it’s likely we’ll have another one quite as intellectually advanced as Alexis. She’s already reading her Dick & Jane book by herself at age 3 1/2.

Branwen’s speaking in sentences, and she managed her first non-imperitive sentence today (“I’m done now.”). Other than that, they’re usually things like “get it” and “Mommy do it!” We also haven’t been able to convince her to say “mine” instead of “my’s”… logical, anyway. Daddy’s… Mommy’s… my’s. Oh well.

The girls are almost finished their dinner and I should go help Joel figure out what’s happening the rest of this evening. Sleep would be nice at some point…

At 10 weeks, my stomach should not be sticking out as far as my chest. It’s just wrong.

Ick, tummy trouble.
Could I be any more tired?
Adoption sounds nice.

You know something’s up when you find yourself sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the afternoon eating leftover cold pasta with honey french dressing dumped on it.

Through my trip to Croatia, I was made aware of a 10 year old Roma Gypsy boy in a refugee camp in Montenegro. He has life-threatening scoliosis. A group of us – some in the US, some in England, some in Croatia – are trying to get him over to the US for life-saving surgery. The bureaucracy we’re meeting up with is pretty crazy, though. Due to the fact that his mom never registered him when he was born (which is probably true of a large number of the Roma children) and to the fact that he’s a refugee, the only identification he has is his refugee card. It’s hard to get a passport and visa when you don’t have papers. We’re trying to help with this, but it’s taking precious time.

On this end, a chiropractor by the name of Dr. John Rattcliffe has just gotten a copy of Vedat’s x-rays and will be speaking to several surgeons to line up one who can do the surgery pro bono. There are a couple of hospitals in the area which will most likely be willing to offer their facilities pro bono since the situation is rather desperate. This is taking some time to line up, too, though, and we don’t know how much longer Vedat can live with his organs being crushed.

Anyone who’s reading this and can send up a prayer for Vedat and his family, please do. Pray that the doctors will be able to help him, that all of this preparation will go quickly and smoothly, and that he will survive until we can get him help.

… and I don’t have much time before the pizza gets out of the oven. We’re all getting over some funky virus, I had to get over an even funkier one that I got in Croatia and that lasted for a month or so, we’ve been through all kinds of preschool decisions, and there was, of course, the whole Croatia trip in itself which was an incredible experience. There’s so much to catch up on, I’ve had no idea where to start and have been avoiding trying. I’m hoping some day soon I might find myself with the time and energy to figure out what to say. 😛

But I do need to remember to post about Vedat…

I wish these anti-depressants would kick in.

Did you know that postpartum depression is kicked off by the drop in pregnancy hormones in a woman’s body? That same drop happens when a woman miscarries. Granted, the drop isn’t as severe since the hormone level hasn’t gotten as high, but she also doesn’t have a little baby to help stave off the worst of the depression feelings.

The materials I’ve read on this andi-depression medication say it’ll be 3-4 weeks till I feel its effects. My doctor said 6. I don’t know if she was just trying to keep my expectations down or if that’s really more what she’s seen in her experience. In any case, it’s only been a week and a half or so, so even by the most optimistic standards I wouldn’t be feeling it yet.

I’m tired. We finally did Christmas pictures this morning. It wasn’t much fun for any of us, but we got one decent one that’ll be the one we send out this year. It took a long time because any time we got Branwen to smile, Alexis was sitting there biting her lower lip. It’s a nervous habit and I haven’t figured out how to break her of it yet. Anyway, the more we told her not to do it, the more nervous she got and the more she did it. 😛 It took at least 20 minutes to get one good shot. We tried for a few more and weren’t having much luck, so we ended up giving up and figuring we should be grateful for the one decent one we got.

A nurse from the OB’s office is going to call me back to talk about whether we need to discuss infertility testing. I’m not sure if they’ll want to since this is my second miscarriage or if they wait for you to have two in a row rather than just two total. Anyway, she’s supposed to call this afternoon. I gave them my cell number so I wouldn’t have to stay offline.

I’m not having too much trouble thinking about the practical aspects of the miscarriage at this point (which is definitely better than I was doing this long after my first miscarriage), but I still can’t let myself dwell on the more emotional aspects of it. I don’t like hearing sympathy from anyone, though reading it is nice because I don’t have to respond. The response is the hard part, because saying, “It’s ok,” would be a lie and I don’t really feel like talking about how I’m feeling yet. I’ve tried just saying, “Thank you for your sympathy,” but it seems kind-of empty. My closest friends understand that I’m not quite ready to talk about it on that level yet, which is nice. Wendy has been especially sensitive, letting me know she’s there but continuing to talk to me about everyday things as if everything’s ok at the same time. That way I’m not dwelling on it all the time, but I can talk about it when I need to.

Anyway, I should try to rest while Alexis is watching a video. Maybe the nurse will call soon.