Weasel Of Doom

I went to bed around 5 am on Saturday, September 16 (well, technically it was Sunday already), after writing the post about D. and playing some more Forty Thieves (evil addicting game that it is). At 7 am, I was woken up by a rather painful contraction. Four minutes later, another one came, and then another. Hmmmm… Painful (check) regular (check) contractions (check) – looks like we are in labor.

I went downstairs and informed B. that we should go to the hospital. While he took a quick shower, I dressed and called Brian & Erica, who agreed to watch D. (very nice to have friends who live on the way to the hospital) – they have a 2-year-old and a dog, and D. always has a good time there. That taken care of, I called my parents and let them know I will not be calling them at my usual 11 am time slot. After that I called the doctor to let them know we were on our way to the hospital.

We got there and were admitted around 8 am, and I asked for an epidural, because that contraction business was getting uncomfortable. The doctor on call was the same one as when I went into labor with D. Some of the nurses remembered us, too. And just like with D., I was 7 cm dilated by the time we were all settled in.

My doctor was not on call, but said he would come in at 10:30, after church, assuming I have not delivered by then. B. had made plans to watch the Packer game at Alan’s at noon, so the joke was that my window of opportunity for delivery was between 10:30 and 12:00 noon. My water broke around 9 am. The epidural kicked in, but I could still feel the contractions at their peak, because the baby’s shoulder must have been pressing on something, rather painfully. With D., the epidural took away 100% of the pain, but I could still feel the onset of contractions, so could push without being told to. This time, I could not feel when the contractions started at all, except for the painful part in the middle. I whined about that a bit, and asked for the dose to be increased :-)

My doctor got in at 10:30 am, checked things, and informed me that the baby’s head was less than 2 inches away from the opening, so it did not look like much pushing would be required. B. and the nurse held my legs in the “push” position, and the doctor told me when to push. Three sets of contractions later, at 10:50 am, we had another son. B. did not even have time to cry :-) And I could not believe how quickly it was over, since the pushing part went on for 3 or 4 hours with D. It was almost anticlimactic. (AND I made it in our window of opportunity, though B. watched the Packer game in the hospital room instead of at Alan’s :P)

B. cut the umbilical cord, and they put the baby on my stomach. He was very very red, his eyes were tightly closed, and he had fine lanugo hair on his face and back. After the little guy was washed, we tried nursing, and he took to chewing on my breasts like a pro, without bothering to open his eyes. Our little miracle #2. Of course, now I had to come up with a boy’s name – I had some picked out for a girl, but not many for a boy, well-prepared mother that I am.

During half-time, Brian and Erica dropped off D., and B. took him to his mom’s house and told her the good news. I called my cousin and our friends and let them know we had another baby boy. Nobody was very surprised that we did not have a name yet :-)

Extremely easy though this labor was, some things decided to go wrong, as usual. My bladder remembered that on previous occasion it got a two-week vacation out of it, and promptly decided to shut down. And I gave birth to a lovely hemorrhoid, too, so that the the episiotomy stitches won’t feel lonely down there. (I named the hemorrhoid Vincent, Vince for short. Bad Russian joke there — often, Russians would pronounce “v” like “w,” which would make my hemorrhoid a Wince. Which he made me do a lot, literal pain in the butt that he was.) Fortunately, the bladder decided to start working the next day. Vince the Hemorrhoid is still hanging around as of this writing, but I think his days are numbered.

We thought that we had 3 days at the hospital , but turned out it was only 2, and I got three with D. because of all the complications I was having due to the difficult labor. That explained why the nurses kept telling me to fill out the paperwork *grins* And so, having checked in at 8 am on Sunday, we left by 2 pm on Tuesday, with our baby still nameless.

We knew that Danger will be a middle name (I promised B. Long story, better told some other day. For the record, we came up with the idea BEFORE the Austin Powers movies came out). I was supposed to come up with a list of candidates for the first name (since last time I shot down everything B. proposed, he felt it was my turn to offer suggestions). I had a short list, but I really wanted to name the baby after my father (which, as B. pointed out when the name came up as we were trying to name D., nobody in America can pronounce correctly). Turns out that name was on B.’s short list as well, along with Xavier and Gunther (Gunther. I don’t know why Gunther. I am afraid to ask why Gunther. Of course, on my short list were Ash, Blaise, and Dakota, so I should not be throwing any stones, now should I?).

Ugh. I love my kids, but sometimes I wonder if the feeling is reciprocated…

Exhibit 1: Squeeker. Who discovered that he does not HAVE to sleep all the time. It took his brother about a month to come to the same conclusion. I was so hoping this one would follow suit, but nooooo. So, after his 8:15 feeding, the kid would not go down. I fed him again at 10 (desperate times call for desperate measures, etc), tried more feeding around 11, snatched an hour or so of sleep downstairs on the couch with him (to allow BelovedSpouse to sleep), fed him at 1:30, and then –

Exhibit 2: DemonChild. Who has not liked sleeping ever since he discovered he could stay awake. The kid fights sleep any chance he gets. And I mean fights it, to the point of pulling on his eyelashes and pinching himself. It takes him half an hour to go down for the night, most of it spent climbing in and out of his toddler bed, squirming around his toddler bed, attempting to sit on my head if I am stupid enough to put it down on his toddler bed, until he finally clonks out in exhaustion. By which point I have gone through a number of rousing renditions of “Tired Toys Are Sleeping” and “Sleep My Joy Sleep” and those famous Russian lullabies, “Chained Together,” “I Tried to Go Away From Love,” “A Star Named Sun,” “Pack of Cigarettes,” and other classics brought to you by Nautilus Pompilius and Kino. Not to mention that I cannot carry a tune to save my life, so it might very well be that he falls asleep to escape my singing… At any rate, he was down by 10 pm, just in time for me to go and give Squeek some quality boob time. Around 2 am, right after another boob time episode, DemonChild started to scream. I think he had a night terror – I could not comfort him, and after 10 minutes of screaming, he finally fell back asleep to the tune of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” with the bag count-down from 10 to 0. At which point –

Exhibit 3: Squeeker again. Crying. Would not be comforted, at least not by me. BelovedSpouse woke up, and was told it was his turn to comfort crying children. So currently Squeek is asleep, tightly swaddled, on BelovedSpouse’s chest. I keep waiting for him to wake up and ask for his friend the boob, but no luck so far (of course). It is after 5 in the morning, I have not slept yet, and last night I got only 2 hrs of sleep as well. I would scream, but that would wake the kids up.

On the plus side, I have been productive this week, despite lingering discomfort from labor (not sure if the stitches or the hemorrhoid are to blame, so they can share the responsibility). On Sunday I did a lot of laundry and vacuumed everything. On Monday the upstairs bathrooms got cleaned, and the linen closet got reogranized. On Tuesday, I have made a lot of progress cleaning the computer room. One can actually see the bed now. I also washed all the linens, and decided on the way to store them (in bins under our bed; very creative of me). BelovedSpouse took a half-day, and we went to the new Wal-Mart super-center, where I promptly spent the rest of my gift certificate from BelovedSpouse’s dad. Of course, I only bought 2 storage bins, and it turns out I can use another 6 for the bedding, proving once again that I cannot estimate worth anything. Oh well, good thing there are more at Wally Mart ;-)

P.S. Kids update, Wednesday, 1:30 pm: DemonChild was up by 7 am, and roamed around for an hour or so when BelovedChild fell asleep downstairs. Squeeker fed around 5:30 am, slept on me until his 8:30 feeding, and has been sleeping in the pack’n'play for the last 4 hours or so. Where is that sleeping behavior when it is night? ;-) At any rate, hopefully he will wake up soon, because he needs to be fed (and I need to feed him *smiles*)

DemonChild will be 20 months old in another week. Seems like just yesterday he was still a little baby; where has time gone?

Physically, he is way ahead of other kids his age. His new way of taking the stairs down is what BelovedSpouse calls “luge” – he tries to slide down. When not sliding, it is jumping from step to step – I usually hold his hand for that, and at least for me he somewhat watches what he is doing – apparently with BelovedSpouse, he just launches himself down the steps. Eeep.

This week he finally figured out how to put Quatro blocks together (before, they existed to be built into elaborate structures by Mom or Dad and then destroyed with unholy glee by DemonChild). There are little clusters of blocks scattered throughout the house now, interspersed with foam letters and numbers which are very likely not intended to be chew toys, but are a lot better than other objects that DemonChild elects for that purpose (such as toy cars and board books. What the child did to “Guess How Much I Love You” is not pretty. It is in at least five well-chewed up pieces. He is now working on getting “Kiwi 1 2 3″ into the same state. Board books, your source for fiber in the diet. When we got back from Russia at the end of June, DemonChild decided to hate taking baths. He would back into the corner of the bathroom and cry unconsolably as his cruel parents filled the baby tub and plonked him there. Duckies and bowls failed to cheer him up for more than a few minutes. Water from the faucet was the enemy. Bath time was torture time. Fortunately, the bath-hating stage lasted only about a month. Now he is back to loving it, and cries when the baths are, in his opinion, cut short. We are all very happy that bath time with Daddy is fun again.

Another thing that started getting out of whack even before we left for Russia was DemonChild’s sleeping patterns. He would go down around 9 or 9:30, then wake up crying around midnight, do it again around 3 am, and be up for good around 6:30 am. June is white nights month in St. Petersburg, and it did not help. DemonChild would fight sleep like it was enemy #1. He would pinch himself. He would pull on his eyelashes. He would pinch others. He would cry. Eventually, he would fall asleep out of exhaustion around 10 or 11 pm. By 2 am, he would be up and crying unconsolably. I would take him in bed with me, he would crawl around for half an hour or so, find a position that would make my sleep most uncomfortable, and then fall asleep. By 6 am, he would be up and raring to get into trouble. Needless to say, not the best three weeks night sleep I got.

When we got back to America, the sleeping thing did not get better. We replaced the crib with the toddler bed. Still no dice, and he would wake up and cry three or four times a night. He did not want to sleep in our bed, he just wanted one of us with him. BelovedSpouse would sleep on the floor with him, or I would. We tried letting him cry it out once, and he cried for hours, so that was a dismal failure. Then DemonChild decided that he preferred Mommy for his nightly awakenings. No idea why, since BelovedSpouse is a lot better parent, but for some reason if I was the one who came to the gate, DemonChild would actually head back to bed, and if it was BelovedSpouse, he would keep crying. So, more sleeping in 2-hour intervals for me. Unfortunately, at 8 months pregnant, sitting on the floor by the toddler bed was getting to be less and less fun. Things do seem to be getting better, though – the last week, there were couple of nights when DemonChild only woke up once, and went right back to sleep after a few minutes. Last night I gave up on trying to get him to sleep after half an hour, and though he cried for a while, eventually he went back to sleep on his own (and the crying was of the “i am whiny” variety, not the “i am desperate” kind we were getting before). And when he woke up in the morning he played in his room until 9 am, for which Mommy and Daddy were very grateful. So here’s hoping for better sleeping!

He is also building up his vocabulary. It now includes Yep, Nope, All done, More, Up, Down, Mommy, Daddy, Uh-oh, Book, Socks, Shoes, Diaper, Car, Baa-baa (request to sing Baa-baa Black Sheep), AB (request for alphabet song), Blueberries, Peas, Milk, and Outside. He is babbling in what appears to be sentences, but they are all in DemonChildese, and mom and dad are not proving to be the cunning linguists they thought they were :-)

He also understands commands, and on occasion chooses to obey them. He knows what “close the door” means, and “let’s put on shoes” and “want to go outside?” and “it’s night night time” and “nyam-nyam.” Once, BelovedSpouse heard his babbling away, and suddenly in the middle of it there was “DemonChild Come Here” followed by more babbling. Guess the kid knows that one, too, though so far he has not chosen to obey it once :-) When he is hungry, he pulls out his high chair. When he wants to go outside, he comes to a door that leads there, and loudly says “Outshide!” He will say “Up” if he wants to be put in a chair or lifted up, and “down” if he wants to go back on the ground or downstairs.

Some cute DemonChild stories:

• A week or so ago, I was working late and did not get home until 10 p.m. DemonChild was still awake, and I heard BelovedSpouse tell him that yes, he can go downstairs. DemonChild came down to the lower landing, and we snuggled a little on the steps. I asked him if he wanted to go outside. He said “Nope.” Since “yep” and “nope” don’t necessarily mean anything with DemonChild, I then asked if he wanted to go night night. He said “Yep,” took me by the hand, and started pulling me up the stairs. We walked to his room, I opened the gate, he walked in and went to his toddler bed and laid down. I asked if he wanted a song, and he requested first AB and then Baa-baa. By the end of the count-down from 10 bags to none, he was asleep.
• This Wednesday Eric and Shannon came over, and DemonChild was playing with Alex, their 8-month-old, who had recently discovered the joy of crawling. DemonChild and Alex joyfully babbled at each other, chewed on the same playstation controller, and in generally gave us hope that perhaps having a new brother or sister won’t end up being too traumatic.
• DemonChild has a plastic bucket he got for Easter from Bernie and Betty. He likes putting it on his head. If I am playing with him, he would also put it on my head, and then laugh. He has a new laugh, the “hah hah hah” one complete with sticking out his chest. I think he learned it from Daddy. Hopefully we caught it on video, because it is too cute.
• His tricycle has a storage container on the back. Occasionally, DemonChild would lift up the lid, sit there for a while, then get up, close the lid, and continue with whatever it was he was doing before.

Ugh, it is 2:30 in the morning. I am off to bed.

Thought for sure I was in labor last night. Around 12:30 am contractions got regular (three minutes apart or so) and somewhat painful (though nothing too bad). On the other hand, they were really short, and had a somewhat suspicious feel to them. Decided to try and lay down around 2:30 am. Was convinced we would have to call friends and wake them up in the middle of the night. Started timing contractions again. And promptly fell asleep. Good thing we did not make that phone call :-) Wonder if mowing the lawn had anything to do with it – but what can I say, I was craving to mow the lawn yesterday, and had absolutely no Braxton-Hicks contractions while doing it…

Had my last scheduled OB-GYN appointment before due date (September 17). Brief review:

August 23

First weekly appointment. Internal exam shows everything nice and closed, but I am measuring 33 cm at 36 weeks. Ultrasound is scheduled to make sure the baby is growing as it should.

August 29

Still measuring 33 cm. Ultrasound reveals that the baby is just being stealthy. Internal exam, on the other hand, reveals that I am now 2 cm dilated and 70% effaced. Entering “can go into labor at any day” mode, but with much less freaking out than when I was told “any day now” when I was pregnant with DemonChild (and he ended up being 5 days overdue, go figure). Of course, since I have redefined “freaking out” back then (as in, accomplishing absolutely nothing during the last month of the pregnancy due to being paralyzed into inaction), “much less” is a relative term. Some panic ensues, baby clothes are washed, and an attempt is made to get a hospital bag together.

September 7

3 cm dilated. Thought that I might go into labor on Labor Day, but that turned out to be a false alarm. Having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions, and not enjoying them.

September 13

After a week of baby attempting what feels like kicking its way out through the top of the uterus every evening, and another “Could this be labor?” false alarm, complete with calling friends and asking if we could possibly drop off DemonChild at their place on our way to the hospital should things come to that, all goes quiet on the Western front. Decide to go in for a non-stress test just in case, after reading scary statistics on stillbirths online. Baby snoozes for the first 20 minutes or so. Finally, a combination of apple juice, cookie, and water induce some kicks. Vigorous kicking continues all the way home. At night, baby finds my bladder and proceeds to joyfully shove it for an hour and a half. By the third trip to the bathroom, I am not amused. Go to bed at 2 am, after 2.0 loses interest in torturing me.

September 14

Last scheduled appointment before due date. I have gained 3 lbs somehow (suspect soups in bread bowls had a lot to do with it, but blame baby regardless). Now measuring at 36 weeks, and feeling like somebody has over-inflated a balloon in my stomach. 4 cm dilated. Suspect that I haven’t gone into labor by now only because my unborn child is as directionally challenged as I am, and keeps heading into wrong directions (like up). Find out my doctor won’t be available on Saturday. Wanna bet that’s when 2.0 is finally going to figure out where down is?

Since I can’t sleep while 2.0 does its nightly cavorting, I have played way too many Forty Thieves solitaire games. Talking about which, I should go and reward myself for writing this post by playing a game or two ;-)