Another Way Wednesday - a different way to do Valentine's Day

There was a whole 'nother post planned for today. And then there was a doctor's visit (just well-child, no one's sick . . . for now) in which each sweet thing got a mean shot. And my hands have been busy ever since.

This morning, however, I came across this great post from Crunchy Chicken on how to Have a Green Valentine's Day. I actually sorta don't like Valentine's Day (issues), but if you are going to celebrate it, I wonder if you could find another way to do it this year?

Negative

I took a pregnancy test yesterday.

We've been practicing natural family planning since D arrived (and by "we" I mean me, I suppose, because I've not once seen The Coach charting temperatures or measuring cervical mucus in the past three years . . .). I thought I had gotten to know the usual signs pretty well, but evidently not as well as I thought.

According to my calculations, a certain long-lost visitor should have shown up last weekend. When she was a no-show, I decided I'd better toss a test in the cart next to the birthday candles and the rice cereal and the Diet Coke. It's funny, really, how many times both the grocery checker and the grocery bagger will ask a mama (with one baby strapped on her in a Mei Tai and another koala joey riding shotgun in the cart) who has just purchased a home pregnancy test, "are you sure you don't need help out to the car with these?" Seriously, it's funny. I laughed.

So anyway, the test was negative. I was relieved.

And disappointed.

And as The Coach and I talked about it last night, I became aware of something else . . . how fearful I was feeling. Not the fear you would think. Not the fears that speak of "how can we afford it? where would we put another? how will the girls respond?"

No, instead, this Fear traces its finger over the now smooth scar at the base of my belly and whispers in my ear of two uneventful pregnancies, two sets of chubby cheeks and bright eyes, two times that two slender pink lines yielded two wardrobes fat with pink.

Then Fear lifts my eyes to that shoe. That shoe that swings recklessly over my head.

When will it drop?

Happy Three to D!

It occurs to me I have never told how my Miss D joined us in this world . . .

By January 27, 2005, I was hugely pregnant, hugely miserable, and cursing the notion of a “due date.” As soon as I had a positive pregnancy test in hand, I looked up an online due date calendar and cemented January 18 in my mind. Our earliest ultrasound at ten weeks estimated a January 21st arrival, so I mentally allowed a few extra days for Sweet Baby’s arrival; but a first time mama at ten weeks, when each day seems to fly off the calendar, can’t really know how those last, tortuous days of being fully full-term and “past due.”

Here I am at the beginning of December 2004 - almost nine months pregnant.


And here I am on Christmas morning. It's the last known picture of me pregnant with D. Behold the belly. And you know what? It would be over a MONTH before Dacey would finally be born!


So anyway . . .

My beloved OB practice errs on the side of caution and is slow to schedule inductions, but at last my doctor had mercy on me and scheduled me to come in early on the morning of the 27th. “Call first,” she said, “and make sure we have room for you on the floor.” I be-bopped out of the office that day, never once dreaming that so many babies would insist on arriving on January 27th. At 6:00 am, I called the L&D floor and the only thing delivered to me that day was the spirit-crushing news that there were, in fact, too many mamas on the floor that day for there to be room for me and my great-with-child self.

Devastating.

But the Lord, He ministered to me with the words of one of my favorite Psalms, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” (27:14) Wait we did, and not too long after that, my OB called and said she wanted to see me at 1:00 for a non-stress test and ultrasound.

Discouraged and weary, The Coach and I followed orders and went in for the testing. At L&D, we had the non-stress test and discovered everything looked fine for the baby, but my doctor could also see right away how disappointed I was. She offered to strip my membranes to see if that would get some action going. Downstairs in the ultrasound room, the ultrasound tech asked, “Has anyone given you a guess on how much this baby weighs?” I told her the last guesstimate from the doctor had been “no more than eight and a half pounds . . .” and the tech replied that what she was seeing looked closer to nine. I didn’t really linger too long on that part because I was starting to feel so crampy and uncomfortable.

We left the hospital under instructions to call if contractions started. In all the (non)excitement of the day, we had somehow forgotten to eat, so we pulled through the Whataburger drive-through on the way home. By this time (close to 3:00), I was having a hard time concentrating. The Coach ordered me a Whataburger and we went home to eat, but I think I ate about three bites before I discovered I had no appetite.

“I don’t feel right. I don’t feel good. I think I might be in labor,” I told him. The next few hours are kind of blurry now. I remember getting one of The Coach’s stopwatches and timing the “cramping.” At one point, the pain became so bad that I didn’t want to talk anymore, so I went up to our bedroom to watch "Friends" and continue timing. I called my sister-in-law around 7:30 to ask her (mother of four at the time, five now) if it sounded to her like I was in labor. When I had to stop mid-sentence of my explanation of what I was feeling, she told me, “Yeah, I think this is it, girl.”

As Donald Trump’s big head filled the screen announcing the beginning of "The Apprentice", I called L&D to tell my OB (who was thankfully still on-call) that the contractions were lasting about a minute and coming every five minutes. She told me to come on up and bring our bags this time.

I remember breathing through contractions at check-in, and I remember that The Apprentice was still on by the time we got settled in our room, but I could not for the life of me tell you who got fired that night. My doctor checked me and found I was at a three already and this sounded like the best news ever. The Coach read quietly as I continued to breathe, and I remember thinking there is really no way words could describe how much I was hurting. It was around this point that I started to curse quietly to myself with each contraction, and my husband started to get pretty nervous.

(I guess this would be a good time to tell you that we had not taken any childbirth classes. Dacey was born at a time before I was even a little tiny bit crunchy. In fact, to be honest, I had no idea what “crunchy” was, other than the other kind of peanut butter. I have a decidedly low pain threshold and there was no question in my mind as to whether or not to choose pain management. In fact, we didn’t take a childbirth class, but I sure DID attend the hospital-required “epidural class.” At the time, I was much more focused on being able to breastfeed and took a breastfeeding class, too. Again, not because it was the natural thing to do. No, no, this was in a season of life when we made just a *little* too much money to qualify for WIC, and so in my mind I had to breastfeed because we couldn’t afford formula. True story.)

The next time the nurse checked me, about an hour later, I had made it to a four, which is evidently the Magic Number for getting that epi. The nurse anesthesiologist was a tall, jolly man named Rocky and he became an instant hero for me. The Coach had ducked out of the room at that point to go gather our bags out of the car, so he missed that experience . . . seeing what I hear is a very long needle being inserted into my back.. I didn’t care how long the needle was, I just wanted relief.

I dozed and half watched TV for a while. When I got to a five, my doctor broke my water. I remember feeling disappointed that I didn’t get to have that “Oh my gosh! My water just broke!” experience. Every check from the nurses showed more and more progression, and everyone kept congratulating me on doing such hard work with no pitocin. That seems silly to me now, but at the time I needed all the encouragement I could get. By 2 am, I had made it to a seven. “A baby by dawn at this rate,” my OB said. But it was also around this time I noticed the nurse kept coming in every fifteen minutes or so and reading the long strip of paper being spit out of the machine measuring the baby’s heartrate. At 3:30, my progression had stalled. I was still at a seven. My doctor ordered pitocin, but told me they were concerned about the baby’s heartrate – that it was becoming erratic. She said she’d give me an hour to get past seven and then we would need to make some decisions.

It’s funny, really, if you go into a birth experience like I did with absolutely no desires other than to bring home a healthy baby. My mother-in-law delivered a stillborn baby between my sister-in-law and husband, and for some reason, I just could not get that out of my mind. I honestly did not care how the baby was going to come out of me. I just wanted her out and I wanted her healthy.

This is where it all gets really fuzzy. I spiked a fever and the next check revealed that not only had I not moved past seven, but there was also now meconium in the fluid. In a ten-second conversation, my OB said she felt strongly that we needed to get the baby out now, and of course we agreed. I remember them starting me on antibiotics for the fever that indicated I had developed an infection (in the amniotic sac? Why can’t I remember these details?) and being given a medicine to stop my contracting uterus. They had me get on my hands and knees on the transport table to be wheeled down to the OR, and it was about this time that I started crying. I was so scared.

Again, lots of fuzzy details, but before I knew it, my man Rocky was by my side in a freakishly cold operating room. He spoke softly and gently to me about everything that was happening, and that helped ease my mind as I lay there, completely naked, arms stretched out and secured to the table. So vulnerable. So very scared.

In a few more minutes, my husband was beside me, and I remember my doctor quietly talking to me as they started. A pediatrician I had never met came in, scrubbed down and in scrubs and my doctor said he was there “just in case.” I cried some more.

There was lots of quiet, tense conversation between her and her surgical assistant. My husband stroked my hair and cheek and told me everything was going to be fine. I heard my doctor sort of murmur “cord tightly wrapped,” and then, “It’s a girl! Daddy, you can stand up and see your baby!” She explained they didn’t want the baby to cry until they were positive she had not and would not inhale any meconium. As every mama knows, those seconds until the first cry reverberates through the room are so much more than seconds. I cried softly while we waited.

Finally, finally, Dacey’s first scream of protest filled the room. I cried again, this time with relief. Later, my husband told me he had never been so terrified as when he saw Dacey freshly pulled from my womb. “She was so, so blue,” he said. I was told later her APGARs were four, and then nine. They escorted Daddy up to the nursery to stay with the baby, Dacey Allyse. The mood was much lighter as the team finished working on me, and after what felt like an eternity, they rolled me into recovery.

I was the only patient recovering from surgery at six o’clock on the morning of the 28th. The post-op nurse was friendly – very friendly – and I remember as he chattered away that all I really wanted to do was sleep. I was so very, very tired – emotionally and physically. My doctor came into the room and began working on paperwork at the far end. The phone rang. The nursery nurses reported that Dacey Allyse had arrived at a staggering nine pounds, twelve ounces. I think she was twenty-three inches long. Or was it twenty-one? Or was that AJ? Oy vey! Anyway, she was, um, big.

After another eternity went by, I was finally released to leave post-op recovery. When they wheeled me past the nursery, I got to see my Dacey for the first time. Oh, I am all teary just thinking about it. I remember that shock of black, black hair. And she was, as you may have guessed, the biggest baby in the nursery that day.

The Coach met me in my room and told me how Dacey had cried and cried while they cleaned her up, but when he reached down to stroke her forehead with his finger, she immediately calmed down. I had never seen him smiling so big.

A little while later they finally brought my sweet new baby to me. The nurse helped me get her ready to breastfeed and she did latch on right away, but didn’t stay on long. I was so sleepy from the various medications and Dacey was, too. I fell back to sleep for a good while, but didn’t sleep much after that the whole time we were in the hospital. I don’t think I took my eyes off of her for more than a minute at a time. I just stared and stared and tried to wrap my mind around this miracle. Our attachment one to the other was instant and fierce and completely surprising.


And that’s the story of Dacey Allyse. As she’ll tell anyone who asks, she’s “fwree yews ode TODAY!”

Happy birthday, my lovie.

Elusive

Laurie Berkner duets with Tom Chapin in a song called "The Happiest Song I Know," and this fun ditty is on the Most Requested list from DJ Jazzy Dacey. The lyrics are an ode to all things happy ("happy as a newborn pup," for example) and one phrase caught my ear as we drove home and I hummed along . . .

The way you shout when school is out

. . . and for a second I thought back to the school days of my childhood, waiting and watching and sighing as the second hand ticked off those last minutes of captivity. I remember that sweet anticipation of the freedom to be relished on the other side of that school bell's ring. I remember the day I counted off the years ahead of me on my fingers and discovered it was to be 1995 when at last I would be relinquished from the bondage of my school years.

My college years flew by in a blur of classes and papers and meetings and tests and dates and functions, and yet always I was looking ahead, X'ing off the days on the calendar in my mind as I hurtled toward graduation. For surely after I was finally, finally done with school, surely that was when I would really be free, right?

And then I turned around and I was married and teaching and once again counting down the days until the school year ended, this time from the other side of the teacher's desk. I was teaching so The Coach could finish his Masters work, and after that? Freedom from teaching! Freedom to start a family.

And then I had a babe in arms and found myself a far cry from free. Convinced that successful parenting was built on solid scheduling, I found it difficult to leave the house for fear of upsetting the delicate equilibrium of naps and nursing. When opportunities knocked, I would sigh and say, "I can't . . . I have a baby" as I wistfully closed the door.

And that's where I find myself again. Times two. As we prepare for D's Big Three and as AJ inches ever closer to five months, my frustration levels rise in the face of so very little freedom. Jealousy wells up in me as I drive past co-eds jogging up and down the hills of our town. I used to jog . . . before I had babies. I thumb through old Bible study workbooks and look longingly on the notes I scribbled on the pages when I had nothing but time to share with the Lord.

And even as I write this, I realize it all smacks of undeniable selfishness.

And I gaze down into AJ's smiling face and I crack up at D's antics and I know I am deeply, unspeakably blessed. So why I am not content? How can I create freedom for myself when there appears to be none? When will I luxuriate in the freedom that is most certainly mine? And if I do discover newfound pockets of freedom, what then? Will I spend it on myself or do something that might just have an impact on eternity?

These are things I think about as I drive and think and whisper Laurie Berkner lyrics to myself on the way home.

In which I discover I really I am a fool

In every person's life, situations and circumstances come along that reveal the truth and depth of character that person possesses. Sometimes these situations and circumstances are big. Life-changing. Other times, it's an utterly ordinary scene that exposes the ugly hiding beneath the pretty.

A crucible, if you will.

There are few places on this planet that turn up the heat on my own personal crucible as hot as the open-twenty-four-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week flame that is WalMart. And I'll tell you where I get singed every time . . . Not when I am walking the three point eight miles from one end of the store to the other because I forgot that now they stock the watercolors in the back by the toys and not in the front by the office supplies like they used to. It's not the snarly employees or the crying babies or the skanky bathrooms or even the mealy produce of questionable freshness. It's the check-out line. Every stinkin' time.

And so the last time I was there, I had AJ strapped on in the mei tai carrier and D riding shotgun in the cart which was filled to the brim with our weekly groceries. And wouldn't you know it? Wouldn't you just know it? At the Not-So-Okay Corral of check-out lanes, there were exactly two regular lanes open, two express lanes, and then the self check-out lanes. All of those were open, you bet.

Now I might not be the smartest mama on the block, but I do know better than to purposefully station myself in an already painfully long line near the check-out counters with a toddler in tow. A toddler who to this point had been amazingly patient and gracious while her mother zoomed her up and down the aisles, but a toddler, nonetheless, who was also known to go a little nutso upon spying the deliberately placed goodies next to the counters. After all, who can resist the glittery packs of gum? And what of the light-up pens? And the plethora of Dora playing cards? And the siren's song of just one more sippy cup?

So the two (and I am really not exaggerating for effect here, ladies, there were two) regular lanes were out. Express lane? Sure. Yeah, that's out. And what does that leave us with? Those darn self check-out lines.

Deep breath. Don't curse. She's talking now, remember?

No lines at the self check. So that's good. I start throwing things on the mini conveyor belt, muttering to myself about how this the last time, the last time I tell ya!, I will be shopping at WalMart and I am gonna go home and write me a letter, that's what I'm gonna do, and on and on. Meanwhile, a sort of (how shall I say this?) scruffy looking middle-age man gets in line behind me and starts chatting me up. I glared glanced at him and sorta half-heartedly responded to his attempts to chit-chat, but what I really wanted to do was bring about violent retribution on the check-out machine because every single time I tried to swipe an item, it would wait about five seconds and then instruct me to place the item in the bag and if I didn't do this on it's time frame, it froze up and I had to start all over.

Must. Not. Hurt. Anyone.

So I think you get the picture. By the time I endured that ordeal, I was exhausted. And annoyed. Annoyed with Chatty McSmall Talk, annoyed with WalMart, annoyed with the world.

Well, not at all coincidentally, the next day I was looking up a word in my Bible's concordance, and as I glanced through the listings, a word jumped out at me. Annoyance. I sorta chuckled and thought, "I don't remember annoyance showing up in Scripture." Curious, I turned to the lone verse listed under annoyance.

A fool shows his annoyance at once,
but a prudent man overlooks an insult. Proverbs 12:16, NIV

Well, hello Conviction. Good to see you.

Again.

Evidently, I need some time off

Okay, I am just going to tell you all this right now so I can get it out in the open. Rather than celebrating the end of NaBloPoMo today, I am beating myself up over my latest entry in the ongoing contest of Worst Mommy of the Year Award. Are you ready? Brace yourself.

I dropped AJ.

Part of me wants to word this in the third-person . . . She fell out of her carseat. Onto the floor.

But the truth lies in the first person . . . I forgot to buckle her in the carrier carseat and picked it up and she flipped forward and landed face down. On the floor.

I can't recall that I have ever experienced anything quite as terrifying and sickening. When D was a baby, she fell off the bed a time or two (yes, see, I've got that Worst Mommy award in the bag, girls) but it was when she was an older baby. The sight of my precious, not-quite-three-months-old baby, face down on the floor . . . Oh ya'll. I am having a hard time shaking it.

This all happened this morning as I was leaving D in the nursery at our weekly community prayer coffee gathering and thankfully - thank you, God! - one of my sweet friends (also a mommy) held AJ for me while I called the doctor's office in tears. (FYI - I discovered today that if you are in near hysterics when you call the pediatrician's office, they put you straight to a nurse - no waiting for a call-back. Just so you know.)

My other sweet friends calmed me and made me laugh with their own tales of baby mishaps and accidents. That did make me feel better. And so far, she seems to be fine. But still. And I still haven't quite determined just how I am going to tell her daddy about this.

So even though I had a whole other post planned, this is what's on my mind today.

In other, non-child endangerment news, as I mentioned yesterday I am taking the next week off from blogging. Let's all pray I don't return from this week-long hiatus in the same condition I was in when last I returned from hiatus . . .

I so look forward to catching up on blog reading next week. Also, my friend Corey called me yesterday to see if I would mind publishing posts over at Living and Loving Every Minute of It while she is out of town. (Not guest posting! Just hitting the "publish post" button on her pre-planned, pre-written drafts.) So anyway, I'll be around. Just uncharacteristically quiet, as I suspect many in NaBloPoMo recovery will be . . .

SortaCrunchy Q&A #14 - Tips and Tricks (sorta)

It's just gorgeous here today. Really, really gorgeous. Days like today make me wanna belt out a few verses of "God Blessed Texas" (If you wanna see heaven brother here's your chance). Added bonus - Miss D has been especially delightful the past few days. Just a real dream of a child (where are you, O Wood, that I may knock upon you?), and that has made life particularly sweet in my SortaCrunchy home.

And that puts me in a good place to answer today's SortaCrunchy question from Birdie of BirdBrain. Birdie is a fun and funky (in a good way, girl!) new mama to one sweet little September '07 man - Otto. Stop over and say hey if you have time!

Birdie asks, "What are your favorite tricks and tools of the Mama trade? What objects/tricks/ideas/attitudes get you through the day with two little ones?"

Honestly, I don't have a lot of tips. Or tricks. Well, some tricks. Like telling D that Cliff Kid Chocolate Brownie Organic Z Bars are "Bunny Scout Brownies." Those brownies are my back-up plan when she refuses to eat a meal, and she is ever so delighted to devour a Bunny Scout Brownie - Max and Ruby style.

So yeah, I have tricks like that.

But my only real tip is one that was given to me by Martha Sears, the mama of the Attachment Parenting super duo who co-authored The Baby Book with her husband, Dr. William Sears.

(Sidenote - I know I talk about the Sears an awful lot. I am not on their payroll. I just love them. I truly, truly do. Their books and website helped bring me from a dark, disappointed, and unhappy place in my mothering to a joyful, uplifted, and inspired turnaround. That's all.)

So anyway.

Martha Sears writes in The Baby Book that in parenting her own high-needs child, she had to learn to get behind her eyes. That phrase, that instruction, that advice has been the single most helpful parenting tip I have ever come across.

When D was a baby and was crying, fussy, out-of-sorts, whatever, I would take a deep breath, close my eyes for a second or two, then open them and look right into my daughter's eyes. Then I would imagine her looking out at me and ask myself, "If I were looking out of those eyes, what would I need to see to feel better?" I sure wouldn't want to see an angry, frustrated, exhausted mama. So no matter how angry, frustrated, or exhausted I was, I forced myself to be the mama she needed me to be at that moment. More often than not, all she needed was some peace, compassion, and understanding . . . maybe in the form of a bouncy walk around the room, perhaps an extra long hug with quiet whispers of affirmation in her ear. It usually wasn't much, but it almost always worked to just get behind her eyes and really think about what is was she was needing.

I gotta tell ya'll this. Life is proving to be quite unfair to my angelic AJ. Her two bottom teeth are threatening to erupt any day now. Yes! At not quite three months! Bless her heart. So this laid-back and content angel of a baby has been uncharacteristically needy and fussy for a few days. I find myself going back to Martha's advice and still find it works like a charm. Heck, it even works when D is going into meltdown mode and she's almost three.

I wonder if it'll work for pre-teen hormonal angst? We'll see.

Anyway, friend Birdie, that is the best I can offer in terms of tips and tricks. I hope it helps you as much as it helped is helping me.

SortaCrunchy Q&A #5 - Motherhood's biggest challenge

Today's SortaCrunchy question is from a very sweet reader I have really enjoyed getting to know - "seattlebags" Sheila. She asks, "What has been your biggest challenge as a mother thus far?"

It's tempting, actually, to write that getting through D's earliest and most high-needs weeks and months has been my biggest challenge. But that's not really true. The biggest challenge I have faced so far involves something that I am pretty sure I have never blogged about. My closest friends and, of course, my family all know about this challenge, but I just never have known if and how to talk about it here.

When D was about seven months old, I began to realize that she wasn't very "talkative." I would read my monthly "Your Child This Month" updates from Babycenter and carefully watched the development charts and suspected that she wasn't babbling and trying sounds the way she should have been at that age. Other parents I talked to about my concerns assured me it was very early to have too many expectations and to just keep talking to her and reading to her and it she'd be up to speed in no time.

By the time she was twelve months and many of her peers were mimicking words and saying at the very least mama and dada, we had nothing. Just the occasional squeals and shrieks, but nothing even close to speech. At eighteen months, still nothing. By that time, I was starting to get a little freaked out. Finally, when she was days away from turning two and still had no spoken words at all, I called Early Childhood Intervention.

The ECI assessment confirmed what I had known to be true for months. D had a severe expressive speech delay. At this point, she was a year behind in her expressive language. I remember being quite emotional over the results. On the one hand, it was such a relief to have someone confirm for me that my concerns were legitimate. On the other hand, it spoke of another kind of confirmation . . . that there was something wrong with my daughter.

When I was pregnant with D, I would sit in the rocking chair in her room and rock and talk to her and pray over her. I prayed that God would knit her together in my womb exactly according to His plans for her - whatever that would mean. She arrived healthy and whole and I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that we were on our way to raising a normal child.

Discovering that your baby falls outside the normal curve is not just a little upsetting. I struggled with guilt that I had done something, or not done something, to create or contribute to her delay. I battled the jealousy that arose as I overheard conversations her peers were having with their parents. I mourned for the dialogue that didn't exist between D and me.

We weathered months of speech therapy that rendered very little improvement. Foolishly I began searching the Internet to see if perhaps D's speech delay was symptomatic of a bigger disorder. Just before she hit the two-and-a-half mark, I found myself sinking into a heavy, dark sadness that bordered on despair. Frustration over her lack of progress combined with guilt over my inability to draw speech out of her left me feeling exhausted and empty.

And then, something amazing happened. I have a friend here in town who spent years working in early intervention before her children were born. When I shared my frustrations and concerns with her, she invited D and I to come over to play. I simply cannot explain how or why, but it's as if that day a switch was turned on inside of D. My friend showed me some new techniques and approaches we hadn't tried yet, and using these approaches marked the beginning of an explosion in what D showed us she was capable of doing. (Explosion may not be the best description . . . more like slow and steady and remarkable growth.)

It's been a little over three months since D has started talking more and more. It was no surprise to her father or me that her first two-word phrase was a command - "Mama, here!" I swear she really started talking so she could boss us around! There are days when the constant "mommy, Mommy, MOMMY!" starts to wear my nerves a bit, but I stop to remember that there were oh so many days and weeks and months when my heart just ached over not hearing that word from her lips. It has been indescribably rewarding to listen to the new words and sentences that each day brings.

And so, to answer Sheila's question, this - more than the days of no naps and sleepless nights and toddler tantrums and sibling angst - this journey has been the biggest challenge I've endured since the day I earned the name Mother.