Writing an Unwritten Rule

I thought this went without saying, but apparently not, so I am saying it: If you don't like the name I chose for my child, don't tell me! Please spare my feelings. If you need an outlet, I give you permission to talk about how weird or nerdy or whatever it is behind my back.

For those wondering, the first name comes from a Biblical figure and the middle name from a historical figure. Both namesakes initiated sweeping reforms in their nations. Combined, this name represents the courage, patriotism, creativity, integrity and intelligence of the role models who previously bore these names.

We wanted to choose a name that would make our son proud and serve him well throughout his life.  I hope we succeeded, but even if we didn't, negative feedback isn't going to do much good now that his birth certificate is recorded.

Once, while I was pregnant with her new little brother, I discussed my four-year-old daughter's name with her.  I told her she was named for her grandmothers and that her name meant "clever" or "curly-haired," which are both apt descriptions of her.  She giggled, beamed and shouted, "I love my name!"  I hoped I could get the same reaction from this new baby someday.

My husband and I put a lot of effort into choosing this name for our son.We perused many books and websites about name definitions, connotations, popularity, nicknames and namesakes. We checked family histories. We wrote lists. We sought a few key opinions. We tried calling our baby different names in utero to see what sounded right.

This particular decision was so difficult that we were still deliberating until the moment we filled out the birth certificate.  I admit that we weren't completely confident in our choice, but we certainly gave it our full consideration. So, if you think his name is beautiful or meaningful or charming, we need your affirmation.  If you think otherwise, please offer your silence.

My Very Important Five Year-old

During your birthday month at my daughter's preschool, you are the "VIP" and must bring a photo poster to display. Here it is. (In my usual paranoid fashion, I removed her name and other names from the poster before posting it on the Internet.)

Fresh from Heaven

I made this collage of my parents with my three kids as infants as a gift for my mom:

Happy 90th Birthday, Grandma

We attended my husband's grandma's 90th birthday celebration yesterday. We contributed these pages to a family scrapbook in honor of this good woman:

Of Barn Wood and Water Valves: A Cautionary Tale with a Happy Ending

We finished another room in our remodel:  the kids' play room.
This Room's Pre-Play Room History

1. The  previous owners of the house thought gluing barn wood to the walls of the room would be so rustic.  It was.  And like a decrepit old barn, the woody walls of this room decayed and molded.
2. We got the moldy wood off the walls, but the globs of glue left behind would not budge.
3. The ice-maker in the fridge upstairs broke. We raced to shut off the main water valve before the house flooded.  The previous owners made this challenging for us because they sheet-rocked the main water valve into a wall inside this room.  We had to attack the walls with a mallet in order to locate and excavate the main water valve and end the deluge.  Note to homeowners everywhere:  Valves should not be inside walls.  You are supposed to be able to turn them on and off.
4.  We added a lovely office space onto the side of our house.  (See the 2/16/2010 post.)  Construction workers blasted through the foundation of the old house (specifically, through this room) to create an entryway connecting the old house to the new addition. 
5. My husband and brother-in-law made fabulous improvements to the heating and cooling and electrical systems in the house.  This involved further damage to what was left of the sheet rock in this room.
6. Fast forwarding to much more recently, my amazing husband performed major reconstructive surgery on what was left of the room, using leftover bits and pieces of sheet rock from previous household projects. He also revamped the closet into a built-in entertainment center/toy box.  I followed up with paint and striped wallpaper (50 cents/roll from the old West Jordan Lowe's that closed and liquidated its inventory a while back).

A room that has survived such past abuse is ideally qualified to deal with the atrocities my none-too-gentle kids are sure to lavish upon it.  Let the games begin.

The kids celebrated the grand opening of their new play room by playing dress-up.

The Birth: Big Sister Reports

From the beginning of this pregnancy, my husband thought it would be wonderful to include my four year-old daughter at the birthing room. What a great experience for her to share with her peers and remember forever!  I imagined trying to give birth while shouting things like, "Don't touch!  Get down!  Stop that!" and was not nearly as enthusiastic about the idea.

I was relieved when the hospitals forbade visitors under 12 due to flu season.  Too bad that my kids would have to wait to meet the new baby until I came home, but well worth it so I would not have to consider having a four year-old present at the birth.

Surprise!  Just days before my new arrival arrived, the policy was revoked because the flu was vanishing.  The debate returned and continued right up until during my labor.  In the end, I gave in and said she could come, but only if Grandma and Grandpa waited to bring her to the hospital until I was pushing the baby out and if they would remove her if she distracted me.

As it turned out, this labor involved only five minutes of pushing--an ideal match to my daughter's attention span.  She was surprisingly interested and well-behaved through the whole proceedings.  The doctor was impressed; he had never met a child with so many intelligent questions about the placenta.  Most are scared by the blood. (I hadn't worried about her being scared; she never is.)  Afterward, she did describe the birth to her peers and it was adorable.  I caught it on this audio recording.

Giving Birth in a Typical 8-Hour Work Day

We finally got the timing right! Instead of being born much too slowly, like my firstborn, or almost too quickly, like my second child, baby number three came out after a reasonable eight hours of labor.

I woke up at 3 AM for no apparent reason and got up to check my email, where I woefully encountered yet another set of revisions on a work project that never ends (but really needs to so I can go maternity leave). I set to work at the computer and noticed the first contraction at about 4.

I continued working until about 5:30 in spite of contractions. The contractions were fairly spread out, but eventually they hurt enough to make continued office work impossible and I decided that I should bathe and dress just in case I needed to leave for the hospital later.

I woke my husband and gave him a heads up: we were probably having a baby later that morning so he might want to get up early to get ready, but no rush. Then I went to start the bathwater.

While it was running, contractions started coming only two minutes apart, so I told my husband to forget the "no rush" part of my previous message.

Now that we were rushing, contractions seemed to spread out, but I couldn't really tell because I was too distracted to time them. I asked my husband to handle that and the results were completely random. What happened to that textbook rhythm I experienced during my last two labors?

We spent the morning debating how much time we had and whether I was even really in labor or not.  Given the deluge of car-birth dreams I had been having, I wanted to go the better-safe-than-sorry route and get to the hospital just in case.  I could handle it if they sent me home. My husband thought it necessary to jostle the car as much as possible during the drive over anyway; he was hoping my water would break to guarantee us a hospital bed.  He is lucky I don't carry a gun. 

When the nurse checked my cervix at about 7:00, I was dilated to a 6.  Yeah!  I was really in labor in spite of my failure to contract on beat or spontaneously rupture my bag of membranes. I went ahead with the epidural right away--that morning (especially the part involving bouncing around in a car with a baby head lodged in my pelvis and a contracting uterus) had been a good enough sample to remind me how much I disliked the intense pain of labor.  Besides, my previous two babies had been born with epidurals and no complications. 

This time was not quite as smooth at first.  Shortly after the epidural, my eyes started watering and I couldn't stop yawning.  I pointed this out to the nurse and anesthesiologist, one of which asked me if I felt like I would vomit.  "No, I'm not nauseated. I'm just sleepy...Wait...I take that back; could I have something to throw up into?" And they got me a barf bucket and an oxygen mask, which I had to take turns using, and a few minutes later I felt fine.  That was weird.  My husband told me later that my blood pressure had dropped to about 60 over 30. That explains it!  But after that things were splendid, except that I couldn't feel any contractions at all, so I was nervous about whether I would be able to push. With my first two, I had never felt the pain go away completely.  The nurse was not at all concerned about that and she was right. By the time I got to the point of pushing, I could feel the contractions easily.  Apparently, I had just been a lot further along in the "pain scale" at the times of my epidurals previously.

It took several hours and having the doctor rupture the membranes to get to the point of pushing, but I didn't mind because I was relieved to be checked in at the hospital and on drugs.  I used the time to browse the web and almost finalize the baby's name with my husband.  (Yes, we cut it very close on the naming project deadline.) At about 11:30, I was almost completely dilated except for a bit on my left side, so they turned me onto my right for a few minutes to drain the meds away from that side and finish things up over there.  It worked like a charm; a few minutes later I was ready to go. (However, my right foot was nearly comatose for a whole day.  When I went to stand on it, I thought the tile floor was made of jello.  It was kind of funny.)

Pushing was easy; within five minutes, I had pushed out an 8 lb 11 oz baby. This future linebacker was much larger than the two 7 1/2 pounders I had before, but apparently that didn't matter.  He forgot to cry, other than the occasional, matter-of-fact little "Wah." I guess five minutes of pushing just wasn't enough to traumatize him, because he is perfectly healthy.  I didn't really get to hear his cry until after I fed him for the first time.  Then he realized what he had been missing and cried because he wasn't feeding any more.

When I first saw him, I was surprised that he looked so little like his two clone older siblings.  But now that I am more used to him, I can see the family resemblance. Anyway, he is beautiful and fabulous too and a very welcome addition to our family.