month two

Rapidly closing in on 8 weeks of babyhood. The major headline this week: he now coos and smiles occasionally! This is when things start getting better for me; I enjoy my babies much more once they smile. He's doing well at night too, generally going 6 hours for the early stretch, though unfortunately that stretch starts at 8pm. I know there will be regressions but I can just begin to see a light at the end of the sleeping tunnel. Hallelujah. 

Poor little guy has already had two colds, both brought home by his brother from daycare. Baby sneezes and baby coughs are so adorable and so, so sad! This is yet another difference between covid and non-covid babies: Jonah wasn't sick at all until he was about 6 months old, even after he started daycare. Though of course he just caught everything later on, and is still catching everything. But it hits different when they are so little. 

I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is next week. How is it not still October? Speaking of illness: last Thanksgiving we cooked an huge meal and I baked two pies and Josh and I both came down with a terrible stomach flu. Fortunately for Josh he started feeling ill before he ate anything. Unfortunately for me, I did not. The charming experience of puking up Thanksgiving dinner appears to have put me off the holiday entirely. I have no desire to do anything this year except order takeout. (Or maybe it's just that I have an infant?)

Weirdly, I have become less and less into holidays since I've had kids. I feel like it's supposed to be the reverse? Maybe once they are older it will feel more like fun and less like an enormous hassle. I keep seeing all these ads for matching family holiday pjs and it makes me feel as though I am visiting from another planet. Do people really spend money on matching pjs and then wear them together? This was not a thing people did before social media, right??

month one

Baby G is four weeks old on Monday. Amazing how having a newborn is simultaneously exhausting and also mind-numbingly boring. It helps to know firsthand that they do eventually become more like people and less like blobs, but man, time sure does drag during these first months. 

My blob baby right now looks like a sad blend of hormonal teenager and elderly man. (He has acne, greasy skin, and a receding hairline.) He's not going to win any cute baby contests. And when I say things like this, the baby people look highly scandalized. I'm sorry, baby people! I respect the fact that you enjoy everything about these little blobs, but that doesn't mean I understand you. I do love my baby, I just don't think he's super cute or interesting right now. Sue me. 

(Secretly I think people who really love babies have tyrannical souls: what sort of person so enjoys having complete authority over totally helpless blob creatures?)

Other than the boredom, the most trying thing about having a newborn is having a newborn and a toddler. Someone on Instagram somewhere said that having a first kid is an existential crisis, but having a second kid is a logistical crisis. This rings quite true so far. The hardest part of the day is toddler bedtime, because it inevitably coincides with the baby having a meltdown while Josh makes adult dinner. I only have two hands! I cannot feed the baby in a dark quiet room while also giving Jonah a bath and reading him a book. 

So far in these scenarios the baby loses, because the baby doesn't really know the difference and he can cry for 15 minutes without it being a huge problem. But once the baby becomes more like a person I think this will become even harder. 

To his credit, Jonah is taking all this like a champ. He's not super interested in the baby, because the baby doesn't do much, but he clearly likes him. He's always giving him hugs and "helping" me give him a bottle. So far he's a very good big brother, but we'll see how it goes when the baby is old enough to want to play with his toys! 

Nights aren't great, though he did give me a five hour stretch a few days ago! It was amazing. I have no idea what caused it, but I'm hoping it gets repeated soon and often. 

Birth

Back in March I wrote about how I never wanted to give birth again and now, having given birth again, I can reaffirm that yes, giving birth is terrible and I was right to never want to do it again. 

Don't get me wrong: this particular birth was far, far superior to the first one. Mostly because I entered the hospital at 8:30 on Monday morning and I had the baby out of me by 11:04am. Waaaay better than the 60+ hours I spent trying to get the baby out before the extremely painful surgery last time. 

And this c-section was not painful at all! I had a very frank conversation with the anesthesiologist before I went into surgery, where I basically told him that if I felt any pain I was going to put a hex on him and his entire family.  And god bless him because he understood the assignment, and I felt absolutely no pain at all. If anything he may have taken me a little too seriously, because I was so sleepy during the operation I could barely keep my eyes open. But I am not complaining! 

The baby apparently had no intentions of coming out the regular way, either. They checked me for contractions for weeks before delivery and up until a couple hours before I went into surgery – nothing, nada. Not even a little braxton hicks! It's so strange to have had two full term pregnancies and never experienced a single contraction. It's hard not to wonder what would have happened to me before modern obstetrics. Maybe I just have 43 week babies? Seems like a bad strategy! 

The c-section recovery has been about the same as last time, except for one hiccup: when I went into the hospital, I had a slight head cold. I didn't think too much of it, which in retrospect was really, really dumb. Turns out, coughing or blowing your nose while you have an abdominal wound is exceptionally unpleasant. 

Long story short: the cold festered while I was lying in a hospital bed for several days, and now I have a double ear infection. And while I don't think I've pulled any stitches from coughing, I'm sure it hasn't helped my recovery much. I'm on antibiotics and already feel better, thankfully. But going to urgent care for amoxicillin 7 days after giving birth was not ideal. 

My conclusion: I sincerely hope that I do not have to be back in the hospital for at least 40 years. 

In baby news: the little one is pretty good, as far as infants go! He's already sleeping for fairly long stretches at night, which actually I find somewhat disconcerting. I keep thinking that the other shoe is about to drop. Honestly, I find newborns very boring: cry, eat, pee, poop, repeat. But he's cute, and he appears to have dark hair like me, which makes me happy. His big brother is very excited about him, which also makes me happy. He calls him "Grabriel."

While Josh and I were in the hospital, my parents came to stay and take care of Jonah. When they arrived on Monday morning they took him out for pancakes so he wouldn't be upset as we were leaving. My mom wished me luck and gave me a hug. And Jonah, who is in a phase where he mimics people, turns to me and says in his little almost-three-year-old voice: "Good luck, Julia!" Cool as a cucumber. What a kid. 

41 weeks

41 weeks today. So very, very tired. My back aches, my hips ache, I can't walk for more than 15 minutes without needing to take a break. There is no position — sitting, standing, or lying down — that is comfortable. I swear that I can feel my organs compressed into my chest — my poor, poor intestines. And, man, acid reflux is really disgusting. Have I mentioned I hate pregnancy? 

I have never been in labor so I don't know what it feels like, but apparently I have no obvious signs of someone who is close to being in labor. Given my current status, I really feel that this is highly unfair. At what point, exactly, does my uterus have a chat with my spine and my bladder and call it quits?? It's like my own body is taking the baby's side over mine — which, of course, is exactly what's happening. Biology is cruel. 

I have a c-section scheduled for Monday. My doctors wanted to do it earlier, but I'm glad I waited until 41 weeks because I am now uncomfortable enough that a c-section will feel like a relief. Even if it's as painful as last time, at least it will be over in about 20 minutes and I can be done. 

It's really a bummer to be one of those women who stay pregnant way longer than necessary. This baby could have been born perfectly fine and healthy three weeks ago. At that point I was feeling ok and excited to meet this new person, and now I don't really have the energy to think about anyone but myself. Intellectually I know that the baby is whole point of all this, but the animal part of my brain is taking over now, and all the animal wants to know is when this will end.  

I've been trying to make myself feel better by remembering that these are the last few hours I will ever be pregnant. And that the next time I'm feeling this terrible, it will be because I'm actually ill, and no one will expect me to be happy or excited about it. I do find some comfort in that. 

Almost 40 weeks

40 weeks on Saturday. I can now definitively say that the first and last trimesters are tied in terms of disagreeableness. There is just something so tedious about having all your organs compressed and a baby's head sitting in your pelvis for weeks on end. You can never quite catch your breath, or sit comfortably. Or stand comfortably. Or walk comfortably. More succinctly: I am uncomfortable.

Last time, I was anxious for it to be over, which is why I was ok with being induced at 40 weeks. I wasn't particularly nervous, just impatient. Now I am in the unfortunate position of wishing fervently for it all to be over and also dreading the ending. It's like wanting a reallllly terrible movie to finish, but also knowing that someone is going to stab you as soon as you leave the movie theater. I know that I eventually have to leave the theater. All I can do is hope the assailant has a very small knife. 

Being this pregnant, everyone has started to tell me their birth stories. My mother is a repeat offender. She loves to tell me how she, my aunt and my grandmother all had babies three weeks past their due dates. Her point (I guess?) is that late babies run in the family, though I have explained to her many, many times that no doctor would allow this today. I have also reminded her that dating a pregnancy is a bit more sophisticated now, what with ultrasounds and all. Her response: there's no way that all of them were wrong in their due date calculations and I have no idea what I'm talking about. 

Other than my mother, I don't mind hearing people's birth stories. They are all entirely unique, which I find reassuring. It's also sort of fun to hear about someone's precipitous labor, or their water birth, or the time when the nurses forgot to insert a catheter. I mean, when else do people share this level of personal information with you?! It's highly entertaining. It's also sort of gratifying to see the look of horror on everyone's faces when they learn that I had a c-section after a failed induction that lasted three days. Veterans have their war stories, and I have this, apparently. 

It's so enticing to think that you can predict the future based on what happened in the past. But it almost never works that way. I am trying very hard to accept that I cannot predict how this will go. I don't know if I will go into labor before my c-section date. If I do go into labor, I have no idea what that will be like. And if I do have a c-section, I don't know that it will feel anything like the last one. 

I don't know anything, really, except that I will not be pregnant in October. And amen to that. 

37 weeks

On the fence about whether the last month of this pregnancy is going to be worse than the first trimester. With Jonah the last month was by far the worst, but I wasn't nauseous with him at the beginning. Months two and three were brutal with this pregnancy. All I did was gag, and I had to do it discretely because no one knew I was pregnant. Ugh. 

With Jonah I remember feeling like my pubic bone was going to break in half during the last few weeks — I haven't felt that way this time (yet). I'm thinking this baby is either in a different position or he's got a smaller head. Fingers crossed for both. 

The worst parts right now are: 1) it is so hot and I am so sweaty and 2) acid reflux. Also, while I like my doctors much, much more than last time, I am getting really tired of being told that I'm old and fat every time I go in for an appointment. They are very nice about it and use words like "over 35" and "higher BMI" but the upshot is the same. Very much looking forward to 2024 when I will (hopefully) only have to go to the doctor once, and I can enjoy being old and fat without anyone commenting on it. 

Next week is my last week of work, hooray. With Jonah, it was covid and I never left the house, so I worked basically up until my due date. In retrospect, that was not a good decision. All I did those last few weeks was work and watch Criminal Minds, which strikes me now as a truly insane combination. 

(Criminal Minds, in case you don't know, is a terrible and unwatchable tv show about serial killers. It's pretty graphically violent. For some reason I was obsessed with it during the last few weeks of my first pregnancy. When I came home from the hospital I watched it again and realized how terrible it is. That was the first time it really dawned on me that women who are very pregnant are not always totally in their right minds.)

This time I plan to actually take a break before I have the baby. No work, definitely no Criminal Minds. (Suggestions for good tv shows or novels that are NOT about serial killers are appreciated.) I am also training myself to forget about my due date, because I find the countdown to be entirely unhelpful. Either I will go into labor or I will have a c-section at 41ish weeks, and that's that. 

Also: I really like my boss, but he's been worried about finding coverage for me while I'm away and that's been stressing me out. I sometimes feel like I need to apologize for going on maternity leave, and I hate that feeling. I am grateful to have 4 months of paid leave, but nothing I do is all that important! The university will continue on just fine without me. I think my boss needs, as the 90s kids say, to take a chill pill. 

33 weeks and the fun continues

The baby will not stop moving, and it's driving me crazy. The first few months it's impossible to concentrate because you're trying not to puke, then the last couple months it's impossible to concentrate because you are constantly being thwacked from the inside. I'm up at 3am trying to figure out what kind of dance he's doing. Such a weird feeling. Take a damn break, kid! 

I'm trying very, very hard not to think too much about the size of the parasite inside me. Also trying very hard not to think of him as a parasite. But he is a parasite. He's just in there, floating! In a bag! Growing limbs! Feeding off me through a weird tether, made possible through the formation of an entire organ that didn't exist 9 months ago. And that I will summarily shed as soon as he is expelled from my body. 

The whole thing is just so damn creepy. Nothing makes me feel more like an animal than pregnancy. You know when you watch Animal Planet and there's a special on the horned toad, or whatever? And you're totally amazed to learn they have some crazy organ that sprouts when they're breeding 10,000 eggs? I feel like I am at least as strange as the horned toad, possibly more so. I deserve my own special on Animal Planet. 

And did you know that no one has any idea why or how labor is triggered? Every single person on this planet is born (somehow!) and yet we have no idea what gets that process started! So I have all these instagrammers telling me to eat dates to trigger labor. Like this is the fucking 14th century and we're still using fruit to perform medical miracles! I just cannot. 

A definite symptom of this pregnancy is overwhelming grumpiness. I don't remember my mood being quite this bad last time. I'm not sad, just extremely annoyed. Most of this is directed at my boss and my coworkers, though I also hate all the drivers in a 30 mile radius, every doctor I meet, and, sometimes, my family. 

My leave from work starts in a month, which I'm hoping will cut down on the grumpiness, since work has been a main source of frustration lately. But it's possible that I will just start to redirect my bad mood towards other areas of my life, once I'm no longer working. My poor family will just have to deal with me, I guess.