Apparently I’ve taken a casual 7 month plus break from blogging. Babies are hard! Also, we moved, which was somewhat of a debacle (hot tip: avoid taking out a Chase Bank loan if you can help it). Those are my excuses.

Nine Months Old!

Avery is now 9 months old, and as of last week, crawling. Scary! She isn’t very fast, yet. And she hasn’t tried to stick things in electrical outlets, fall down stairs, or pull over furniture, yet. Phew.

I have been feeling the need for a creative outlet so I’m going to put forth a solid effort to blog at least once a week. Hopefully not just about baby related what nots. Maybe some exciting home renovation updates, too! A couple dudes are hammering away upstairs as we speak.

Anyway, happy summer even though Seattle has been shafting us in the sun and heat department for the last month or so. Here’s to a reinvigorated blogging effort.

Baby’s First Trip To Lowe’s (jk, this is like her tenth trip)

I’ve never been a napper (unless passing out in front of the TV at 9PM counts- I’m really good at that). During the first sleep deprived months after she was born, I sucked at napping when Avery napped. Her naps were incredibly inconsistent for at least three months so it was hard for me to really let go and sleep because I knew she could wake up at any moment.

Now that Avery *usually* wakes up only once at night and *usually* naps for about an hour at a time, I’m *usually* not a total zombie. However, I am still tired a lot so I’ve been thinking about cultivating napping as a potential new hobby. Just in time for National Napping Day, which is Friday, March 11 (maybe it should be moved to Sunday, March 13th since we all lose an hour of sleep the night before…ugh).

To celebrate National Napping Day, sleep startup Casper (they make award winning sheets, pillows and mattresses) has created a lovely Napping 101 tip sheet:

The coffee tip is kind of brilliant. And apparently my 9pm couch naps are a terrible idea. Also, naps should only be 10-30 minutes long, who knew? Just don’t tell Avery this, please…

I’ve made it through the first three months of parenthood, holy shit. The last weeks have been intense. Brutal lows, exhilarating highs. I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much in such a brief stretch of time. A few thoughts:

Take help when offered. Seriously. My dad saw me struggling while he was visiting post Avery’s arrival and he offered to pay for some daytime help for me. I felt anxious about inviting a stranger into my home and almost turned down his offer. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Being able to nap a couple times a week while leaving Avery in someone else’s trained hands (we hired a postpartum doula) has been absolutely amazing.

New parents will likely receive less specific offers of help, e.g. “what can I do?” Keep a list of things people can do for you. Have someone buy you groceries, walk your dog, do laundry, hold the baby while you shower, make you a sandwich, cook you a bunch of something you can freeze…If you are offering help to a new parent, offer to do something specific! Or just drop off food or a gift certificate to a restaurant that delivers.

Yawn? Or scream?

It’s impossible understand, pre baby, how different things will be, and in what ways. One example: I went to Costco alone last week while Will watched Avery and it was a blissful escape. I hit horrific traffic en route and welcomed the delay. Lame but true.

Don’t pay much attention to timelines/dates. This was an important lesson for me to learn. I initially clung to any timeline oriented tip I heard, thinking, at six weeks she’ll start getting less fussy! Not so much. Then: At three months everything evens out! Guess what, Avery still has terrible days/nights pretty much weekly. Every newborn is different and from what I can tell, few are super consistent in all of their habits. They also constantly evolve and change. It’s trite, but I try to take things a day at a time. This has helped me avoid feeling like a parenting failure/that there is something wrong with my child.

Naked time

It might take a while to feel bonded to your baby. I had heard this before giving birth but I didn’t fully internalize it. Then, when I didn’t necessarily feel an instantaneous all consuming love for Avery, I felt extremely guilty. But seriously, your baby is an unfamiliar being that doesn’t reciprocate your affection: it can take some time to feel strongly connected, and that is normal.

This face though

Parenting a baby is really fucking hard. This past three months has been one of the hardest periods of my life. And if I hear one more anecdote about so and so’s easy baby who never cries and slept through the night at three weeks old I’m going to throat punch someone.

But it does get easier. Not all at once and not very fast (for me, at least), but it does get easier, and it’s well worth the rough patches.

Overall, I was lucky and Avery’s birth went pretty smoothly. (MAYBE IT WAS THE DATES I ATE). By my due date, September 25th, I still wasn’t experiencing any labor symptoms and my OB decided she wanted to induce at 42 weeks as long as the baby and I remained healthy until then. We were doing regular fetal non-stress tests (NSTs) and everything looked just fine so I feel like I could have pushed back and insisted on waiting a little longer. But, I was generally feeling ready (i.e. super antsy and impatient) and the date worked out: my OB was scheduled to work on the date of the induction so if I didn’t go into labor on my own before that, she’d likely be the one to deliver Avery (typical of a lot of OBGYN practices, I would get whichever of the OBs was on the day I gave birth).

At my NST two days before the 42 week mark, I was having contractions, but I couldn’t feel them. I lost some of my mucus plug around then, too, but nothing else was really happening, so we checked into Swedish First Hill at 8pm on October 8th. It was a little anticlimactic as I had been prepared to labor for quite a while at home. I’d assembled coconut water and snacks, made a list of yoga poses to try, and DVRed lots of Jeopardy episodes, thinking that would be a good distraction from contractions. Oh well.

BABY!

I was pretty nervous about being induced, having heard lots of stories of inductions dragging on with no progress and ending in C sections due to fetal stress. My OB had warned me that an induction would boost my chances of a C section from about 10% to about 20-30%.

After checking in and taking blood and putting in an IV line and other assorted medical type things, they gave me a round of misoprostol to try and soften my cervix, and encouraged me to try and sleep. The contractions slowly intensified to the point that I could feel them. At some point they gave me a second dose of misoprostol. I still wasn’t dilated past like 1 cm or so but the contractions were strong enough that they didn’t give me any pitocin. They did however give me an Ambien which helped me sleep between the contractions, until about 3 or 4am when they became so intense I could no longer sleep.

Baby w Burrito

Somewhere around 5am I made Will wake up as shit was getting pretty painful and I needed the moral support. The contractions felt like really intense pelvic and lower back cramps/spasms. The most painful thing I’ve ever felt, for sure. Eventually I got into the jacuzzi tub in my room and hung out in there. The tub, counting through the contractions, and trying my best to breathe through them, was was got me through. And a lot of bracing with my arms against the walls of the tub which the very no-nonsense nurse kept admonishing me not to do. My guns were really sore the next day. The staff also gave me a couple doses of fentanyl, which just lets you get into kind of a weird zone in between the contractions that relaxes you a little but doesn’t do that much for the actual pain.

At some point, maybe around 8am or so, my water broke in the tub and at 10ish I decided I couldn’t deal anymore and wanted an epidural. The staff didn’t measure how dilated I was but I guess they could tell it was fine to hook me up with an epidural given the breaking of the water and the intensity of the contractions.

The anesthesiologist took his sweet time getting there and I felt a little desperate by the time he arrived. I then waited out a couple brutal back to back contractions since I didn’t feel like I could hold still through them. Though the epidural needle is indeed huge and scary they numb you before inserting it and besides a tiny pinch from the numbing, I didn’t feel a thing. Within like 20-30 minutes I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down which was amazing. I’m totally pro epidural-it was fantastic and I can’t imagine going through labor without one. I slept and ate Haribo gummy bears (you can only have shit like gummy bears or popsicles post epidural-real food was allowed earlier but I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. I was actually really nauseous for much of early labor and puked a bunch of times which I did not expect).

By 12pm ish my OB came and checked on me and I was fully dilated and at 2:30 I started pushing. I was able to push really well somehow despite not being able to feel shit. I pushed for an hour (3 pushes with every contraction) and the environment was extremely chill-Will and I were talking to the nurse and doctor about, like, wine tasting, and how we met in college, and other random chit chatty things. Avery hung through labor like a champ, and after an hour, she was born and placed on my chest. Will admirably overcame his fear of blood and cut the cord. I had a couple superficial tears and just needed a couple stitches here and there. Avery was only 7lbs 3oz which I am sure helped with this, and probably all the squats and kegels I did while pregnant didn’t hurt either.

Recovery was pretty smooth though I was definitely sore for a few days. But in all, labor went really well and I feel extremely lucky. Swedish, my OB, and the rest of the staff were fantastic and it was a great experience overall. Way smoother and faster than expected. Life with a newborn? Definitely NOT smoother than expected. More on that later…

Avery Isobel Wyatt is here! She arrived Friday October 9, 2015 at 3:30pm weighing in at 7 lbs 3 oz, measuring 20 inches long. She is pretty adorable and we are crazy about her. We are gradually adapting to life with a newborn, which has brought its ups and downs, but everyone is doing well overall. I’ll post her full birth tale soon.

HI!