fiona's birth and the bed-in

Introducing, my daughter, Fiona Ruth; born at 3:14am, July 29th.

 She was 7lb. 4oz., 19 in. with lots of fight in her!

Birth Timeline:

July 13th - Cervical cerclage removed at 36.5 weeks. Go out to Buffalo Wild Wings after. Leave the restaurant, and realize baby has DROPPED. Looks like that little stitch did it's job!
July 17th - Doctor declares me 3cm dilated, 80% effaced, with baby's head engaged! We expect to go to the hospital any minute.
July 18-27th - Nooooothiiiiiiing haaaappeeeeens.
July 28th 7:30am-1:00pm - What a nice chill day. Maybe I'll shave my legs and blow-dry my hair for the fun of it. Heck, let's paint our nails. Huh, I'm having more Braxton-Hicks than usual.
2:00-3:00pm - Yeaaaah, I should start writing these down. And maybe clean the kitchen.
3:00 - Call Zach on his way home from work to say I hope he wrapped everything up cause they might tell me at my doctor's appointment today that this is it. Contractions are 10 minutes apart but completely painless. Just a tightening and release. Jaina and I speed-clean the living room.
4:00 - Put bags in car on the way to doctor's appointment just in case.
4:20 - Doctor doesn't think I'm in real labor yet, but, hmmm, blood pressure is elevated... we're gonna send you to the hospital anyway.
6:00 - Meet Dad at York Hospital, say goodbye to Jaina, head upstairs. Contractions are 6 minutes apart and utterly painless.

6:30 - My good friend, Meredith, is my nurse. Yay! Labs for possible preeclampsia all come back negative, as expected, but they decide to have me check in anyway. Contractions are 4 minutes apart, moderate intensity, but still just feel like a blood pressure cuff tightening. What the what?
8:30 - We get set up in our own room. I find out that because of my prior c-section I'll need to be hooked up to a monitor constantly to record Baby's heartbeat. That's kind of a bummer cause it means I'll have to stay within steps of the bed rather than shower or walk around which I had been planning on to manage pain. I bounce on the birth ball for a while while Meredith holds my monitor in place since Little Lady was being stubborn and making it difficult for us to hear her heart.
9:45 - Midwife comes in and breaks my water. Woosh! Here we go.
10:00 - Um, yeah, this isn't comfortable.
10:05-11:45 - I AM EARTH MAMA, HEAR ME ROAR!!!! Do. not. touch me.
11:45 - Still only 4.5cm dilated. Epidural requested.
12:15 - Anesthesiologist arrives
12:45 - Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh..... Dim the lights. Zach falls asleep immediately. I close my eyes and settle in for the night.
1:15 - Nurse switches me to my other side and has me put on oxygen to help Baby's heart rate stay where it should be. I sleep between each contraction, but they're getting uncomfortable.
2:00 - Why does my butt hurt?
2:15 - I think I'm supposed to call if my butt hurts. If it still hurts at 2:30 I'm calling. ZZZzzz...
2:30 - Heyo! Baby's very ready to come out. Wake up Zach. He basically has a heart attack.
2:40 - My bed magically transforms into a piece of gym equipment, and they watch while I do a practice push. Midwife and nurse immediately gown up. For some reason I become very concerned about Zach and keep asking if he's okay.

3:14am - Roughly 10 contractions later I manhandled this baby out of me. Seriously never been prouder of any accomplishment. She was born face up (!!!!), and presented forehead first which is supposed to be quite a bit harder to push out. She also had her cord over her shoulder and across her body - Miss America sash style.

I had the most amazing epidural. I couldn't feel any pain, but I felt all the pressure and knew right where she was. That helped so much. Also the handles. Once they brought the handles up on the bed I rocked it.

She was so healthy and ALIVE when she came out, and it was pretty amazing to have her right up on my chest immediately. There were lots of perks with Jaina's planned c-section, but man, nothing beats that immediate contact with your kid.

3:30 - The midwife calls an OB in to do my repair stitches, and - yay! - it's my favorite doctor at the practice. So I got to see her while she fixed me up.

4:00-5:30 - After they finished with me and got Fiona all weighed and cleaned up she came back to me and nursed like a champ. Baby instinct is pretty incredible.

6:00am - We got to our room over in maternity and realize a new day just started. Only we didn't get to sleep the night before... It's gonna be a long day.

It took me quite a while to get over pulling that all-nighter. The highlight of that day was watching Jaina meet her baby sister. She was so sweet and basically clobbered her with kisses.

I didn't get to sleep much that night either. It felt like people were coming in my room all night long. And never while we had Fiona up to feed her. Grr.

My fancy homemade hospital gown. ;)

Then the next night Little Miss wanted to eat literally every hour. Friday morning I finally had a nap for an hour and a half. That was my longest stretch since Monday night. Yuuuuuuck. 

 Her profile is already so different since her face has come un-smushed.

That's what coming out forehead-first will do to ya.

I saw a mom online compare that first post-partum week to John and Yoko's bed-in. I totally agree, except with a lot more bodily fluids. ;p I was only steps away from a bed or couch for over a week. You're in a whole different dimension. It's uncomfortably intimate, tender, and intense. You can be deliriously happy one second and in the very depths of despair the next.

We've been this new family for over two weeks now, and I just feel like I'm crawling out of the postpartum bed-in cave. I finally returned all the texts I received. I'm beginning to be interested in what's going on in the outside world.

I don't know if other women experience this, but I feel like my mind was operating on over-drive the week after Fiona's birth, but I had no strength or will to express all the thoughts I was having. What this results in is whole essays written in my head while I sat nursing Fiona all night and day but then not being able to get any of those words down even if I got to a notebook or computer moments later. You'll just have to trust me when I say I had so many glorious thoughts on motherhood, birth, mortality, and pain. I think I mentally solved a few women's rights issues too. Too bad the world will never know... ;)

 Dressed and ready to go home!

Here's one snippet of something I was trying to work out:

People often look on postpartum women as angels. These serene madonnas holding court from their hospital beds. But what if we changed our perception of new mothers from angels to warriors? Wounded warriors who've just fought the biggest battle of their lives. Madonnas are silent, stoic; a sweet facade against which a precious baby sits. 

Warriors have a story worth hearing. People ask a warrior about the wounds received in battle! A madonna sits there LITERALLY BLEEDING, in a haze of hormones and maybe narcotics, muscles aching, body alternating between sweating and shivering, and sweetly answers questions about her baby - glossing over any of the unpleasant details of her birth.

Not sure where that was headed, but that's just a glimpse of what a brain high on adrenaline and every other hormone sounds like. There should be a nursing app that also has a voice recorder to capture all of the musings women have while they feed their children. ;)

So that's Fiona Ruth's birth story! I was soooo happy with how it went. She's doing so well. Jaina's doing great. Zach and I are getting there. ;) I'm trying not to be impatient waiting for our routine to fall in place. We'll get there.

More about Fiona's name to come. It took me two weeks to write this, so don't hold your breath. ;)

reflections on 6 (12) years... and road trips

Zach and I just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We've still been married less than half the time we've "been together", though. We dated for six and a half years. Much of that was spent living far apart. I would never recommend long-distance dating, but because of it we're kind of amazing -- and super efficient -- at talking out our disagreements and assessing where our relationship is headed.

 Zach and Kara circa 2006

Once, while we were dating, we were getting ready to take a long road trip from Michigan to Pennsylvania. I said I was gonna go clean out his car before the trip. He asked if I needed any help, and I think I shrugged and said, "If you want." He raised an eyebrow, like what's that supposed to mean? I smiled, walked back, gave him a hug, looked in his eyes, and said, "I'm going out to clean the car. I'd like to do it myself, but if you could come out in 10 minutes, tell me I'm doing a good job, and thank me that would be great." His cousin's fiance who caught the whole exchange said, "Whoa, you guys are crazy good at communication."

And so we are, when we try.

 Engagement - 2008

When you live together, though, especially with a talking, talking, talking toddler, end of the evening communication is usually:

    "Wanna watch something?"
    "Sure."

or

    "The $57 at Giant was for groceries, but the $24 at Target was a gift."

That's okay, though. It's a totally different stage of life. So many of our conversations in our early twenties were so intense because the stakes were so high. Is he the one I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with? Is this little flaw I've just found a deal breaker for me? or for him?

 Honeymoon cruise shenanigans - 2009

We were away as a family in North Carolina over our anniversary last week, and we got to have lots of good conversations. Plus, the trip opened up with probably one of my favorite moments of our marriage so far.

To set up the story, here's how we do car trips: Zach goes to bed pretty early the night before since he does all the driving. I stay up till 2am or later getting every little thing packed and in order.

I like to have the house looking exactly how I'd like to see it when I come home. I put all of the packed bags in a line by the door. I put all of the food we'll need for the cooler on one fridge shelf and all the food that will need to be thrown away in the morning on a different shelf. I choose what Jaina and I will wear for the whole trip. I pack two bags of toys and books for Jaina; one for the car and one for the house when we get there. I pack all of my toiletries except for my toothbrush and deodorant which sit neatly on top of my half-zipped toiletry bag.

In short, I put a lot of work into making the morning exit as smooth as possible.

 Wedding rehearsal - 2009

Zach got right up and showered in the morning, and I took my usual forever and a day to sit on the edge of the bed and try to wake up my face. As I slowly (and calmly) got ready, I could hear cabinets opening and closing downstairs and just a flurry of activity. I felt myself getting annoyed, but as I was pulling up my car trip yoga pants I had an epiphany.

This is what we do. I pre-plan, and Zach crisis-manages.

I could hear him taking out the kitchen trash (before I had a chance to make our trip lunches or to catch any other last minute trash). I told myself this is the part of the morning when he runs around making rash decisions, and I can either get all huffy about it and ruin our trip or I can calmly show him the plan I've laid out (hopefully taking away his stress) and we can proceed from there.

I came downstairs proud of all the progress I've made as a wife and determined to speak respectfully. He met me on the stairs saying,

"I threw out all the milk."

I sat down on the stairs and laughed hysterically.

It was just so "us", and I love it.

 Pregnancy announcement #1 - 2011

I love that even after 12 years of identifying with each other we still have so much to learn and so many rough edges to smooth out.

Baby #2 is due in nine weeks, and I am actually excited by the thought of going through a VBAC together. That's when Crisis-Management Zach really shines.

There's only a certain amount I can plan for when it comes to birthing. But Zach is amazing when it comes to emergencies. We're a perfect team, really. I meticulously plan for all eventual outcomes, and Zach reacts quickly and confidently... to all eventual outcomes. You want this guy on your team in a zombie apocalypse. I think Emergency Zach is the hottest Zach, actually. ; ) And I'm kind of excited to see him again.

Here's to new adventures in parenting, Honey. But here's a warning. If we're leaving on a trip with the new baby, and you throw out any breastmilk, I might kill you. I had a plan for that.

Maternity photos (before Jaina) - 2012