Welcome, Caleb!

Sheesh, they put me on a pink blanket. Yet another side effect of being second-born. At least I'm not in girl clothes...

For anyone who is interested, here is how the labor went down...

I awoke this past Thursday morning at 5:25 AM to find that I was having contractions roughly every 10 minutes. I stayed in bed until around 6:30 (by then I was convinced that maybe I was actually in real labor) and I got up and got dressed. Leia woke up 20 minutes later, so I got her ready for school between contractions.

"Mommy, why aren't you dressing me? Why are you just standing there?"

"You'll have to wait a minute, sweet pea, Mommy's having a contraction."

"Oh."

At 7:30 I got three in a row that were nearing 5 minutes apart. I woke Jeff up and called Jeff's parents and asked them to come get Leia (she doesn't go to school until 9, and I wasn't taking chances.) Then they slowed down to 10 minutes again and stayed there until 9:30.

At 10:00 I got into the bathtub (tubs are great for dealing with contractions). Jeff wanted to get going but I wanted to stay in the tub. I got out at 11:00 with contractions coming every 4-5 minutes, and we headed for the hospital.

Riding over in the car was less than fun for me. The contractions were way more intense than I remembered them being with Leia. I got myself through by making sort of a low humming/moaning noise (must've sounded bizzare but I could not have cared less) and dreaming of drugs.

When we got there they made me wait downstairs for 10 minutes. I continued moaning through my contractions. Then some woman says, "Come sit down in my office and I'll admit you." I'm thinking, "Are you KIDDING me lady????" but I take my intermittently moaning self into the office. She takes FOREVER to get me admitted (what is she, blind?) while I sort of hold on to her desk for dear life. She slaps a bracelet on me that says 12:01 AM. She tries to explain the admitting packet to me. I want to murder her. Jeff steps in and I go off with the person who showed up to take my upstairs. I refuse a wheelchair, because even though by now contractions are showing up every 2 minutes or so I know I am better off getting there on my own. I hobble down the hall, pausing to squat when contractions hit. There are people waiting for the elevator, who blessedly let us through.

Once we are upstairs, I am hit with yet another contraction and have to stop in the hallway. When it subsides I tell the aide we need to make a break for it, and I waddle as fast as I can to the L&D unit. I walk into my room at 12:12 PM. The nurse takes one look at me and says "Oh my, you mean business. Let's get a gown on you. Can you give me a urine sample?" I tell her I will do my best.

Once inside the bathroom I sit down to attempt a urine sample and my water breaks. (How convenient...no mess.) I yell out to the nurse that my water broke. She comes in to help me into the gown. Then I get hit with the worst contraction ever - 10 times worse than any of Leia's - and I say, "Holy..."

The nurse says, "Go ahead. Let it out."

I proceed to spew every expletive I ever heard. Jeff said it sounded like I had an attack of Tourette's. Then I hobble out of the bathroom and inform Jeff that I am absolutely not making him any more babies, ever.

Then another hits. Jeff steps toward me. I hiss, "Get out" and wave him away. (Poor Jeff.) He moves out of my line of sight and says, "I am here if you need me." Meanwhile the nurse is begging me to get into the bed so she can check me. I tell her I can't, but somehow do so anyway.

She takes one look at me and shouts, "Fully dilated and effaced!" I inform her that I am sorry but I have to push RIGHT NOW. Jeff peeks in and sees the baby crowning. The nurse yells for an obstetrician. Mild chaos erupts as my doctor is not on the floor. They pluck a random OB who was on her way to surgery and she catches my baby about 2 minutes later. Jeff says I held off on pushing him out until they told me too, but I have no recollection of this.

By now it was 12:20, and little Caleb has made his debut. 7 lbs 13 oz, 21 inches long.

I have to say, as great as it is to get delivery over so quickly, it is also highly disorienting. It took me a while to take in that yes, I had him, it was done, and I'm not going to wake up in a few hours still pregnant.

So that is my tale, floating around in cyberspace for posterity. The little guy is sleeping now and I am tired of typing. I am going to take a nap!

Coming soon...

I'm only freaking out a little bit...


On the ABD front, I am happy to report that I am nearing the halfway mark in data collection. And I've gotten some good feedback from my chair on my writing so far. End in sight!

Very scary...

To have only 70 some-odd days left until the little guy makes his debut...I'm 30 weeks.

I'm scrambling to get as much writing done as possible in the absence of data (I won't really get any until the spring semester is underway). I'm also putting together the nursery and sorting through little clothes and baby things I haven't looked at in three years. Luckily we got a nice pile of loaner clothes, since Leia had maybe three unisex items in her entire first-year wardrobe.

Oh, and Leia informs me that she also has a baby in her tummy, and likes to have me feel him kick. Here is another conversation we had a few days ago:

Leia: Mommy, how did my baby brother get into your tummy?
Me: (praying this will suffice) Well, Mommy and Daddy made him, and we put him there until he gets big enough to come out.
Leia: How will he come out?
Me: (hopeful since the first pseudo-explanation seemed to fly) We'll go to the hospital and the doctor helps Mommy get him out.
Leia: How?
Me: The doctor helps...
Leia: But HOW???
Me: (so much for lame euphemisms) Well...he comes out through Mommy's vagina.

Silence.

She considers this for a few minutes.

Leia: When you and Daddy go to the hospital, can I come too?
Me: You'll stay with Me-Ma and Papa Bear and then come see us once the baby is out. How does that sound?
Leia: Well, I want to go with you. I want to see what happens.

Always the skeptic. Who can blame her?

These are the days of our lives...

IRB approval!

I am happy to report that I got my IRB approval today, after minimal revisions. (Basically they made me re-word stuff...gotta love red tape!) Now I am free to collect data!

Overdue Halloween pic

Here is Miss Leia in her Cinderella outfit (minus the tiara, which lasted for maybe 5 minutes). She loved trick-or-treating, and if she hadn't been sick with a cold and wheezing like crazy she could have gone on for hours. Oddly enough she had the exact same illness last year, and I kept her in, but good luck keeping an excited three-year-old from the magic of Halloween!

On an unrelated note, my IRB stuff got submitted today. Now all I have to do is anxiously await approval...

Yay!

I finally had my proposal meeting today, and I passed! That means my topic is approved, and pending IRB approval I can collect my data. Unfortunately the University's IRB approval process has gotten much more complicated since the last time I had to do it.
You see, it used to be that the "IRB" was one professor - you filled out a 2-page form and gave him a copy of the materials you were using, and he approved you. Now it is a proper IRB committee, replete with deadlines and procedures and all that nonsense. Oh well. I am a little stressed about that, but hopefully I can get it done relatively quickly.

I was right...

It's a boy!!
(That's his hand, for those who may be ultrasound-image-reading impaired.)

Oh my...could it be?

Could I actually graduate?

In this lifetime??

I found a third committee member, and I have a proposal date tentatively set. It is in less than 2 weeks! Once the proposal goes through I can collect my data, and then analyze it and write it up and...dare I say it...FINISH!!! I can't think about it too much or I get nervous.

Oh, and tomorrow we find out if it is a girl or a boy. Assuming the baby decides to give us a good view, of course.

News

Now that I've heard an actual heartbeat, I figure it's time to fill in those who don't already know about my latest deadline: March 18!!! And I am convinced it's a boy.

Leia's big day

Hi Mommy! I'm ready for my first day of preschool!


Check out my Ariel lunchbox!


Mommy can't believe how big you're getting...

Jeff gets a bite!

For those who may not know, Jeff finished his manuscript and has been sending out queries. The way it works is you send out "partials" of varying lengths to agents, and based on that small piece of your work they either reject you or get interested and ask for more. He's been accumulating the usual pile of rejection letters (10 and counting)...but this morning he also got a request for the whole manuscript!! Especially on the heels of the rejections, it is very affirming for Jeff that an agent finds the book potentially interesting and wants to see the rest. I, for one, am excited. We'll see where it goes from here...

OMG, there is a kitten in my engine.

So this morning I heard loud meows coming from my garage, and both my kitties were looking at me in my kitchen. I opened the door to the garage, and saw a tiny kitten under my car!! He was stuck in the garage all night, poor guy. I opened the garage door to let him out, but he didn't go out, he disappeared. I looked all over the garage, still hearing the meow, which sounded like it was near the car but I couldn't see the little guy anywhere.

So I popped the hood. And saw a little kitten head staring back at me. Which then promptly disappeared as he burrowed himself deeper into the engine. Now what? After a few minutes of searching the engine and poking at it with an umbrella I couldn't find him, so I thought maybe he ran out. I closed the hood. About a half hour later, I took Jeff into the garage with me and he opened the hood, just to be sure, and THERE HE WAS, right on top. Had I been expecting it I could have grabbed him, but he wriggled off into the depths of the engine once more. We decided to leave some food out and leave the hood up in hopes that he would come out. I was trying to go to the gym I just joined (free childcare!), so I had to lug the car seat out of my car and wrestle it into Jeff's.

When L and I came home, the food had been eaten, so I *guess* this means the little bugger found his way out. But I am petrified to start my car. I really needed a visual confirmation on this one, you know? Let the paranoid checking begin...

Cutie and the Geek

It's all in how you dress 'em.

Stupid genetics...

So Leia was with my parents, and she ate a small amount of cereal that had peanut butter in it. (It was my nephew's Reeses Puffs...don't get me started on the fact that he was eating *that*, but anyway...) She develped hives and later started coughing and wheezing pretty badly. After a few phone calls, my father rushed her to the doctors office and she ended up needing an adrenaline shot. Ugh. So now we need to carry an epi-pen and join the ranks of parents with a peanut-allergic child. I am thankful that she does *not* get the "throat closes up and you die" kind of reaction, but it is still scary. I swear, she inherited all of her daddy's genetic anomalies. (He is not allergic to peanuts in particular, but is definitely the allergic type, and toted around his own epi-pen for years.) She even has his feet. Poor child.

Niagara Falls

For our 8th anniversary (yikes!), Jeff and I drove up to Niagara Falls for two nights without the child (that alone is a vacation in and of itself...the destination is just gravy). Here is Jeff in the smurf suit they give you for the Maid of the Mist










American falls from the boat...Jeff was determined to get a shot with a bird in it.








After Jeff told me I smile like a dork for pictures.








Here are Jeff's hives from being on the Maid of the Mist. He's a freak of nature, I tell you.





All in all, it was a great little trip. There's lots of campy tourist stuff near the falls that is fun to do, and the falls themselves are one of those things you really ought to see at least once in your lifetime.

Rant...

Since Jeff has left the full-time workforce, we have had to foot the bill for our health insurance directly. This is not a small bill, and since we are paying out the ass for coverage I have decided to get everybody current with their checkups. Last week I had an appointment with a dermatologist to have my skin checked, and I had to have a couple of biopsies. Yesterday I got "the call" from Oxford...the one where they are "just wondering" if I might have some "other" insurance coverage so they can weasel out of paying my claim. They then proceed to withold payment until I verify that I'm not forgetting to charge my secret backup health insurance company instead of them. Heaven forbid Oxford should have to, oh, I don't know, PAY for something. Honestly, this happens every time I go to the damn doctor, and I am really sick of it.

Rant over. Oh, and my skin is fine :)

Spider Man 3

A Synopsis:

Particle Man, Particle Man
Particle Man hates Spider Man
They have a fight
Spider Man wins
Particle Man

How did I end up on this track???

I have been really struggling over the past several months with the dissertation. I've been researching and reading and writing but I am not really getting anywhere, which I am very frustrated with and seem to deal with primarily through avoidance. (And crochet...wait until I post pictures of the blanket I am finishing up for my Mom for Mother's Day...but that will come later.)

Part of the problem is that I am so removed from the community at school. I live far away, and everyone I know has already graduated. But I think the real reason involves the little epiphany I had last night: Ever since I became a mother, I don't take myself or my potential career all that seriously, and as a result, neither does anyone else. Oops...I've mommy-tracked myself. I have been reduced to continually reminding everyone involved that yes, I still exist, and yes, I do intend to graduate someday. It's not unlike running inside a hamster wheel and it's predictably exhausting.

I'm not sure what my point is in posting this, and I'm not sure how I intend to climb out of this little hole I seem to be in. I just needed to put it out there, I guess. It's been on my mind for a long time now but I couldn't put it into words.

Lazy afternoon

Leia settles down to paint, while Max hangs out to watch.








Of course paint feels great on your nose.








And your face...











And your eyes...
Maybe now would be a good time for a bath.