There is was again. The tiny, squirting sound of newborn poop. The third time in five minutes. I kid you not. Another diaper filled with yellow, liquid breastmilk poop. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. (I realize this is the grossest introduction to a blog post ever. I'm sure in a year I'll look back and be completed revolted, but when you are in the thick of it with newborn fluids and sounds, you lose a bit of your decency for a few months.) This little girl poops with the best of them, but three times in five minutes was a new record. It was almost as if I had wished it upon myself. Micah had taken the girls on a bike ride to give me some "alone time" on a Sunday afternoon, but instead of being grateful, I was a postpartum, bitter mess. He said he would take them much earlier in the morning, but he got distracted by an NBA playoff game. The girls were destroying the house. I had served breakfast, cleaned breakfast, and got the girls dressed, huffing and puffing my way through Eisley's solid morning nap instead of doing anything remotely restful. By the time they left, I was irate. "Now the baby is going to wake up and I'm going to spend my ALONE hour nursing," I hissed at Micah as he walked out the door. And it was true. I nursed the whole hour, I dealt with a record-setting number of poopy diapers, and I was just patting Eisley back to sleep when the older girls walked into the house after their hour-long bike ride. But somewhere beneath the exhaustion, the resentment, and the tornado of postpartum hormones, I mustered a half-smile. I signed up for this. When I became a mother, I entered into a covenant with my children. I promised them, "I will lay down my life for you like Jesus laid down his life for me." Maybe I never said those words out loud, but I agreed to them in my heart. So even when my husband gets distracted by the NBA playoffs. Even when my preschooler uses a sassy tone for the tenth time that day. Even when my toddler is throwing a tantrum. Even when I'm hungry and tired and just want ten minutes alone... None of it really matters. Sure, it would be nice if my older children didn't fight over who gets the pink water bottle and if my husband were a little more sensitive to my fragile, postpartum state, but it doesn't change my role. It doesn't change the truth that I must live out the Gospel every day for my children. Three poops or ten poops... I will change your diaper. Second tantrum or fifth... I will discipline you with all the wisdom and grace and patience I can muster. Bumped head or skinned knee caused by slightly erratic behavior as you learn to adjust to a new sibling... I will give you a hug and a band-aid too. Just like my Savior, I lay my life down. I may give up my alone time with tears. I may struggle against my flesh as I seek to serve my children with a smile and a gentle tone. I will surrender my body to breastfeeding a baby while a toddler climbs on my back, even when I long for no one to touch me. Jesus surrendered his body on a cross for me. That truth will get me through the next tantrum, the next nursing session, the next poopy diaper. I count it all joy to die to myself as I worship the One who died for me. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." || John 15:12-13 || ... Read more
Eisley Avalon: A Birth Story (Part II)
Micah and I breezed through our four-minute, 4am commute the hospital and arrived to find triage calm and empty. They checked my fluids, inserted my IV (with one blown vein... gross!), and got me into my delivery room quickly. I was still contracting every 2-3 minutes and not in unbearable pain yet, but they told me the anesthesiologist was available whenever I wanted an epidural. I decided not to wait until I was miserable this time around. I was dilated to a 4 and thought maybe I could get an epidural and take a nap before delivery. I got my epidural around 6:30am, and then my doctor came in to check on me about an hour later. The nurse informed her that my water was not fully broken on one side, so my doctor broke the rest of my water. She then told my nurse she would be at the gym and to call her cell phone when it was time to deliver. At that point, both Micah and I tried to sleep. Micah was successful. I was not. Just as I was dozing off, I started to itch. I forgot that itching is a side effect of an epidural. I could sleep through it with Zianne, because I had such a long, exhausting labor. I didn't have time to sleep with Talitha because by the time I got an epidural I was so far along and getting close to transition. This time around, I felt drowsy, but since I went into labor after three solid hours of sleep (ha!), I wasn't exhausted enough to sleep through the itchy feeling. I finally surrendered the idea of sleep and started texting some friends and family with updates. I also agreed to a little Pitocin to speed up my now lagging contractions. Right then my friend Angie walked in. She recently became a doula and offered to attend our birth for free, as a gift to us and to gain experience in her practice. I had texted her right after I got my epidural, and she arrived on her own accord at the perfect time. Micah woke up from his nap, walked downstairs to find some breakfast, and Angie chatted with me to fill the time. The nurse came in to check me and said I was almost complete, at an 8 or a 9. She mentioned that my cervix hadn't fully opened on the right side, so Angie suggested using the peanut ball. Although I had heard about this device in my labor classes long ago, I had never actually seen one. It is huge... and very effective. They slipped the giant apparatus between my knees and within four minutes I was commanding them to take it out. The baby was ready, and I could feel it. The nurse confirmed I had made it to a ten and decided we probably shouldn't do practice pushes since this was my third baby and I was clearly ready to deliver. She turned off my Pitocin and ran off to call my doctor who said she would arrive in 15 minutes. My doctor's 15 minutes ended up being 30 minutes. I waited and waited, so thankful to have an epidural. I could feel so much pressure during every contraction, and now I know why women without drugs have an overwhelming urge to push out their baby when the time has come. If not for the epidural, my nurse would have been delivering Eisley for sure. Finally, Dr. Lee ran into the room, counted out her supplies, propped my feet into stirrups, and it was time to go. I pushed through two contractions and noticed this growing pain, almost like a burning sensation. It didn't feel like tearing, but it hurt pretty badly and felt nothing like my last two deliveries. By the third contraction, I started to feel upset. Something was burning me and no one could explain it. My doctor and the nurses were encouraging me casually to push, and I thought I probably had 10 or 20 minutes to go with this searing pain. On the fourth contraction, I started to cry until I heard the baby nurse suddenly change her inflection. "Push HARD!" Something about her tone convinced me to push a little harder and all of a sudden my doctor said, "The head is out!" "Praise the Lord," I said under my breath, relieved that whatever pain I was experiencing was about to end. "Praise the Lord," Angie whispered, more tenderly than me in that moment. Micah explained later that the widest part of Eisley's head was coming out when I was writhing in pain. Why didn't he or anyone else tell me that? I have no idea. The way my doctor and the nurse were talking in such subdued tones, I thought I had minutes upon minutes of pushing left. Thank God for the baby's nurse whose little cheer at the end motivated me. With one more tiny push, our baby was out. I glanced down at her just as Micah told me it was a girl. Three girls! It seemed surprising and not surprising and perfect all at the same time. The rest of delivery was pretty seamless. A few tiny stitches, a babe who nursed for 40 minutes on her very first attempt. All the nurses and my doctor kept saying the same thing... "That's a big baby!" "That's a very big baby." However, at our hospital they don't weigh the baby until 60 minutes after birth to protect the golden hour of skin-to-skin contact. By the time, the nurse finally came in to weigh Eisley and do her other tests, everyone else had left. My doctor was gone, Angie was gone, even my nurse was off doing something else. They put Eisley on the scale and I strained my eyes to see the digits across the room. "How big is she?" I asked. The nurse replied, "9 pounds, 4 ounces." I was in disbelief. Big babies run in my family and Micah's family, and I expected a baby in the mid to high 8 pound range, but never in my life did I think I'd have a baby over 9 pounds. Especially not a girl. Especially not before my due date. Now that she's arrived, I'm pretty sure Eisley's due date was off. We had no idea when we conceived, so our due date was based on an ultrasound where she measured 9 weeks and 2 days. Since she came out over nine pounds with slightly dry skin and fingernails so long they were breaking off, I am pretty sure she was actually closer to 41 weeks when she was born. Although I'm calling her Eisley in this post, I should note that she still didn't have a name at this point. Micah held her after she was weighed and we whispered ideas about baby names as nurses moved in and out of our room. Since we didn't have any family at the hospital with us, we didn't feel as much pressure to decide on her name before anyone met her (like we did with Talitha). We went ahead and texted our families to say it was a girl and we weren't sure of the name yet. When we made it to our recovery room, I wrote down all our possible girl names (three different first names with a variety of middle name options) and read the list out loud as Micah held our baby girl. We started leaning toward Eisley right away, but were uncertain of her middle name. Typically, Micah likes our children to have "normal" middle names to make up for their "weird" first names, but this time around he surprised me. "I think I like Eisley Avalon the best," he said. And with that, our precious third daughter had a name. The rest of our time in the hospital was relatively easy. Kayla brought the girls to meet their sister that afternoon, and we came home the very next day. It was Good Friday. We spent Easter weekend with a sleepy newborn, celebrating our new life in Christ and new life in our family as well. Postscript: *Eisley has a "stork bite" on her forehead and nose, which can be seen clearly in the above picture. When she first came out, the nurses weren't sure if it was bruise from delivery or a birth mark of some sort. It was hard to tell since her skin and lungs and blood flow were all still adjusting to life outside the womb. The next day the pediatrician confirmed it's a stork bite (medical name: nevus simplex), and said it should fade away in the next 12-18 months. In many cultures, stork bites are called "angel kisses" or "raspberries" and they are considered good luck. ... Read more
Eisley Avalon: A Birth Story (Part I)
I've heard two different narratives about third children. Some say third kids throw you for a loop - disrupting the seamless family dynamic you had with just two offspring. But others say third kids are laid-back and cheerful, easily slipping into the existing family structure. If her birth story is any indicator of her future demeanor, Eisley arrived quickly and easily at a time that conveniently fit everyone else's schedules. My hope is that our baby would be born after April 12th. I had a few things to wrap up at school that day, and then I was planning to work from home until the baby's arrival. Little did I know when I left campus at 3pm on Wednesday, April 12th, my water would break exactly 12 hours later. That same evening Kayla took Zianne and Talitha to an Angel's Baseball game. Kayla loves baseball and visiting new stadiums, so she had planned months in advance to take the girls to a game around the baby's due date. It was a special auntie date night before Kayla moves away at the end of this month (cue postpartum crying). Since Kayla was taking the girls all evening, Micah and I decided to sneak in a date night. We used a gift card from my parents and had a lovely dinner on the water in Laguna Beach. I was hoping for a gorgeous sunset, but it was rather cloudy. I had also been battling a cough and congestion for at least a week. Because of the cloudy skies and my stuffy nose, we almost skipped our fancy dinner for something more casual. We debated getting burgers from Rudy's Shake Shack and saving our gift card, but Micah insisted we follow through on our beach dinner. Although it was overcast, for the briefest moment right when we got called to the beachside hostess stand to claim our table, the clouds parted and we got a thirty second sunset in the midst of the gloomy evening. Micah joked that God always gives me what I want... At dinner, we discussed baby names and I ate red wine short ribs and walnut cream sauce ravioli. I left the restaurant satisfied with my mini-sunset and filling meal. When I was in labor just hours later, I was so thankful we opted to spend our gift card on quality food rather than eating a greasy burger and a milkshake right before delivery. We made it home before the girls. When they walked in around 10pm, we looked at all their loot (tote bags and popcorn and cotton candy and cracker jacks) and got their sugar-filled, tired bodies tucked in bed. I finally climbed in bed around midnight, utterly exhausted. I woke up just after 3:00am, thinking I had dreamt that my water broke. I blinked in the darkness and tried to figure out if it was actually a dream or reality. I decided I should probably check and trudged my huge body to the bathroom. Sure enough, my water had broken, but thankfully it was more of slow leak than a huge gush like I had with the other two girls. I caught it right in time and not even a drop got in our sheets! I had just showered and shaved the previous evening before our date night, so I brushed my teeth and started gathering my toiletries to take to the hospital. I woke Micah up a few minutes later. It's important to note that Micah has been lecturing me for months about getting to the hospital quickly this time around. Ever since our good friends accidentally had their third baby at home in their bathroom, Micah has taken our hospital commute time very seriously. He told Kayla and me that if I were to go into labor on a work day, we shouldn't even bother calling him at the office. Kayla should just rush me to the hospital and text him once I got there. An accidental home birth is his worst nightmare. Kayla and I laughed at these lectures. We happen to live four minutes away from our hospital, and I'm not one to labor at home in pain for as long as I can. With my water broken, I didn't feel rushed, but I did try to move fairly quickly just in case I had a short labor or triage was crowded and slow (like it was with Talitha). Micah, on the other hand, did not heed his own lectures. For the first few minutes, he wandered around our room slowly, still sleepy and dazed. I told him I was hoping to leave for the hospital in 20 minutes, but he didn't seem to move any quicker. Finally, I said, "Micah, I am having contractions every 2-3 minutes. I would like to leave SOON." Suddenly, he jolted alert and looked at me in disbelief. "Really?!" he exclaimed. That seemed to be the motivation he needed, because he instantly went into the bathroom to quickly shave and shower. One thing I had been slightly concerned about was childcare while we were at the hospital. Micah's sister, Kayla, lives with us, but she has a job where she is often gone in the evenings and on weekends. I was hoping the baby would come at a time when Kayla would be home, but I had a couple of my college students on call just in case. When I knocked on Kayla's bedroom door around 4am to tell her we were headed to the hospital, she jumped out of bed excited. She informed me that she didn't have to work at all on Thursday and wasn't on shift until 5pm on Friday, so she could easily take care of the girls and drop them off at school the next day. It was seriously impeccable timing... ... Read more
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