A Likely Story

She’s a week old already!  It’s been a whirlwind for sure.  We’re all just taken with her.  I find myself saying to Jonah many times a day to “back off!” or “give her some space, please.”  He is all up in her business.

Speaking of Jonah, he informed us that he no longer wants to be called Jonah.  He wants us to refer to him as Big Brother.  In fact, he even refers to himself in the third person as Big Brother.  Like most men I know, he already has his identity tied up in his work!

Depsite the sleep deprivation, Jason and I are really enjoying becoming parents again.  When your “baby” is 4 years old, it’s easy to forget all the neat things about having a newborn in the house.  Their funny little noises – Lyla chirps, their funny faces and that sweet “new baby” smell.  We, I admit, act like giddy idiots most of the time with her. That’s okay though, it’s baby love!

Lyla had her first doctor appointment on Monday.  She had started to show signs of jaundice in the hospital, and it got worse over the weekend.  After a bilirubin heel stick (which Lyla slept the entire way through) we learned that her bilirubin levels were high enough that she would need to go under the bili lights to bring the levels down to normal.  I freaked.  The first hiccup, and I just freaked!  Although I knew in my head that this was a fairly normal thing that happens to newborns, my heart just wouldn’t hear it which resulted in some minor blubbering and fretting. Ah, but God is good.  He has surrounded us with so many amazing sources of encouragement here in Oklahoma, back in Tennessee and elsewhere.  Friends, you are amazing. 

Today I am waiting for a phone call to see where we are with her levels.  We took her in for another heel stick today (again, she slept right through it!  Atta girl!) I don’t feel anxious.  I just wish I knew how long I’d have to sit here and watch her sleep in her bassinet lying on the bili light.  She literally looks like one of the little glow worm toys I had as a kid.  I’m waiting to take a photo this evening to show you all what I mean.  It’s really cute!

In the midst of all this, I have to say that I have the most amazing mom.  She’s been with us since the birth and has made all this transition a breeze.  That, and she’s fun to have around.  She and Jason almost have too much fun as I am constantly asking them to keep it down, there’s a baby sleeping for pete’s sake!

Well tonight I plan to kick back and watch Marley& Me.  I can’t wait!  It was a fun book.  Also, if you are looking for a funny, lighthearted movie, I highly recommend Baby Mama.  I put off watching this for fear that it would be raunchy like so many “SNL” type movies are.  Not so, Baby Mama was hilarious!  We watched it twice.

Hello, friends!  It’s 11pm and next to me on the couch are my sleeping husband and a sweet little sleeping baby girl. Sigh. I am pretty much in hog heaven. 

I decided to use this post to share my birth story, minus the gory details. 

I didn’t feel well Monday evening.  I was having a lot of braxton hicks and the sciatica was out of control.  I was mis-er-able.    I woke up at 5am on Tuesday with contractions. I got up and around, getting ready much earlier than usual.  I just had a feeling this day might get a little hairy. I started timing the contractions at 7am and was ELATED to find they were coming at regular intervals.  I called the doctor at 8:30am and was even more elated when they told me to come on to the hospital. 

Jason rushed home after being at work for a whole 45 minutes and we took Jonah to school before heading to the hospital.  We (okay, I) waddled to triage, aka preggo purgatory.  You do your time in triage and if it looks like an all systems go, you get moved to preggo heaven – Labor & Delivery.

After an hour in triage, it looked like that while I was dilated more, I wasn’t making much real progress.  The nurses were getting ready to banish me back to the house for what was sure to be hours of waddling around trying to get things moving when they decided to call my doctor first.  If I ever had any doubts about my doc (and I haven’t – he is great!) they were banished after that phone call.  He asked if I’d like to stay and “get this show on the road.” To which my answer was a hearty, “YES!”  Yay!  I was moving on up!

At 11am, Jason and I were escorted to L&D by our nurse, Madeline, who really and truly had worked as a L&D nurse for 50 years. Suffice it to say, girlfriend was old, but also fabulous. By 1pm I had pitocin going, my water broken and then an epidural. Ah, the sweet epidural.  By 1:30pm, my mom arrived.  I love my mom!

Jason’s mom came shortly after. She and my mom chatted it up while we waited. We didn’t have to wait long!  By 5pm I was ready to go.  At 6:05pm, we had our beautiful baby girl.  She was 8 lbs 5 oz (or as Dr. McAdam’s exclaimed, “What a little chunk!”) and 21.5 inches long.  

Here we are on Saturday night.  My due date is tomorrow.  It’s hard to believe she’s really here.  Compared to my 14 hour labor with Jonah, this 5 hour ordeal was a whirlwind!  She’s just too beautiful.  Jason, Jonah and I just stare at her.  Jonah calls her his pretty Lyla.  She loves to eat, LOVES to sleep, and is so strong!  She kicks like a mule during diaper changes.  Yeah, I’m totally not surprised since she kicked me non-stop in utero. 

Well, that’s about all I can muster for now.  Time to nap before the next feeding.  Thanks to everyone for all the incredibly sweet messages on FB, the visits and gifts. We are really and truly so blessed.

I got angry today, at a stranger!  Was it just hormones? I don’t think so this time. While it may not justly fall into the category of righteous indignation, it felt pretty close to me.

So I am out running errands with Jonah – we were going to Petco to find a cool toy for Jonah’s friend Colin’s new hamster (Colin’s 5th birthday gift) and then on to Crest for grocery shopping.  It’s not unusual for me to strike up a conversation with strangers, in fact I enjoy it, but this particular stranger struck up a quite unfortunate conversation with me. If you can call it a conversation since it left me pretty speechless.

So, said stranger, a young man in his 20s walks past and stops to stare at my rather large pregnant belly.  He smiles and says, ” So have you decided on names for them?” At first I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. My preggo brain slowly processed his words, and I realized he had not said him/her – he said them, as in twins.  Oh my.  While I cannot tell you what look I had on my face, I am sure it wasn’t pleasant yet I managed to be polite and held up one finger, saying, “No, just one.  A girl.  Lyla.”  Now, I was sure the man would see his error and sheepishly apologize.  I would laugh it off, and say, “Oh it’s fine.  I’m due really soon.”  This was not how it panned out.  It got worse.

Instead, this individual says, “Really?!  Wow.”  I reply, “Yes, really.  I am due in like a week.”  He then goes further saying, “I thought you were doing like that mom in California.”  My blood began to boil.  He smiled, congratualted me and walked away. Furious, I called Jason and ranted.  Jason had a tinge of fear in his voice.  Before going to the grocery store, I went home and changed into a less form fitting shirt.

So, friends, what can we take away from this?  Unless someone TELLS you they are carrying more than one . . . no, unless they TELL you are pregnant, please do not ask.  And if you do, apologize, grovel – whatever.  Sigh.  Please, Lyla, come soon!

We are trying to stay sane while waiting for the newest Zaragoza to make her appearance. My eagerness to see her cute little face is due largely in part to the enormity of my baby mountain . . .  er, bump which has become quite cumbersome. I just sort of waddle around and ask Jonah and Jason to fetch things for me.  Fortunately, they are sweet and don’t mind.

Since the possibility of bringing all my thoughts together for one coherent post is pretty unlikely (I’ve tried – several times) here is a little of this and that for your reading enjoyment. 

*Jason and Jonah took a small road trip 90 minutes up the road to Tulsa on Saturday for Jason’s eldest brother’s surprise birthday party. Under strict doctor orders, I stayed home, just in case little missy decided to show up. I thought this would be a great opportunity for some much needed alone/chill time complete with pizza, ice cream and a good chik flick.  Turns out it was insanely boring. I missed them and much to my shock – the noise!  I was ever so glad to see them again on Sunday morning.  Lesson learned:  alone time can be highly overrated.

*Anyone see SNL this week?  I am really sad that I fell asleep because it was truly one of the funnier ones I’ve seen. In particular, “The Rock Obama.” Please, for your own enjoyment, give it a Google.  You won’t be sorry!

*Ever had frozen custard?  I hadn’t until yesterday.  We have this restaurant, which used to be Backyard Burger, about 1/4 of a mile from us called Freddy’s Frozen Custard.  In this case I admit that I did judge a restaurant by its name.  I haven’t had much custard in my life.  Custard reminds me of the word curdle which reminds me of old milk which makes me want to puke.  I admit it, I was prejudiced against custard.  However this weekend and this week we are participating in something called DUCK week (Doing Unselfish Charities for Kids), and this year’s recipient is a little girl named Abby who is in Jonah’s pre-K class.  On Sunday Freddy’s was giving 25% of the bill to Abby when presenting a DUCK week flyer.  In short, turns out that frozen custard is awesome!  I love soft serve, and this was by far the most delicious, creamy soft serve I’ve come across.  Move over Sonic, there’s a new love in my life!

*I think I love age 4 and a half.  I’ve known for some time that a good deal of growth and maturity in kids happens at the half year of whatever age they are.  Suddenly my little man who still had a little bit of toddler in him has completely shed any “babyness” he had left and has really turned into a fun little person.  He’s really into making up hilarious stories right now and loves to play pretend.  It’s amazing really seeing as how he wasn’t doing this a few months ago.  He’s also on the threshold of reading, which to a nerd like me is wildly exciting! One thing is for sure, Lyla could not ask for a cooler big brohter nor one who could keep her better entertained.  Jonah is delighted to know he will have a captive audience who won’t ask for “quiet time.”

*Being so big preggo inevitably means we are watching more movies at home.  Well, it’s not like we went to the movies much to begin with. It’s really hard to pay $2o + when you know you can rent it later for a few bucks. We rent our videos from Family Video which has awesome rental prices and a free kids’ movie section.  Here are our rentals as of late and what we thought: 

-The Duchess- good acting by Keira Knightly and cast but a wildly depressing story.  It seems that every movie I’ve seen her in lately is wildly depressing.  What’s the deal?   The Rocker- okay so we rented this because Raiin Wilson from the Office is in it.  Yes it was pretty dumb, but funny too.  Not as vulgar as I had feared.  Sort of a weird teeny bopper/SNL fan type movie.  Hancock - Okay so I didn’t watch this, but Jason did.  I took a nap.  He kept calling it “Hitchcock.”  He says it was good. 

Alright folks, that’s all for now.  Don’t know how much I’ll be blogging in the coming weeks as we wait for Lyla to show up, but I promise to keep you posted!