new year new year new year!

I have never been a numbers person. Unfortunately for my SAT scores, I quit at math pretty much in the 4th grade and never really progressed. That landed me squarely in a pre-cal class taught by a coach while all my super smart friends were taking mystical math classes by a cool, genius professor-type high school teacher. 

Whatever. 

My teacher let us out of class to get breakfast tacos. 

"If you get caught it's your ass, but if not, bring me two carne guisada."

I am, however, friends with a lovely lady who has a quirk involving odd numbers. When making copies, there's 3 copies made. Not 2, not 4, but 3. That makes next year, 2011, in prime position to be awesome. 2010 for me was pretty much summed up by a whole lot of transformational growth, amazing miracles, and a whole lot of vomit. I am ready for what next year will bring.

Now that Christmas is over, it's time again to start thinking about New Year's resolutions! My favorite time of year! I had originally planned to do a triathlon, but these last few weeks of recovery (did I really have major surgery?! I can still hardly wrap my mind around it.) have taught me to treat my body gently. I also am ready to get serious about things I dabble in: veggies (the growing and eating) and yoga.

While prego I felt so gross that I ate whatever sounded good, meaty or not. I'm ready to veer back toward the veggies. Abdominal surgery, while ending in a wonderous, beautiful life, has made me appreciate all the things that those muscles do. Breathing, laughing, coughing, laying comfortably in bed, walking, talking, everything pretty much. Rehabilitating those muscles that have been stretched to their limit in order to accommodate a growing life has included a whole lot of rest and an acute awareness of how central they are to my whole body's function. I mean hey, they don't call it "core" for nothing. So yeah. I am going to commit to some regular yoga to focus my brain and to heal my body.

Overall I think the theme of this next year is turning out to be devotion. Devoting myself to spending the time every day to become a better musician, a thoughtful friend, a focused and fun momma and wife, to pray, to handwrite notes, that sort of thing.

Anyone else out there working on their resolutions? Don't bah-humbug these things, friends. We all have things we want to tweak in our lives. Why not set after a goal that is attainable and meaningful?

how it all went down: Monday & Tuesday

Before I start, I just want to say that when someone has been through a heavy experience, don't underestimate the power of these four words: "tell me what happened." I've sat down a million times over the last couple weeks wanting to write this down and not being able to, mostly because labor was obscenely long (56 hours?) and then I had a bunch of stuff to resolve in my own brain about how everything turned out. All that being said, I really enjoyed being in labor...call me crazy but I think there are few times in life when your brain is forced to take a back seat and all there is left is what your senses give you, and then you get to react accordingly. It was kind of like being at a really awesome concert.

So anyway.

Monday

 morning meant I was 42 weeks and 1 day and we decided to do some natural induction stuff, so I ended up drinking the castor oil smoothie, which ended up in some cramps but nothing really consistent. That was also the day of the midwife visit and the membrane stripping *shudder* and the discussion of baby positioning (less than favorable). I think I walked the mile home from my midwife's office that day. I was in touch with my doula, who spoke with my midwfe about what was going on position-wise, and she adjusted me accordingly (closed off my right hip in hopes the baby would scoot over to where it was supposed to). 

Tuesday

  about 3:30am is when we officially say that labor started. I had contractions every 15 minutes 

6:00am contractions were less regular. It was decided to do the castor oil/breast pump/walking again...on the walk I puked up all the castor oil smoothie (surprised? no?) and then by 

7:30am I had contractions between 7-15 minutes, and then by 

12:30pm I had contractions every 5-7 minutes. They were not very strong, and I was pretty much just in early labor.

2:00pm I was scheduled for another sonogram to make sure that the baby was STILL okay, still with lots of fluid and still with a good heart rate (of course she was). During that visit I was hooked up to a contraction monitor, and the technicians said, "ummmm....did you know you're having really regular contractions?" and "yeah...when are you going to the birth center?" 

4:30pm We had another scheduled visit with my midwfe, so we went over there and found out I was 2cm dilated, and she said to go home and rest. My mom drew me a bath and me and Kyle hung out, talking when suddenly...

6:30pm my water broke, which was really gross. I felt a pop and a squish and stood up in the tub, freaking out a little bit - mostly because I couldn't believe it actually happened, and also because if I had continued laying in the tub I would be laying in amniotic fluid, and it just grossed me out. For the record, SINCE the whole labor and birth thing, there's not a whole lot that grosses me out. Just sayin'. I texted my midwife and my doula, both agree that it doesn't so much change the game plan of resting and waiting for labor to pick up, and my doula said that when contractions get so bad that I can't sleep, call her. I tried to sleep for about 15 minutes and it was impossible. 

7:30pm doula came over about , when labor started to kick up. I labored around the house, walked a lot, sat in various chairs, held on to Kyle, danced around, made lots of noise.

9:30pm contractions were about 2-3 minutes apart, so my doula called my midwife so she could hear what I sounded like. Doula asked for 2 hours to labor around the house, expecting that I was about to hit transitional labor and would be about a 6 or 7.  Midwife gave us 1 hour.

10:30pm we head to the birth center (btw: being in a car while in labor SUCKS.) where we find out that I am STILL 2cm. The midwife's suggestion is to go home and help me relax.  On the way home, K, the doula, and I decide that instead of sleeping, to keep doing the labor thing if I felt good. That's about the time labor started getting a little intense.

our new normal

Adeline will be 2 weeks old in a couple days and wow what a learning curve these last two weeks has been! The first few days of breastfeeding were crazy...to establish my milk supply the nurses had me nursing left and right for 20 minutes apiece every 2 hours. The only thing is that the 2 hours starts from when you start breastfeeding, so by the time she is changed, fed, and possibly having to be changed again, that meant maybe an hour of sleep in between. It's a good thing I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere and on cue. Nowadays she eats between 2 and 3 hours at a time, sometimes eeking toward 4 hours every once in a blessed while.  There have only been a few times where we had to rely on her swing or turning on a hair dryer to totally zonk her out. Our other life saving tool has been this stuff called Gripe Water which has helped us whenever I've eaten something that makes Adeline gassy.

We've played with 3 different diapering systems...started out with disposables in the hospital, then came home to our cloth diaper service, and just today tried out the Gpants. Cloth diapering is proving to be really easy, the only thing is that recently her diaper has been getting wet through to her diaper cover on longer stretches (like at night) so we've had to double up on the diapers. Anyone out there encounter the same issue and want to share their fixes? The Gpants we're planning to use for traveling for the holidays, and today we gave them a trial run today and they worked great! 

Ummmm....okay she's crashed out so that means I need to nap as well :)

keeping the wolves at bay

me just now: *sneaks off to wrap some Christmas presents while Adeline is awake, happy, playing on the changing table with dad*

Kyle: "are you okay? is this you resenting the baby?"

Me: "no, this is me trying to head off any of that stuff. I got into a pattern of eating, sleeping, changing feeding, and need to do something else."

normal, yes?

the act of recovery

So by now you've probably heard that I ended up having to give pitocin a shot, along with an epidural and eventually a c-section. Pretty much exactly the opposite of what we were trying to do - all natural earthy crunchy and such, but definitely according to our plan. I sit here and look at Adeline's face and am thankful for the fact that we have the interventions that we do that make birth...well I guess in my case, and in lots of other cases, possible. 

I'm not disappointed in the way things turned out because above all, I wanted to stay away from unnecessary interventions. There was never a time that I felt "resigned" to a c-section. The whole time, Kyle and I were empowered, encouraged, and informed by my angelic nurses, OBGYN, and doula. Where was my midwife, you ask? Well, that's another tale for another time.

Six days out from the whole thing I am bewildered why there is such a thing as an "elective cesarean," that anyone would elect to put their body through major abdominal surgery, stay in bed for at least 24 hours, be whacked out on pain meds, and deal with all the pain and ickyness, if they had the choice of doing one or the other. This is in no way a judgement by any stretch of the imagination - I just know that I would rather do labor all over again and push a baby out than do the c-section recovery dance again.

People say that every birth is an enlightening journey and there were definitely things I had to learn about myself through the process that I couldn't have learned any other way. I'll get around to telling about the whole thing later, but for now I'm still kinda processing, being thankful for my sweet little family, especially Kyle. Seriously, there's no way I could've survived the last week and a half without him.

What you've all been waiting for

This is Kyle posting for Christina, who is still confined to bed but will be getting up for the first time shortly. She and Adeline are doing great and are finally starting to sleep normally after the adrenaline rush from yesterday's activity. Here are a few pictures and a quick video of ridiculous cuteness.

FYI, Adeline is also the name of the record label owned by Billie Joe Armstrong. Interestingly, Billy Joe and Green Day put out Dookie in 1994. Adeline put out some dookie of her own about 30 minutes ago. Coincidence, or destiny?

sneezes and yawns from singmetheblues on Vimeo.

Well, here we are.

And by here i mean the hospital, just got hooked up to pitocin! It's a longer story than I can type out on my phone at the moment, but this is what god had planned all along apparently :) don't expect many updates til baby stock gets here, just know that we love and appreciate all your prayers and warm wishes! :)