A Good Year

It has been a very good year. While there were some very hard months in 2009, looking back, I have so much to be thankful for!

I kept my 2009 resolution and read 50 books--but with the unintended effect of when I met my goal, any reading other than magazines nearly tapered off all together.

My husband and I enjoyed our home life--perfecting the art of homemade pizza and gourmet popcorn and watching every episode of the remake of Dr. Who.

Bee has grown up faster than I ever believed possible--with an impressive vocabulary, fierce love of her family, penchant for all things Disney princess, and a vivid imagination.

My next job assignment will be in Washington, D.C.: our most anticipated posting yet. We bought a house. In a neighborhood I have always loved. We are living in a small town tucked inside larger suburbia. We can walk to the hardware store and Starbucks. I can't think of a better material "thing" to spend my money on than a home for my family.

I got pregnant. We worried whether the baby would stick. I developed a wild craving for spaghetti bolognese. I came home to the United States to deliver. My parents stepped in and took care of Bee and I while Justin and I were apart.

Thanks to the prayers of many people, Baby N stuck it out for 38 weeks and six days and was born completely healthy. The best early Christmas present ever.

I am indeed blessed and lucky. My hope is that 2010 is as wonderful for all my friends and family (especially for all those who are expecting their own little babies) as 2009 was for me.

Happy New Year!

Warm fuzzies

I was quite surprised that my favorite Christmas gift this year were seven pairs of socks.

In a lapse of good packing judgment, I only brought three pairs of socks to wear for the three months I planned to spend in the US--and this quickly grew rather monotonous.

Now I have argyle and stripes, stretchy cotton and soft wool--a treasure trove of footwear. Warm toes. Less laundry.

My feet were made even happier today by the fact that I took three walks outside. As any nursing mother of an almost two week old newborn knows that is nothing short of miraculous.

Home for Christmas

We have a white Christmas, although it is leftover snow. My house is very quiet--the only sounds are my baby nursing while I type, cars slushing down the street, and Max sighing to go outside.

We celebrated Christmas with my husband's family this afternoon. It was wonderful--to see everyone and also to enjoy my father in law's spectacular cooking. His idea of a "small" tea consisted of eggnog, crudites, white cheddar with pear on crackers, turkey sandwiches, stuffing, cranberry sauce, waldorf salad, cranberry bliss bars (and his are better than at Starbucks), peppermint ice cream, and three kinds of tea. So I think we'll have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Christmas eve dinner tonight.

My husband and Bee are at church. I wish I were too but there are too many coughing, sneezing, germy people there to risk exposing Baby Nightingale.

We're ready for Santa, but I'm afraid he is bringing far too many presents for one young lady . . .

Merry, Merry, Christmas to you and yours!

Shhhh. . .

Both of my girls are currently napping, a fact which boggles my mind so completely, there is no way that I am going to be able to sleep myself. Miss N sleeps with her arms in the "touchdown!" position, which is just about the cutest thing in the universe aside from her pouty baby mouth.

All the parenting books say "sleep when the baby sleeps" and that is a good idea only if you don't ever want to get anything else done for the rest of your life.

Right now I actually do have the laundry and Christmas present wrapping under control. So while I may not sleep, I have a stack of magazines and a cup of peppermint tea to keep me company for a bit.

It has only been a week, but I have realized that second babies are very different from the first. Miss Bee had me in such a state of utter panic that I think it was almost a year before I started to feel like I really knew what I was doing.

This time around, I know that Baby N will eventually sleep through the night, and grow fat and then mobile, and before I know it, be running and joking and negotiating over dessert. It's really nice to have some perspective.

Baby story

So there was no room in the inn, but instead of the stable, I was waiting in a crowded waiting room filled with mothers, uncles, husbands and cousins (don't know how they all got in to be honest, since the hospital had a strict limited visitors policy due to h1n1 flu, but I guess that it was okay to visit outside of the delivery suites).

The other pregnant women were not having as hard of a time as I was--one was chatting on her cell phone, the other had been sent to walk the halls in order to move things along. I wasn't moving anywhere! I was struggling to stay upright in the wheelchair that my husband had snagged for me when it became apparent that walking had become a bit impossible.

After what seemed like a veritable eternity, a delivery room opened up and we headed in. I was already at 4 cm and in a lot of pain and had already decided that I wanted to have an epidural. I will say that I am secretly jealous of women who are brave enough to do natural childbirth. However, I have no idea how anyone could actively chose to be in that much pain.

The anesthesiologist was very quick and efficient and as soon as he was done, the nurse checked my progress and I was already at 9 cm. After a couple hours of blissful pain free rest and it was time to deliver. After 40 minutes of pushing (and I was brave enough to use a mirror and watch my baby being born) and my sweet Nightingale was born. She was 7 lbs even and a perfect 10 Apgar score. Perfect to me in every way. When Bee was born, she had a small complication and was immediately whisked away. This time, my daughter was placed warm, crying and wiggling on my chest--and there was no greater feeling in the entire world.

Giving birth to Baby N almost felt like cheating after the 20+ hours it took to have Bee. My nurse and doctor were almost cavalier about how easy the delivery would be--I guess it had been a long night for them. But best of all, my husband was there this time, from beginning to end.

We lobbied (and were permitted) to leave the hospital after one day instead of staying the requiste 48 hours. Baby N. is doing great--eating, sleeping (some) and making diapers. Bee is a proud big sister and handling the whole transition very well--although it is hard for a three year old. And I am just fine. A tired Mommy of course, overwhelmed a couple times a day, but feeling wonderful and just so proud of my girls.

And after these long nine months, I love to be able to say girls in the plural. My babies. My Merry, Merry Christmas.

My Christmas Day

. . . seems to have arrived a few days early this year. My week started off very nicely when I realized that the class I was enrolled in didn't actually start until Tuesday. So Monday morning my dear husband and I dropped Bee of at daycare (with a small amount of guilt, but mostly excitement at the prospect of spending the day together) and headed to go Christmas shopping at the mall.

We walked and shopped and talked and ate at Five Guys for lunch, and even had enough time leftover to see a movie together in the afternoon; my husband very obligingly went to see New Moon, and I know that that wasn't his first choice. Throughout the day, I had periodic mild contractions, but chalked it up to Braxton-Hicks. I mean, I couldn't possibly be going into labor, could I?

Oh, but I could!

By 7 pm that night, I was fairly certain that this was the real deal, but it wasn't until about an hour later that we were calling the doctor and my mother to come and stay with Bee. We finally left for the hospital just after 9 pm. We arrived safely at the hospital (despite a long and torturous walk from the parking lot to a locked entrance) only to be told that all the delivery suites were occupied! Fortunately, they were cleaning one and it would be ready soon. We were sent to the lobby to wait. There were several other women in my predicament--and from my pain addled state, I was busy drawing parallels the fact that we had just been told that there was "no room at the inn."

To be continued once I have 15 more minutes. . .

Vertex

Vertex is my new favorite word in the English language.

This pregnancy has been nothing but one excitement after another. So I guess I wasn't entirely surprised when I went in for my 35th week "welcome back to medicine in the western world" sonogram and the ultrasound technician looked at me and said, "Well, you know the baby is breech, right?"

Um. No.

My doctor recommended a couple of in-home exercises and other things I could do to try to induce the baby to turn. The most humorous of these involved playing music in the "target area." While I dutifully followed his advice, Baby Girl was not impressed. At my 36th week checkup, the doctor confirmed that that baby was still breech. Week 37 came and went, with no apparent position change on the baby's part.

According to the baby books, only 3-4% of babies are in the breech, or feet first, position by the 37th week of pregnancy. Delivering a breech baby poses a number of risks, so nowadays, most obstetricians strongly advise delivery by Cesarean section. And while 30% of American women now deliver by C-section (I have been doing some research) this is most certainly not my ideal birth plan. There is a much longer recovery involved--which is time away from Bee, and an additional challenge in taking care of a newborn.

So I opted to schedule an external cephalic version, or ECV, where the doctor attempts to move the baby into the head down position but manipulating the outside of the pregnant woman's stomach. There are some minor risks involved, so the procedure can only take place at a hospital equipped for an emergency delivery.

My ECV was scheduled for today, which meant that my dear husband, who is most recently returned to the U.S. from Romania (he arrived yesterday!) could come with me for support. So this morning I was starved (no food or drink for 8 hours prior) registered, monitored, hooked up to an IV and ready to go. The doctor walks in with the ultrasound machine, puts it on my belly and says. "Vertex! Your baby has already turned head down."

Cue the hallelujah chorus. Somehow my baby flipped without my knowing it. No ECV necessary. No scheduled c-section. Merry Christmas indeed!

I know that she still could flip back, although it is unlikely, or that my labor could always end up in a c-section--and that there are a million other little possibilities to worry about but right now, I am just so happy that my baby girl can greet the world when she is ready to do so.

Lack of willpower

So a nine months pregnant woman and a three year old Disney princess in training are probably not the best pair to be making decisions like, "Should we stop and have ice cream on our way home from work or continue on home to a healthy snack option?"

Really, in our case, there is only one possible answer to this question: "Ice cream! The green kind."

So me and my baby sat and ate mint chocolate chip ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles at Scoop Beauregard's ice cream shop today.

I knew that this was a hit with Bee when she spontaneously started singing "If you're happy and you know it. . . "

We're happy. We know it.

Exactly what I wanted

My very special Christmas present from my sister this year is a Alois Dallmayr chocolate advent calendar from Munich. She brought it to me in Bucharest and I in turn toted it all the way home to Virginia, carefully wrapped and packed in my checked luggage.

Now it is December and I cannot even begin to describe how delicious these chocolates are other than to say they are heavenly. A different gourmet truffle or caramel every day of Advent. So no, I am not sharing, not with Bee or even my dear husband--they are my own reward for being a nine months pregnant temporarily single parent still working full time.

Now I am off to bed so that tomorrow morning I can open another delectable window. And when I reach the final one I will --hopefully--be a mother of two on maternity leave with present and supportive husband. While I cannot think of anything sweeter, I will probably need some more chocolates to help manage the sleep deprivation that awaits!