She Was Twisted

Yes, we went outside today in the gorgeous weather, took the lid off the sandbox to find a nice muddy mess. The boys, of course, thought this was the greatest in the world. Well until….

1. Push hands through mud.

2. Shake hands vigorously, spewing mud everywhere.

BONUS: Make older brother mad.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat…

Good times!

O.K. so I’m a complete dork and I fell off the earth for 7 or  8 months. Yes, I am a bad, bad blogger. But I had some good reasons:

Say hello to the new addition to the family – our little Maxton. He’s a keeper. He’s 7 months old now, born on March 18, 2008. Big brother Evan is finally adjusting to the family status change.

So in the spirit of those of you with babies out there, I thought I would share my birth story. If you are here for knitting and spinning content only, you might want to stop. I’m getting a bit side tracked here.

So here is my story: it is quite the interesting one.

To begin, let me quickly give you the events of Evan’s birth. I go to sleep and wake up at 5 am to feel my water break. Induced by 8 am, epidural by 11 am, baby born by 3pm. Fast and easy. Minimal pain. So I was calm and cool about this pregnancy all the way through. Evan’s birth was a good one, and I was just hoping for Maxton to go the same. But that would make for a boring world, wouldn’t it?

March 17th, St. Patty’s Day: I go to sleep at about 11:00 pm. I have had NO signs of going into labor before this. None.

I wake up around midnight with tummy cramps. I’m thinking, oh wow, my stomach is upset. So I get up to, umm, relieve myself if you know what I mean, and I go back to bed. 20 minutes later – the same thing. Back to the toilet. Then again, and again. But this time I am in agony. Hurts like hell. I’m starting to freak — are these contractions? Or are my intestines spazzing out? I seriously couldn’t tell the difference. Crap, what do we do? I let it happen a few more times until my system is cleaned out before I go tell Brian to get ready to go to the hospital. We are in the car by 2:00. The contractions REALLY start up. Like every 5-10 minutes. Poor Evan is in the back seat not knowing what was going on. The car ride is agonizing not only because of the contractions, but also because I start to feel the pressure. You know, THE PRESSURE. Oh crap, I’m going to have this baby in the car!!!! I keep this to myself, however, because I don’t want Brian to be under any more stress than he already is. I’m just praying that we can make it.

Well we do. We get to the hospital, and my contractions are so bad and close together that we have to stop several times in the halls, lobby and elevator for me to lay on my side on the floor to get through a contraction. I know the maids thought I was out of my mind. We get up to the maternity ward, and the nurses want me to sit down to check in. HAA!  I tell them to get me in NOW and let Brian check me in. They get all annoyed and take me back to the little room to check me. I’m in so much pain that I can’t figure out how to get the damn gown thing on. Not to mention that I can only function for a few minutes before another contraction hits. I continue to fumble around in this room, ALONE for what seemed like an eternity. I can hear all the nurses laughing and talking just outside the room. I go out there and yell at them, “is someone coming to check me?!” Again, all huffy, puffy and annoyed they tell me “Yes” go back into the room (you crazy impatient lady.)

When the nurse finally gets there, she checks me:  9 cm dialated, 100% effaced. Oh shit, she’s going to have the baby. Now the nurses are not laughing. They toss me on a strecher and wheel me down to the labor room. No time to call my doctor. The doctor already in the hospital will have to do the job. They can barely get the IV in me because I’m thrashing around so much, and it suddenly dawns on me — I’m not going to get my epidural, am I?  Nope. No ma’am and no how. The baby is coming now.

Let me tell you, laboring naturally is the most painful thing I think any human being can ever endure. Looking back, of course, it seems like no big deal. But at the time, OH MY GOD. Luckily, it only took 4 or 5 pushes and he was out. Maxton was welcomed into the world at 3:18 am.

So let’s do a quick recount:  Labor pains begin at 12:00 midnight. Check in to hospital at 2:30 am. Baby born at 3:18 am.  You do the math.

Not only did I survive, but also I am extremely proud that I did it 100% drug free. That is a major accomplishment in my book.

And look at the end result! Could he be any cuter?? Let’s have another look, just to be sure:

Yep. I believe Maxton is officially cute. Worth every minute.

Next up: I promise to actually write about something crafty. I have much to catch up on, so bear with me.

Happy Halloween to everyone and their own little dragons.

Having a sick baby in the house has got to be one of the scariest things ever. You feel so helpless. You want to help and make it all better, but you want to be careful and extra safe too. You can’t just run to drugs like you would for yourself or another adult – the self-help easy way out. Instead you worry about if the dosage of Tylonel was o.k., oh god, please don’t let me overdose him, or let him get to hot, or I wish he could tell me what hurts and what I can do for him.

Evan has had a cold for about 5 days now. Nothing horrible – or at least we thought. His appetite has been good, he was running around like usual – just with lots of fun rasping breathing and tons of extra snot. However on Thurs, he starting throwing up. Couldn’t even hold down water. No fever, thank goodness. So we started him on the Pedialite treatment of an ounce every 20 minutes or so, and eventually got him to the point where he was holding down 5oz at a time. He slept through the night fine and woke up Friday morning feeling good.

Friday went pretty much as usual – his appetite was back, he drank tons and tons of fluids, couldn’t get enough of the greater outdoors, had a good nap, etc. But then around 5:00 he suddenly became pretty listless and I discovered his forehead was hot. Took his temp. and got a 100 reading. Called the hubby in to help me decide what our plan of action should be. It took about 15 minutes for Brian to clean up and come inside. He takes Evan’s temp – it was now 102!! We run for the Tylonel, and hope for the best. Well this little boy’s head was on fire. He could barely keep his eyes open. We are in slight panic mode. (Remember since moving to AR we have no health insurance – a.k.a. no pediatrician that we can call.) The decision is made to get this boy into a tub of cool water to see if we can cool him off. Temp is now reading a 103. Evan screams his head off the entire bath and is desperately trying to climb out. No amount of comfort is going to help. It took about 15-20 minutes for his head to start cooling off. Poor baby.

I wrap him up in a towel and we cuddle in the rocking chair for a bit. Temp is now down to 99. Oh thank god! Change him into his PJs, we snuggle back down in the rocking chair with all the lights out, he is asleep in my arms within 5 minutes.

He slept through the night with some wakings and fumbling around to get comfortable, but the fever stayed down all night. Today he is acting like himself – but yesterday he also acted fine until the evening. So we are trying to take is slow and easy. Let’s hope the worst is over.

So I leave you with a photo of our little guy, taken a couple of months ago. Don’t you just want to kiss his little forehead?