Churching

I'm coming to the end of my 40 Days.  I had sort of intended to go back to church yesterday, but when it came down to it on Saturday afternoon, I didn't know where my clothes that fit and are presentable for church were, I hadn't laundered or picked clothes for either my baby or my older girls, I didn't really think we (I) could handle being out all day for church and then a wedding and reception on my first Sunday back, and my husband was away at a wedding rehearsal and couldn't help me if I'd wanted to tackle all these preparations just the night before.  Add to all of those things that my lochial bleeding seemed a wee bit worse this weekend and I'd really like it to stop already, since it really is almost gone!  (Sorry if that's TMI.)

So, since 40 days for me would be about Thursday this week, I decided to wait until next Sunday.  My parents will be in town anyway for my Dad's and sister's birthdays. (Chicago is a good converging point for everyone—aren't we lucky that we don't have to travel!)  I know they'll be happy to see (and help with) the Churching.

Anyway, I'm coming around to the point of this post (really!).  I wrote up a list of preparations I'd (ideally) like to finish this week before Sunday so that the day goes smoothly.  I thought I'd share it with you all since I know there are a few people who have just had babies recently:

Feel free to download, print, share, or whatever.

We'll see how much of this I do.  I really was brainstorming as much as I could think of so I know exactly what I'm leaving out if I don't do all of it instead of just forgetting to do something important while I instead focus on laundry or something that may not be as ultimately important.  Wish me luck!

40 Days of Patience

I am in a funny place, routine- and homemaking-wise, right now.  Three weeks ago, I birthed our third child.  As anyone who has had this experience knows, I am doing a lot of nursing, sleeping, not sleeping, and healing.  And with the healing comes bleeding, which brings me around to that weird place.

In order to make the bleeding stop as quickly as possible, I need to do as little as possible around the house.  In some ways it is freeing.  Spend as much time on the internet as I want?  Sure!  Go back to bed after breakfast?  Yes, please!  Watch another movie?  Why not?  Read another chapter of a giant novel?  Absolutely!

It is also the antithesis of what I normally try to accomplish with my days.  Usually, I try to put away what I take out when I'm finished.  I watch the floor for piles of crumbs or spills to clean up.  I monitor the laundry piles, and the dish piles, and the amount of food in the fridge.

Thanks to many hardworking women in my parish, we are receiving meals for the next few days.  Thanks to my mother and mother-in-law, we had in-home care for a few weeks beforehand.  And thanks to my tireless, child-loving brother, we have help now too.  I don't have to do most of what I normally do.  I can focus on mothering my baby.

My mantra right now is "almost anything can wait four weeks."  I recently read this in Dr. Sears's The Baby Book.  Actually, I'm waiting closer to six weeks.  And if I do as I plan, that means I'll be "going back" next Sunday (the 11th of July).  That's going to come up pretty quickly.  Seems this is a good time to practice living in the Here and Now and actively enjoy the rest of this precious newborn/postpartum period.

40 Days

Another fellow blogger, Matushka Emily, has a post up by Matushka Jenny Schroedel:

40 Days With Natalie

It's a great explanation theologically and medically of why women should rest during the 40 days following childbirth.  Maybe I'll post some of my own thoughts on this topic later.  At the moment, I am too sleep-deprived to write much of anything that might be considered coherent.

And I'm trying to observe my 40 days, so as soon as my husband comes home from the service for Sts. Peter and Paul, I'm going to bed!

Being Mommy to a Newborn Is...

...finally getting around to eating a rock-hard English muffin that has been toasted three times throughout the day.  And having to eat it cold anyway, because if you toasted it again, you wouldn't be able to bite into it.

...rejoicing at being able to see the veins in your feet again because said appendages are no longer waterlogged.

...trying to nap with your newborn (Child Three) and being joined by Child Two who nurses and falls asleep next to you, only to be pushed aside by Child One who sucks her thumb and holds on to your leg to fall asleep wedged in between you and Child Two.  Mommy wakes up feeling like a Mama cat sleeping with a litter of kittens (but she's thankful that Child One and Child Two are finally getting some rest after this weird week).

...deciding between tweezing stray hairs or loading your iPod with some relaxing music in the time between laying down the newborn and whenever it is in the (very near) future that he will wake up.  (The iPod won.)

...being ready for a nap before 9:30AM.  I'm going back to bed to enjoy my 40 days!

At Last!

Finally, Blogger is responding and letting me create a new post!

And, finally, we have some good news!

I think most people may know already through other means, but we had our baby yesterday!  John Harold made his appearance after 43 hours of steady contractions and about 3 hours of active labor.  I think I pushed for about 20 minutes.  He weighs 9lbs, 13oz, and the doctors told me he had a rather big head (ouch).  It was a very tiring weekend, but surprisingly, I really feel great.  I am sore and need my rest, of course, but this is the best I've felt after a birth yet!

His big sisters are so excited about their little brother and spent a lot of time this morning hovering around him in his baby rocker, rocking him and singing to him any time he would start to wake up.  They are such sweet little Mommies.  They keep bringing him toys, too.  Maggie was careful to pick out one of her few prince (as opposed to princess) dolls for him since he is a boy.

Andrew is taking time off for a few days to be with us and his son.  (His family name will live on!)  He's also planning to take the girls to the Children's Museum one of these days to give them a special day out with Daddy.

Here's our little (well, not that little) boy!

No Anything

That's Maggie-speak for "nothing is happening."

Well, not entirely nothing.

I have been having contractions off and on all day.  Some of them have been pretty painful too.  But they just haven't kicked into what I'd call "active labor."  This is going to be my longest labor yet.

At one point, Andrew and my sister took the girls to the park.  I should have gone along to keep things moving, but at the time, they were moving and I thought contractions were getting regular.  I called my practice, they eventually sent over the nurse, but then with dinner and conversation, things slowed again.  Andrew and I then took a short walk, which felt productive (read: painful) but it was too late to keep that up, so we came home and put the kids to bed, promising to wake them when the baby comes out.

At this point, everyone has gone to bed.  The nurse went home to get some things (she should probably stay there and get some sleep too).  I tried sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor, hoping to get things moving, but no luck.  I think I'm going to have to go to bed too.

When the nurse checked, I was only dilated 2cm, although the nurse was impressed with how low Baby's head is.  I knew I'd been feeling a lot of pressure lately.  Anyway, I was not completely surprised to hear that I wasn't dilated very much, but I was disappointed.  The nurse is pretty convinced that I'm on my way to having this baby fairly soon, but I really was hoping to have it all over with by now.  All in God's timing, I suppose.

 So, I guess I'll check in come morning.  Good night!  I hope I don't sleep well.  ;)

Here We Go!

Well, friends, I think I'm in labor.  I started feeling odd (read: even more uncomfortable than usual) during dinner last night, but wasn't sure if it was contractions or not.  My husband told me that's what I felt like about 24 hours before Susannah, our second, was born.  I tried not to get my hopes up.

We put the kids to bed and then instead of going to bed myself, which would have been smart if I had any inkling I might be going into labor, Andrew and I stayed up and watched an episode of Dr. Who.  We went to bed sometime after 11pm.  I think I may have had a contraction that awakened me around 1am, but I definitely was awakened by a contraction around 3am.  And I've been sort of dosing and contracting ever since.

My husband woke up at one point and asked if I was OK (not because of anything I was doing at the moment, just because that's been his greeting to me for the last week or so). I said "Yes" and he rolled over.  I hope my husband will forgive me for telling the internet that I am in labor before confirming it with him—I figured at least one of us should get some sleep.

I am up having something to eat (easily digestible this time...), so my contractions have gotten less intense.  I think I'll go back to bed and see if they get a little more serious.  I want to have this kid before tomorrow.

Here's a parting belly shot, believe it or not, from a couple of weeks ago.  I'm probably bigger than this now.  And no, I am not having twins.  :)

Hopefully, the next photos I post will include a baby!

Nothing to Report, Except Some Recipes

Other than increasingly uncomfortable nights, there is little change here.  A couple of things going on with my body might mean that labor is in sight, but I won't get too graphic here.  Of course, my doctor says they really don't indicate a time frame, but it keeps me going.  Trying to will myself into labor this morning (I might have had a light contraction or two) did not work.

So instead of baby updates, I'll add some links to some of my favorite recipes from our Summer Fasting Menu.
 

• Fish (or Shrimp) Tacos ~ I'm replacing the shrimp with some kind of white fish, since I already have a couple of shrimp dishes on the menu.
• Dumplings with Soy Slaw ~ This one is a serious favorite of mine.  And so summery.

To finish sharing the dinners on our menu, here are the final three:

The Shrimp Stir Fry night is just combining a bag of precooked shrimp with a bag or two of stir fry veggies, and either throwing together a sauce yourself (I like to mix rice or cider vinegar, honey, soy sauce, and sesame oil to taste) or using some kind of prepared sauce (either a bottle or something that came with the veggies).  This is my Errand Day easy meal.

The next recipe comes from a cookbook my Mom gave me in college, The Kitchenless Cookbook, by Suanne Beverly.  I've changed it a bit, so I think I can offer it here in my own format.  I love this stuff.  I eat it right out of the bowl.

Finally, I created this recipe from the contents of the pantry in the home of one of the families we house-sat for last summer as we were moving back to Chicago.  It turned out amazing—probably due to the amount of olive oil I used.  It might be improved with fresh parsley.  I used tubetti in my initial creation, but I recently bought shells, because those will catch the peas and walnut pieces well.  I'm making myself hungry....

Now, to see if I get through a week of using this menu before Baby arrives and my Mom takes over my kitchen!  (Thank you, Mom!)

Home Alone

Once again, I'm on my couch with my swollen feet up.  I don't really think it helps relieve the swelling, but it does put less pressure on the already swollen. 

My due date is this Thursday.  Hard to believe it's almost time.  Any time now, I could be having this baby.  I wonder how life with change with another child in this home.

If I did Daybook posts, I'd have fun with the "Outside my window..." prompt today.  Dark clouds.  Rain and wind.  And my family out in it.

My husband, daughters, my brother, and my parents are off to visit a cemetery in the city where we have great-great-grand parents buried.  Andrew plans to say some prayers at the graves and scatter some bay leaves from Holy Saturday.  I've always wanted to see the site myself, but I've been up in the middle of the night with a sick two-year-old two nights in a row now, and I need some rest.  I instructed my husband to take pictures.  Although, with the aforementioned weather, I question whether they will even get out of the car.

The two-year-old insisted on going along with the outing despite being a bit feverish.  My Dad convinced me that there really wasn't any reason to keep her home when she'll just be on a family outing and being held there instead of at home, so I let her go, happy to have some quiet time to myself here and not to have to deny her the car trip with Grandpa and Grandma.  Why do kids get such a kick out of riding in other peoples' cars?

My coffee is lukewarm.  A perpetual occurrence in my life.  Brew.  Sip.  Interruption.  Microwave.  Sip.  Forget to drink any more because microwaved doesn't really taste that good.  Rediscover mug.  Microwave.  Sip.  Blech.  Microwaved coffee.  Forget....  But having that mug sitting around unfinished brings me some kind of odd sense of comfort.  Like I could sit down at any time, pull out something I wanted to read or work on and sip my coffee in peace.  I think in the scenario, though, I expect it to taste hot and freshly brewed.

I don't really have anything profound to say in this post, so I think I'll stop here and work on some of the other posts that have been brewing (still thinking about that coffee, I think) in my mind for the last couple of days.  Then I'll have to find something to make the crew for lunch when they return from their wet excursion.  And finally, my sickie and I will take a nap.  :)

Justified Computer Time

Since my ankles are swelling into small tree trunks, and my doctor told me to eat more protein and put my feet up, I have downed a hard boiled egg, and am now resting on my couch, with feet elevated, looking forward to playing with my Cycles of Grace Notebooks and some blog posts.  I am able to sit back and enjoy this break because I have most of my personal Morning Routine done (showered, dressed, kitchen cleaned...), the girls and I said our prayers, and we played a board game together--that was definitely their Math lesson for the week.

I have 9 more days until my due date.  When I was this pregnant with Maggie--well, I wasn't pregnant any more!  I'd had her early in the morning, 10 days before she was due.  Susannah, however, came four days late.  I had a prenatal yesterday, and I wasn't dilated at all--so, really, I know nothing!  I am still apprehensive of the pain of labor, but I am ready to meet my baby and get over being pregnant already!

I'm glad that labor is something I have no control over.  Since I can't do anything about it, I am less tempted to worry about it.  It will come when it comes, and I will get through it by the grace of God.

Is that a contraction?

I think I actually had one today.  OK, maybe it was my second--I may have had one a day or two ago, not that I'm thinking about it.  I've been having these tightening ones that don't hurt "down there" for a while now, but this was similar and started hurting in all the right places.  It was mild, compared to being in real labor, and I wasn't really aware of what it might be until most of the way through.

I am measuring 41 centimeters (the measurement in centimeters, for those of you who don't know is supposed to correspond to the week of pregnancy), although I am only 38 weeks.  That would be part of why people ask if I'm having twins.  (Happens with every kid.)

I've been feeling kinda yucky this afternoon, and just now, when I was up sweeping up under the dinner table, I thought I felt the tightening with the hurting (just a little, but in the right place) again--so would that be #2.5?)  I've never had a labor start like this, but then, the other two started completely different from each other anyway.

It would be quite a coincidence if I had Baby tomorrow.  But I'll tell you why tomorrow.  Unless, of course, I am otherwise occupied nursing a newborn.

A contribution from my two-year-old: mmmmmbbbhhhhhffffffffffffffffffdddddddddddxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxllllllllllll

And one from my four-year-old: maggie

Thank you for indulging them.  :)