A Week of Firsts

You can see from the pictures that Sadie was not in love with bath time. We can't just dunk her in the baby tub until her umbilical cord falls off, so we decided to do a sponge bath on our bed. It was our first time too so we were going a little too slow for Sadie's taste. I think she is on the fence still about whether she will forgive us for taking so long and for allowing the water to cool far beyond her pleasure level. She sure does look cute all dressed up like a pink Jedi, though!

We also had our first spin in the baby stroller, which was glorious on a perfect July morning. This was our first outing-- Sadie accompanied mommy to a much needed therapy appointment and then we strolled a little bit in Millenium Park. The morning was flawless: little humidity, sunshine, cool breezes, darling baby and shutterbug husband. I only wish I was up for a longer walk that morning. Damn that major abdominal surgery getting in my way!

Sadie, our captivating newborn, sleeps about 18 hours a day. I always assumed that was an exaggeration, but it's not. When she sleeps for long stretches I miss her and want to wake her up to play. I don't because that is insane behavior, but when she wakes up and is ready to nurse and get busy looking cute and farting, I am so excited.

Today is a big day for us as well. We have a lactation consultant coming over to observe me and Sadie doing our breastfeeding gig. I am slightly obsessed with doing it right, mostly because I want it to stop hurting when she latches on, but also to be sure that she is getting what she needs. Honestly, I am just winging it right now and I decided that if there is such a thing as a person who comes to your house to help us get this process to a place of comfort and peace of mind, then why not? I am just sitting around breast feeding anyway.

Tonight we are going to a small get together for a friend's birthday. I have learned how to use the sling, so our plan is to go with Sadie in the sling and let people admire her from afar. I am not ready to pass her around yet, but I am willing to show up and practice my new dual role as mommy and party reveler! The party starts at 8:30 p.m., which in my former life would be way too late, is now perfect. Sadie konks out from about 7-10 every night and then wakes up to feed and hang out until about 1, when she goes down for good. We'll see how it goes, but I am optimistic and grateful that the hostess has kids as do many of the guests, so it will be a friendly crowd.

La Familia Ellis

We did it. Miss Sadie is now home and settling into life with her two adoring parents who are unabashedly in love with her. She's on to us and she knows that we would do anything for her. I expect to start seeing messages in her diapers that say, "buy me a Mini Cooper," at which point, Jeff and I will pack the car and head straight to the dealership. This child shall want for nothing is our philosophy and it's working for all of us right now, though I can imagine a time down the road when we may have to tweak that a bit in order to raise a functioning and healthy member of society.

I never thought there would be any sweeter music to my ears than Lyle Lovetts, I Love Everybody album, but there is. As I sit here right now typing this entry at 9:13 p.m. on Friday, July 31, 2009, I can attest that the sound of my daughter farting every 30 seconds is as close to aural nirvana as I have ever been. She's been farting like a drunk who just binged at Taco Bell for about 3 minutes and it's starting to stink in here. The delight of my little swaddled bundle of flatulence is something that I have no words for. Jeff has gone to the drug store to fetch a refill of my pain meds along with some meds for my own GI tract issues. I tried to be a hero today and went from 7:45 a.m. until 5:45 p.m. before taking my pain meds. What the hell is the virtue in that? I guess I wanted to be sure I wasn't addicted to Norco or that I wasn't just indulging in medication. It was not a prudent move, because the reason I am on those drugs is because I had major abdominal surgery only 8 days ago and I am no spring chicken. By about 5:00 p.m. tonighht I was slipping into despair about the physical pain: the incision, my uterus, my aching nipples, my hemorrhoids. It's a lot to deal with while also caring for a totally helpless 8 lb baby who can also scream so loud it almost bursts my inner ear. So, off Jeff went to be sure we are stocked up for the next week and for that, I am immensely grateful.

We've had a great week so far at home. The highlights include getting to know more about Sadie and her needs and her budding personality, as well as the sheer pleasure of just being in her company and being her mom and dad. We've also had a loving stream of visitors, each who has been a pipeline to the world beyond our four walls, bringing in love and support so we can heal and get to know our daughter. Our freezer and refrigerator are both full to bursting at this point with the most thoughtful and generous of dishes, including a kugal, a killer apple pie, and some lentil soup that is savory enough to serve royalty.

Happily, we are also getting infinitely more sleep than we imagined we were allowed as parents of a newborn. She's an awesome sleeper, going for 3 and 4-hour stretches, which is a dream. We have some good teamwork going so we aren't running too ragged yet.

There are 100,000 more things to say, but it has to wait, because Jeff just home and suggested that our daughter's farts and the pungent smell in the room means we should change her diaper.

Milk of Momnesia

Yesterday was a big day in room 1396. Sadie hazed us like we were college freshmen trying to join a fraternity. She's earned her reputation as being "fiesty," an adjective that more than one nurse has applied to her. (And make no mistake, I take it as an affirmation every single time. I could not be more proud.) It all began innocently enough at 3:00 p.m. when I realized that my maternity shirt barely fit over my chest because my milk came in. Because I am in the haze of early motherhood this event is equivalent to winning the Pick-3 Lotto game. I have heard more stories from moms about milk not coming in or moms being traumatized by having to supplement weak flow with formula to know that I sincerely did get a huge gift when my breasts began to weep the white, calcium-rich nectar. I was literally doing the river dance in my room, scaring the baby and amusing my husband. I think the milk coming in was overwhelmingly joyful for three main reasons. First, so little of my labor went like I wanted it to, that I really just wanted the universe to give me a pass on the breastfeeding and allow me to have an easy time. I think of the milk coming in as payback for the whole C-section part of this process.

Second, I have had such a conflicted relationship with my breasts-- feeling self-conscious about their size and afraid of their significance in a misogynist society. I have hated on them and hidden them and misuderstood them for so long. In 1999 I did the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk to nourish more gratitude and compassion for my breasts, but still I had more moments of hate than love for my large breasts. So, having the milk come in that I will use (8 times a day MINIMUM) to feed my daughter feels like it may accomplish what 3 days of walking and fundraising could never do. These breasts give life. It's like a fuzzy picture that just came into focus. It's really a good development because there is no hiding these ladies. If I thought they were big during pregnancy, this is truly a whole new level. The bottom line is that I love them and they are doing such a good job. The proof of their power to give sustenance is that Miss Sadie gained 4 ounces yesterday. We got all kinds of props from the pediatrician for that. We are already looking back at my meltdown on Friday worrying that she wouldn't get enough to eat because she lost 7% of her birth weight. (Hospitals let them lose 10% before they take any action.) As I sit here right now, I am aware that my right hand is drenched and Jeff just came over to inform me that I am "leaking."

Leaking?

Holy dairy-ness, my body is leaking milk! It's totally prosaic and mothers have been doing this for as long as humans have had babies, but when it happens to you, it's like sci-fi or a miracle of Biblical proportions.

And, let's be honest. Everyone knows that breastfeeding is nature's way of taking the baby weight off the mom. I may be spouting off lots of Mother Earth thoughts and feelings, but I am also very vain and really really love the clothes I packed away over the winter as Miss Sadie grew in my belly. It's exciting to feel the body doing what it's supposed to do and one of those things is to have my daughter suck the fat out of my body so her body can grow. No gym for 6 weeks, but lots and lots of breastfeeding, which is more efficient and two of us win!

Enough about me, back to Sadie. She definitely liked the breast milk if her diapers are any indication. I think she may have overdone the first feeding because the subsequent explosive diarrhea and puking freaked her out so bad she was up from 1-4 and the nursery kicked her out because she could not be settled. Jeff and I are happy to be officially parents of a newborn who wants to sleep all day and eat and scream all night long. Like every parent before us, we wish we could figure out why she is crying and FIX it, both for her and for us. And, like every parent before us, we sometimes will be able to and sometimes will not. I have to get used to that crying because it's one of her precious few ways of communicating with us. So, just like my nipples need to toughen up so does my central nervous system, which threatens to crash when my baby cries. I almost can't wait for tonight to try again and see if we can swaddle better and soothe sooner.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

We made it to Sunday morning, which at one point back on Wednesday or Thursday would have seemed about as possible as trying to land a hand glider on Jupiter. Yesterday was a sublime day with lots of quiet moments with my baby and my husband. We love laying her body on ours, and when I see her wiggling around on the OUTSIDE of my stomach it seems like the exact same movements I used to see her make inside my stomach. I love the closeness we used to share and having her here so I can see her face and her expressions is even better.



I can't believe we are going home tomorrow. I feel excited and anxious about getting her in the car and then trying to get up the stairs when I get home. I am looking forward to getting to sleep in my own bed with Jeff, instead of in a hospital bed with Jeff on a Daddy cot across the room. I am also excited to have a relaxing routine with Sadie in our house. It gets easier to imagine everyday life as the pain and discomfort subsides. The nurses on our floor just changed shifts, and we met our nurse for today, Doreen. Doreen asked about my birth experience and Jeff mentioned our journey to Sadie. When he mentioned that I was stuck in triage for 3 hours after the doctor agreed to admit me because the labor and delivery floor was too crowded, Doreen mentioned that on Sadie's birthday the hospital set a record for the highest number of births in a single day. Incredible. This hospital is always busy-- it has 10-12,000 births every year, so the volume is always there. But there existing record on the day of Sadie's birth? No wonder it took so long to get a room and an epidural. Also, when I got out of surgery they were supposed to put these leg warmers on my legs that would keep me from getting a blood clot. My nurse asked for them 3 times and I never got them. I knew that I should have told them that both Jeff and I are lawyers so maybe they would have been afraid of a lawsuit. I am not sure how I feel about giving birth in such a high volume place, even if its reputation is that it's the best women's hospital in Illinois and ranked 18th in the country. It makes me nervous that there were so many women vying for those resources on the day I gave birth. (Does someone who has a C-section give birth? I was thinking the correct phrase is "gave myself over to birth." Can you tell that I still have very strong feelings about the C-section?)

I am heartened that everyday so far has gotten easier. The pain from having my uterus cut out of my body, laid on my chest and put back together again lessens a little everyday. I now can go almost 6 hours on a single Norco instead of the 4 hours I could tolerate just yesterday. Let's pause here for a little story about the C-section:

I was prepped for surgery and they put up a curtain so that I could not see what they were doing. Tears were streaming down my cheeks into my ears because I was laying on my back for the first time in months. (Pregnant women are not supposed to lay on their backs after the first trimester because of the pressure that the growing fetus puts on the vena cava, which in turn makes it difficult for mom to breathe.) One of the anesthesiologists (the one with the hairy chest as I foggily recall) asked me why I was crying at one point, and I said, "are you seriously asking me that?" He said, "we do this all day everyday." I said, "well, I don't." Anyway, looking back I would probably think twice before being snarky to someone in charge of my pain medication, but I digress.

Anyway, the C-section progressed and I kept saying I could feel more than I thought I should feel. I have to say that this got the doctors' attention. Once they got Sadie out and assured me orally that she was fine, but the neo-natal doctors had to clean out her lungs, I started to get a little panicky. By "a little panicky" I mean that I had a full out panic attack on the table. I started telling the resident (woman without the hair chest) that I had to get up right now. I was so sure that I was going to be able to reasonably explain why I had to get up and go get my daughter and get something proper to eat. The resident put her eyes right next to mine and said in a very stern voice, "you are in surgery and you cannot get up. You are not getting up."

I was pissed. I decided I needed another angle.

When Resident Without Chest Hair put her face next to mine again, I said in my most rational voice, "I need anti-anxiety medication right now." She said, "I can give you anti-anxiety medication, but you won't remember anything and I don't want to take that away from you."

At that point, I was out of tricks. I decided maybe I just needed more information. Dr. Hairy Chest swung by to see how I was doing and I said, "I need to know what is taking so long." (I was of the mind that getting the baby out was the point and since she was out, I thought we should be done.) Dr. H.C. said, "I hear you've been asking to get up and what's taking so long. You can't go anywhere right now, because they have to put your uterus back in."

Put. My. Uterus. Back. In.

That was a lot to process in my precarious position. So many questions. Why is it out? Out of what? Why is that necesssary? Is this why I had to sign a consent form? Where the hell is my baby? Back in?

While I am all for telling the patient the truth, is it the best practice to tell a patient having a panic attack that her major reproductive organ is currently OUTSIDE of her body cannnot be an approach signed off by the American Medication Association. (Neither is that chest hair all hanging out, but that's an infringement of a different kind.) I believe at that point I lost all semblance of calm and started asking for oxygen, which was being pumped into my nose at a medically acceptabe level.

So, that's a little Sunday afternoon story about the road to Sadie's debut into breathing oxygen.

In addition to the ongoing processing of the entire experience, there are lots of challenges and joys every hour. I want to keep/make a record for the following reasons. (1) I want to remember this so that I may be able to help any future mommies who, in the post-birth aftermath, are trying to make sense of their experiences so I can give as many details as possible; (2) I also want to have as many of the details to share with Sadie in case she's ever interested; and (3) I want to be sure that I remember this whole process as realistically as possible in case we ever do this again.

To that end, here are my favorite parts:

• Watching her exquisite face all day long
• Listening to her funny sounds: some days an eaglet, some days a piglet, other days a little duck
• Seeing Jeff and Sadie interact and develop their relationship
• Changing her diaper and seeing her body start to work out its systems
• Breastfeeding and seeing her doze off between sucks, but become a fierce little tigress if I try to take her off the breast
• Having her sleep on my chest and make those movements I fell in love with months ago
• Seeing her little hands in her gloves that protect her from scratching her delicate skin
• Her cute little boogers

As for the hard parts, that's another post. Let's end on a high note for now. It's time to go change a diaper and get the boob on!

Father Daugher Dance

"There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you."

Labor Day (July 22-23, 2009)

Ah, sweet labor. I don't care what anyone says, childbirth hurts a lot. I keep explaining it as being as painful and arduous as running 2 marathons, studying for the Bar Exam, and dating into the mid-30's-- but much, much worse. We ended up having a C-section when my body failed to dilate after hours of contractions and drugs. For me, the experience was overwhelming because it was such a roller coaster: one minute we would have a victory-- such as getting an epidural or learning my body dilated to 3 on its one-- and then agonizing news the next time we talked to the doctor-- such as the baby is in distress during contractions, which were coming every 2.5 minutes. I have no words for how I experienced the C-section, but as soon as I have them, I will broadcast them to the world. I adore my daughter and am thrilled she's here safe and sound, and having yourself sliced open and your internal organs jostled about and then stapled such was a traumatizing experience for me. I have never had major surgery or spend the night in the hospital and now I have to use phrases like "my incision" and "my pain meds" and "my catheter." While I am glad we went the C-section route to keep Sadie and me safe, I am very sad that the pain and the after effects are so distracting and painful, especially when all I want to do is hang out with my baby and be her mommy. Much more to come on this.

Here are two angels who helped carry me, Jeff and Sadie during our labor and beyond. These troopers spent the whole night with us. I heard that Joyce (right) used a table cloth to wrap herself in while we were prepping for our C-section and the support crew tried to get some sleep. I am also slightly devastated that Sadie's Angels were not able to join us for her live birth experience, which was the plan had I been able to have a vaginal birth. I am deeply grateful for these ladies for brushing my hair, rubbing my feet, praying with me, and being around during some scary times when I had to come to grips with the biggest surrenders I have ever have to make.

Here's Krista bravely giving my hair some loving after about 20 hours of laboring. She's got nerves of steel and a very light touch, which is more than I can say for some of those anesthesiologists, but again, that's another post.

Jeff and I snuggling up before we got the news about my body not quite progressing. Lucky for Jeff, this was BEFORE my epidural wore off so I was game for a little visitor in my bed for the sake of a photo op. Five hours from the picture was a totally different story and I didn't want anyone touching me or talkinng to me. Drugs were a good decision for me and that was never more clear then when they wore off.

The full complement of Sadie's Angels-- Joyce, Trish and Krista. If you think it takes a village to raise a child, I am here to tell you that it takes at least a village to get them out of the womb. I assure you without these women, Sadie would be an only child. She may be anyway, but her future siblings only have a chance of being born because these ladies kept my spirits up, my eyes on the prize, and my hair shiny and styled.

The Love Of My Life

It was a long road in labor, which will be the subject of another post that I will write when I need the catharsis of writing about the experience, but let's do first things first.

Here's my daughter, Sadie Anne, on the second day of her life. She's on her way to being the most photographed baby in the world. The picture above was taken by the professional photographers that come to the hospital, spend 10 minutes in your room, and walk out several hundred dollars later. I am so glad we did these pictures because already everything is a blur and I want to remember everything about her and these early days.

My impressions of her so far is that she is very alert and very good at evacuating her bowels. She had already make a poop before I ever held her in my arms. As a person who has spent well over half her life constipated, I couldn't be more overjoyed by the murky content of her diaper. So, you can see that I have already made the leap into the part of parenthood where poop becomes a very, very big deal. Sadie is like her dad in that she would rather sleep than eat. (Her mom would rather eat than do anything.) I am happy to let her curl up next to our bodies and sleep, but there we are still in the hospitals and the nurses are very big on SCHEDULES. The protocol is that Miss Sadie must eat every 2-3 hours and we are asked to record the her feeding information on a dry erase board in our room. Twice I have pushed the feeding because it would have taken a stun gun to rouse her-- and stun guns are frowned upon at this particular hospital-- and the nurses went all One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest on me with tales about low body weight and how they will supplement with formula, which another set of nurses (and the La Leche League) said would ruin Sadie's life forever.

Physically, her newborn picture looks a lot like my newborn picture. I see Jeff's chin, eyes and ears on her. I see my nose for sure. She's quite tall for her age (21. 5 inches) so that has to be Jeff too. She's got the most gorgeous long black hair that has a slight wave in it. I can't wait to see what kind hair she has once it gets going. For obvious reasons, we are hoping she gets my hair and not Jeff's, but since she already has more and longer hair than Jeff, we're probably safe on that score.

Emotionally, she's mature as well. She's really good at letting us know what isn't working. Being cold is not something she'll tolerate quietly, which should make winter very interesting. She's ok with a massively dirty diaper, but DO NOT deny her the breast when she's ready to eat. She's pretty comfortable with having a camera stuck in her face every 5 seconds, which is good because we have more cameras than people at any given time. She loves to be swaddled tightly in multiple blankets, but does not like her feet rubbed at all. I can't believe it's only been 56 hours and I can already name things she does and does not like.

As for me, emotionally I am all over the board. Yesterday (Day 2 of Sadie's life) was a dark night of the soul for me. The physical toll from labor, the pain medication, the sore nipples, and the bone crushing fatigue started to wear me down yesterday and I was overcome by all of it. Luckily, people more rested than myself encouraged me to get some sleep and after almost 5 hours, I am literally a new person. When I get very tired, I forget how insane and despairing I get and I can longer remember that missing lots of sleep is practically lethal for me.

Today, I am so in touch with the joy it almost hurts. She's so precious and little and I can't believe she's ours. I can't believe we get to watch her grow and change and become her own little person full of life and love and thoughts and preferences of her own.

My favorite moments are after her feedings when we lay skin to skin (big deal with baby experts to lay skin to skin with baby to promote bonding and breast feeding) with my little baby and watch her mouth move inscrutably while she sleeps, utterly trusting me for her every need. In those quiet moments, when Jeff joins us in some family quiet time, I can say with greater certainty than ever before that there is nowhere else I would rather be and no two people more important to me. I hope to hold them close to me all the days of my life.