Summer's Last Gasp

On what will probably be the hottest day for quite some time, B and I headed up to the Common with Elijah in tow. We're still coming to grips with a lot of the new parent things, so getting going is a rather involved process. Got to make sure all the boxes are ticked - is he fed? do we have enough diapers? is the pacifier sterilized? And so on. By the time we got out the door it was probably 45 minutes after we first started the "getting ready" process.

But man, it was worth all the hassle! There's a little family-friendly cafe in the middle of the large Common, which extends surprisingly far and wide for being in the middle of a city (London is good like that, many green spaces). It's not as wild as Hampstead Heath, nor as hilly, but it's got a duck pond, play structures, and oodles of greenery. Plus, something seems to be in the water here - almost everywhere we looked there was a young family out. We met and chatted with a couple who had a baby just a week younger than Elijah.

Bicycles ride to the left; walkers stay to the right. These paths (and convenient trash cans) extend all over the Common.

We treated ourselves to ice cream and walked back home.

A Cold Tea Mentality

Having a baby means putting down your tea and expecting to pick it up 20 minutes later stone cold.

Truly though, he is such a good baby. We took him out (awake!) to a Korean restaurant down the hill to celebrate Bruno's birthday with a few friends. It's always nice to go out with these particular people because one of them is Korean and is able to chat with the staff at these restaurants. I think it gets us better service.

Anyhow, Elijah sat in his carseat by my feet and stared around at all the lights and just sat there listening to us talk and the low level music. He fell asleep halfway through the dinner, then woke up when we passed him around for everyone to inspect. After staring at everyone with his trademark suspicious gargoyle look (I'll try and get a picture of it sometime), he went peacefully back in his carseat for the ride home.

The health visitor came by today and weighed him again. Elijah now weighs 9 pounds, 12 ounces, and is measuring just above the 50th percentile on the standard (read: formula-fed, not breastfed) growth chart. Not bad.

Here's a picture of him in his carseat at 3 weeks, 2 days, ready to accompany us to the Korean restaurant. You can compare it to the picture of him in a previous entry when he was just 24 hours old.


And here's a picture of him "helping" his daddy work.



To add to the cold tea mentality, we have realized that 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep = bliss.

Fortunately, he is a very laid-back little boy. We are very lucky. He sleeps well, feeds well, is growing well, and is starting to learn night from day. He feeds a lot more during the day, which is great. Of course, we're trying to help this along as much as possible. Right now he's in a mid-afternoon doze, but I've got a Mahalia Jackson song up at medium volume, the lights on, and I'm typing about 3 feet away from him. At night, I keep the lights dim and there's no music.

The Milk Vampire

Elijah has developed into a veritable milk vampire, and seems to be growing very well. We ventured out a few times this weekend - had brunch at a family-friendly place for Bruno's birthday, and took a walk around the Common, which is a large park less than half a mile from here. It has a pond with ducks and play structures scattered around several acres, including large grassy areas where people can chuck frisbees around or lounge in the sun. (When it's not raining, of course.)

Anyhow, here's a few pictures of the past few days. Excuse the quality: I have no time to crop and touch them up!

Here's Elijah being weighed. He was over 9 pounds at this point. In England, they send health visitors/midwives for home visits for the first few weeks post-birth. It's so nice to not have to go out, dragging everything and the kitchen sink, to wait to be seen at some clinic.

Despite his grumpy expression, he was sitting peacefully in his bouncy chair here:

If Bruno looks tired in this picture, it's because... he is tired. This is Eljiah in his first outfit, going to visit north London.

We're trying out part-time cloth diapers (real nappies, they call 'em over here). So far, less leaks than cheap disposables, and it saves money and landfill space.


That's all for now. And no, I'm not posting any pictures of myself for awhile! I look like a zombie and I'm not all that photogenic right now! Plus, Elijah is more fun to look at.

Labo(u)r synopsis

"Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?"

A short write-up of how labor went, for those who are curious:

Contractions started at 10am Saturday (August 2). We were due to go to a friend's baby shower, but thought we'd better stick around home just in case. Irregular contractions continued during the day and night. I was able to get a few hours' sleep but my waters broke at 4:30am, and when we called the hospital, they asked us to come in. I was 2cm dilated, so they sent me back home and said to come back in when the contractions were more regular.

Thus commenced an excited-but-grumpy rest of Sunday spent bouncing on a ridiculous purple birthing ball in the living room and huffing my way through painful contractions while Bruno read to me. Got maybe 2 hours sleep total that night, for a total of about 4 hours slept between Saturday and Sunday.

Monday midmorning I had a midwife appointment. She sent me into the hospital's assessment unit to monitor blood pressure, but when I got there and they saw I was in active labor, they booked me for an induction that night since my bp was fluctuating/high. So, I staggered away, contracting and sleepy, being watched apprehensively by about 5 different pregnant women who must have felt as if they were tied to a pair of tracks with a distant freight train approaching....

At home, I tried to eat, but couldn't get much down. Contractions varied between every 3-4 minutes and every 10-12 minutes. We went to the hospital an hour early, but it was too busy a night to induce right away. So I spent 7pm-9pm in a wheelchair and a waiting room having contractions, then 9pm to 9am in a private room having more contractions.

By this time the baby had moved back-to-back, so the contractions had turned from frontal pain to excruciating lower back agony. To make matters worse, I had no idea how to use the laughing gas thing. I'd take 2-3 puffs, which weren't nearly enough.

They had to bring some expert person in to stick me with an IV because my veins are apparently utterly horrible. Actually, both hands still have faint bruises on them from the jabbing, and it's been over a week since the labor.

After 2 penicillin drips, I was collected around 9am and brought to another room. I had been able to snatch maybe an hour's worth of sleep in between contractions, but it was fragmented. After so long, I wasn't able to relax into the contractions, so my muscles kept seizing up, especially in my thighs/back region.

Thankfully, they gave me an epidural around 10-10:30. I think I told the person who administered it that I loved her. I don't know, I was pretty out of it. It was at this rather anticlimatic point that I finally got shown how to properly use laughing gas (gas and air/entonox, they call it here).

"Take the tube and breathe in and out throughout the entire contraction."

Oh. Right.

Anyhow, the epidural worked, and apart from a bout of uncontrollable shivering/shaking, I was actually able to doze somewhat. They put a monitor on the baby's skull in order to keep track of his heartbeat. If it had shown distress, they would have done an emergency c-sec.

Fortunately, I progressed faster than they thought I would, and by 5:30pm or so I was 10cm dilated and ready to push. He came out after 40 minutes and flopped onto the bed. His first sign of life was to curl up slowly, his fingers turning into fists, his feet crunching inward. Then he let out a bellow of utter rage and unloaded, erm, both ends, all over the doctors who rushed in. Quote from one of the attending doctors was: "Don't be surprised if he doesn't have to go for another day or two, because that was a lot."

After all that, I spent the night on the ward and went home 24 hours later. I didn't get much sleep there, either, but hey, what can you do?

That's all for now.

Update

Elijah is showing a little bit more personality now that he's over a week old. He's taking more of an interest in the world, looking around and vocalizing.

After his first bath:
With Daddy:

He has put on 6 ounces from his birth weight so far. Not too shabby.

Wait, what?

You mean to say that babies don't come with instructions?!

Just kidding. Anyhow, things are going all right, despite a distinct lack of sleep. Elijah's hair is gradually lightening; we think he might go blonde in later life.

Still catching up on some emails - thank you for the continued support and well wishes! I haven't had time to write up anything about the labor. I know people are curious. It was... a very long ordeal, but the end result was worth it. Will write more later!

The latest....

Elijah Derek Murray, 8lb, 7ounces.

No time to update further, but I wanted to thank everybody who emailed, texted, prayed, and called. All is well, just got out of the hospital observation ward and plan to catch up on some sleep.

Quick update

Got a mild case of high blood pressure (pregnancy-caused), so they're inducing me at 8pm GMT tonight. Thank you all for the messages of support.

Despite the abject pain of having had contractions for the past 57 hours (with about 5 hours of broken sleep during that), I still found WICKED PLEASURE today in walking into the Day Assessment Unit (for pregnant women). Why? None of them are admitted there in active labor. Yet I was (I think the referral was a mistake). Seeing a group of 5+ women staring at me with identical deer-in-the-headlights expressions was very amusing.

Tea minus owwww

Irregular contractions started at 10am Saturday.
Waters broke at 4:30am Sunday.
Went into the hospital for a check, got sent home at 7am to "progress more." Was 2cm dilated at that point.
Currently 4:15pm, contractions are approximately every 7-10 minutes for about 45-50 sec each.
The hospital wants us back in when the contractions are approximately every 3 minutes for 1 minute each.
I'm eating dried apricots and feeling very sorry for myself.
Bruno is reading me inspirational birth stories and I am switching between glaring at him through contractions and being somewhat inspired.
I am too lazy to post a picture, so this update will be a wall of text.
I'll update again at some point when I can.
That is all.

Tea minus 4

Random picture of the moment: Warm waters running into the ancient Roman spa at Bath.

I haven't popped yet. Also I'm having some issues with legit emails winding up in my spam folder, so if I've missed an email from you over the past few months, forgive me!

Got checked out at the hospital today and pronounced sound, although I'm supposed to go back in if I get any more symptoms of pre-e. Ankles/feet are still swollen... walking is hard, but doable! B has been working from home as much as possible. Periodically I catch him looking at me with an appraising gleam in his green eyes, kinda like I'm some sort of roasting chicken, as if at any moment I'll leap up and shout: "DING! My waters broke! The baby's all cooked!" Someone needs to tell the man that a watched pot never boils.

And, a bit off-topic for the general tone of my blog, I read an interesting letter today concerning a patron's complaint to a library about a specific book being included in the collection. It's one of the best responses I've ever seen to a censorship request.

Off to a baby shower tomorrow. I'm hoping to hold out a few days longer in order to see the new Batman flick, but we'll see.

T minus 5

Since I'm living in England, maybe that should be tea minus 5? Either way, the due date is rapidly approaching. I've had a few symptoms of pre-eclampsia, so they're keeping an eye on me. In fact, I'm going in tomorrow for another blood pressure profile. Fortunately, blood tests, etc, have come back normal, so I should be all right.

The UK is a little bit more laissez-faire about pregnancy than the US tends to be. There's less emphasis on induction/c-section and more on natural birthing. They don't give you an internal exam until you're very close to the due date or actually overdue. This suits me just fine.

Here's something to drool over - homemade sausage gravy.

Ingredients: Sausage (plain), Flour, Milk, dash of pepper, a little butter. Crumble the sausage in, remove when cooked but leave the drippings. Make a roux. Add milk after letting the flour brown a bit. Cook until it thickens. Add sausage. Serve over homemade biscuits.

I made buttermilk biscuits from scratch for this good old southern dish. Warning: it's fattening, even with skim/lowfat milk, so don't say I didn't warn you. On the other hand, one serving of this for brunch should hold you until dinner.

That's all for now. I'll try and keep updating more often as things progress.