Four Kids is the Bomb

Seriously, the bomb. You know the kind that explodes and leaves detritus, food and clothing strewn randomly around? That kind of bomb. And just to mix metaphors a little bit, let's pretend my house is a submarine that has been hit by this four kid bomb, so then you can know that I feel like I'm drowning. [Insert laughter-- tentative, shaky laughter, bordering on maniacal, in an attempt to let you know that I'm fine. Fine. Everything is just fine.]
While the sleep schedule has vastly improved around here, and the combat nursing has quieted to an uneasy Cold War, I can't seem to get it together. I told Mike that the first line of a mythical book that I'm going to find the time to write will say, "It was the laundry that finally killed her." How does laundry manage to mulitply like rabbits? I swear I leave it alone for one day and the next thing I know it's baby's baby's are having brightly stained babies.
Everything else we own is busy making homes in the middle of the floor, on top of the piano and on the couch where we used to sit. I need my boppy riot shield just to walk through the house without breaking my ankle.
I'm struggling to survive this four-kid thing. And it makes me feel even worse when I think how much I am struggling and this doesn't even count as a real trial. It's supposed to be a blessing. And I'm not allowed to complain about the struggle because it's a blessing, right?  And there are so many wonderful things in my life too. Norah is an angel. She sleeps well, is predictable and smiles sweetly. Ellie is potty training (I have a new idea for ways to convince teens to remain abstinent, or to torture insurgents. Have them potty train a two-year-old without losing their temper, only clapping and dancing happily every time the child manages to make it to the toilet). Hannah is learning to control her temper. Mckenzie is learning independence (this is a euphemism for 'yelling at me all the time and not wanting to do anything but sit around'). So things are good. And now I feel guilty for even complaining.

Dear Mothers who are Happy that it's Summer time and you get to spend every waking hour with your precious children-- What are you doing that makes it so happy? We are having small issues with adjustment to a new schedule of chores and piano practice and "don't-get-stupid-this-summer" worksheets.  Do you just forget the house and chores and worksheets and do fun things all summer long? Do you send them to summer camp all summer? My philosophy has been "Work first, then play." But this has turned into "Work First. Fight Always. Get Grounded and Have No Fun." I would just give up and go sit on the couch, but the couch is currently buried in a pile of laundry.

What it's like to breastfeed a baby while caring for other children

It's like trying to conduct a symphony with your arms tied behind your back. Sure the violins basically know what's going on, but those dang violas and that percussion line? They need a lot of direction. And don't even get me started on the french horns.

So, it's slightly difficult. I always complicate things by having preconceived notions about how it's going to go. For some reason breastfeeding a baby looks like this in my head:
I am sitting in a comfortable rocking chair, that was whittled out of a maple tree from one of my great-grandparent's farms, bathed in a glow of soft light, quietly suckling my newborn. Quietly. No one is banging out various minor variations of Mary Had a Little Lamb on the Piano. No one is yelling from the other room, "Kenzie! THATS MINE!" while sobbing hysterically; And no one is trying to climb up onto my lap to "Kiss! Kiss!" the baby while simultaneously trying to gouge the baby's eyes out.

In the lower left corner of this picture you can see poor Norah's head. Ellie's favorite activity while I am nursing is to pull over a stool, place its sharp, cutting surface directly on my feet before I have a chance to move them, and then climb up onto the Boppy to give Norah kisses. She also likes to observe intelligently, while pointing to Norah eating, "Belly Button. Belly Button." We're all about correct anatomy at our house. (I did try to explain it once, but gave up when I figured that it was really more socially acceptable to feed the baby from my belly button.)  

Kenzie and Hannah like to make me nervous by hovering close by and making mother-hen noises. "Oh, little baby Norah," they sing-song, pushing the chair I am sitting in into the newly painted walls and stepping on clean blankets and my feet as they trip headlong into Norah in an effort to rub her little head.

"Don't touch the baby while she's eating. No. Seriously. Let her eat. Okay, guys. I'm feeling a little claustrophobic here. Don't touch her. ALRIGHT. EVERYONE OUT!"

So instead of Norah getting this wonderful quiet mother-bonding time, her eating is punctuated with a series of violent blows and resonant yells. I call it combat nursing. The Boppy should come with riot shields.

I try to be discreet about breastfeeding, but while I am no breast-brandishing La Leche League card-carrier, I do think it's ridiculous to have to throw a blanket over my baby's head while I'm in the privacy of my own home. (Privacy is such a funny word for a mother of four.) Here's how that particular scenario goes:  "Mommy, what's under there? Why are you hiding Norah?" says Kenzie peeking under a corner of the blanket, uncomfortably close to my chest. Hannah wanders over and tries to lift up the blanket, which attracts Ellie to the scene. "Peek-a-boo!" She says pulling the blanket off of me and the baby and then throwing it back violently where it somehow manages to catch Norah in the eye.

Shutting the door results in horrible fights, bloodcurdling screams and crashes which I am sure signify certain death. So I don't do that either.I just pretend that breastfeeding is normal and natural. Because, well, IT IS.

While it's easy (okay easier) to distract the seven and five-year old with a movie, or other activities, I don't have a solution for occupying Ellie (21 months) while I feed Norah. I know the experts recommend reading a book to your other kids while you nurse, but these so-called experts must be people who have never tried to shield a newborn's head and her delicate eyes from the paper-cutting, corner-poking potential of a book in the hands of a toddler). Or they recommend setting up a toy or toys that you only get out when you nurse.  Does anyone have an easy to set-up and store toy, that requires no parental intervention and that absorbs their toddler for 40 minutes? Yeah. Me neither. 

Mostly, Ellie wanders around happily as long as I've made sure she's fed and as long as I let her climb up and maul me and kiss Norah's head once in awhile. I'm hoping that if I don't make a big deal out of it, she'll just get bored of the whole situation. In the meantime I'm on a countdown to March 2013. If Norah and I can make it that far, she's sure to be well on her way to winning Survivor Season 354.  

This is your brain. This is your brain on motherhood.

Normally I am sharp as a tack (snort).  Okay, but I can generally manage to use adverbs correctly and utter socially acceptable responses in polite conversation. Mostly. But when I am waking up twice a night (three if you count 5:30 a.m. as night), blinking dazedly, half awake and half asleep, fumbling groggily to feed a floppy baby with a ginormous head, my brain doesn't function normally.  My already struggling social graces take a dive into, "Is that woman all there? Something seems a little off" terrirtory. I find that nodding and smiling is one of my best defense tactics during these looooooong months that sleep (or a lack thereof) occupies all of my brain cells. But sometimes people want me to respond. To answer coherently. To speak as if I have been processing the conversation and have something to add. They're not asking me to weigh in on the moral and social implications of foreign policy or asking me to solve difficult algorithms, but they might as well be.
Example:
"Hey Steph, how are you doing?"  I smile blankly. And then when it becomes painfully obvious that an answer is required, I scan my brain nervously, thinking, "I know I have answered this question correctly before. What is the answer?"
"Nothing!" I blurt. And then I realize that I have mistakenly substituted the answer to the Other question that people ask each other, "What's going on?" Then my milk comes in and I mutter something about "keeping the baby alive" and leave. Or I rush off to rescue Ellie (the toddler) from certain death.

Ellie has become really good at "certain death" activities, or "horribly mutilating" activities. In fact, we started off the second week of new motherhood with Ellie bashing her nose into the bottom cement stair on my parent's porch. It swelled to the size and color of a small plum. After a quick trip to Instacare, where they told us a CAT scan would need to be done if we thought it was broken (no thank you), and that it was rare to break your nose when you are so young, she began recovering nicely. Then, right when the swelling had gone down and the color subsided to a nice yellow, she bashed her eye climbing up onto a chair. It was a small gash, but she has another black eye. Poor thing.

And our cat is shedding a lot.

(Did I mention I have trouble focusing?)

Anyway, please forgive me if I respond like a homeless cat lady. Hopefully when I start sleeping again I'll at least be able to answer simple questions.

Norah's Delivery Story

Warning: Long, boring and possibly gory details about Norah's delivery follow.


"It's a girl Steph!" Mike said, a little tear-ily. I was still leaning over the side of the bed, wondering what the water coming down my back was coming from.
"She's peeing."
"What?" I thought. "I am not. I just had a baby." Then I realized that it was our new little girl, saying hello to her mother with some friendly bodily fluids.

It started on Tuesday night. I caught some sort of flu virus and spent the night moaning about how sick I was and wondering if I was having contractions or if one of my internal organs had somehow crept into my stomach and stuck and knife in it. It was torture. Mike came home early on Wednesday when I threw up and could only manage to stare vacantly at the floor afterward. He let me sleep and moan and took care of me.

Luckily it was torture of the short kind, and that night I was able to sleep again. And when I say "sleep again" I mean I only woke up 6 times to pee instead of being up for 45 minutes of every hour moaning about my stomach. It was very restful. In fact, I think having the flu made me feel grateful for being 9 months pregnant. I appreciated it much more.

Thursday my stomach was still a little queasy so I kept it easy, eating mostly toast and applesauce. I went shopping with Ellie for drape material for the nursery (because I am a totally rocking seamstress who always homemakes her drapes and decorates her nursery. Actually, I blame Pinterest. It's ramped me into this crazy craftin monstress.) and that night I felt a spastic burst of energy that involved moving furniture, vacuuming excessively, shampooing the carpets, and cleaning the fans with a pillowcase (thank you Pinterest for that tip).

Mike had a headache and kept saying groggily, "Steph, will you please come down from there? I can help you with that tomorrow."  or "Steph, don't you realize you're 9 months pregnant?"  or "Steph, why did you move all the furniture? You could have asked me to do that."

I brushed him off with a little cluck of my tongue and told him to go lay back down.

The next morning I even shaved my legs, thinking hopefully, "This might be the last time before I have a baby."

Then it was off to coach a few kids from my neighborhood at the local park. I had them run hill intervals, and while they were off running up the hill, I watched from my vantage point on a little berm by our starting line and I began to think, "Ohhh. I believe that was a contraction." So I started timing my contractions while I timed their intervals. They were probably about 10 minutes apart at that point. So I finished the workout (What else was I supposed to do? Yell at some 13 year olds that I was having a baby and scare them to death as I drove us all home? No. It's much better to pretend everything is fine. And between contractions, it was.), drove them home and went home.

When I got home Mike was outside with the girls, jumping on the tramp. "Hey," I said, trying to be casual about it, because I would hate to be wrong. "I think we're going to have a baby today. Let's go to the hospital."

"Really? Girls, Mom says we're having a baby today!"  This made Kenzie and Hannah giddy and Ellie just copies what they do, so she was giddy too.

"Maybe." I said. Since it was between contractions, everything seemed fine. It didn't seem real that I was going into labor.

Mike started going into worry mode a little. "What should I do? I haven't even showered!" Mike always gets a little flustered when it's time to go to the hospital. I'm glad, because then I get to be the calm one.

I told him to hurry and go shower, I would time another contraction, just to make sure I was in labor. He showered while we waited for Shirley to come over and get the girls, and I gathered up our things and we headed to the hospital.

I called my midwife on the way, since I usually go so fast and she assured me that she would be ready.

We arrived at 11:30 and nicely enough, they believed that I was in labor. My midwife had called ahead and told them to expect me. So they took me right back while Mike checked me in.

Luckily it was our same nurse from when I had Ellie! She was supposed to stay on triage (just check me to see if I really was in labor, I guess), but when she recognized us, she asked to switch and got to be my delivery nurse! Both Mike and I were so glad to have Laurel again.

I was at an 8 when she checked me the first time. Hallelujah!  And then they started running the IV for the Strep B medication right away. (Stupid IVs. It took 3 times to get it in. And it hurt like the dickens.)

When Mari, my midwife, showed up, she had a student with her, who was at my last appointment. She asked if it was okay if she was there too and I think I tried to smile and say yes, but I wasn't really happy about it. I remember thinking at my last appointment that I was glad Mari only had a student for a week and that hopefully she wouldn't be around when I delivered. (Nothing against the student, just I didn't want one more person in the room.)

Mari left for a little bit and I had a few contractions, but wasn't quite ready to push yet. Mike and Laurel helped me through them by putting pressure just below my kneecaps and laughing and talking with me. Then I started to feel like I wanted to stand up.

Mari came back in without the student and told me that she had re-read my birth plan and saw a line about wanting no students. Hooray! I didn't have to be rude, my birth plan did it for me. I always feel kind of funny about handing my plan out and being bossy to my nurse and the hospital staff, but I was really glad I did this time.

My contractions were getting harder and I switched to standing up to help me get through them a little bit. You know, the whole, "Walk it off," thing. I wasn't walking much, but swaying and Laurel showed me how to hold onto Mike shoulders and lean my weight into him while he put pressure on my hips to counteract the contraction. Mari rubbed my lower back and I started feeling a real need to push.

My water broke on the first push, and that in itself felt like an accomplishment. Then suddenly, I was pushing and I could feel the baby coming out. I was still standing (not planned), leaning against the hospital bed. One purple-faced long push and the head was out. As I felt the head come out I thought, "My gosh. This is the biggest baby I have ever delivered." Another push and the shoulders slid out.  It was such a relief. I just leaned over the bed and felt tired. Mike said, "It's a girl Steph. It's a girl!" And they laid her on my back. And she peed on me.

Ahhhh. So sweet. Mike cut the cord (he cried real tears), I got the placenta out, and then I finally sat down. I'm not sure why I didn't sit down earlier, but I guess I didn't know what to do after the baby came out. I didn't plan on delivering standing up. In fact I remember talking about delivery positions with Mari, saying I did not want stirrups, and wanted to be able to move around. She said the only position that was hard for her was standing up. I said, "Oh, I probably won't deliver standing up." But then it just happened. I kind of wish I had turned around a seen them cut the cord and stuff, but oh well. They put that little oxygen breather over her mouth and rubbed her vigorously for a bit, and then they handed her over to me.

As I held her, I felt done. Complete. It wasn't a seismic shift, like when I had Kenzie, and it wasn't an overwhelming emotion. It was just perfect. It was how I felt when I held Mike's hand for the first time--a feeling of being where I was supposed to be, a wholeness.

We debated names for a bit and finally settled on Norah Jean. Our lovely fourth daughter, 7.2 pounds, 20" born at 12:52 on March 16, 2012. The Jean is after my Grandma Bette and Norah because we liked it and it has the same ending as Hannah.

Being Strep B positive while pregnant

No, my throat doesn't hurt. Apparently if you are Strep B positive it has nothing to do with having strep throat. Last week I was the lucky recipient of a Strep B positive result at my now weekly appointments. And by lucky I mean cursed. My vision of my delivery was shattered. Okay, I'm being pregnantly dramatic, but I guess my vision (if you can have a vision of your delivery) was clouded.

See, I envision hanging out at my house until my contractions are about 3 minutes apart, getting a few last minute things done like organizing my sock drawer, and then driving to the hospital to have a baby. I like the au natural sort of delivery, sans drugs. I don't like hanging out at the hospital being prodded and stared at and monitored. But I also don't like the idea of screaming from the bathroom for Mike to call 911 while Kenzie and Hannah stare dumbfounded at their mother delivering a child and Ellie cries hysterically and tries to crawl in my lap while I'm pushing.

This laboring mostly at home but finishing at the hospital is a fine balance that we've managed three times so far. I was hoping for a fourth, but thanks to my Strep B results I'm supposed to be at the hospital 4 hours before I deliver the baby so that they can stick an IV in me and run penicillin through my body. Fabulous. I have never been to the hospital four hours before I've had a baby. I just don't figure out that I'm in labor soon enough to get there that early.

When I expressed displeasure to my midwife at having to have an IV, she said, "Yeah and penicillin is one of the more irritating drugs to the veins." Thank you. She also gave me a little print out that assured me that I did nothing to contract Strep B and that being Strep B positive was just like having freckles, only more dangerous and scary for your baby. The little printout also assured me that most pregnant women do not have any symptoms of Strep B. But when they do it includes frequent or urgent urination.

Oh.

Well in that case, all my doubts about the validity of the Strep B test are gone. Because I definitely have that. In fact, I've probably had it every pregnancy. I'm surprised they haven't caught it sooner.


P.S. I found the pig! It was tucked into Kenzie's bottom drawer in a tangle of pants, probably courtesy of the Ellinator. I know that if Kenzie knew it was there she would have brought it to me because I offered them a dollar if they found it. Instead I'll be paying that dollar to the library. I think we have financed the purchase of a few new books with the fines we have paid to that place. Sigh.

Look who turned 200,000!

On January 19, 2012 Mike called me from work. 

"Steph, can you drop the girls off at your Mom's and come eat lunch with me? The car's going to turn 200,000!"

Mike wanted to eat a romantic picnic while we drove around the flight line of Hill Air Force Base watching as the odometer turned to 200,000 on our little Chevy Prizm. (We go for broke on our dates these days.)  So I packed Hannah and Ellie up to my mom's and we celebrated our car's mileage birthday with a little reminiscing.

Our car is like our marriage. It just keeps going. Ummm, that doesn't sound right, does it? Well, how about this: It just won't quit! It may have a few breakdowns, but it always makes a comeback. Or, "200,000 miles later and surprisingly it's still going strong." Okay, I give up on the clever slogan comparison. But it is a good car. A great car. And it is a good marriage. A great one.   

One day in October 2001, Mike and I bought a car together. It was $8,000 (the most I had ever spent at one time and Mike too). We bought it from my Uncle Norm. I remember going to his house with Mike to look at it. We weren't engaged yet, but I do think we had secretly set a wedding date for the next June.  The white 2000 Chevy Prizm had about 30,000 (Mike says 20,000) miles on it and seemed to be a good, clean car. 

The day we signed the loan papers we walked across the street from the America First in Ogden and went to a Kmart photo booth to take our picture together, and Mike taped one of them to the dashboard. We both look young and a little clueless (see above, bottom left). We were. 10 years later and we're still a little clueless, but we are older.

When we got our license plate I made up a funny acronym to help us remember it. We'll always be able to remember our license plate number. I would share it here, but it's not really appropriate for viewer consumption. :) Plus I'm sure psychos would somehow find this blog post, use our license plate number for bad and ruin our lives. So, sorry, no slightly off-color license plate acronym for you. 

Until 2010 this was our only car, and we drove it everywhere. It's seen more trips to St. George than we can count; it's carried our bikes all over; we've taken it to Moab; it's been driven to California a few times; and we once drove it up the coast from Cali to Seattle (we were childless at the time). We also forded a small river in it and have driven on many four-wheel-drive-only tracks. 

We've put one major repair into it. When we were living in California for Mike's UCLA internship we had to replace an oxygen sensor. That's it. Oh yeah, and we had to replace a back window and the faceplate on our stereo when some punk broke into it while it was parked in Salt Lake. 

We've added a few upgrades, the radio that played Mp3s (so novel in the early 2000s), a clicker (that Mike wired in to unlock and lock it) and we've (Mike) replaced the door handle once many years ago.  In October of this last year, for safety and emissions, we did have to tape the passenger door handle on. Isn't that how a car should work? The door handles break before the engine.

Here's to another 100,000 miles little Chevy Prizm!

Look at this cute guy. I'm so glad I bought a car with him. 

If you look close, you can see our 200,000 milestone! (And a zit on my cheek. Thank you pregnancy.)

How a Pig Ruined My Day

Today, success was based on whether or not I could find the number two pig from that stupid toy we borrowed from the library.
FAIL. Of course it's due tomorrow (and someone has it on hold) and I have scoured every inch of my house looking for the &*% pig. I have vague memories of the pig in various areas of my house (did I allow Ellie to take it in the van? Why, for the love, would I do that? Didn't I just yell at my children for putting it in their dirty laundry?); but none of these have panned out. And today, that makes me feel like a failure. Let's face it. There were a whole lot of other things that happened today that made me feel like a failure, but the pig--oh that stupid pig--- I think it sent me over the edge.

I'm 8 months pregnant and a pig is unbalancing me. I know I should be sitting here counting my blessings, but that pig, the one with green overalls that built a house of twigs, is ruining my otherwise cheerful recollections of the day. Like the recollection of Ellie sobbing hoarsely ALL MORNING, and wiping snot all over the only clothes I have that cover my belly. Or the fond recollection of having my mother-in-law bring Hannah home from tumbling early because she refused to go. Or the cheery memory of me accusing Kenzie of nefariously ripping the name off of Hannah's new box of crayons so she could steal them (I was wrong).  Or the happy reminiscence of Hannah yelling at the top of her lungs that she was NOT GOING TO! as she kicked at Ellie and Ellie screeched loudly in response and I locked myself in my room. Or the exciting recollection of trying to decide whether moving from the couch caused such pain because either A. The baby has lodged it's adorable head in my pelvis, or B. I kicked a kickball with Hannah two days ago. (I'm going with B since I still have about 5 weeks to go.)

Yeah, that stupid pig. It totally ruined my day.