Random Musings

Natalie only has four words in her vocabulary right now, plus about a half-dozen animal sounds. Do animal sounds count as words? They're a lot harder to work into casual conversation - "That's a moo point. It's like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter."

But despite her lack of words, she can hold entire conversations with just the sound "eh". "Eh, eh eh eh eh EH!"means, "I was playing with that toy, Sam! Give it back RIGHT NOW!" And "Eh eh EH eh eh," (accompanied by a pointing finger) means, "I'd like a snack. Preferably those animal crackers I see on the counter right there."

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On an unrelated topic, hooray for the new TV season!* Last night, I eagerly scrolled through my DVR listings to find Monday night's new episode of Two and a Half Men. Hmm. That's strange, it wasn't there. Come to find out, someone deleted the program off the list of timers (Ron later fessed up). No worries, though. I was able to hop online and find the full episode and watch it anyway.

That got me thinking about all the things my kids are going to take for granted. They'll never know a time before being able to pause and rewind live TV, skip through commercials, and record TV programs with a couple clicks of a remote. They'll never remember what it was like before internet and the ability to instantly download TV shows, movies, and radio programs from around the world. They'll never know what life was like before iPods, cell phones, or text messaging.

Just like the things that I've grown up with, and taken for granted. Things that didn't exist a generation or two ago - like televisions and microwave ovens. Doesn't it make you wonder what life will be like for our grandchildren?

*Did anyone else watch Worst Week? The last thing I need is another television show on my DVR, but the first episode was freaking hilarious. I'm a little skeptical that they'll be able to keep up that level of humor, but I'll definitely be watching that one again.

The PROTECT Our Children Act

I happened to catch an episode of Oprah last week about online child predators. It was absolutely horrifying, and I had to skip through most of the first fifteen minutes because I was getting sick to my stomach.

However, I did watch enough of the show to gather that only 2% of all leads are followed up on due to lack of resources. Law enforcement is grossly underfunded in this area.

There's currently a bill before the Senate - Bill 1738, the PROTECT Our Children Act - that would provide a lot more money and resources to law enforcement. I believe this is up for vote this Friday, September 26th.

Oprah's website makes it easy to contact your senators to show your support of this bill. She not only has the link to find contact information, but also a sample letter that you can modify as you see fit. Here's the exact link: http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20080911_tows_predators

It seems like such a small thing to do, but there's strength in numbers. Let's email our senators and then pray that this bill passes.

Learning About Bees

Colony collapse disorder has been in the news a lot lately. It’s scary stuff, especially since no one knows for sure what the cause is. I’ve heard of everything from a virus to cell phone radiation as being possible culprits.

Evidently, wasps are not struggling with the same problem. This seems to be a record year for wasps in our area. We took the kids to the zoo on Saturday, and were swarmed by wasps looking for a free meal while we were trying to eat our lunch. Amazingly, no one got stung. That day, anyway.

Thursday night was a different story. Ron drank some soda and left the empty can on the picnic table. An empty soda can is equally attractive to both wasps and young children, but I didn’t notice the can until the inevitable had already taken place. I heard Sammy’s screeches of pain and turned around to see him still clutching the can, so I guessed what had happened even before Sammy blubbered, “I got a bee stung”.

He wouldn’t let me touch it to try to scrape the stinger out, so all I could do was wash the area and apply an ice pack. His cheek turned bright red and swelled up, but after an hour he didn’t complain about it anymore. Friday morning, he crawled into our bed at 5:00 a.m., like he does every morning, and after a few seconds he obviously remembered what had happened. He sat upright in bed and said, surprised, “My bee stung not hurt anymore!”

Yesterday, he went into the garage to throw something in the garbage can. After about a minute, when he didn’t return, I yelled around the corner to ask what he was doing. “I throw something away,” he said. I waited another minute. Pretty soon, he came around the corner, still clutching the garbage. “There a bee on the garbage can,” he said. I went to help him and shooed away the “bee” – a housefly. It’s good that Sammy has a healthy respect for bees/wasps now, but I guess we should work on insect identification.

The Dreaded One-Year Checkup

Natalie had her one-year well-baby checkup yesterday. Dread is not a strong enough word to describe how I felt about the upcoming appointment.

Let me explain why. Twenty months ago, Sammy had his one-year appointment, and I expected that the shots would be the worst part of it all. As usual, he cried when he got the shots but got over them quickly. Then...the blood draw. You see, at our pediatrician's office, they want to check lead levels and hemoglobin levels at twelve months old. So, they stuck Sammy's finger and he instantly started screaming. It took an eternity for them to squeeze out enough blood to fill the three little tubes full of blood, with Sammy getting more and more frantic with each passing second. In the parking lot afterwards, it took literally close to an hour to calm Sammy down enough to get him into his car seat. And that was with nursing, his usual cure-all.

Now, Natalie is a bit more skittish about new situations than Sammy was. So I was expecting at least twice the commotion. She cried at her shots, but got over them pretty quickly. We dawdled in the examination room after dressing her, letting Sammy take as long as he wanted to pick out a sticker from the doctor's sticker drawer, delaying the inevitable. I walked slowly down the hall with Natalie in tow, feeling like I was leading her like a lamb to the slaughter.

I sat down in the lab chair with Natalie on my lap and tried to steel myself. I felt her flinch when the nurse stuck her finger, but...no tears. As the blood flowed into the tubes, Natalie watched with curiosity at that strange red stuff coming out of her finger. And when the nurse put a band-aid on her finger, Natalie scrutinized it and evidently found it pretty, since she proudly showed off her band-aid to everyone she came across on the way out of the doctor's office.

Well then. Ahem. To think of all the time I wasted worrying about that darn appointment, when I could have been spending all that mental energy trying to solve the current energy crisis.

Natalie's Birth Story

September 6, 2007: Natalie's due date. The day came and went without any fanfare. So much for the theory that second babies come sooner than first babies (Sammy was born on his due date). Apparently my uterus didn't get the memo.

September 7, 2007: Contractions start, getting closer together and stronger as the day goes on. I'm determined to stay home as long as possible, and decide not to leave for the hospital until the pain is nearly unbearable.

September 8, 2007: More contractions, more breathing exercises. Didn't sleep well the night before, so am extremely cranky.

September 9, 2007: Sunday night, finally go to the hospital to be checked. Since this is a VBAC attempt only 20 months after a C-section, decide it would be prudent to make sure scar is holding up. Pronounced "in early labor" with scar holding up well, and nurse says she expects to see me back later that evening but is sending me home to be more comfortable in the meantime. Gives me something to help me sleep (similar to Benadryl, if I remember correctly?) and about an hour after I get home, contractions stop abruptly.

September 10, 2007: No contractions all day long. Feeling disgusted, frustrated, and very cranky.

September 11, 2007: Contractions start up again. Actually relieved the day comes to an end with no baby, since I prefer baby have a birthday without so much negative association.

September 12, 2007: OK, now this is getting ridiculous. Contractions frequent, and bearable only with visualization and breathing exercises. This means no sleep for me. I spend the second night in a row in the bathtub, since it's the only way I am remotely comfortable.

September 13, 2007: I've had it. I tell Ron, "I am having a baby today and I don't care how it comes out. We are going to the hospital." We leave right at the start of rush-hour traffic and need to drive all the way across town. The hour-long car ride is the longest ride of my life.

Here's where my birth story really starts. We get to the hospital at about 9:00 a.m., and I am pronounced to be 4 cm. I have mixed thoughts about this. On the plus side, I am finally in active labor. On the minus side, 6 days of labor (5 if you count the one-day break I got on Monday), and I'm only at 4 cm? Kill me now.

I was checked in and sent to the labor and delivery room. I had been determined to have an unmedicated birth, but I was exhausted and had no more reserves left to deal with the pain, so when they asked about an epidural I said "yes, please". I still think that was the right decision for me, considering the marathon that was still ahead at that point.

Labor progressed slowly but steadily. At about 2:00 p.m., the nurse talked about adding some pitocin (NOT in my birth plan - it raises the risk of uterine rupture, although only slightly, but it wasn't a risk I wanted to take) but I didn't have to argue the point since they were too busy and never got around to trying it.

In my labor with Sammy, I stalled out at 6 cm, so when I finally got past that point, I really started getting excited that this was going to happen. At 6:00 p.m., I was pronounced complete. My epidural was wearing off and I could really feel the pain in my hips again (interestingly, throughout the whole labor, the worst of my pain was in my hips, which felt as though they were being spread with the jaws of life).

Right before my nurse went home at the end of her shift, she said, "You look familiar. Where are you from?" and that's when we figured out that we graduated from high school together (both of us had different last names then, which is why we didn't make the connection earlier). Since that high school is in a small town three hours north of here, that was an amazing coincidence.

At about 6:45, the doctor finally came in and had me start pushing. Two hours later, at 8:53 p.m., Natalie Rose finally made her appearance - but only after getting stuck on the way out. Thankfully the doctor was skilled enough to get her past the pubic bone without breaking her collarbone, although they watched her closely for the first few minutes to make sure she was moving both of her arms. She was, so all was well.

I think the doctor put her on my chest as soon as she came out, but honestly I don't have very many memories of those first few minutes after she was born. I was so exhausted, and tired from not sleeping formost of the past week, that I think my brain shut down for a little while. The first memory I really have is when she was over on the warming table, and the doctor said, "That's a big baby". I remember thinking, "What? She looks tiny," but the doctor turned out to be right. She weighed in at 9 lbs. 1 oz. and 20 1/2 inches long.