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Things that happened this week that I totally forgot to blog about because, hot damn, y’all, I am TIRED.

1. My brother and sister came over from Charlotte last weekend to hang out. That was fun, even though I completely forgot to take any pictures whatsoever.

2. Everyone (my brother, my sister, and my mom) went back to their respective homes on Sunday. We were very sad about that. Or at least, Catie and I were sad; Lucy honestly didn’t seem to notice much.

3. I survived 48 hours on solo parent duty with a four year-old and a newborn.

That probably seems like nothing to some people, but for me, it felt like a pretty major accomplishment.

4. Dave got back from England on Tuesday evening. Thank God.

5. Also on Tuesday: I started back to work. And Lucy turned 6 weeks old.

Whaaa? Where does the time go?

6. I moved Lucy to her crib, because she’s such a light sleeper that she wakes up if I so much as roll over or clear my throat. I thought maybe we might all get some more sleep that way. She’s spent the last 2 nights in her crib, and it’s been semi-successful. She’s gone from sleeping 2.5 hours at a time to sleeping 3 hours at a time, so… yay? I guess? I’ll celebrate once she’s consistently sleeping 4+ hours at a time. (Soon. Please, God, let it be soon.)

7. I’m finally starting to feel the post-partum crazies set in. I know that it’s just the accumulation of several weeks’ worth of exhaustion, and it’s all stuff that will pass as soon as I get some rest. But this has not been my best week, to put it mildly.

8. We have no plans this weekend, and I am so looking forward to that. I might not get out of my pajamas until Monday.

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When my mom was here right after Lucy was born, she said, “I keep looking at Lucy and thinking, ‘I know this face. Where have I seen this face before?’” She said that she knew it was one of her kids, but she wasn’t quite sure which one.

So, this time when she flew up, she brought a bunch of old pictures with her. And it kind of blew my mind.

This, as you probably already know, is Lucy:

And this is me as a baby:

So… Huh. Apparently I gave birth to myself. Who knew?

I find it kind of hilarious that Dave and I each got one kid who looks like ourselves. Catie is basically Dave’s twin, so I guess it was my DNA’s turn.

Also, I never thought that I looked like my mom; everyone has always said that I take after my dad’s side of the family. But then I saw this picture of my mom. It was taken in 1982, so she was 36 years old at the time (pretty darn close to the 35 that I am now).

I wouldn’t say that we’re exactly twins, but I can see the resemblance for the first time in my life. So that’s weird, but really cool at the same time.

P.S. During all of this, we also pulled out a bunch of pictures of Dave when he was young to contrast and compare. My dad managed to find the one picture we have in this house of Dave’s ex-wife (it’s really a picture of Dave, she’s kind of off in the corner). And my dad insisted that it was me in the photo, not Dave’s ex. I told him that clearly Dave has a type, but no, it’s not me, and can we please change the subject now thanks? Ok then. Yeah. That was… awkward.

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What with all of the focus on the new baby lately, I sort of forgot to mention that Dave is flying to England today. (Well, tonight. He’s on the red eye.) This time it’s for business reasons rather than just fun/family stuff, and the trip has been planned for a while, so it’s not like I didn’t know this was coming.

And the funny thing is that I’ve been totally chilled out about the idea of this trip all along. When Dave first mentioned it weeks ago when I was still pregnant, my reaction was all, “Eh, whatever. Two kids, one me, no biggie.”

It wasn’t until late last night that I suddenly almost burst into tears. I’m sure it’s a combination of post-partum hormones, sleep deprivation, and maybe a little leftover trauma from the last time he went to the UK.

But it doesn’t even make sense, because it’s not like I’m going to be on solo parent duty for the two weeks that he’s away. My mom is flying up tomorrow and she’ll be here for the majority of the time that Dave is gone.

(My dad is coming up for a few days in there too, but since he’s not a big fan of travel, he’s only coming for a few days rather than 12 days like my mom.)

So I know I’m going to be fine. I’ll have backup. The whole thing is totally manageable.

But holy crap, we’re really going to miss that guy.

Safe travels, babe. Love you.

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I wrote a post a few months ago about things that were different in my first and second pregnancies. And of course, I knew that Lucy herself would be different than Catie, but I didn’t realize that the differences would be start appearing so quickly. Little things like:

Eating Habits
Catie wolfed down each bottle and ate every 3 hours like clockwork when she was a newborn. Lucy is much slower on the bottle and tends to “graze” more – she just wants a little here and there, not a lot at once.

Swaddling
Catie loved to be swaddled and slept peacefully that way until she was about 5 months old. Lucy wants her hands up by her face when she sleeps, so if you try to swaddle her, she gets ANGRY. I’ve started swaddling her under her armpits so at least her lower half is all warm and snuggly, and that seems to work pretty well.

Exhibit A: Lucy’s hand placement when sleeping.

Swings vs. Bouncer
Catie hated the swing and loved the bouncy seat. Lucy is the opposite – loves the swing, not a fan of the bouncer.

Music
Catie has loved pop music since she was in the womb. (Seriously, she’d start kicking every time I turned on Madonna.) And she still likes the dance radio station whenever we’re in the car. She loves Lady Gaga, ABBA, Michael Jackson, Pink, all kinds of pop music.

Lucy, on the other hand, seems to have an affinity for the “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack. Which may be because I sing this song to her as a lullaby.

She also seems to like Rufus Wainwright and other stuff that’s on the more mellow end of the spectrum.

Diapers
These kids have very different, um, bathroom habits. Lucy tends to hold it in and then have very explosive results. I’m not a fan of this. And I can only assume that my washing machine isn’t either. Yuck.

Pacifiers
Catie was never interested in pacifiers, but they really seem to comfort Lucy a lot.

It’s just a lot of little things, really, but it’s cool to see how babies are essentially born as their own unique person. I can’t wait to see how their personalities differ (or are similar) as they get older.

One thing they seem to have in common so far is a strong mutual affection. And I really love that.

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I guess since I have a new baby, and I’m a blogger, I’m required to post something about how breastfeeding is going, right? Isn’t it, like, a mommy blogger law or something?

Breastfeeding Catie was awful. My milk never came in, we were both frustrated, and we both cried a hell of a lot. It was definitely not an experience I wanted to repeat.

This time I went into it cautiously optimistic (lots of women who can’t breastfeed the first time find it easier with the second baby, right?), and also with more than my share of skepticism. I made an internal deal with myself before Lucy was born: I would not cry about breastfeeding this time.

And? I haven’t. Cried about it, that is.

For one thing, I went into this knowing a bit more about my own health and medical history. And I armed myself with the resources that I knew could help me: my pediatrician’s office has a lactation consultant on staff, who I can speak to anytime for free (and she’s a good one, unlike the one I had when Catie was born). I also knew to start off with fenugreek and More Milk herbal supplements right away.

But also, I went into it knowing full well that I have milk supply issues, and accepting the fact that supplementing with formula may always be necessary. When I admitted to my (awesome) pediatrician that we had started supplementing by day 5, he shrugged and said, “They found baby bottles in the ruins of ancient Egypt. We don’t worry about it.”

So, rather than a breast versus bottle argument, we’re doing both breast and bottle, and it’s working out really well. Lucy is nursing about 5 or 6 times a day, and even with the supplements, it’s never quite enough to fill up her tummy (although based on the number of times I hear her swallow when she’s nursing, I can tell she’s getting a lot more than Catie ever did). Then we add in formula afterward if she’s still hungry. Which she always is.

I feel good knowing that the breastmilk Lucy gets is boosting her immune system and doing all that other good stuff for both of us. And the formula works because other people (like Dave, or my mom, or whoever) can help out and give her a bottle and allow me to get a little extra rest in between feedings.

So it’s good. It might not be the perfect solution for everyone, but it works for us, and that’s fine by me.

It seems to be fine with Lucy too.

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We’re almost two weeks into this whole “life with two kids” gig, and so far it’s pretty great. Lucy is a really good baby, she usually only cries when she’s hungry or when we change her diaper. Which, to be fair, is pretty often. But still.

I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m medicated, or if it’s because this is my second baby, but things just feel so much easier this time around. Yes, I’m exhausted, and every time Lucy wakes up in the middle of the night (which is approximately every two to three hours), I have that feeling of “oh god, somebody find the baby’s snooze button, I can’t handle this right now.” But it’s fleeting. I get up, I feed her, change her, get her back to sleep. And we cope. It’s hard, sure, but it doesn’t feel unbearable like it did with Catie.

My mom has been here for the past week, and it’s been so great to have her here. She helps out with the baby, she cooks dinner, and she even convinced Catie to try holding Lucy, something I hadn’t been able to do.

Seriously, that picture just about makes my heart explode.

We will all be very bummed when Mimi flies home on Wednesday. But the good news is that she’ll be back in just a couple of weeks when Dave goes to the UK.

My mom is already sad about leaving too. (And incidentally, anyone looking to buy a house in Ridgeland, Mississippi? Because I really need my parents to sell their place so they can move here!)

Anyway, we’re hanging in there. Better than that, really. We’re doing pretty great.

Oh, and Lucy says “hi!”

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We got up crazy early on Tuesday morning and set off for the hospital. Before we left, my sister took this picture: our last moment as a family of three.

(Props to Angie for the idea.)

The Boring Part

We got checked into the hospital around 7:30 a.m., did all the medically necessary prep work, got the IV started with Pitocin, and then we waited. And waited.

A few hours later, the contractions started to get really intense, and I was still barely dilated 1 centimeter. I asked for some pain relief, and I was given a drug called Stadol. Which was… well, it made me high as a kite, is what it did. It was actually quite pleasant and it definitely took the edge off of the contractions. I passed out for a while, I’m not sure how long.

At some point the doctor came in to check me, and said that I was dilated to 4 centimeters. She broke my water for me to get things moving, and then they called the anesthesiologist to get my epidural going.

Meanwhile, I realized that it was almost 5:00, and visiting hours ended at 8:00, so basically my whole plan to have Catie come to the hospital to meet her baby sister immediately after she was born? That wasn’t going to happen. And I almost cried. Dave suggested that she could come see me anyway, but I was worried that it would freak her out to see me in pain and lying in a hospital bed with an IV.

Finally, I got my epidural. I don’t remember it hurting very much when I had one with Catie, but this one hurt so bad it almost made me cry. Once it was done, the pain from the contractions went from excruciating to almost non-existent. Oh, and I was flagged as a fall risk, which cracked both me and Dave up. I should probably wear this bracelet all the time.

Since I wasn’t in pain anymore, I agreed to Dave’s original idea to bring Catie to the hospital, as long as we prepped her beforehand about what to expect. “Mommy’s in a bed, and there are some tubes and things to give her medicine,” etc. My sister explained it to her on the way to the hospital, and she didn’t seem too freaked out by it.

Tracy and Catie stayed for a little while, then went home for the night.

At some point, I mentioned to the night nurse that I had a headache, and I suspected it was because it had been over 12 hours since I’d had any caffeine. She told me I could have a Diet Coke. I will love her forever for that.

The Part Where Stuff Started Happening

I started to feel some weird pressure, and I asked the nurse to check me. She started to, then her cell phone rang and she said she had to take it because it was her baby-sitter. While she was out of the room, the pressure got suddenly very intense and I told Dave she better hurry up because I thought I might be fully dilated. She came back a minute later, apologized, and checked to find out that yes, I was indeed at 9 cm and almost fully dilated, the only problem was that the baby was still face up, but once she flipped around, she’d be out in no time.

My OB had left the hospital, so they paged her, and she said she’d be there in 10 minutes. The nurse was worried that the baby might try to come before the doctor could get there, so she had me (with my numbed-up from an epidural legs) flip over on the bed and get up on all fours. No, seriously.

And yes, that was exactly as awkward as it sounds. Especially in a hospital gown, so I was basically mooning the whole room. Very nice.

The nurse also mentioned something about not being able to get a good read on the baby’s heart rate, but I didn’t think much of that at the time.

The Really Freaking Scary Part

My OB got there and had me flip back over on the bed (again, numb from the waist down – VERY. AWKWARD.) and she had me start pushing. As I pushed, she tried to reach in and manually flip the baby around the right way. She’d get Lucy flipped, and on the next push, she’d flip herself back. The problem was that the angle of her head was such that she couldn’t get past my pubic bone with the direction she was facing.

I pushed for something like 45 minutes. Finally the doctor said that she was going to have to do a vacuum extraction to flip the baby over as she came out. Fine by me, I just wanted her out, and it seemed like the safest option for both of us. As soon as the vacuum was attached to the baby’s head, she was out on the next contraction.

What happened next is probably something I’ll have nightmares about for the rest of my life. Lucy was out, and she was covered in blood (as you’d expect). But she was gray. And even though her eyes were open, she wasn’t making any sound. I heard the doctor say that the cord was around her neck.

There was a team of people who swooped her over to an incubator and started working on her. I was sobbing and saying to Dave, “She’s not crying! Why isn’t she crying??” Dave said that he could see her (I couldn’t see much at all from where I was), and he kept telling me that she was ok. That didn’t really help ease my growing sense of panic at all.

Finally, I heard her cry, then I started crying tears of relief.

The Happy Ending

As scary as those few minutes were, as soon as they were over, that was it. She was just… here. And she was perfect.

(Apologies for my lack of make-up. I know the under-eye circles are a bit scary.)

Now it’s five days later, and we’re still getting to know each other. But I think we’re going to get along famously.

This one is a keeper, y’all.

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