Category Archives: Dave

not really a vacation, but…

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Dave has to go to California for work next week. Seeing as our two-year anniversary is on Tuesday, and I didn’t love the idea of being alone in the boonies with the baby for a week, I decided that Cate and I would tag along with him. I already know that she does pretty well on planes, and it’s only a two hour flight, so why not? His company is paying for the hotel and the rental car, all we have to fork over is the plane fare (which really isn’t that bad from here to the Bay area). I’ll drop him off at work in the morning so Cate and I can have the rental car during the day, and oh, the fun we will have.

So, we’re flying out on Saturday (as in, the day after tomorrow), and coming back next Friday. Turns out that my cousin Cat is also in the Bay area this week for work, so we’ll get to see her, Tony and e-baby before they leave. Woo! Also on the agenda: dinner with my aunt, meeting up with a girlfriend from college, and I’m retardly excited that Cate and I have a playdate with the lovely and talented Amanda, who I’ve had a blog-crush on for years.

Of course, this also means that we’ll be out of town on my very first Mother’s Day, so my plans for the day will have to be postponed a week. (More on that later.) But that’s ok, we’ll just pretend that Mother’s Day is on the 20th instead of the 13th. Works for me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about 50 loads of laundry to wash, I need to get a copy of our house key made for the teenager across the street (she’s going to check on the kitties for us), and oh yeah, the baby is screaming. The fun never stops!

everybody loves Naked Time

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Two things that are totally unrelated to each other…

1.) Spring has officially arrived here, which means the cats are back into Hunting Mode. Normally this is fine, as long as they do their business outside. Not having mice in the house is a-ok with me, I just don’t want to know about the Great Outdoor Killing Spree. Unfortunately, Beaumont hasn’t quite figured that out. A couple of days ago, I found him with a tiny little bird in our foyer. I chased him off and screamed for Dave. The bird was cowering in the corner making this really horrible little squeaking noise. I thought for sure he was a goner. Dave told me to go upstairs – I don’t know what he was going to do with it, I’m honestly afraid to ask – but he said that as soon as he took the bird outside, it flew away. So I guess it wasn’t injured too badly. Or at least I hope not.

The other incident happened this morning. I was heading upstairs to get dressed, and I spotted Beaumont in my office, halfway behind my desk. That’s not a place where any of the cats hang out, so I thought it might be smart to go investigate. Sure enough, he had caught himself a teeny-tiny baby bunny rabbit. Again, I screamed for Dave, because I am totally useless in these situations. I honestly thought the rabbit was dead because it was frozen stiff when I saw it, but apparently he was just terrified. After Dave chased the cat out of the room and closed the door, the bunny started hopping around all over the place and it took Dave a while to catch him. It seems that he was totally uninjured. And he was so cute, I really wanted to keep him, but I know that isn’t very practical in a house with four cats and a baby. Dave set him loose in the woods behind our house, where he will hopefully be reunited with his little bunny family and live a long, happy life.

2.) Cate and I have a little morning ritual that I call Naked Time. Apparently a good cure for diaper rash is to let your baby go diaper-free for 10 minutes a day. She doesn’t have diaper rash, but I figure this is a good way to make sure she doesn’t get it. So, every morning, when I change her out of her pajamas, I lay a waterproof mat on the floor (you know, just in case), toss a blanket over it, and strip her down to her birthday suit. She really seems to enjoy it, she laughs and kicks her little legs in the air. It’s pretty funny.

This morning, we were playing with this little stuffed giraffe that plays different children’s songs when you squeeze his tummy (“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “London Bridge,” etc.). Dave came in the room to play with us for a while. He squeezed the giraffe and it started playing “Three Blind Mice.”

Me: You know, I’m realizing that I’ve forgotten most of the words to these songs. Like this one. All I remember is something about the farmer’s wife, and she cut off their tails with a garden knife.
Dave: It’s a carving knife.
Me: Oh, right. Whatever.
Dave (to Cate, in baby-talk): Isn’t your mommy dumb? She thinks the song talks about a garden knife, but there’s no such thing. She’s so silly. And wrong.
Me (to Cate, in baby-talk): Your daddy’s kind of a jackass, isn’t he?

We do this whole “making snide remarks to each other through the baby” thing all the time now. I know we’ll have to cut it out when she gets older, but it’s so much fun.

change of plans

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My in-laws won’t be coming for a visit after all, for reasons that are best left off the blog. It’s nothing life or death, just some run-of-the-mill internal family drama. If I’m being vague, it’s because I feel like it’s one thing for me to write about my own family here, but I believe Dave is entitled to a bit of privacy, so we’ll just leave it at that. It will all be fine, I promise. These types of things always sort themselves out.

Another bit of news this week is that Dave is apparently going to have to go to San Francisco for a work-related conference during the first week in March. Which would normally not be a big deal – he often has to travel for work, and I’m not a huge fan of it, but I do ok by myself. This time, the idea of being alone with a newborn for a week, combined with my current state of sleep-deprivation and post-partum hormones, made me freak out a bit. Taking care of the baby by myself didn’t seem like a big deal before she was here; now, however, it seems absolutely terrifying. How will I ever be able to take a shower? And who will hold her when she’s screaming her head off and I need two hands to make a bottle?

Of course, the baby and I could go with him to San Francisco and just hang out in the hotel all week, but that didn’t sound like much fun either. Airplanes are so full of germs, and Cate hasn’t had most of her vaccines yet. Not to mention all the gear you need to travel with an infant. Ugh. No need.

So my mom, god love her, scrounged up some frequent flyer miles and booked herself a flight to come back to Seattle and help me with the baby while Dave is gone. Totally unselfish of her – not like she isn’t dying for more Grandbaby Time or anything. Ha.

The timing is pretty perfect too, since my mom’s visit will overlap with my cousin’s. And since her mom (my aunt) and baby will be here too, we’ll have our own little “Three Generation Estrogen Fest.” It should be a lot of fun. I normally hate it when Dave goes out of town, but I’m actually pretty excited about it this time.

Um, not that I want him to leave, of course. I’m just looking forward to the family time. I will miss him while he’s gone, though. I always do.

And hey, look! More baby home movies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9eD-uw5G3s 
I know, it’s pretty dull because she doesn’t actually do anything. I filmed it mostly for the grandparents’ benefit, since my folks claim to be going through Cate-withdrawal right now.

Btw, that song in the background is the Mozart tune that plays on her little baby gym. They say that it’s good for her mental and emotional development. I don’t know if that’s true, but that song has got to be the most annoying piece of classical music ever created. It’s been stuck in my head for days and it’s about to drive me up the damn wall. So much for my mental and emotional development.

hearts and teddy bears and all that goo

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Scene: last night, our living room. Dave was sitting on the couch with Cate, giving her a bottle. I was sitting on our over-stuffed chair with my laptop, trying to catch up on blogs, because I have fallen hopelessly behind. There was some old sitcom rerun (Friends, maybe? Or Will & Grace? I forget) on the TV. During a commercial break, an ad came on for a local jewelry company.

Dave: Sh*t. When is Valentine’s Day? Tomorrow?

Me: Yep.

Him: Um, happy Valentine’s Day! I sort of forgot to get you a card or a present.

Me: It’s ok, hon, I didn’t get you anything either.

And that pretty much sums it up. Aren’t we just the most romantic couple ever?

Actually, I think we’ve already got our little valentine, and it’s way more precious to me than any bouquet of flowers. Although, to be fair, flowers wouldn’t wake me up at four in the morning demanding food. Which, seriously kid, could you please just eat more during the day so your mommy can sleep for longer than two hours at a time? I’d really appreciate it if you could work on that.

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day. Now I’m going to take a nap.

Cate's birth story

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I started trying to write this over 24 hours ago, if that’s any indication of how crazy things are right now. (If I owe you an email, I’m sorry. I’ll get to it, I promise.) So! Here’s the timeline of how it all happened:

3:30 a.m. – My water broke. I called the hospital, and they said that since I wasn’t having contractions yet, I didn’t have to break any land speed records trying to get there, but “you definitely need to come in and have that baby today.” Okie-doke. Dave and I each took a shower, since we figured we had time. I even put on my make-up, which Dave totally laughed at me for, but I think it was more because I was afraid to leave the bathroom since I was leaking water everywhere. I was just sort of standing on the bathmat trying to figure out what to do (and, um, not panic), so hey, why not mascara? I guess that during times like this, when you know that something huge and scary is about to happen, the familiar is comforting.

5 a.m. – I was all checked in to my room with the monitors hooked up. Still no major contractions. I kept asking the nurse “was that one?” because I’d feel a slight twinge, but nothing that I could pinpoint. I think the nurse thought I was insane. Oh well, she wasn’t there long. We got a new labor nurse (Laura) when the shift change happened at 7 a.m., and she and her nurse trainee were with us for the rest of the day. They rocked.

8 a.m. – Since it was nearly five hours after my water broke and I still wasn’t contracting regularly, they started me on pitocin to get things moving. (The longer you go after your membranes rupture, the more the risk of infection increases.) About a half hour later, I no longer had to ask whether I was having a contraction or not. Ouch. They gave me some narcotic that I had never heard of to take the edge off of the contractions, and told me that I could get an epidural when I had dilated to four centimeters. At that point, I was still in the 2 1/2 to 3 range.

9 a.m. – I asked the nurse probably two or three times the name of the drug they had given me, because it sure was niiiice. (To this day, I have no idea what it was called.) The contractions still hurt like hell, and they were almost entirely in my lower back, but at least I was able to completely relax in between them.

11 a.m. -?The labor nurse told me I had finally gotten to four centimeters and asked if I wanted the epidural. Yes, please, thank you. Meanwhile, I guess there was a full moon out this weekend because the hospital was chock full of women having babies. The labor nurse told me that they had twelve other admissions that same night. So it took the anaesthesiologist a loooong time to get to me.

12:30 p.m. – During the hour and a half that it took for the anasthesiologist to arrive, the narcotics wore off and my contractions got really intense. That was the worst part of the entire experience. It was back labor, so Dave would try to apply counter-pressure during each contraction, but it didn’t help that much. I couldn’t even speak during the contractions, I just made moaning and grunting sounds. All I could say was “ok” when it was over, so Dave would know he could stop pressing on my back.

When the anaesthesiologist arrived, Dave left to get coffee. It was my idea, because I know he’s squeamish about needles, and he’d be useless to me if he was passed out on the floor. But trying to manage those insane contractions without him there was really difficult mentally – not to mention that I was trying to hold perfectly still while a very large needle was being inserted into my spine, and I had to keep telling the doctor to stop when a contraction hit. The labor nurses were rubbing my shoulders and telling me that I was doing a great job, but it really took all that I had not to scream/cry during the contractions. If that is any indication of what natural childbirth is like, I’m glad I opted for the drugs. I have a new respect for women who go the natural route, because I know for a fact that I couldn’t do it.

Now, after the epidural? Dude, that rocked. It’s a very strange sensation to be numb from the waist down, but it was amazing to watch my contractions on the monitor (which were 2 minutes apart, lasting over a minute each, and getting progressively more intense) and not even feel them.

1:30 p.m. – The ob/gyn on call – not my regular doctor, but a very nice lady who I liked a lot – came in to examine me about an hour after the epidural. She said I was at about 5 centimeters. We also learned that while the baby was head-down like she was supposed to be, her head was facing the wrong way, and it was way up high even though I was dilating. She told us to relax, because it was probably going to be several more hours before we had a baby.

1:30 – 3:30 p.m. – Since I had the epidural and wasn’t in pain anymore, Dave and I both took naps. Neither of us had slept very much the night before, and the day had already been pretty exhausting.

3:30 p.m. – The doctor came back to check on me. I told her that I was feeling some pressure a bit lower, so I wondered if maybe the baby’s head had finally dropped like it was supposed to. She said she doubted it, but offered to go ahead and examine me just to see. I said ok.

Around this time, Dave mentioned that when he talked to his dad earlier in the day, his dad had predicted that the baby would be born between four and six p.m. The labor nurse laughed. The doctor scoffed. I said that I thought his dad was probably confused by the time zone change between here and England. Dave just shrugged, agreed that I was probably right, and went back to chowing down on my lunch tray of hospital food. (I told him he could have it since I was restricted to ice chips. It honestly didn’t look that appealing, anyway.)

The doctor checked me and everyone in the room was stunned to learn that not only had the baby’s head dropped, but I was fully dilated and ready to push. The hell? I went from five centimeters to ten in two hours. I don’t think it’s a world record, but that was still mighty impressive.

Dave was finishing off the piece of cake from my lunch tray, so he stopped and went to the restroom to wash his hands. By the time he came back, the nurses were already holding my knees in the air and counting down from ten while I pushed. I think he freaked that the whole thing was going to be finished before he got there, but he made it just in time.

The next few minutes were a totally surreal blur. I was trying to push even though I was totally numb, so I was using muscles from memory rather than sensation. I felt the pushes more in my face than anywhere else. I don’t honestly remember much about any of that – I think I pushed through four or five contractions. The labor nurse told me later that the pushing part lasted 14 minutes from start to finish.

3:51 p.m. – Suddenly, there she was. This pink squirmy baby with a head full of dark hair was lying on my stomach and shrieking up a storm. Her little screams were so high-pitched, the first thing I said to Dave was, “She sounds like Teenie!” (Of course I would compare my child to the cat I’ve had for the past 11 years. Totally normal. I am not one of those crazy cat people, I swear.) We also realized that Dave’s dad was wrong by less than ten minutes. Who knew?

Dave and I both just sort of stared at her in shock for a couple of minutes. Dave took her off of my chest, and brought her to the nurse to get her cleaned up. The second he picked her up for the first time, she stopped screaming. And that is how things have been for the two of them ever since. Dave = Comfort. He is the instant end to tears. It is amazing to watch them together. Which is not to say that she and I haven’t bonded – believe me, I am totally smitten and can stare at her for hours on end – but I think she is going to be a complete and total Daddy’s Girl.

As for how things are now? It’s day three, so we’re still in Survival Mode. Everything is new and foreign and All About The Baby. We’re totally exhausted and happy. Breastfeeding has proven to be a bit tricky, but it’s new for both of us, and between the lactation nurses at the hospital and our pediatrician, I’m pretty sure we can work the kinks out of that system. I’m not too stressed about it, and I’ll get into all that business some other time.

Right now, I’m going to take advantage of Dave’s awake time so I can go take a shower, and then we’re going to see if the three of us can get some sleep. At least for an hour.

waiting game

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So… um, hi. I’m still not in labor. Ho-hum.

In fact, there hasn’t been a whole heck of a lot going on at our house lately, other than my constant whining about feeling miserable (par for the course at this point). And Dave is frantically trying to finish up some last-minute work projects so he can take a few days off next week. 

Actually, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but one of the perks of his new job is that he primarily works from home, so it doesn’t really matter if he takes an official paternity leave or not. He’ll still be around to help me out with the baby, and just knowing that he’ll be present is an enormous weight off my mind. He can re-adjust his daily work hours however he needs to, which is fantastic. I’m being very careful to ensure that he gets the amount of “quiet time” every day that he needs, because I think it’s a good habit to establish. We’re pretty good with our boundaries; if his office door is closed, I leave him alone. (Actually, I’m very housewife-y these days, so I do check in to see if he wants a snack or another cup of coffee, but that’s about it.) I know most of our routine will get thrown on its head after the baby arrives, and who knows, maybe Dave will want to go into the office more often, just to get a break. But it seems to be working pretty well so far.

Yesterday, Kris emailed me to remind me that this will be my last child-free weekend, and she wanted to know if I wanted to do something to mark this momentous occasion. Or at least have her come over with some take-out and a movie. Which was very sweet of her, even though I’m not up for it. My attention span can barely keep up with “Friends” reruns on late-night TV these days. A two-hour movie plot? Forget it. My brain is way too focused on its own little internal Baby Watch.

It’s weird, though, it hadn’t crossed my mind at all that this will be our last weekend before the baby arrives. I haven’t been thinking of it in terms of “my last moments of freedom.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite – I’m very much looking forward to being a single-resident human again, and I think that after she’s born is when I’ll feel “free” again. Most of it is just based on how miserable I’ve been feeling lately, but there’s all the other little things, like hey, I could eat sushi again if I wanted to! Or (gasp!) maybe have a cocktail! What a concept!

So! The waiting game is almost over. We only have three more days to go at the most. And three days is tolerable, right? Actually, it’s less than that – we’ll be all checked in to the hospital in a mere 65 hours. Even better.

Hope all of you have a good weekend. You can probably expect to see some sort of “exploiting the hospital’s free Wi-Fi for all it’s worth” post on Monday. Stay tuned.

happy day

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Very, very good news: Dave is flying home today! A whole entire day early! Hoooray!!!

He told his boss that I was showing “early signs” – which I suppose is true if you count all of these Braxton-Hicks contractions that I’ve been having like crazy for the past few days – and his boss agreed that Dave should be home. (I believe his words were, “I really don’t want your wife to hate me for the rest of your career.” Ha.) Honestly, I’m not sure if all of these little contractions are a sign that anything is happening at all, but I know they were making Dave (and me) nervous. I’ll feel much better having him nearby.

Not-so-good news: We got somewhere close to 6 inches of snow last night. We didn’t lose power, so I really have nothing to complain about, I’m just a bit nervous about the fact that I’m about to have to get in my car and drive to the airport to pick Dave up. I’m not so worried about myself – I’ve lived in snowy climates before (hello, Worcester, Massachusetts! I hated living in your city!), and I feel pretty safe with my little Subaru’s four wheel-drive. I just worry about other people on the roads, because Seattleites aren’t famous for being great drivers.

Last night I was supposed to go meet up with the girls for dessert, which I was really looking forward to. Just a chance to get out of the house for an hour or two and remind myself of the good old days when I felt like normal, functional human being, you know? We ended up cancelling our get-together because of the snow, which was probably wise. But still, kind of a bummer.

Later that night, I was talking to my mom and she said, “So, if you go into labor right now, when you’re alone and it’s snowing out, you DO know to call an ambulance to come get you and that you shouldn’t try to drive yourself, right?” Um, thanks, Mom! I hadn’t even thought of that possibility until you mentioned it! Now I think I might put 911 on speed dial, just in case. Sheesh.

But seriously, I was thinking about how insane this winter has been: the flood in November, the windstorm last month, and now this snowstorm. (I know six inches of snow doesn’t seem like much to most people, but it’s practically unheard of in this part of the country.) I just can’t imagine what’s next. What do y’all think, locusts or frogs? Maybe we should have people start placing bets now.

(Another quote from my mom, ever the optimist: “Hey, at least it hasn’t started raining blood yet!” Um, yeah! Ok then. We’ll send up three cheers for the one plague we’ve managed to avoid so far.)

I did take a lot of photos of the snow this morning, because it was really beautiful. (I’m very conflicted about the white stuff: I love it as long as I can stay home and not go anywhere. If I have to drive in it? I’m not so much feeling the love anymore.) But I’ll get the pictures uploaded after I get back from retrieving my husband from the airport.

Aside to Shannon: Tell Gaby she can bloody well have all of our snow that she wants. It’s only January and I am so over winter. I’m ready for spring.  

Update: Snow pictures are here. (Or you can click the photo below and go to the set.)

Also, Dave is now home. I’m happy.