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First, a video compilation of three videos I took of Matthew getting his groove on. Lately he’s been inviting me to dance as well – it’s great fun! Until he asks you to pick him up and then your back hates you.

We are all doing well here. It’s been raining, which is nice because we sorely need it, but not nice because it kind of limits what we can do. I think I have wimped out on weather a lot since moving out here – I used to not get ticked until there was a big old snowstorm, but nowadays, toting an umbrella around makes me a tad bit miffed. Can anyone say “spoiled”?

Anyway, the kiddos are great. Matthew is in speech therapy and is doing well. He’s also sick – bronchiolitis – and sounds like he’s been smoking for 20 years. Otherwise, he’s good. We’ve gotten a referral for an ENT evaluation to see if maybe he needs tubes in his ears since he’s got chronic fluid there. Ick. Hopefully if we can remedy the fluid in his ears he will pick up on his language.

Lindsey is doing well. In a little bit I am going to get her ready for bed. This is the Baby Who Sleeps – we can put her down, awake and swaddled, and she will fall asleep on her own. She naps two great naps a day and sleeps from 7ish pm until 6ish am, with a few wake-ups in between but even so, just having a schedule in place makes me feel like a whole new person!

Josh and I went out last week on a Date (shh, don’t tell my husband) – Josh’s grandmother and cousins came over to babysit while we snuck out and caught the movie “Doubt” which was great, and then all of us went out to dinner, which was Korean barbecue, also great. It was nice to go see a movie, if only so I didn’t spend the entire time talking about the baby.

And that’s about it. I ordered some new fabric so at some point this week I need to sit down and start making stuff and get my sewing groove back. I’ve been trying to take a picture a day in 2009 and am pretty successful thus far! We’ll see how things pan out.

Everyone tells you when you have a second child, your heart somehow grows bigger to love the second one equally, or something like that. It wasn’t quite like that for me. Every time I look at Lindsey I am grateful for Matthew paving the way into my heart – without getting to know him and love him first, I wouldn’t be able to look at Lindsey and all the potential and excitement for our relationship in the years to come. I look forward to loving Lindsey when she is one year old and two years old and so on. So thank you, my son, for helping me eagerly anticipate motherhood a second time. What a gift you have given to me.

a) It’s 9:23pm. I put Matthew to bed two hours ago and he is still up. I suspect a variety of things:
- Matthew
- Age 2 (actually, a mom on my mom’s board says she’s seen something indicating a “wonder week” type of developmental spurt at 2.5 – I hope this is the case. DESPERATELY.
- sniffles – he has a head cold
- transition with Lindsey coming into his life

Nevertheless, the boy is still awake and it is irking me madly! He’s just sitting there near the door. When he is tired, he will go to sleep. Right? He can’t stay awake forever… or can he?

b) Matthew is week 3 into speech therapy and it’s going well, I guess – she does a lot of directed play with him and toys and makes him sit down and talk and is teaching him some signs.

c) So when I put M to bed tonight, around 7:15ish I put Lindsey down, awake but a bit groggy. She’s still asleep. I suspect she will wake soon to nurse, at which point I will move stealthy like ninja to change her diaper quietly, nurse her and put her back to sleep. I think the Prilosec is helping – she’s spitting up less – although still spitting up and still grunting and having a hard time with gas. She seems less farty lately, but has still shown traces of mucous and green in her diapers (sorry nonparents, that was kind of gross). I have eliminated dairy… except for a pecan shortbread cookie I ate yesterday and didn’t even realize I’d consumed dairy until this morning. So we will see.

d) My supply seems to be touch and go. I am debating whether or not to go back to this lactation support group I’ve been going to on Tuesdays (it’s $10 a session and I’m not sure exactly how much more help I need – we’ve got a latch down pat and it doesn’t hurt at ALL now, just pinches when she first latches on, but otherwise it’s peachy). I know she’s getting milk since she’s spitting it up (ugh). She’s definitely gained – she’s outgrown her NB sized sleepers (sob) but she still seems so impossibly tiny! Anyway, back to my supply – today feels like a low, but perhaps these last few days of constant nursing was her 6 week growth spurt? Is there one at 6 weeks? Have to go check kellymom. I have also noticed that if I have a lot of salty foods/soy sauce, things seem slower going the day after, so I have to make sure to buy low-sodium soy sauce – we had sushi last night and what can I say, I like soy sauce.

e) I finally broke out my sewing machine and sewed a quick and dirty mei tai for Matthew. Yesterday, Matthew came over to me with the mei tai and asked me to put it on (in his own language, sigh) and wear him, so I did. He is heavy. HEA-VEE. Afterward, I put his doll Quincy in it and tied the mei tai up for him to wear which he was perfectly happy to do. He was none too impressed with my sewing skills, but it was a fun adventure nonetheless. I miss sewing – with some creative boppy-pillow sitting, I could nurse Lindsey and sew at the same time. Woo!

Matthew’s first time in a meitai:

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a) Josh took the kids to the Berkeley Bowl to pick up a few things that Safeway didn’t have – he took both of them so I could get a break and nap. Yet, here I am, unable to sleep. Gah. So instead I bought a crockpot.

b) Lindsey’s on Prilosec right now to help with reflux. It is a drug that’s supposed to stop her belly from making acid, which may be working right now, but she keeps gurgling up my milk and that keeps all of us up at night. We’re kind of dying. Gurgle, spit, gurgle, spit. Blah. I am almost a week into dairy elimination, so we will see how this goes, but what else can we do? Just wait until her gurgle flap grows in? It sounds like she’s drowning. And it only happens at night. During the day, trace, but nothing nearly as bad as it is at night – and we have her sleeping propped up in a boppy pillow. I might try hanging her in one of these things next! (just kidding, I mean, really – not going to hang Lindsey at the Oakland Airport for us to get a good night’s sleep!)

c) I am a cow. I do nothing but nurse, nurse, nurse. She cluster feeds at night and goes maybe 90 min during the day, the occasional nap notwithstanding. If I weren’t fatigue-tired, I am most certainly physically-tired. I feel the life force draining out of me when she feeds! Hello overdramatic.

d) I remember how stoked I was that M settled into a nap routine and I am desperate for the same for Lindsey, although she feels too young for that. Maybe in the next few weeks or so we can transition her? I don’t know. But man, it would be nice to have a few hours, roughly, during the day where I wasn’t attached to a mouth. Or get dressed for the day before 1pm. Or shower more than 3 times a week.

e) I’m taking insulin again. I hate diabetes.

f) It’s 6:10, and I hope the kids haven’t killed Josh. I think they’re going to be great friends, they already tagteam each other brilliantly.

Happy Lunar New Year – Gong Xi Fa Çai, homeys.

Matthew had his 2.5 year well child check today. He is healthy, and exceeding weight and height on the growth chart 3′3″, 42lbs. – Dr. Lewis had to get a new chart that was bigger because it was confusing otherwise. Go M! Next WCC is age 3. He got the flu vaccine and Hep B (I think) vaccine, and is all caught up til kindergarten now. He seemed shocked and betrayed when he got his shots – he frowned but did not cry, but if he could he totally would have cussed me out.

His peeing thing – Dr. Lewis thinks he’s learning how to hold his urine and deposit en masse. She’s suggesting a timed potty training intro for him – offer him the potty after he wakes up, 10-20 min after he eats*, before we go out, when we come back and before bed – to get him used to the idea that people go to the potty.

Lindsey – she just had a weight check and is 7lbs 14oz! Yay! She is actually gaining fast now – the average they want to see is 1oz/day and she is at 1.28oz/day. Dr. Lewis thinks she a) has reflux, but it’s not bad right now as the vomiting doesn’t seem to bother her (and in the last few days she’s totally indifferent to it) and she’s gaining; and b) is not allergic to milk proteins – no blood in her stools, although the mucous in her stools indicates that she’s sensitive to something I am eating, which is not ruling out milk proteins as it might be a slight sensitivity. Based on this I am eliminating dairy from my diet and I am going to journal how she’s doing so if in a couple of weeks things are the same, I am going to go back to see Dr. Lewis and ask for a prescription for something for her. Right now both of us thought we should wait and see how she does as she both ages and as I tweak my diet.

She also has a teensy hemangioma on her right collarbone. Josh has the remnants of one on the back of his neck on the right. She says it is benign, it will get bigger and peak at age 2 at which point it will fade. Nothing to worry about. She comes back in a month for vaccines.

*She said that the vast majority of people poop 10-20 min after eating, and 70% of those people poop in the morning. How funny is that? That pattern describes me to a T!

Matthew is…

• 2 and a half years old
• 2 sessions into speech therapy (and is starting to understand some sign language, which is neat!)
• 6 months away from aging out of early intervention and if his language hasn’t improved, his care transfers to the local school district, which for some reason makes me worried
• 42.4 lbs. I kid you not.
• Growing out of 4T tops and pants and into 5T comfortably
• 1 great big brother – he kisses and hugs his little sister and is very possessive (”MINE!”)

Somewhere around the time Lindsey was born, Matthew seems to have gained 20 lbs and 10 inches and is such a big little boy. We go to the doctor’s on Monday for his 2.5 year check up and I am curious to see how much he has grown. He loves the doctor’s. He is also totally in puffy heart love with his speech therapist, Lauren. Cries inconsolably when she leaves.

Still loves his mama’s cuddles, which is really what’s important!

One of the upsides of maternity leave is the opportunity to take tons of pictures of my favorite subjects. Here is Lindsey’s tag, Matthew’s tag, and the stream in general.

A couple of my favorite pictures thus far:

Lindsey flips Matthew off:

Matthew loves kissing Lindsey. She’s not as enthralled. The next few years are going to be interesting, that’s for sure.

December 23, 2008 – San Francisco, California
2:33AM
6 pounds, 11 ounces; 19 inches long

Gary, Kathy, Josh and I reported to the hospital for the scheduled induction at 7:15 or so in the morning of December 22 – way early, to avoid traffic on the Bay Bridge. Most of the morning was totally boring – we did a lot of waiting and I did a lot of contracting. I relearned how to play cribbage. We had a fantastic view of the city – on the 15th floor of the Long Hospital section of the UCSF hospital – you could see the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and downtown San Francisco to the east. Everyone who came into the room marveled on the view and congratulated me on getting such a gorgeous room.

We started out using misprostol (cytotec) to ripen the cervix. I began contracting not too long after. and later that afternoon when I was checked, I hadn’t gotten that far. I was at about 1-2cm at around 3:30pm or so, soft cervix. I was disappointed – I was hoping to be much further along! Then I started out on a Pitocin drip and waited. And waited and waited and waited. If the Pitocin didn’t work in terms of further opening the cervix, the next course of action would have been a foley catheter inside the cervix, which I was not wanting to do.

Around 7pm or so, after I’d had dinner, I was sitting in bed, waiting to get checked to see how the Pitocin was doing (from my perspective, the contractions were getting stronger and increasing in intensity) when my water broke. Actually, I wasn’t even entirely sure that my water had broken – at one point it felt like my back cracked. I remember saying, “Wow, it felt like my butt just popped.” And sure enough, during the next contraction huge gushes poured out. Nothing like a rupture of the sac to make you feel like you’re horrifically incontinent!

The Pitocin was upped then. Once I got to 5cm I decided I needed to get an epidural. It took the anesthesiologist awhile to get there, because she was at a c-section occurring at that same time, and once she did, she talked and chattered so much I was rolling my eyes between contractions to Josh and was THISCLOSE to telling her to shut up, but I decided that if she was going to give me drugs in my spine, perhaps I should remain on her good side. She and the nurse were a little testy with each other (the anesthesiologist was a resident; the nurse was an 18 year seasoned professional) but after their bickering, it finally went in and worked well.

We rested for a few hours at that point, and around 12:30/1AM or so I felt it was nearly time. The doctor came in to check and sure enough I was nearly complete. At that time, activity picked up, as the epidural started wearing off fast. The magic button they gave me to up the epidural coming in didn’t work. They rushed to get the anesthesiologist in and I remember complaining a few times about where the hell she was. Oops! Finally, she came in, topped me off, and then we were pushing. I pushed for 90 minutes or so with Lindsey, which seems speedy compared to pushing with Matthew – who took 6 hours. The final push came as they were telling me to slow down, but there is no slowing down a baby with a mission. That final push had Lindsey out entirely! I held her and cried. So tiny compared to Matthew!

While Josh accompanied her to the other side of the room to get weighed and all of that newborn jazz, the doctor returned to work on me and pushing the placenta out, which didn’t come out at all. Pretty soon, serious work was going on inside me as the doctor scrubbed the inside out trying to get all of the placenta. I almost passed out from the pain at that point – a nurse rushed in to inject a little painkiller into my IV. Finally, all of the placenta was removed.

Not too long after that, Kathy and Gary left and things got quiet. As the nurse was cleaning Lindsey up, I started feeling progressively worse. My vision started fading in and out. A remaining clot inside my uterus caused me to hemorrhage, so a doctor came back in and fished out the clot (ugh). More medication later (cytotec and pitocin to help contract the uterus) and all was right as rain.

We discharged from the hospital a day early, after some administrative wrangling (the pediatrician in charge didn’t want to discharge Lindsey unless she could be seen in 72 hours by another doctor… but being a holiday weekend things got hairy there). Finally, we were all released and things have been settling down quite well, I think!

Breastfeeding Lindsey is harder, I think, than breastfeeding Matthew. She has an impossibly tiny mouth and so latching on has been difficult, but we are weathering through. As a part of the discharge process, we had a home health care nurse come by on Christmas Day to check on her and she had lost 10.5% of her body weight, so we supplemented with formula to help pack on weight until my milk came in, which was the day after. Since then, no formula, but because of latch and sore nipple issues, occasionally we are giving her a little bit of pumped milk via bottle. Her latch is getting better, though, so that’s better, at least!

She is so tiny that I barely know what to do with her. I snuggled Matthew a little earlier today on the sofa and was amazed by how different they are in size. He seems gargantuan compared to her!

last belly pic

our amazing view

Golden Gate Bridge

a rainbow

bored, playing cribbage

surfing the web

here she is!!

I have been incredibly lax in updating. Mea culpa.

Updates here…

Matthew is doing great! He is growing like a weed and is probably the boss of you – he certainly thinks he is the boss of us. He is great at wagging his finger and telling Ava to go into her crate, or telling Mama and Baba (or as he likes to say “A-C and Dosh”) “NO!” and “MINE!” He is still his sweet loving self, though, which makes it a lot of fun.

Here is Matthew and Santa. He is not pleased.

I am about ready to pop with baby girl and I tell you there is no one else more excited about this feat than myself. A couple of weeks ago the baby was estimated at 7lbs and 2.5 oz. GULP. If I don’t have a baby by the 22nd, I will be going in for an induction at 8am that morning. I am beyond ready to remove this alien from my body!

Here I am last week at 37 weeks. Full-term.

Same stretch marks as with Matthew! Heheh.

And here is Josh, skeptical as always when I brandish my camera in his general direction.

I think he looks a lot like Gary here!