Today everyone in the flat is napping but me. Actually, I think Isaac is awake but he’s in his room for naptime. I’m trying to keep awake myself, because I know if I nap I’ll only feel worse when I wake up again…or as soon as I fall asleep one of the boys will be waking me up again.
So instead I am listening to music on my headphones and dreaming awake. The other day we had a great time playing music and trying to get Isaac to dance. (Isaac’s dancing is basically running in circles, but it is quite amusing.) Brian played “More Than a Feeling” by Boston and “Spirit of Radio” by Rush. Both of them made me think of cruising the freeways of Houston with my big brother Tom when I was a youngster (and he was 10 years older but also fairly young). He taught me that the best way to cruise Houston was on a warm spring night with the windows down and the wind in your hair, blasting Rush on the radio and air drumming like crazy. And he taught me to appreciate the fine talents of the Rush drummer, Neil Peart, a true master of rock and roll. Of course, Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” is also a great song for air drums. I have never really enjoyed air guitar, just air drums.
And as my mind skips abruptly from one memory to another, sometimes connected by very thin threads, I think of enjoying music with Ellen, my first roomie at Southeast Missouri State–we both loved to disco dance in our tiny dorm room and we both loved to croon along to Harry Connick, Jr. From there our tastes sometimes deviated, but we taught each other to appreciate new genres. She reminded me recently of a time she asked me to play a certain song in my collection. She couldn’t remember who the artist was or the name of the song, but she said it began “Ai-yi-ai-yi-ai-yi” and demonstrated that sort of yelling noise for me. She says I proceeded to play 5 or 6 songs that started in a similar manner. I fancied myself quite the rocker at the time. I guess I’m not now or I wouldn’t be writing a sentence like that last one.
Back then I was all into King’s X, Pearl Jam, Mortal, the 77′s, Rush, and the like. Brian introduced me to The Who and Led Zeppelin as well and my U2 collection has grown steadily over the years. I even read books about U2, so I think it’s safe to say it’s my favorite band.
OK, the boys are all waking now, so this little stroll down memory lane is cut short, but I’m sure I’ll traipse this way again.
Archive for » February, 2006 «
Relating to my previous post on Real Estate Comparisons, I thought I would research New York City as well–and boy, is it scary…
Here’s what you can get in Manhattan for a little more than $450,000
A great starter studio:
http://citi-habitats.com/viewsales.php?adID=894068&scroll=1
Ouch.
Well, if you read the previous post, you’ll know what my very long labor experience was like when I had Isaac. I did not like the whole clinical, bed-bound ordeal so I decided to go more natural with my second baby, Ewan. I didn’t want the typical hospital experience, so I chose a birth center instead. Not only did I choose a birth center, I chose The Birth Centre — an incredible private midwifery service in Tooting, south of the Thames, but still part of London. Yes, Ewan was born in Tooting. You may laugh now.
So, before baby #2 arrived, I jumped wholeheartedly into the natural birth preparations. Homeopathy! Aromatherapy! Birth pool! Classical music! I was up for almost anything that would make for a great natural birth. I even tried a little yoga, but I drew the line at hypno-birthing. I am not down with that kind of thing. I was particularly enamored of the birth pool idea; I bought a whole book about it and made sure my midwives knew I was into it. I also got a crazy striped two-piece maternity swimsuit to wear in the birth pool. Luckily, they had birthing pools at The Birth Centre, so at least I didn’t have to rent one.
I wasn’t sure if I could really handle a natural birth, but I knew one thing for sure–I really did not want to give birth in a hospital again. Ack. That last experience was so icky –no modesty, no dignity, no control. I also decided I didn’t want to give birth in at home–and I figured the landlady wouldn’t be too pleased if I tried to deliver a baby in her flat. The Birth Centre was the perfect happy medium between a home birth and a hospital birth–and it was next door to a hospital…just in case.
The best thing about The Birth Centre was I had two awesome midwives–Debbie and Natalie. They alternated visits to me and both were consummate professionals as well as warm and friendly. And hey, I just got to use the word consummate in a sentence.
I was all ready. Books read, homeopathy kit and aromatherapy stuff bought, bags packed. We’d arranged a ride and babysitting for Isaac. However, Ewan wasn’t ready to come. His due date came and went. Everyone knows the due date is just a guideline and not set in stone, but it’s still hard to accept when you’re still massively pregnant past the date. I was truly enormous, and sick and tired of being truly enormous. I did my best to kick-start his arrival. I was desperate to bust that puppy out, let me tell you. I was drinking raspberry leaf tea and taking evening primrose oil capsules. I don’t even remember exactly what those did, though, but it was supposed to be something fabulous. I took walks until I could barely waddle down the street at a snail’s pace. I can’t tell you how much chicken curry I ate. It seems like we had hot curry dishes almost every night for a week hoping Ewan would get the hint. My friend Audra told me her sister bumped down the stairs on her bottom to speed her baby’s arrival, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that.
Oh, and the worst part–Isaac came down with chicken pox just after the due date. So we had to double-check that the family who would be looking after him had already had their round of the disease. Poor little guy. His worst night was the night we were in labor.
Finally–bam–contractions started at 10 p.m. on Monday night, the 25th of July. Brian was in the living room on a conference call for work. I was lying in bed reading when I started feeling something. I started talking to Ewan–”Yo, dude, is that you? Does this mean you’re coming or is this another false alarm?” (I’d already called the midwives for some false starts in the last couple weeks.) I started watching the clock. Tick tock tick tock. And I was pretty sure, so I went to the living room and started signaling to Brian that it was time. He eventually got off the phone and urged me to call the midwives. I waited until I was 100% sure the contractions were for real. The midwives said to meet them at The Birth Centre. And there was much rejoicing!
My friend Lucia came for Isaac (and the poor little thing had chicken pox)and took him home for the night. I put on my TENS machine (I’d explain it but it would be exceptionally boring–you just need to know it helps the pain with electrical pulses or something) and wore it in the mini-cab on the way to the birth center. We got to the birth center at about 2:30 a.m., and we started unpacking all my special little helps. Brian put some music in the CD player and we had a few hours of mild labor. Boring. I spent some time in a birthing pool, but when I got in the water, it slowed my contractions dramatically, so I had to get out again. (Somewhere on my computer I have a picture of me in that birth pool, if I haven’t deleted it already, but I’m not about to post it here–yikes, scary.) My labor progressed best when I knelt on the floor and embraced a birthing ball. I never expected to be the kind of woman who would spend her labor on the floor hugging a ball, but yep, that actually is the kind of woman I am.
Brian was supremely helpful by rubbing my back as I hugged the ball. Then my midwife Debbie decided labor was progressing too slowly, so she told me I had two choices. I could just rest a while, maybe sleep a bit, or I could have her break my waters. No way was I going to suffer through another insufferably long labor like the one I’d had with Isaac, so I asked her to break the waters. So at 6:45 a.m. I had to lie down on the floor. As I arranged myself I saw the instrument she was about to use–it looked exactly like a wickedly long and pointy crochet hook. Yowza. That was a bit daunting, but I tried not to think about it. I’ll skip the ugly details and assure you that it worked. Debbie was really gentle and reassuring, and Brian held my hand, so it wasn’t too bad.
It amazed me how quickly this trick worked. Soon the contractions were dramatically more painful and effective and labor began to really progress. Holy cow did it ever progress. I tried the birthing pool again (I really wanted to actually deliver in the water). I also tried some Entonox, (50% oxygen and 50% nitrous oxide given through a rubber facemask). I don’t know how to describe its effects and at the time I couldn’t decide whether it was working and whether I liked it. It made me feel light-headed, woozy, and sleepy but I couldn’t tell if that gave me any pain relief or if it was just annoying enough to distract me from the pain a little. It wasn’t making me as spacey as whatever they gave me during my labor with Isaac, but I hated the lack of control and sleepiness. I finally tossed aside the Entonox and got out of the pool. All I wanted to do was to get back on the floor and embrace my beloved birthing ball.
Finally we were speeding along. At 8:30 a.m. I was experiencing pain on a whole new level. It was no longer localized in the womb. I felt like it was overtaking my entire body and eating away at my soul. Perhaps you think I’m melodramatic, but if you’ve been there you’ll know it’s no exaggeration. The ear-splitting screams were of mythic proportion. Just like with Isaac, I got very weepy and told Brian I just couldn’t do it. I was fantasizing about dragging my gargantuan shuddering carcass across the street to the hospital for an epidural but in retrospect I’m sure I was too far along to do that. At that point I was standing leaning heavily on Brian and shrieking as the contractions hit me one after another. Brian continued to reassure me–making me look in his eyes as he told me that I could do it. His most effective encouragement was
reminding me that I’d said if Kendra could do it, so could I. (Kendra is my older sister who delivered both her boys naturally.) I was a bit irritated by the reminder, but it helped steel my resolve.
My midwife Natalie gave me some stuff from my homeopathy kit (“Were those just placebos?” I wondered) and encouraged me. For a few minutes she had me sit on the birthing ball and face her, and she held my hands and encouraged me to breathe through the pain. It sounds a bit odd, perhaps, but that did help. I focused on Natalie and slowed my breath instead of just crying. It was very calming (though I did not become completely calm).
Natalie then urged me to try walking around a bit, though for some reason I felt glued to the birthing ball. Finally I got up, with Brian’s help, and we walked out into the hall, but we didn’t make it far as more hideous, deathly contractions slammed into me. I hurried (as much as I could hurry in that state) back into the birthing room and fell back onto the birthing ball, clutching it as if it was a lifeline. Soon after (at about 9:10 a.m.) I began to feel the urge to push. This was a new feeling since I hadn’t felt it with Isaac’s birth, but it was an undeniable compulsion. Brian later told me he realized birth must be imminent as Natalie began to prepare by getting out a towel and other paraphernalia, but she didn’t say anything. I think she just knew how to read my screams. Indeed, just before she began to prepare, I began to feel like I would push soon. We didn’t discuss it at all, though I may have screamed something about wanting to push after we started to move. I have to tell you that even in the midst of all that, I was feeling some sort of cosmic connection to my womanhood. Cool. As Natalie prepared I scrambled around trying to decide what position to take–finally I got back on all fours embracing the birthing ball again. Brian went in front of the ball and supported me from there.
The next hour seemed to last for several hours. I only realized later, as I read over the midwives’ birth notes, that it was only an hour. I leaned over the ball grasping Brian and screaming as if I’d lost my senses (which I had at that point). As I pushed I felt a strange horrible stinging sensation, but the midwives explained that was normal and that I needed to push through that feeling. At 9:40, Natalie started saying she could see the head and everyone kept telling me we were “almost there” but I just kept screaming and pushing. Finally, at 10:07 a.m., I actually felt a release with a huge stinging push and baby Ewan was slipping out–Natalie was there to catch him.
Then everything became really horrible. I expected her to hand Ewan to me between my legs so I could see him but instead I realized it was eerily silent. Finally I looked behind me, and my baby was lying quiet and still on the floor and his skin was blue. Literally blue–like the sky is blue. To be honest, he looked dead–I was terrified. The midwives were very busy trying to get him to breathe, sometimes blocking my view so that I wasn’t sure what was going on. Also, I had taken off my glasses so I couldn’t even see him or what was happening clearly. They were giving Ewan oxygen and then suddenly paramedics were rushing in the room (only 5 minutes after his birth) and soon they took him away to the hospital. Brian and another midwife, Rachel, went with him. The other midwives then explained to me that Ewan had been born with the cord tight around his neck–apparently a more common occurence than I had thought.
Meanwhile, my midwives continued to take care of me and clean me up. I can’t emphasize enough how incredible Debbie and Natalie were. They were phenomenal. I was shaking from shock and from an injection given to deliver the placenta. I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening and I felt so cold (though it was a hot July day). At this point, the midwives explained that when Ewan was born the umbilical cord was wrapped tight around his neck, so he couldn’t start to breathe. Fortunately his heart rate never faltered–it was fine when they monitored shortly before delivery and still fine after.
As I was changing into some clean clothes, the midwives got a call from Rachel at the hospital–Ewan was now “pink and screaming”. It was the best news I’d ever heard. Soon after another ambulance arrived to take us to the hospital to be with the baby. I managed to hobble slowly down the stairs and walk the few yards to the ambulance outside. Unbelievable to me that I was able to do that so soon after the birth. Luckily the hospital was a very short drive and when we arrived we were told Ewan was doing well and they put me in a wheelchair and took me to him. Finally, an hour after his birth, I was able to hold my sweet baby–who, by the way, weighed in at a whopping 9 lbs. 11 oz. No wonder it felt like that….
We stayed in the hospital for 48 hours so they could observe Ewan. The horror of the English hospital experience is something for a whole different blog. For now, suffice it to say that I shared a room with three other women and their babies, and I called one of the midwives in the ward The Nazi Midwife (but never to her face). Finally we got to take our healthy baby home and introduce him to his pox-ridden brother. Now I’m a mother of two. Wow.
My first son, Isaac, was due Saturday, August 3, 2002. By the time the end of July rolled around, I was so ready to go ahead and pop that sucker out. I was hoping he would go ahead and be born in July (not dangerously early, just a bit). I had a friend whose baby was due the same day, and she went two weeks early. You can bet I was seething with jealousy the day I lumbered my gigantic pregnant self over to her place to see the newborn. I put on a happy-for-you face, but inside I was begging God to get mine out soon. Silly, but true.
My mom arrived in Houston the day before Isaac’s due date so she could spend the weekend–hoping he would come on time. I was a hopeless insomniac at this point of my pregnancy–tossing and turning all night, hopping up constantly to visit the toilet or put wet washcloths on my itchy feet (weird pregnancy symptom). Brian was more than happy to volunteer to sleep on the couch while Mom stayed in the bedroom with me. As usual, I couldn’t sleep, and Mom was also excited, so we talked late into the night. We finally made one last effort to go to sleep around 4 a.m. We turned out the light and settled down. Minutes later–pop–gush. Enough said. I called my OB and she told me to go ahead and come to the hospital.
So, by 5:30 we were at the hospital, ready to start the whole labor adventure. We were disappointed to learn that my wonderful OB had already been in the hospital for many hours with another birth, so she had to go home. Instead, we had one of her colleagues. As it turned out, that hardly mattered since I spent most of my time with a string of obstetric nurses and rarely saw the doc. Then nothing happened. We wandered the halls–or perhaps I should say Brian wandered while I waddled and shuffled. I was still…um…leaking…and that made me even more uncomfortable. However, nothing else happened. Occasionally I would clutch my abdomen, thinking perhaps I’d felt a contraction, but no, nothing happened. Whoop-tee-freakin’-do.
About 4 hours later, they stuck an I.V. in me and started a Pitocin drip to induce labor. So now, I was attached to a drippy thing and had to wheel it shuffling down the hall wearing a hospital gown and enormous padded undies. The first thing to go in a hospital birth is your dignity.
The second thing to go is your modesty. I don’t even remember who all managed to take a gander at my personal area while we were there. Nurses, anesthesiologists, doctors, my husband, my mother, my sister, whoever. I didn’t care much by the end.
We finally had contractions. Wandered or waddled down the halls a bit more. I was so miserable in my hugeness and discomfort that I preferred to stay in my room anyway. After a few hours, I started asking for drugs, but it was too early for an epidural, so they gave me something else. I don’t even remember now what they gave me, but it totally spaced me out. I was hovering in the air above the bed part of the time and Mom and Brian occasionally wafted into my line of vision and spoke backwards to me like something from Twin Peaks. I answered them in an equally bizarre manner, but didn’t know what I was saying. But sure enough, the pain lessened.
At last, I floated back to earth and the pain intensified again. And then the joyous moment when I had dilated enough to have an epidural. I’m not sure what time it was, but it was at least late that afternoon. I went through that whole weird process of having that tube thing inserted in my back and the drugs were started. I was sure it would not be long until we had our baby out with us where he belonged. There was much rejoicing. And the drugs were good. Maybe too good.
More hours passed. More people came and had a look at me. More nurses came and went off shift. We had arrived at 5:30 Saturday morning. It was now 11 p.m. Saturday night. I got the go ahead to start pushing. My last nurse held one leg and Brian held the other (more hands-on than I think he had intended). So we pushed. And pushed. And pushed. And pushed more. I was completely exhausted, starving (I hadn’t eaten since dinner Friday night), desperate, and miserable. Brian kept telling me I could do it. I insisted I could not. I wondered why they didn’t just take me in for a C-section already. I must admit that I was a total baby at this point, but Brian was a tower of strength. He held my hand (when he wasn’t holding a leg) and looked in my eyes and told me I could do it. Not only that, but I think he said, “You will do it.” Brian was so convinced that I felt I just had to do it. But I still couldn’t quite do it yet.
Eventually, in the wee hours (around 4:00, I think) they decided they needed to take me off the Pitocin because it was no longer effective–my exhausted body had stopped contractions altogether. They let me off for an hour’s rest (not that I could sleep much at that time). Then they started the drip again and the pushing started all over again. (I’m really trying to think of something amusing to say here, but it was really not at all amusing at the time.) I was having a hard time even figuring out how to push because I couldn’t feel much of it. At some point, my mom gave up and had to leave–she couldn’t bear to see me in such a state and was exhausted herself. My sister Kendra came in and stayed through the birth, giving me ice chips and encouragement when necessary.
After 6:00, they decided to bust out the vacuum extractor. Let’s review those words: vacuum extractor. It’s kind of icky to think of something like that coming anywhere near my…you know. However, it turned out to be my deliverance–or rather, Isaac’s deliverance. Bam–three tries with that thing–the first two being rather unpleasant–and pop goes the baby. Out came Isaac’s head and then a bit more pushing and out came the rest. I must emphasize at this point that the vacuum extractor did not do all the work. They still had to coordinate it with my pushing (just so you don’t think I was just lying there waiting for the baby to be sucked out or something).
Wow. The massive relief it was over. The incredible joy of seeing our beautiful firstborn baby boy–he actually looked a bit freaky with that cone-shaped vacuumed head, but we didn’t care about that. The exhaustion. Time of birth was 6:52 a.m., Sunday, August 4, 2002. He was 8 lbs. 13.6 oz. The first thing I wanted was him in my arms, but they had him across the room doing all that hospital stuff to him. The second thing I wanted was breakfast. Oh, how I wanted that breakfast.
I got both wishes, at long last. And family members came in a few at a time to meet Isaac. We had called people as soon we got to the hospital and they had all come immediately–and subsequently all waited all night through the labor. Then they all went home and we were stuck there with a new baby by ourselves, though supremely fatigued. We managed and we were supremely happy.
It’s hard to believe that Isaac is now 3 1/2, walking, talking, counting, saying his letters, and spelling his name. He is such a beautiful gift–worth all those many hours of waiting, misery, vexation, immodesty, and weariness.
Warning–we just got a snazzy new digital camera so I will be hard at work posting pictures to my Yahoo Photos page and my website.
I’ve also found a place to put my new videos (little ones made with the new camera) online so I don’t have to send huge files to people. To see videos (mainly of Isaac and Ewan), click here to go to my Putfile page. Please be patient when waiting for each video to load as it can take a bit. It will start automatically once it’s ready. Oh, just a note, the video titled “Ewan’s Bathtime” was actually done by my good friend Ellen, which is why it is so much cooler than the rest of them.
Yesterday was my husband’s birthday. He is an amazing guy and he has totally changed my life since I met him.
I think I’ll tell you how I met him, by the way. I moved to Houston in the summer of 1997 to live with my dad and look for a real job. I got a job teaching high school Spanish at a Baptist school (ooh, such a bad idea) and was trying to settle in to Houston life and make friends. I was finding it harder to make friends than it had been at university, and I was trying a different church every week. Finally, my step-mom’s secretary called me and invited me to go to church at Second Baptist with her. Second Baptist hadn’t even been on my list of churches to try (too big, too Baptist) but I went. As it turns out I enjoyed it and met lots of friendly people in her Sunday School class. Then I went along to lunch with the group. I was one of the first through the line at the hamburger joint, so when I went to the table, there was only one person sitting there–it turned out to be Brian. I sat down across from him and introduced myself. He wasn’t eating because he was about to go meet his parents and pick up his dog Abbey who he’d left with them (something like that). For some reason, I remember that I was wearing a prim yellow dress and my glasses–not my most flattering look, probably. I don’t remember any particular interest in Brian that first day, but I know that by Halloween I was very interested. Slowly we became good friends. However, we didn’t actually date until March 13, 1998. By May I wanted to marry him, and he proposed December 12, 1998. We were married May 15, 1999. That is our early days in a nutshell. He doesn’t look a day older than when we married almost 7 years ago. He still has his lovely freckles and very sparkly brown eyes.
Happy Birthday and loads of lovey stuff to my wonderful hubby Brian!
We have been doing searches of houses in Houston, as we expect we’ll be returning there in the fall. I decided to do a little comparison of the cost of housing here and in Houston. Location, location, location. It’s amazing. I have chosen the random number of about $450,000 for my search, primarily because that translates to about £250,000–and you can’t find much cheaper than that in London. This number is not necessarily anything to do with our own search–not sure yet if we are even buying again or returning to our house in Pearland.
So here’s the comparison.
Here’s what you can find in Pearland for just under $450,000:
4470 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 full baths, 3 car garage on a large cul-de-sac lot
here’s the link: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2AD5329C
And here’s what you can get in central Houston in a neighborhood we really like for the same price:
2444 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 3 full and 1 half baths, 2 car garage on a very small lot
and the link: http://makeashorterlink.com/?F5BD6229C
Now for what you can find in London near where we live now for £250,000 (similar to $450,000)
a studio flat
link: http://makeashorterlink.com/?O1CD1329C
However, I have seen 1 bedroom flats for that price and even 2 bedroom flats (if you want to live in a rather icky neighborhood).
Of course, this was a rather narrow comparison, but it does show the advantages of moving back to Houston (in addition to the fact that we’ll be closer to our family).
Location, location, location! Lots of people want to visit us here in London, and few will be blazing a trail to our door in Houston….
