"Oh, she's going to be a delightful 2-year-old"

Our Eleanor has a temper.  Everyone told me girls were more dramatic than boys, but I kind of thought we had more than a week before we were forced to admit it.  Silly me.

She is the sweetest, most content baby most of the time.  When she is awake, as long as she's not hungry, she is happy to play the tongue-sticking-out game, the finger-grabbing game, etc.  She can hold her head up for a few seconds at a time and enjoys looking all around.  She likes dancing around the kitchen and prefers hip-hop to anything else I've tried, though she will tolerate country and rock.  She likes to be held all the time and is sleeping with me in the nursery for now because she doesn't like to be alone in the bassinet.  She'll wake up a few times to nurse at night but I fall back to sleep once she's latched on.  We generally get a 4- or 5-hour stretch of sleep (after a 3- or 4-hour stretch of nursing--she is a cluster nurser to the nth degree) and a couple of 2-3 hour stretches out of her.  Yesterday and today, Ellie and I got up with the rest of the family while Patrick was getting ready for school, then took a 3-hour nap after he left.  Given that she's a newborn, we're reasonably well-rested.  I don't expect it to last but each day she goes like this is certainly helpful!

But woe betide you if she's hungry.

Ellie doesn't cry.  Ever.  If she's not hungry, she's not crying--she's either sleeping or happy to be awake, looking around with her big blue eyes.  If she's hungry, she screams.  There is no warning beyond some squirming and turning red for a few seconds.  Then she yells with all her might until she has no choice but to take a breath.  She flails her fists (Patrick came down the other day and said "I got beat up by a baby girl!").  She arches her back.  She turns bright red.  She tries to nurse on your chin or arm, or any other body part she can get her mouth on.  She is the angriest, hungriest baby ever because the food is not there RIGHT THAT SECOND.  It doesn't matter if she's eaten 2 hours before or if I'm just switching her to the other side after finishing the first.

If the food doesn't come fast enough, in her opinion, she does what Jason calls "playing dead" (this only happens if someone else is holding her).  She stops crying and goes entirely limp.  She closes her eyes.  As soon as I take her, she immediately opens her eyes, yells at me, and starts trying to nurse through my shirt.

Today, I had the selfish notion that I should feed myself--after all, if the food source does not occasionally get nourished and watered, she has trouble producing food for Her Highness.  And shamefully, I wanted warm food--clearly, that was taking way too long.  Jason was holding Eleanor.  He tried rocking her.  She yelled.  He tried putting her in the bouncy chair.  She screamed.  He picked her back up and rocked her some more.  She yelled louder until her voice started going hoarse, then played dead.  (This all took a grand total of no more than 5 minutes.)  Mind you, I'd finished feeding her right before I handed her to Jason. 

When I sat down to nurse her 30 seconds later, she was all sweetness and light as soon as she latched on.  She spends 99% of her day like that.  It's only the other 1% of the day when she's hungry and not actively eating that she turns into this 9-lb raging red ball of baby.

It's impossible not to be head-over-heels in love with this little girl, even when she's not so happy.

Eleanor Desta has arrived!

We welcomed our daughter, Eleanor Desta, to the world on March 7!  She sure took her sweet time in arriving but as she is such a sweet little baby, it seems appropriate that she made such a wonderful entrance.  Ellie kept us guessing about when she would come right until the end--well, she kept me guessing until the end.  Everyone else who was here seemed to know a lot sooner than I did :-)

I started having the contractions that ultimately led to her birth at about 11 a.m. on March 6, while I was waiting for Patrick's Sunday school to end.  We got home around 1 p.m. and I told Jason that I was having contractions about 4-5 minutes apart and had been for a couple of hours.  "So, just another Sunday?" he asked.  "Yep, pretty much," I told him.  I'd had contractions like those multiple times in the last few weeks.  One of those times they were like that for 22 hours, so I didn't read anything into them.

They started getting the tiniest bit stronger and around 3 p.m. I decided to take a nap.  After laying in bed for about 15 minutes, I had one and actually felt downward movement from the baby, so I thought I'd call my midwife and give her a heads-up that something might be happening (this will be a recurring theme).  I had a contraction while on the phone and apparently my midwife said to herself "Oh yeah, she's in labor."  She called her apprentice to let her know. 

I got up since I didn't like being in bed anymore and just hung around downstairs for a couple of hours.  My midwife called back around 5:30 to see how I was doing and said she and her apprentice would just come over and see what was going on.  They came around 6:15 or so and listened to the baby's heartbeat, asked how I was doing, etc.  Around 8 p.m., we'd put the kids to bed and everyone started bringing equipment in from the car.  I called my friends who were coming and told them that the baby would probably come that night.  Mind you, I didn't believe it but figured that if my midwife was bringing things inside, it was a reasonable thing to do.

My friends got there within the hour and we all sat around waiting for something to happen beyond the contractions. And waiting.  And waiting.  They were pretty regular and certainly stronger compared to earlier, but I didn't buy it.  I did get into the birth tub at one point but my contractions basically stopped after that, so I got back out and went back to what I'd been doing.

I did a lot of laboring like this.  Jason was an awesome coach, of course.

At around 1:30 a.m., I decided to lay down for a while.  I was tired and nothing seemed to be happening, so Jason and I went upstairs to take a nap.  I slept until about 4:30 a.m., then Jason suggested we walk around downstairs for a while.  We did that for a little over an hour and the contractions picked right back up.  I still thought it might fizzle out again, but my midwife's apprentice watched me labor for a while and called my midwife to come back (she lives close by and had gone home to get a bit of sleep so that her apprentice could use our guest room).  It was a good thing everyone else believed I was really in labor, because I certainly didn't!

Still, we kept on all morning.  I spent some more time in the tub, more time laying down, a little more time sitting.  I was able to eat and drink as I needed.  The kids were awesome--they watched videos on iPads and played upstairs and read some stories.  My friends Rachel and Lovisa were fantastically helpful--making coffee, entertaining the kids, helping me with whatever I needed, keeping me entertained between contractions.  We talked a lot and it gave Jason the freedom to help me emotionally and physically.  He was the one always there wherever I was, to help keep track of how things were going, giving me lots of excellent massages, encouraging me every minute.

I'm not sure when I got back in the tub for the last time but I was in there through Ellie's birth.  I'd been having really powerful contractions--the last of which actually had me in tears--but when I got back in, they became so manageable!  I could still feel them but they didn't hurt much anymore, even though they were clearly just as strong as they'd been.  It was wonderful.  I was able to eat some lunch about an hour before she came.

Everyone else knew what was happening.  I, despite being the one actually in labor, didn't really believe it was going to happen.  At 3 p.m., we heard Patrick's bus come by and Jason remarked that Patrick could have gone to school that day.  I said "No, the baby will probably come today so I'm glad he stayed home."  And immediately, everything picked up.  I went into transition and had a couple of contractions that had me sobbing.  My midwife checked me because I felt like I wanted to push and said "There's the baby's head."

Me (now sobbing semi-happily): "Oh, I'm so glad.  I was afraid you'd check and I'd be like 5 cm."  Everyone else laughed but I'd been serious--that's how much in denial I'd been all day.  (Mind you, it was the one and only time I was checked.)

Push #1 was at 3:02 and was so intense that I felt there was no way I could do it (I yelled a lot more this time around than I did with Patrick).  My water broke with push #2.  I could feel the baby's head with push #3--that was when the kids came in and I told them that it was OK if I yelled, it was hard work but I was OK.  Push #4 had the baby's head out.  Push #5 brought our beautiful baby out into the world at 3:18 p.m., screaming and pink and perfect and chubby.

I asked Patrick whether he had a brother or a sister and he said "Brother."  Then someone moved the umbilical cord and asked if he wanted to look again, and he said "It's a girl."  We told him her name so that he could share it.  Melkamu came over and touched her head, smiling the whole time even though he'd said he wanted a brother.  I said that she was so big and thought she was around 8 lb--my midwife said "Maybe 7 1/2 or 8 lb."  And I said "She has hair!"

We didn't weigh her for several hours but when we did, we found that she was actually 8 lb 14 oz.  I can't believe I grew an almost-9 lb baby girl to 40w2d and delivered her naturally at home!  (For reference, Patrick was born at 37w5d weighing 6 lb 11 oz.)  Her head is so perfectly round because my water didn't break until minutes before she was born, so she was cushioned the whole time.  I look at her now and wonder how she could possibly have fit inside me!

We are incredibly lucky to have her.  She is a cluster nurser and will nurse basically every hour for several hours, then sleep for about the same number of hours.  She only cries when she's hungry or needs to be changed, and has been much more alert today.  Her name, Eleanor Desta, is a very special one to us--she is named after Jason's grandmother Ellen.  Her middle name is an Ethiopian name that means "Happiness", which honors Melkamu's firstmom since her name, although different, means the same thing.

My blue eyed, dark-haired baby girl.

I can't tell you how my heart filled with happiness when Jason said "Hey, how are my girls?" as I nursed her the other night.

The boys really, really love their baby sister.

A lot.

Jason could not be happier to have a daughter.

She's been out for fewer than 60 hours but has already helped make our family even more complete.  Welcome, my Ellie.  We've been waiting for you for a very long time.

The lazy photoblogging day

Some of them are kind of old but here they are!

Kamu and Grandma

Both kids and Grandpa

The kids out playing on a white Christmas!  This was not the horrible ice/snow storm from January, thankfully.

Kamu likes to cuddle and our blue chair is excellent for that.  He's been particularly cuddly lately (I don't think he's quite ready to stop being the baby of the family).  I think I'm around 30 weeks in this picture, but it's hard to see anything.

Patrick's packed on some pounds of muscle lately, and he and Melkamu occasionally enjoy playing "horsie".  (It's also good that Melkamu's legs are long enough that he can reach the ground when he's "riding" Patrick.

Kamu loves his dogs.  Nietzsche isn't doing well (you can see how skinny he is in this picture) and can't walk on his back left leg anymore but doesn't seem to be in pain and is still eating and going up and down stairs, so we're very glad for every day we get with him.

The dogs love Kamu also.  This is how Jason found Kamu and Caesar this morning when we went to wake them up.

OK, you asked for it.  Me at ~26 weeks pregnant.

Me this morning at 36 1/2 weeks pregnant.  If I don't pop soon, I'm going to start growing out of a lot of maternity clothes.

Home is where the heart is

36+ weeks pregnant now and at some point there will be a picture of me pregnant...assuming that Jason takes one sometime before I actually have this baby.  I think I've got one from Halloween and there are a couple from when I went to NY for my dad's retirement party in November but since then, I don't know that there are any at all.  Then again, I'm usually the one behind the camera so pictures of me are few and far between anyway.

Let's just say that I've grown.

I have a lot of contractions lately.  They are Braxton-Hicks contractions, since I'm not actually in labor, but that's really long to type.  Today, for example, they've been about 5-10 minutes apart for several hours.  Some people would get excited/nervous about that and probably not be planning to teach for 4 1/2 hours tonight, but I've learned from experience.  12 days ago, they were 3-8 minutes apart for 12 hours.  It was irritating since I knew I wasn't in labor and it was the middle of the night and for crying out loud, could I not just get a break long enough to fall asleep?

I'm a little cranky right now.

At this point, I'm just holding out for 37 weeks, which will be on Saturday.  At 37 weeks I can have a homebirth.  Before then, it's not a great idea for the baby's health and we're not about to risk that!  5 more days until I do what I did with Patrick--look at my stomach and invite the baby to come out any time he/she wants.  Patrick was obliging and came 5 days later.  I'm actually hoping this little one will wait a bit longer, as Jason's job ends on the 16th and then he wouldn't have to worry about taking off for one of his last few days.  Plus, I'm still trying to work for as long as I can.  But babies have minds of their own and I know very well that I don't get a say in it!  If the baby decides to come before then, I have a very nice practice of hospital-based midwives who will care for us at the hospital.  As much as I like them, I still don't want to be in the hospital.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how much support I've found for homebirthing.  I'd heard many horror stories about the lack of support from friends and family from my Bradley students who wanted to homebirth, and I'm very happy that I haven't experienced that at all.  Most people are excited, or at least surprised but supportive, that we'll be having the baby at home.  When people ask where I'm having the baby, I reply "At home."  I even said it to my GP when the kids went for their physicals, and her response was "Oh, how exciting--what a great experience!"  (And that's why I love her.)

Some people choose to homebirth because they've had horrible hospital experiences and don't want that again.  We didn't.  Our hospital experience was fine.  I'd even venture to say that it was pretty good.  We had a supportive OB last time and he made all the difference in the world for that to happen.  We just didn't see the need to do it again.  The idea of homebirth has always intrigued me and now that we're looking at it happening soon (I hope...not before 37 weeks, kiddo), it relaxes me.  Oh, there's a lot to prepare before then...but it's at home.  I know where everything is at home.  If we forget to put something out, it's either in the house somewhere or there's a store within two miles that carries it.  If our kids get bored or worried or anything else, we have four families on our street who've offered to take them anytime, day or night.  We'll have access to our favorite foods whenever we want them.  I won't have to feel self-conscious about random people watching me walk the halls because the only people who will be there will be those who love and support us.  The kids can be there to see their new baby sister or brother right away.

It just feels right for us.  I'd been prepared to face a lot of criticism, both overt and subtle, based on what I'd heard from others who'd planned to homebirth...but it's been so nice to be wrong about that.

Heartbreaking

I recently wrote about how Melkamu's been through a lot, and how we sometimes forget it.  Actually, I wrote about it twice in different ways.  He's generally such a sweet, happy, fun-loving kid that it's easy to just see that and not think about how much he's been through.  And that's as it should be.  We don't ever forget that he has a firstfamily, that his Aachie is back in Ethiopia, that they love him also; but we don't focus on it every day.  In fact, we rarely do--although I think about his Aachie almost every day and we do look at her picture or watch the video of Kamu with her or look at his "Aachie book" fairly frequently, we do it to remember his first family's role in his life, not to be sad.  We don't focus on the losses that he's had as a routine matter because the reality is that regardless of what's happened in the past, we are a family now and we just go on about our lives as they are. 

I put dreams into four basic different categories: good dreams, bad dreams, nightmares, and night terrors.  Good dreams are lovely or indifferent or even weird, but not bothersome.  Bad dreams are slightly disturbing but not too bad--maybe they wake you up a little but you can go back to sleep.  Nightmares are bad--they wake you up and then you have trouble falling back to sleep, because you're afraid they'll come back.  Night terrors are the ones that you can't get out of, that seem never-ending.

Kamu had a night terror tonight.

He wasn't feeling great earlier, so I let him fall asleep in my bed as I read in there.  About 2 hours after he fell asleep, he started to get anxious in his sleep--squirming around, fretting.  Then he started to cry and shake.  Then he sobbed for his mama, even though I was already holding him and trying to soothe him.  Then he wet the bed.  That's when I knew that he was having a night terror, not just a bad dream or even a nightmare.  I can't even tell you the last time he wet the bed.  It has to have been close to a year ago, if not longer.

Thankfully Jason came up right at that moment and helped me get him out of bed, sobbing and anxious and terrified, so that we could get cleaned up.  I brought him into the shower with me.  His eyes were open but he kept sobbing "I want my mama.  I want my mommy."  I kept hugging him and saying "I'm right here and I won't ever leave you," but it didn't make any difference.  I don't think he was even awake yet--he could not pull out of this night terror.  At one point I even said "Look at me, baby, who am I?"  He said, "My mama...I want my mama."  I got him cleaned off and handed him out to Jason so that he could get him dry and clothed while I finished washing off. 

I went into his room after my shower.  Jason had gotten him settled and he was finally calm and asked me to cuddle him.  When I laid down, he said "I had a bad dream in the shower."  I said I knew he did.  He said "You were there?"  He genuinely wasn't sure.  I said I was and promised yet again not to leave him, that I would always be his mama.

Finally he'd pulled out of it.  He was OK with my going downstairs a few minutes later as he was on the verge of sleep, and gave me a kiss and said "I love you."  Now he's sound asleep.

Seeing him like that makes me want to sob and cry.  His bad dreams and nightmares are about being lonely.  His night terrors are always about me leaving him in particular.  He hasn't had one in a long time but they're always just awful and generally, I'm not the one who can calm him down--Jason can do it but I can't.  It almost feels like his brain is so locked into the idea that I've left him that he can't comprehend that I really am still there.  I can't even say what might have triggered it today, as I kept him home from school since my sister is here visiting and we were together all day.  Maybe it was nothing in particular, maybe it's that he wasn't feeling well, maybe I just don't know what it was.

It makes me feel so helpless to see him so utterly terrified that I will leave him, and I can't even bring him out of it to tell him I'll always be there.  To watch him on a daily basis, you'd never, ever know.  But it's always there in him.

Recent changes

We're rapidly moving to the point of having a family with three children (I'm 28 1/2 weeks pregnant now) and preparing for that has been surprisingly low-key.  Most of that is because we already have children and there's very little that we need.  Oh sure, there are a few things that we'd either borrowed the first time around or have given away since Patrick was a baby but we have a crib, we have a carseat, and we have clothes.  Since I'll be nursing the baby, that's practically all we'll need.  The changes to our household until the baby actually arrives are pretty minimal.  The playroom/guest room is being converted back to a nursery, but that's simply a matter of moving furniture and toys.  I'm still reasonably comfortable and so our normal activities have stayed the same. 

One bigger change that I have noticed is the sharp drop-off in the times that we've been asked if we adopted because we couldn't have more of 'our own'.  (I mentioned at one point that all of my children are mine, regardless of what blood we contain, so I won't address that again right now.)  Apparently the fact that I could get pregnant again and am now visibly so means that we clearly didn't adopt for reasons of infertility.  And ultimately, that's true.  We didn't adopt because I am infertile.  We adopted because it was how we chose to build our family.  We had the option of doing more fertility treatments and trying to get pregnant again then, we had the option of choosing to raise Patrick as an only child--we had many other options.  We had already planned to adopt before Patrick was born.  We chose to adopt at that time because it was the right choice for us.  Living in our family now, I can't imagine having made any other choice.

What makes me uncomfortable is not that view because really, it's fine that people don't look at our family and see "adoption" = "infertility".  I wish more people realized that no one adopts because it's their only choice--everyone has other options.  It makes it easier on me and it certainly will make it easier on Melkamu not to be hearing that all the time and wondering if that's the only reason.  No, what makes me uncomfortable is that people seem to have transitioned to the view that for our family, "adoption" = "selfless rich people who saved a poor little starving orphan".

Ugh.

I've written about the costs of adoption in the past.  That post has nothing to do with money, and money really isn't the biggest part of adoption--we are certainly not rich.  We are not selfless.  We wanted another child.  We chose to adopt a child from another country, which means that we took him away from his home country.  We also chose to adopt a child of another race, which means that he's being raised in a completely different racial environment than that of his firstfamily.  We made those choices deliberately and while we feel like we can do a good job being his parents, we know we're not perfect.  There are a lot of burdens to adoption that Melkamu will bear.  Selfless?  Hardly.

Don't even get me started on "saved".

It's true that his firstfamily was poor...but not all firstfamilies are poor.  It's true that he was malnourished and might have starved...but not all firstfamilies lack food.  And while he fits the definition of an orphan for international adoption, he does have a living firstmom.  Many children who are adopted have living firstfamilies. 

When you are a family formed through adoption, you learn a lot more about the world than you might have otherwise.  I've learned a lot about Ethiopia that I might not have otherwise been moved to learn, and that would have been a terrible shame because it is a beautiful and fascinating country with an incredibly interesting history.  I've learned a lot about international adoption, about the ethics and issues involved in the process--much more so than I knew before we'd started the process or even when we were fully involved in it.  I continue to learn more about it now.  I've learned a huge amount about adoption in general, about the history of adoption and parenting children by adoption and all the issues (both good and bad) that are involved in adoption.

The changes that our family are making right now have helped me realize that there's even more to learn, and I'm so glad that we chose to adopt so that I had a reason to start doing so.

Snow no!

Yes, it's snowing in Atlanta.  I don't think there's any actual accumulation predicted but it is sticking and we've got big, white flakes coming down.  It's very pretty and very, very cold outside.  The kids, of course, can't wait to build a snowman.  I told them they could probably build a snow ant.