The craziness continues

Apologies to our eager readers, who have been anxiously awaiting more news of baby Liam's first days. It has been a crazy ride so far. Most recently, my car wouldn't start on Friday (and it is still having what appear to be battery issues), and now our garbage disposal is apparently broken. But I wanted to take a moment and catch up on the more important life events from the past couple of weeks.

My parents came to visit for a week, and we had a great time visiting, since I was already home from the hospital with Liam. The weather was nice and mild, so we even ventured out to the zoo last Saturday with the whole family. Charlie built lots and lots of ramp structures out of blocks with both Grandma and Grandpa. And we all went out to eat for dinner one night as well.


While my parents were here, Liam had his first appointment with the pediatrician on November 3. He was back up to his birth weight of 7 lbs 4 oz. They measured him at only 20 inches long, and his head was 14 inches.

Everything appeared to be great. Since then, he's only had one real problem health-wise, which is an irritation on the skin where his leg connects to his body inside the diaper area. Some antifungal cream seems to be helping that heal. The bigger problem with Liam's diapers is that he seems to like to urinate on Mommy and Daddy while we're changing him. We are pretty sure that we've already gotten wet more times with Liam than we have ever had with Charlie to-date. One diaper change was so bad (he pooped AND peed on Daddy during it) that we had to conduct his first bath right away in the kitchen sink.

He's still so lean, we've still been using the newborn size diapers, but will likely switch to size 1 when our current supply runs out in a day or two.

I had a nice birthday dinner last Monday with John, the kids, and Beth. After having brunch with Mom and Dad at First Watch (where I had eggs with runny yolks), I had medium rare steak, a salad with gorgonzola cheese, a glass of wine and a drink before dinner at Brio. It was a wonderful treat after months of avoiding all of those foods.

John went back to work on Wednesday this past week, so I was on my own with Liam and the laundry for a few days. My sister Christine came to visit this weekend, and the weather was wonderful-- upper 60's for highs. She and I took the kids to the park so Charlie could have some time on the playground on Saturday while John tried to catch up on some work. Charlie sang some songs for Christine while she was here, including itsy bitsy spider and five little monkeys, and he enjoyed showing off his room.

Lucy has been doing really well considering all the commotion at the house. She brought me the gift of a rabbit head on Thursday morning when I let her in the house. We think that something else (possibly a coyote) caught it during the night, and Lucy just brought us the pieces. I was appropriately "pleased" all the same.

Life gets back to "normal" tomorrow, when John goes back for his first full week at work, and the visits from family are over for now. I am able to drive again at this point (although I'm still taking easy) so I won't be stranded completely here at home. Now I just have to figure out what is going wrong with my car....

What a week!

Along with Liam's early arrival, by an unexpected method, our week was studded with other "surprises." On the day I was to come home, John was about to drop Charlie off at daycare when Charlie vomited in the car. Unable to take him in, and fearing the worst, he drove him home and made an appointment with the pediatrician. I had to call another friend, Teresa, to come pick me and the baby up from the hospital. As it turns out, Charlie was fine-- no fever, no other symptoms, and flu was not suspected. He went home and took a long nap and appeared to be feeling much better by the time Liam and I arrived home.

Later that evening, I was running water in the kitchen sink to wash out some parts to my breast pump, when I discovered that we had no hot water. The gas line maintenance that we had been warned about a week or two earlier had apparently happened the day before, and our gas had been off ever since. We had to call to have it turned back on and the appliances re-lit.

Halloween was not as expected, since we had two kids, not one. But Charlie had a great time nonetheless. And I got to have a glass of wine while handing out candy!

I think the distraction of Halloween has helped Charlie with the transition to being a big brother. He seems interested in the baby, and is being no more difficult than he has been lately. I could easily attribute most of his acting out to just being his age and wanting to be independent. He's no more defiant than he was a week ago.

We've had several visitors already. My parents arrive this evening to spend the week. It's hard to believe that under our original plan, I would have been taking vacation today to clean the house and make final baby preparations. Instead, I was trying to rest between feedings and diapers while John went in to work for a while.

We've been doing pretty well, considering we were only half prepared for what has happened. The verdict is still out as far as whether my recovery will be easier from this delivery than the last one. It certainly is different-- I will say that for sure!

Early Bird Special

It was a dark and stormy night. I had gone to bed about 9:45, and 2 hours later I woke to a strong contraction. After two more spaced about 6 minutes apart, I decided to go downstairs to tell John, who was still awake, what was going on. I didn't need a doctor to tell me that these were different than the "practice" contractions I'd been having for about 3 months.

I had more contractions pretty quickly, and we called the doctor's office right away. We were advised to wait 30 minutes to see if anything changed, before coming to the hospital. Lucky for us, we immediately called our friend Beth and asked her to come over to watch Charlie. By the time she arrived at the house, I was in extreme pain with contractions 2-3 minutes apart, and barely able to walk to the car.

We arrived at the hospital at 1:20am, and I think the nurse at the front desk was surprised to see how far into active labor I quite obviously was. As it turns out, I was already 9 cm dilated. We later determined that it was likely that my water broke in the car.

To make a long story short, the doctor on call (who happened to be the same one scheduled to do my c-section a week later), convinced me to try to deliver vaginally. I agreed, on one condition-- that they could get me an epidural. Neither John nor I was prepared for this-- we had assumed all along that this baby, like the one before, would be delivered via c-section. So not only was he arriving early (10 days before due date), he was entering this world in his own way. Once the epidural had been administered, I was able to tolerate my condition. They let us both rest for a couple of hours before having me start to push.

Two and a half hours of pushing, with a little vacuum assistance at the end, brought Liam Overberg Robenalt into the world at 7:27am on October 28, 2009. He was 7 pounds, 4 ounces, and 20.5 inches long.

We apologize for the lack of blog updates along the way. Hopefully having heard the story, our readers will understand why the account of Liam's birth was not quite so real-time as that of Charlie's.