Milestones

Yesterday was the first day since Zebediah was born (19 days, but who’s counting?) that I didn’t cry at all. Was it:

A) Two day’s worth of antidepressants (initial half doses)

B) Time passing and natural hormonal shifts

C) Placebo effect

D) Luck

Edited to add E) session with my therapist, whose attitude towards PPD is a little more matter-of-fact than that of the obstetrician and his nurse…

ETA, or F) because it was my wedding anniversary, which I forgot, even though I’d been thinking about it a lot before the baby was born.

Where Were You Made?

A friend gave us a onesie for Zebediah that has “Made in [State We Live In] on the front (and the title of this post on the back).

Of course, although he was born here, he wasn’t  “made” here. It got me to imagining a gift shop next to Alma Mater Clinic’s fancy new offices selling onesies with mottos like “Made with pride* at AMC” or “Excellently ICSI’d in NYC” or “Designer Baby by Midwest PGD Lab.”

The problem would be placement of course, because the gift shop would have to be out of sight of all the women going through their ivf cycles, and of course the pregnant ones and the parents aren’t hanging out at the clinic anymore. Maybe they could send mail order offers along with the form letter follow up.

*I typed this as “made with price,” which might also be appropriate.

It’s Good to Have Goals

Luo Lin: I need to get comfortable enough with the breastfeeding that I can handle the new Harry Potter hardback in one hand while nursing.

Mr. Luo: If I ever finish Barrayar, I’m going to re-read that bird stump book,** because it’s all about a guy dealing with sleep deprivation.***

* I’ve dropped a paperback copy of Little Women on Zebediah’s head twice this week, and he hasn’t even flinched, but I don’t know if he can handle a bonk by one of JK Rowling’s tomes.

**Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

***Actually, the character suffers from time lag (too much time travel), but the symptoms are similar.

Random Bullets of One Week Old

• Zebediah Xerxes really is the cutest baby ever.
• Our doula was worth her weight in gold. And, yes I am very aware of the privilege I enjoy to have the money to pay her and live someplace that has a surfeit of doulas.
• If you don’t want a new mother to panic, don’t tell her she should be nursing 8-12 times a day when her baby only wants to nurse 3 times.
• The good thing about weighing more than 8 pounds is that it is harder to lose more than 10% of birth weight. Zebediah only lost a bit over 5% despite hardly nursing while we were in the hospital.
• He gained it all back in the next two days. He’s nursing all the time now, so I have found other things to panic about.
• It turns out 3 days in the hospital was just about right post-cesarian section. The day before I couldn’t imagine getting by on my own, but by the time I left I was glad to get away from the constant interruptions.
• If you happen to have strong feelings about names, put it in a pre-nup. Midnight the night before leaving the hospital is not a good time to be having the worst argument of one’s marriage. (Yes, we had discussed it earlier, even before I was pregnant; we just never resolved the question.)
• It turns out that in our state, one can leave the hospital without filling out the birth certificate information. The real deadline was two days later.
• I thought a hyphenated last name was a perfectly logical way to give a child both parents’ names. Not the standard way of doing things, but fairly common amongst people I know (i.e. academics). Unfortunately, my husband hates the lowly hyphen with a burning passion.
• In the end, we made up a last name for the kid out of our two surnames. Which seems much less mainstream to me, but is orthographically acceptable to all.
• After being able to eat only small portions for most of my pregnancy, I am now ravenous. I am probably eating five times as much per meal as I was before, even when I am holding the baby in one arm and shoveling down the food with the other hand.
• My mother is here for another week. We are being completely spoiled with beautiful, delicious, large meals. We have about two weeks of dinners in the freezer from big batches of meals we cooked before the baby was born. After that, will we be recovered enough to feed ourselves well, or will we be so cumulatively sleep-deprived that we all starve or will we just eat take out from the places within walking distance forever?
• That advice about “sleep when the baby sleeps” is good advice, especially if one tends to become emotional when tired. It’s just that there is also the advice about  making sure to eat, and shower, and so on to take care of.
• Even after my labor contractions had started, I was still able to take a shorter version of my normal neighborhood walk last Friday. Now post-op and with the baby in a sling, I am up to about a five minute walk before I have go home and nap.
• Upcoming post: the joys of being “at risk” for post partum depression.
• And the birth story, though I may not be able to post my version before my husband posts his more … interesting one.

41w3d

Zebediah Xerxes* Luo** was born at 41w3d by cesarian section.  We’re all home and healthy and sleepy.

*Not his real name.

**Surname still under negotiation.

41w2d: Progress

The difference between 39w6d and 40w was that at 39 weeks, I was thinking “I certainly haven’t reached the stage at which I am so uncomfortable that I want labor to start.” I had aches and pains and I hadn’t slept through the night in months, but I felt generally perky. I could still dance a little. Then, right at 40w, the baby dropped and my pelvis was sore and it hurt to walk. My husband and friends thought my waddle was cute. I thought, “maybe it would be better to just have this kid–but not over the weekend. Wait till Monday so I can have my own doctor deliver the baby.” I went to the dance that Sunday and managed to walk through the figures on the slow dances (the fact that everyone else there was exhausted from an afternoon performance made it easier for me to keep up).

The difference between 40w and 41w2d is that I’m timing contractions and thinking, “this had better not last until Monday” and “it’s good to know that all my anxiety after yesterday’s appointment when the doctor started talking about scheduling induction was most likely completely wasted.”

For the record, they said everything was fine on the biophysical profile yesterday. I saw the fetus doing his practice breathing, which was unexpected. Also, in my opinion, despite the fake breathing the fetus looks less human on ultrasound at 41 weeks than at 28 weeks, because you don’t get a view of the whole body at once. (Maybe I should pass along this insight to the legislators who want to mandate ultrasounds for women seeking abortions.)

I am keeping this-my favorite part of Finslippy’s birth story- in mind:

You know this part if you’ve had a baby already: everything you read, every doctor you speak to, every hospital orientation you attend, every labor preparation course you take, they all tell you the same thing: don’t go to the hospital right away. We won’t admit you until you’re four centimeters dilated! they say. You’ll probably panic at those first contractions and think you need to go to the hospital! But you won’t! Stay at home and be comfortable and don’t bother the hospital until you’re absolutely certain! Maybe then you can come. Maybe. But until then we don’t want you. So don’t go to the hospital! Did you hear us? Were you listening carefully, when we said the part about waiting? Please sign this form that tells us you understood that part, because Jesus we don’t want you. Until, you know, such time as you’re truly, absolutely ready. But at that point when you think you should come, it will probably be even a few hours later than that. P.S.: Don’t come here.

In her case, it was bad advice, of course…

Meanwhile, I told Mr. Luo that due to popular demand (ahem, Jody and Thalya), he needed to produce his alternate birth story for this blog. For inspiration, he is currently rereading Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cordelia’s Honor. Because it is hard to top assasination attempts, civil war, fire, decapitations and infanticidal (feticidal?) fathers-in-law for an exciting gestation.

It turns out that sitting in my office chair is the least comfortable position for me right now, so I’ll sign off.

June 4, 1989

Back on the day of my embryo transfer, I tried to write about being in NYC on 9/11. I mentioned that one way in which my reaction to the attacks was different from that of people my students’ age was that “Emotionally, I had already been completely devastated by a different tragedy more than a decade earlier.”*

What shook my world was a completely non-American tragedy: the massacre of the student democracy activists in Beijing in 1989. I was twenty-three and living relatively close by, though not in China. Two good friends of mine were teaching in China. I marched with my students a few times, starting on May 4. I learned how to chant “The spirit of May 4″ in Cantonese, and later, “Support the Beijing Student Patriotic Democracy Movement” and other slogans. I learned the words to the songs people were singing at the marches. I was caught up in the optimism, that Chinese people could effect change, that the protests were working. Then suddenly it was over, and all hopes were dashed. On June 4, I received a letter from one of my friends in China, written a week or so earlier. Things had quieted down at her university because most of her students (some of whom I had met when I visited her over Christmas) had gone to Beijing.

I was devastated by 6/4, but I didn’t realize until recently how much it had affected my world view. If I am a pessimist, 6/4 is one reason why. If I am cynical about government and politically apathetic (I vote, always, and I keep informed, but I do not act very often) 6/4 is one reason why. I realized this year that I had not participated in a protest march since 1989, though I remember at least attending one “Take Back the Night Rally” in graduate school.

Logically, this does not make sense, because as a citizen in a democracy, I am in a better position than Chinese citizens to influence my government. But I’m not talking about logic. In fact, much of my reaction to 6/4 was so far from logic that I didn’t even recognize it.

*I started writing this post back on 9/11, thinking I would revise it eventually. Now I’m too tired to go into detail, except to say that I cannot overstate how much the 1989 democracy movement affected me at the time, and that I do realize it is a bit self-centered to write about it only as it relates to my own feelings.

Random Bullets of Expected Date of Delivery

• 40w2d
• As of yesterday, 1-2 cm dilated. Not that that means anything, according to assorted books and childbirth educators. Well, I take it to mean things are happening, but that there are no guarantees as to when other things will happen.
• In other words, I did not call my mother to say it was time to hop on a plane.
• Biophysical profile scheduled for next week.
• My pelvis is so sore that I can barely walk, but I can still do yoga. This seems odd to me, but supports the idea that yoga postures might help during labor.
• I am a little bit proud of myself for still being able to attend yoga classs at 40w, even though I know I’m supposed to let go of the ego for yoga. Back when I was in my first trimester, I was amazed at the women in the class who were past their due dates.
• Yesterday, I was so uncomfortable that I was desperate to get to yoga class and feel better.
• In my more superficial moments in the past, I wanted to get pregnant just so that I could take the prenatal yoga class that met after the regular class I was taking, with the same teacher.
• That yoga teacher was the first person I told I was pregnant from the category of people who did not know about the ivf.
• Goal for tonight: finish packing my hospital bags.
• Towards that end, I bought a nursing bra today.
• Various packing lists I consulted said to take 1-3 nursing bras to the hospital. The maternity store where we took a class on breastfeeding recommends waiting a couple of weeks after birth to get a nursing bra, so that the engorgement will be past and sizing will be more accurate. The specialty lingerie store where I bought new bras a couple of months ago said to come back closer to my due date and they would guess my size for a nursing bra. I suspect they may have overestimated how much my band size will go down, because it’s a long time since I wore that size.
• Other chore accomplished today: took a carload of paper, magazines, cardboard, etc. to the recycling center, and a bag of stuff to Goodwill.
• Our office, specifically my side of it, is still a mess. (Mr. Luo’s stuff is a mess too, but although that bothers me, it does not really affect my productivity.)
• Favorite thing I have read so far in the American Academy of Pediatricians’ Your Baby’s First Year: “Unless the temperature is hot (over 75 degrees Farenheit [23.88 Celsius]), your newborn will need several layers of clothing to keep her warm.” 75 degrees is hot? I have been feeling guilty for using the air conditioner, and for turning it down to 75 at night. I am fairly sure that we will not need the bunting and multiple blankets I’ve seen recommended for getting the baby home from the hospital. According to my local friends, a onesie is just fine.
• Least favorite thing from that book: something about using an extra rinse cycle for washing the baby’s clothes. I have done an inordinate amount of laundry recently, in part because I washed all the baby clothes we have been given, and now they tell me I did it wrong. No, I’m not going to re-wash the clothes, and yes, I do know there will be a lot more laundry soon.
• We have not bought a single item of clothing for the kid, but it is possible that he has more clothes than I do, and that they are better matching. Blue, blue, blue, blue, white, blue, blue, green, blue blue blue, red, khaki. It’s a good thing blue is one of my favorite colors.
• It looks like the doula will most likely be able to drive us to the hospital when the time comes, so that is one worry out of the way. I’m not sure why the idea of taking a taxi did not seem like a great solution, except that I worry about relying on taxis when not in a major metropolitan area where you can just step outside and hail one if the one you ordered doesn’t show up.