One Month and Letters to Creedence

We are one month into this two children thing.
It's been the most challenging month of my life.
And most rewarding.
I have, fortunately, gotten past the postpartum emotions thing and am now just working on the sleepless night exhaustion thing.  I often feel sorry for Michael, who is usually the only one awake past 7 p.m.---especially if he is driving us home from a family event and the heat in the car is at the perfect level.

Nothing like having a husband snap photos while you sleep on the couch 

I have a few things in my head that might not be articulated correctly, but I wanted to get them down before I forget this stage of life.

1. A birth child is so very different than an adoptive child.  This should be fairly obvious---but it isn't...and it deserves its own post.  Mostly, it involves how Michael and I have been so wired to attachment parenting and watching for signs of self-soothing (bad! bad! in adoption) that it's difficult to remember that Creedence doesn't come with a ton of baggage.  He can soothe himself, and it won't be detrimental.  He can even take a pacifier, and we won't be guilty of the greatest sins in the world.  (Funny how initially we wanted Million to be able to take a pacifier, and he wouldn't; and we hated the idea of Creedence wanting a pacifier, but it helps him calm down and soothe himself.)

2. Breastfeeding is work and brings along with it all manner of mama concerns and guilt that bottle feeding never did.

3. At the same time, it doesn't feel right to complain about the work involved in breastfeeding, since it is a lifestyle choice (how fortunate I am to have a choice!)

4.  It is infinitely harder to play the parenting trump card game  with two children.  Maslow's hierarchy of needs is of NO practical assistance, because Creedence's needs are almost ALWAYS on the bottom level (feed me! change me! I need sleep!  My brother is touching my eyeball!)  and Million's are almost always on the emotional affirmation level.  I need to make decisions about when it's okay to let boy #2 scream about being wet/hungry/tired because boy #1 is crying and saying that he's "just sad"  (a frequent statement around here, which also deserves another post.)

5. Christmas this year wrought all sorts of different emotions.  I think because my big boy has a sibling now, it reminded me so much of my childhood Christmases with my siblings.  And something internally felt lacking because our Christmas lacked structure (although, my childhood Christmases had almost too much obsessive structure and super-predictability as to where we would be what time each day, etc.)  Michael and I do our best to create meaningful traditions for our small family, but this year it just didn't feel like enough.  And I missed my siblings incredibly so on Christmas Day...  But we'll see them this coming weekend.

6. Sometimes I don't mind the middle of the night wakings, because they're my only uninterrupted time with my second child.  

7. Today we got what (should be) our last dinner delivered.  We have been completely spoiled by friends and family.  It will be interesting and fun to get back into cooking again.

8. We are one document shy of being DTE (dossier to Ethiopia.)  And it's not our immigration form.  Isn't that nice?  We might meet our agency's deadline of December 2012!

9. On that note, I will never do a fundraiser again where the element being sold is out of my control.  Mean, mean thoughts about a t-shirt company inserted here.  (This is seriously the biggest problem in my life right now---first world privilege.)  

10. While on the topic of adoption, I don't FEEL like I'm nearly waiting for another child.  Perhaps because my two current children take up 8000% of my daily energy.  This adoption is nothing like our first adoption.  Which also could be another post.  

I highly doubt that I'll get to all of my "another posts" in the near future.  But at least I got some of my mind written down.

Dear Creedence,

We've known you a month.  We've seen your brownish blue eyes and heard your very insistent cry and listened to your coos and felt your dry little skin.  (Winter is tough on a baby in Minnesota.)  You have provided us with such laughter.  You also are needy.  Very needy.  You teach Mama so much about dependence and interdependence.  You teach Mama how very badly she needs God.  How she relies on God for sustenance, for her very life.  Your need of Mama humbles her.  We love you so very much.  When people ask us who you look like, we think you're a pretty good genetic mix of both of our gene pools.  But gene pools are not what matter in this life or in our family.  You are our son.  You have the same rights and privileges as your older brother.  You also have responsibility that you will grow into.  We are so very humbled and blessed that God gave you to us, and we don't take His gift lightly at all.  We are burdened for your soul and tremble while we take each faltering step forward as parents.  You are unique.  You are special.  You are ours.  But more importantly, you are God's.

Happy one month in our family!

Love, Mama, Daddy, and Million

Merry Christmas, Jesus

Merry Christmas, Jesus.
You came to earth as a baby boy.  You know what it's like to be a little boy.

Give me strength and wisdom enough to parent these two in a way that honors You.
You know them intimately; they are Yours.

Give me grace and patience.
Let them not look back on their childhood years and see a mama who was frustrated or upset about little things.
Let them see You in their memories.  

Working Against Dementia

At least once a day I have moments that I try to capture in my head and store in my heart.

Memories I want to last forever.

My cameras aren't out as much these days.  

In fact, I don't know where two of them are.  (?!)

So I purpose to make the memories stick somewhere in the crevasses of my heart, in order that I can pull them out when I'm pruny and grey and recall how very blessed I have been.

This morning, I went about Creedence's feeding and then handed him off to Michael for ten minutes.  Michael put Creedence back in bed, and when I came into our bedroom, Michael pulled me to sit on his knee and put his arms around me.  Then he prayed.  He prayed for our daily lives, for our sons, for our relationship with God and with each other.  

He prays with me every morning.  But today I wanted to make a memory of it.  

This man---this humble, patient man---chose me.  

And it took me seven years of close friendship with him to say "hey, he might be the guy for me...."  

Our marriage isn't about fireworks and candlelit dinners---although we've had those.  

Our marriage wasn't a whirlwind romance; romance comes disguised in different forms.

Our marriage takes work.  Daily.

But this morning, as he pulled me onto his knee and prayed, I thanked God for our marriage, silently.  

I am so blessed to be this man's wife.  

So memory, please, stick in my heart, so that when I have dementia I can still vaguely recall how beautiful marriage is and how God has blessed me incredibly.  

As a "special treat," Michael heated up some rice socks for Million and I.  

Million wore his under his shirt, whereas I chose the neck drape.

He thought it was the neatest thing in the world.

Until we rode with my parents through a Christmas lights display.  

And then THAT was the neatest thing in the world.

I'm tired these days.

But it's a different kind of tired than week one postpartum tired.

That kind of tired was "where the heck are my internal organs, and how long will they take to migrate back to their proper places?" kind of tired.

Week two postpartum kind of tired was "I'm crying so much and so hormonal that I absolutely MUST have postpartum depression.  Wait, let me google it and see if I have the symptoms."

Week three kind of tired involved a lot of concern with some extra doctor appointments and visits.  It often seems like all I ever do is breastfeed and take the boys into town for doctor appointments.

I'm trying to have a good perspective for this week.  

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."  Matthew 11:28

Trying to find rest from the true source of rest. 

A New Brother-in-Law

My little sister got engaged on Friday night.  (This is not a picture of their engagement...just a picture of them together.)

We are finally all caught up on orders for our shop and will likely remain closed through Christmas.
We just need a break.
And the rest of this post is just a big fat sigh.  

The Nitty Gritty Birth Story

Okay...  I dedicated 3+ years of writing a whole blog to Million's coming into our family.  The second-born in me demands that Creedence gets at least one post.  And I wanted to get this written down before I forget some details.  But also there is a part of me that always hated reading birth stories before I had kids, and even while I was pregnant I hated hearing talk of how dilated other women were etc.  Those are personal details about personal parts, excuse me. I'd rather not be thinking about the spreaded-outness of any areas of my friends' bodies that should be covered up while wearing a swim suit.  So by all means, skip this post if you have to.  I seriously will not be offended.  

I'm going to try to keep this as G-rated as a birth story can possibly be.

Sunday, November 25th (a day after my due date), my water broke at 9:15 a.m.  I googled to make sure that it was my water breaking, because it wasn't a huge dramatic thing like you see in the movies.  I told Michael to go ahead and take Million to church, which he did (and he made it through church without telling anyone other than my parents who were slotted to watch Million while we were in the hospital.)  I called the triage line at the birthing center, and they said I could hang around home for awhile and just to be there by 1 p.m.  I got all of the dishes and laundry done and brought all of the bags for Million, Michael, and I downstairs, and just generally cleaned while waiting.  When Michael and Million got home from church, we dropped Million off at my parents' house.  

When we got to the birthing center, the midwife confirmed that my water had broken, and they put a monitor on me and found out I was having contractions that were three minutes apart.  But I couldn't feel them at all.  Not a twinge or anything.  So they sent me a'walking with Michael.  We went to Barnes and Noble for awhile, and he went to Caribou coffee (I got a grilled cheese there...)  They wanted us back in our labor and delivery room by 3 p.m.  We came back, and I still wasn't feeling anything.  So the decision was made by the midwife to start pitocin, since my water had already been broken for 6 hours.  

Insert 8 hours of walking, playing sudoku, eating roast beef open-faced sandwiches, laughing with Michael, and having the pitocin levels increased 8 or 9 times.  The idea was to get me to be able to feel the pain, so I would know when I was contracting, since I had absolutely no clue unless I watched the contraction monitor they had around my abdomen.  The fetal monitor kept on going off every time I would exit the room, so we would walk down the corridor for 2 minutes, come back in the room and make sure that Creedence was doing okay.  We made a LOT of laps in that birthing center.

At 11 p.m., the midwife student "checked" me, and there wasn't much progression of labor, but in the process of checking me, they stretched me out some amount.  At 11:30, I was finally able to feel the contractions.  They were about a minute apart at that point.  Our labor and delivery room did not have the stand-in hot tub that I had really wanted, as the rooms with those tubs in them were already being used.  But it did have a very long and deep bath-tub.  So I opted for that.  As soon as I got in the water, my labor started progressing quite quickly, with contractions coming on very suddenly, nearly on top of each other.  So I only stayed in the tub for about 45 minutes.  Following that, I sat down for another half an hour and suddenly felt the urge to push.  Michael helped get me up on a birthing stool (uncomfortable contraption that kind of looks like a walker for an elderly person.)  He sat behind me and supported my back.  I pushed about five times in 15 minutes, and at 1:10 a.m. on Monday morning, Creedence came out.    

There are two sides of this whole story.  One was that it was seriously a wonderful experience.  The lights were dim, my favorite music was playing, we had peppermint essential oil in the room, and there were only Michael, I, one nurse, a midwife, and a midwife student in the room.  (And the last three were only in the room for the last hour of my labor.)  I was able to have the pain-med free labor and delivery that I absolutely wanted.  The midwives told me many times that it was the most beautiful labor they had seen in a long time (how do you respond to that?)  They were impressed with Michael's level of involvement as my labor coach, as many husbands don't apparently know what to do for their wives or get squeamish around bodily fluids.  I am seriously indebted to Michael for the perfect job he did coaching me through my pain.  (I am not one of those people who needs to be told that they're doing a "great job"---in fact, it annoys me.  And Michael knew that much about me and coached me in a way that worked for me...blunt and business-like.)

The bad part of the story is that because my body had so much pitocin in it, I couldn't control how or when I pushed.  Or how hard.  And even though I only pushed about five times, my body worked itself so hard that I experienced a lot of trauma.  Following the birth (this is the gross part for you squeamish people), the placenta would not deliver despite tugging and yanking on the umbilical cord.  So OB was called in semi-emergently after 45 minutes, as the placenta is "supposed" to deliver within half an hour.  I'll not go into detail on how the OB doctor got the placenta out, because it grosses a lot of people out...but the process was the most painful part of the whole delivery and also contributed to the trauma my body experienced.  They wheeled me off to surgery to stitch me up, telling Michael and I that the surgery would only take about 20 minutes.  There Michael was, doing skin-to-skin contact with Creedence, since I wasn't able to.  Apparently, one of the only songs he could think of to sing to Creedence at the time was Baby Beluga.  *sigh*  

The surgery took three hours.  And I was completely drugged up for it, although remaining conscious. (Please note, my mom is concerned that any readers might think I had a hysterectomy, given the length of the surgery and my vague terminology about the kind of trauma.  Not that you need to know, but this was not the case.)  When I was wheeled back to Michael, I was finally able to hold Creedence for longer than a minute and find out how much he weighed, etc.  Two hours later, I got out of bed and into a wheelchair and was wheeled down to the postpartum ward.  Postpartum was a different story entirely (only part of the hospital experience where I cried...and that was from exhaustion and complete lack of privacy.)   

So obviously, things didn't go according to our written "birth plan."  We knew they wouldn't from the first, since the stand-in birthing tubs had played a big role in what we wanted...and since I had always assumed that I would know when I was having contractions.  :)  But the midwife followed everything that she could from our plan (i.e. Michael cut the cord.)  And God gave us enough grace and laid-back personalities so that veering from our plan wasn't really that big of a deal for us.  We are really so very pleased with how our labor and delivery experience went and couldn't recommend a midwife birth enough to anyone.        

And I can't really think of a way to end this post.  I feel like I'm supposed to do jazz hands and say "ta dah!"  or something.  

Not happening here.  

My second child was born.  He is completely beautiful. 

And I'm so grateful that I got to experience this way of growing a family too.    

Early Mornings and What I'm Not Doing For Christmas

Million woke up earlier than normal.
He must have found some sort of a toy in a storage bin in his room, because I'm hearing a mechanical voice say "This is M, This is R, This is H" repeatedly.  Not sure what toy he's playing with or from whence it came, since we have a semi-strict "no noise-making toys except for musical instruments and that one police car from his Auntie" policy, but at least he's entertained.

He's arguing with the toy now.  Apparently he has a different definition of what "H" is.

It's amazing how a few days and a hot shower can put things into proper perspective.

We're not quite to the thriving phase of family-hood yet, but we are doing more than surviving.
Of course, it helps that we've had food dropped off every night for the last week.
I'm getting so many good ideas for meal deliveries for other people.

The balance I'm struggling to find is how to re-program our routine to fit in some intentional Million and Mama time.  We need this.

We NEED this.

And with all of the holiday bustle and commercialization saying that Christmas is about family and togetherness and intentional time spent in meaningful traditions...it's easy to get a tiny guilt twinge.  But I'm not buried in heaping mama guilt right now, for which I'm grateful.

I haven't started an Advent calendar or Jesse tree.  In fact, I'm rarely getting in Million's devotions these days.  Michael and I talked about having a birthday party for Jesus with a cake and one helium balloon for Million to play with, but I'm not sure how far those plans will actually go.  I haven't scheduled any service projects for our family, and we're actually purchasing our little family's traditional "Christmas gifts" of lambs and ducks, etc. from charities in January.  You can do that.  Did you know this?

I also don't foresee much Christmas baking on the horizon.  Thank you Pinterest and my Facebook feed for making me feel extremely inadequate and like somewhat of a Grinch.  We've got a few years before our next child comes home, so that is my justification for taking this year kind of slowly.  We'll "do" Christmas next year.    

We're skipping our MOPS Christmas celebration tomorrow, as it's still a little too soon for me to feel confident and physically energetic enough to handle both boys and an adult Christmas celebration.

All of these things are good.  They're great.  They're just not possible or probable right now.  Our priorities are a little different right now.

Like returning crockpots and tupperware to appropriate people and writing thank-you cards.  And running a business.

Million's stopped playing with the alphabet recognition toy, whatever it is.  I'm not sure who won the fight about the letter H.

We're going to go downstairs, have some non-gourmet oatmeal, and start our day off with the hopes of carving out some intentional time together, learning about God and the true meaning of Christmas through our everyday activities.  

Eight Days In

I posted this picture on Michael's facebook wall this morning.  It's a pretty good representation of me right now.
I'm out of my element.

I'm slowly getting back into some manageable patterns, and we're trying to find our new normal.

In other news: I went to Target with both boys today.  By myself.

Picture Post

We are surviving as a family of four.  Adjustment is hard, to put it mildly... 

Tomorrow will be my first solo day with the two boys, and I'm dreading it.

We're behind on our orders for our business, and losing "control" in multiple areas of life is very tough for this perfectionist.

At some point, I may get around to posting a very abbreviated and vague post about Creedence's birth.  You see, the end gets a little medically graphic, and I don't really want that out on the internet for the whole world to know.  But for right now, you get photos from our last week. 

After Creedence's birth, right before a lengthy surgery.

First family photo.

My boys.

He is one of the most content babies I've ever met.

First Christmas photo as a family of four.