Birth of Francis

I've finally found the time to record the story of Francis' birth.  :)

On May 27, 2011 at 6:42am, my 2 year old daughter Elaine woke me up to nurse. I felt a little trickle that I suspected was my water breaking. 5 hours later, I was holding my son.

More details:
We arrived at the hospital at about 8am. I definitely was having strong contractions but they were far enough apart that I opted to walk from the parking lot with my husband and daughter instead of being dropped off. I'd called ahead so we were immediately shown to our room. I labored with my daughter for a bit where she stood on the bed and rocked with me. Then my parents arrived to take over care of my daughter. My mom took one look at me and said, "We won't leave the hospital." (She used to work in L&D.) I guess she knew this would be fairly quick.

At 9:30, the contractions were close and very intense. Stronger than I'd ever felt them in the 27 hours of labor with my daughter. The midwife checked me and I was 5 cm dilated. She asked if I wanted a doula. (They have a volunteer program.) I quickly said, "Yes!" (Then wondered if i should have asked my husband first how he felt about it but contractions were very strong and close so there was no time to discuss. And I knew I needed the support. My husband could hold my hand or get me water but he wouldn't know if some new position was good or if that would stall labor. Besides, why not?)

Within a few minutes, the head of the doula program (Anne) came in and explained the doula-on-call was on her way but she'd stay with me until she arrived. That was great. Anne was amazing. She talked me through contractions. She squeezed my hips in some way that was supportive. She encouraged me to relax in between contractions (in between? there were like 5 seconds. lol) and gave me "permission" to have irregular contractions, be in any position that I felt comfortable, be vocal, etc. Not that I couldn't have done those anyway, but it was nice to feel like I was doing it "right" even though I've never gone through anything so intense.

I labored on hands/knees for a while. Then I made the long trek (15 feet or so) to the bathroom. Then I labored standing for a while and the new doula, Michelle, arrived. Both Anne and Michelle stayed with me for a while.

Eventually, I crawled back onto the bed (hands/knees) and started pushing. They called the midwife and told her to put gloves on. She sort of argued that she needed to check me and both the nurse and doula basically said there's no time. Get ready. I confirmed that it was ok to push since I'd heard pushing too early could cause swelling and slow things down. "Yes! If you feel the urge, push!"

Well, I never felt the urge, but pushing made the pain more tolerable so I pushed. With Elaine, I pushed for 4 hours. A little out, a little back. A little out, a little back. With this guy, I felt one move out and then recede back a little and thought, "Oh, no! There's no going back in!" and pushed with everything I had left with no regard for contractions or timing. I was just pushing.

Meanwhile, my husband asked if he could help deliver the baby ("Sure! Go wash your hands.") He did, tweeted "pushing" (at 11:25am) so our family and friends getting the twitter feed would know what was happening, washed his hands again, and then the head was out and he was ready. I declared myself done and everyone started screaming, "No! Keep pushing! Keep pushing!" I didn't know it at the time, but the cord was loosely around his neck. With the next push, I got his shoulders out, the midwife slipped the cord down his body and my husband and midwife caught the baby.


At 11:28am, we had our baby boy. 8lbs 5.9 oz and 20.5 in long. My daughter joined us shortly thereafter followed by the rest of the family. Everyone was happy and healthy!

Regression - mom

I should add to my previous post that Elaine hasn't regressed in terms of potty training but I have, apparently.  After assisting her in the bathroom, I grabbed a diaper and started putting it on her.

"Mommy, what are you doing?"

I think I just looked confused for a moment.  I'd checked to make sure I grabbed a newborn size, not size 1.  Then it hit me, "Oh right.  You don't wear diapers."  In fact, she hasn't worn diapers of any kind day or night in 5 months.  I'm clearly a little short on sleep these days.

Regression

I wondered how my 2 year old would deal with potty training once we had the new baby.  With this in mind, I've kept her in the blueberry trainers for the last few months even though she rarely had accidents.  I figured the added protection when we had a baby and she might regress would be a good idea.  She'd be spending a few days with her grandparents (and had never been away from us for more than an hour or two previously) so i thought that might cause some chaos as well.

However, she's done great!  She had no accidents with grandparents or with all the new baby visitors when we got home.  After a couple of weeks, she started having accidents at night (4 out of 5 nights in a row) but I think that was more about exhaustion than regression of some kind.  After she started catching up on sleep more, the accidents stopped.  She finally had one small accident yesterday (after more than 5 weeks of daytime accident free) where she suddenly announced she'd made a mess and ran to the bathroom.  It was only a few drips and almost all contained in her trainers so not a big deal.  This is the longest accident free stretch she's had, actually.

I wonder if we're not seeing any regression because her brother is going to the potty too.  Perhaps that's a benefit of ECing that I hadn't considered before.

Our First Catch

Francis was born on Friday, May 27, 2011.  We came home from the hospital on Sunday.  On Monday, we got our first catch in the potty.  Well, in the bathroom at least.  I'll admit that my aim wasn't too great having never pottied a boy before.  This is how that event ended;

So the first toilet trip was a bit messier than anticipated, but we  were thrilled we'd picked up on his signal.  A mere 4 days old and he'd successfully peed and pooped (mostly) in the potty.  Our first catch with him was even sooner than his sister (5 days old) but both were very exciting.  Within 24 hours, we'd had another 4  successful trips with him and 3 of those times, he'd had a dry, clean diaper.  I always feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when the diaper is dry.

This begins our journey with Elimination Communication with Francis.

Sleep Training

We're trying something relatively new with Elaine.  Sleep training.  Now, this isn't the typical let-her-cry sleep training, but giving her some skills to help her relax and fall asleep.  My hope is that she'll be able to use these skills as she gets older as well.  Both my husband and I have had trouble falling asleep at times in our lives and we didn't really have any skills to utilize.  Telling a 2 year old to "just count sheep" doesn't seem reasonable.  "1... 2... 3... 4...{giggle} 5... 6... 7... 8... 9... 10... {squeal} 11... 12... 14... 16... 17... 18... 19... um... 16... {jumps on bed}"  :)

So I stood by her bed last night and talked Elaine (and dad) through progressive relaxation and then we did deep  breaths until she fell asleep.  The whole thing took about 15 minutes: 6 for relaxation exercises, 8 for deep breathing and another few minutes of me hanging out just to be sure she was actually asleep.  (And all while swaying back and forth nursing a 3 week old.)  I'd like to have more relaxation ideas up my sleeve so I can keep going if she's clearly still going a mile per minute.

The ideas I used were from skimming the book The Floppy Sleep Game Book by Patty Teel.

There's nothing particularly novel about the book, but she used language that is appropriate for little kids and gives me ideas of exercises.  It's geared toward kids 3-8 years old so I had to adjust when I started using it with my daughter at 22 months.  Perhaps it was coincidence but she went from sleeping 5-6 hours in her longest stretch (then 2 hours, then 1) to 9 hours straight starting the first night we did the exercises. We didn't even use it long enough to get her to sleep, just to calm down and then got ready for bed. It seemed to make an immediate difference though.  But then I was pregnant and not able to lie on my back to do the exercises with her so that got put on the back burner.  We did do the exercises occasionally and her sleep stayed about the same (until we potty trained a month or two later) so it was still beneficial.

This was the first time we set out to actually do this until she fell asleep.  (Well, we tried it last week and it did work but there were exceptional circumstances where we thought my daughter was ill and needed to keep her away from new baby and mom and it worked, but it was not a normal night.  This was normal.  Or at least as normal a night can be with 2 little kids.)  I think we'll try to do this more regularly.  I'm not sure I'm going to use the "4-week plan" involved because that's not really my objective but I like the tools available.  I also think I'll buy the book now that I've checked it out from the library 3 times.  :)

Flats and Handwashing Challenge

Since I mentioned flats and washing diapers in my last post, I thought it would also be prudent to link to the recent Flats and Handwashing Challenge.  It is over now, but I thought the idea was neat.

The basic idea was to switch to using only flats (just a big piece of cloth) for a week and they could only be handwashed.  The idea was to see if it was really feasible to use exclusively flats, handwash and air dry.  Apparently, about 400 families participated and 50 blogged about their experiences.  Sounds interesting!
http://dirtydiaperlaundry.com/take-the-flats-and-handwashing-challenge-may-23-30/

Diaper Donations

A friend just visited and her playgroup is doing a diaper drive for a Mother in Need so I sent some diapers with her.  If you want to donate:
http://www.helpamotherout.org/donate/

I couldn't help but think cloth would go farther for people who can't afford diapers.  Cotton Babies has worked hard to put together affordable options like the econobum diapers... everything you need for less than $50:
http://www.cottonbabies.com/product_info.php?cPath=138&products_id=2533

And cloth can be even cheaper than that  if you get good deals on prefolds ($1-2/each) and covers (about $6 each) or flats, which are even cheaper and easier to clean.  However, I have to think that dealing with cloth is probably not something a lot of moms want to deal with if they're worried about not being able to diaper their child at all.  Not to mention washing might not be easy or economic if they have to get to a laudromat and pay for the machines frequently.

Of course, there's always ECing-- needs no diapers at all!  :)  (Not an option many families know about, I suspect.)

Anyway, my heart goes out to parents who are struggling to take care of basic needs for their child.  Perhaps some of my readers will be able to donate as well.