This doesn’t happen often enough:

I think yesterday was a pretty nice mother’s day, other than Anna wasn’t feeling particularly well.

We had nice weather so we spent a lot of time outside in the afternoon on the back deck watching Owen play on the big rocks, in the dirt, in his water table, in the dirt again, in the mud, back on the rocks, digging for worms, etcetera. Lily fussed the entire time. She may not like the outdoors yet.

Garden planning started this past weekend, too. This year’s garden was brought to us almost exclusively by Groupon. The nursery we go to for plants had a $25 for $50 Groupon, and our local Ace Hardware had a $10 for $20 Groupon. I was able to get plants, some heavy-duty tomato cages, and some soil from the nursery, and then all compost and other stuff from Ace. Was kind of neat. With the “extra” money I was able to buy a ton more compost and fertilizer. The past few years I’ve kind of skimped on those things – and while I can’t say that’s the reason our garden hasn’t been as successful the past two years, I’m sure it contributed.

This year we are planting two varieties of cherry tomatoes. Our cherry tomatoes always do very well, but starting last year we seem to have developed a serious pest problem. Somebody seems to be toddling around in the garden pulling off all the cherry tomatoes and eating them. I cut back on bigger variety tomatoes because Colorado has a hard time staying warm enough long enough for bigger tomatoes. We also have squash, zucchini, broccoli, basil, lavender (Anna’s), mint, carrots, beets, and spinach.

Everything is about eggs the past few days. More eggs. Eggs, please. Find eggs.

And Lily? Here she is with Auntie Jen. She didn’t like the hat either. For reference:

Well… almost.

Everybody’s gone. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles. That gives me some time to catch up on the interblog.

She’s filling out nicely.

We’ll see how he does with no distraction and an actual deficit of attention. He puts on these glasses and runs around yelling “COOL DUDE”.

Chop-chop is smitten.

Owen and Uncle Matt got along swimmingly. Owen was very sad to see him go.

Initially, I didn’t want this stupid lamb swing. I guess you can say it’s paid off.

I have a ton of pictures to post and things to say, but haven’t really had time to devote to the old interblag.

It’s been a busy few weeks. First, you all know about Lily, and that takes up quite a bit of time.

What you may not have heard yet is that for the first week of her life she didn’t sleep a lot and was extremely fussy all the time. One of the biggest user complaints against babies is that whenever something is wrong, the only have one way to convey the message – crying.

So she was crying a bit. About one week after she was born, her skin started to pick up a yellow tinge, and she hadn’t pooped in about 36 hours. We figured maybe it was jaundice, considering both Anna and I were born with it.

Turns out she wasn’t getting enough to eat. Anna thought everything was going swimmingly with feeding. Unfortunately there’s no good way to know until your baby starts turning yellow, since the cries are hard to differentiate. When they weighed her, she had lost another six ounces on top of the first, initial quick post-birth weight loss of six ounces.

That was hard news to take. Essentially, we were starving her. She was fussy all the time, and not sleeping, because she was so hungry.

Unfortunately, because we missed the cues, Anna’s supply had started to dwindle as well. Lily wasn’t taking much, so Anna stopped producing as much. This was also hard news to take, considering that with Owen and early with Lily, Anna was a prize cow in terms of milk production. This means we had to do the following things:

• Nurse Lily for ten minutes on each boob, and afterwards pump until supply was exhausted.
• Supplement any pumped milk with formula to make up 2oz total of fluid, and serve to Miss Lily in a bottle.

This had to be done every two and a half hours. And it was important, because of the dramatic weight loss, to wake her up and feed her in order to fatten her up. And it was super effective – in forty-eight hours, she put on six ounces. Yesterday she had an informal checkup when we brought Owen in for his two year, and had put on a full pound in a week. Anna’s milk supply is back up, and we’ve stopped using formula, which is mostly symbolic, but matter of pride and importance to Anna.

And, Lily isn’t as fussy anymore, and is a joy to be around when she bothers to be awake!

So things are getting better. We don’t have to wake Lily up to feed her anymore, though she’s doing enough of that on her own as she’s continuing to grow. Eventually when she gets a bit bigger we should be able to lessen the frequency of bottle feedings, which is important to me because it means I can sleep some more! Anna is ambivalent about that particular milestone.

Note that I haven’t even mentioned Owen, and how he’s been doing or acting. Just assume that through all the above visuals you’ve created for my words, that there’s a two year old toddler running around doing toddler things, which I will address later.

Busy day yesterday, but here’s Owen’s cake. Taste-wise, it turned out freaking rad. My fondant skills leave a bit to be desired…

Owen’s 2nd birthday is in a week. HOLY CRAP.

Made green pancakes for St Patrick’s day yesterday. They were well received.

Friday morning, Anna had her thirty-nine week appointment. Not much happening in the dilation department, but some effacement. She had her membranes stripped. I promise you I don’t know anything about what any of that means, other than that the doctor said she could give birth today, or that she could give birth in two weeks. I guess you know what happened.

She had some contractions on Friday, but nothing for us to be really alarmed about. There was no pattern or consistency to them. We had dinner with friends, and went to bed.

Around 11pm, Anna had more contractions, this time with a bit more frequency, but not a lot going on otherwise. She noted that when she stood up, the contractions were pretty close together. But when she laid down, they spread out considerably.

After about 12:30 on Saturday morning, we decided to go ahead and time the contractions. One minute, forty five seconds. Um, we better go!

And go we do. With a quickness. In short, we got to the hospital around 1:35 in the morning. The funny thing about planning is that – even though we had packed and had a plan and everything, it still took us a considerable amount of time to get out of the house. We had to wait for someone to come watch Owen. We had to make sure we had everything, and of course we didn’t.

Anyway, we got there at 1:35 in the morning. Last time, the process required us to go to triage and be checked for dilation and such. This time, we got to triage … and there was nobody there despite repeated cries of pain from Anna and me testing the constructed limits of the bell you ring for help. I’d guess we waited for about ten minutes, but it’s hard to gauge that kind of time passage given the situation we were in. The nurse at triage just gave one look at Anna and said “oh yeah, we need to get you up there pronto.”

She was admitted at about 1:59 AM and was dilated at seven cm. Everybody on any surrounding floor within a 100 yard radius knew that Anna wanted an epidural. By about 2:05 AM they had her strapped in and hooked to monitoring equipment while Anna howled in pain and crushed my hand. At about 2:00 AM, she was at eight cm. Still no epidural. At about 2:10 AM she felt like she had to push, and the nurse said “OK, go ahead and push!” and also “it’s too late for an epidural.” Anna responded something loudly with a paraphrased “Gee, that’s too bad” and then almost bit my hand off. At 2:15 AM and with only four pushes, Lily bloomed.

As the husband and father, time kind of stopped for me at that moment. I had an exhausted, hurting, and excited wife. I had a healthy, shrieking baby girl. And there was a lot, lot, lot of blood. The adrenaline kind of disappeared, or possibly peaked past what I could take at that point, and I almost passed out. The last thing you want to be doing when you have a new tiny baby that you’re excited to meet, and a wife who needs counseling, reassurance and praise, is to be sitting down because you’re trying not to faint.

Anna never felt her water break, but apparently it had broken at some point. Our best theory is that it happened when she sat down to pee and had one of those timing issues that you read about in medical dramas but never actually seems to happen to real people. Also, it apparently ruptured in such a way that some of the amniotic sac adhered to the inside of her uterus. I am told that during normal delivery, the uterus shrinks after birth to minimize the risk of bleeding. Something about the quickness of the labor and the remnants of the amniotic sac kept Anna’s uterus from shrinking, and also from properly expelling the placenta. This means, in short, that there was a lot of blood.

The fix required them to scrape the offending matter from the inside of her uterus with an unceremonious tool that looked like a peeler. This, according to Anna, hurt much worse than the actual delivery – and is even more horrible when you’ve got a screaming, brand new baby newborn who needs her mama.

Factor on top of that – passing out aside – there is literally nothing I can do, to help my wife or daughter.

Once the bleeding got under control a bit, things streamlined into something I would say is more normal for the delivery process. Anna is fine, Lily is fine.

The post-game report included the instruction from our doctor that we’d probably have to stay in the hospital for forty-eight hours, because they didn’t have a chance to apply the necessary antibiotics to Anna before delivery. They didn’t have time to do a lot of things!

I’m biased, but because Lily is probably the perfect baby and Anna was designed for baby making, we got discharged early and have been home since about four o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday, and are desperately trying to find a new “normal”.

Owen has finally acknowledged Lily. I think he’s slowly starting to realize that the baby is here to stay, and not just visiting. He’s getting more curious and assertive with her, and now really wants to touch her. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except that he’s got a cold, and we’d really like to avoid Lily getting this cold. As many of you are aware, it is a delicate dance.

My girls.

This is the best family photo we have right now: