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:

Incidentally, Anna managed to get the shuttle launch on the TV so that Owen could watch it. All this rocket indoctrination is working out, because he wanted to watch it twenty or so times on the DVR before Anna couldn’t take it anymore and shut the TV off.

Anna found out she has a new superpower.

Trouble is, it can only be activated at very certain times.

See, when Owen starts to scream or cry or fuss, her boobs leak. TAKE THAT, CRIME.

Owen is very helpful in the kitchen these days. Perhaps a bit too helpful. Every time he sees us in the kitchen he wants to help “cook”.

We’ve enabled this by giving him some measuring cups, measuring spoons, and some dried beans. Oh, and his knife.

We also give him dried rice. And veggie scraps for him to chop. Oh, and rice, tofu, and just about whatever else we happen to be preparing. Some gets “prepared” and most just gets eaten.

Apparently there’s a special stool you can buy. It’s a stool that is counter height, and is designed to allow the kid to help and watch cook without being able to fall out – at least not easily. And also $199.99.

We use a twenty dollar murderous step ladder. He hasn’t died yet, but but all accounts I’ve read, it’s only a matter of time until he either falls off this two foot stool to his untimely death, or the stool rises up to devour Owen’s tasty innards.

Here he is cooking a special dish:

So Friday night went pretty well. Owen spent the first hour and a half bumping around and playing by the meager illumination of the night light. He jumped on the bed for a while, then went and tried to read some books which is funny because there was no light, and he can’t read. But that didn’t stop him!

Then he tried to open the door, kicked the wall for a while and ultimately fell silent.

See for yourself:

I think we were both pretty surprised to see that he had actually fallen asleep in his bed. But he figured it out!

Then, the next day at nap time after a tiny bit more of playing and realizing that he could stand up in his bed, open the shutters, and look out the window, he settled down for a nap. IN HIS BED.

Two days of napping and three nights of sleeping overnight isn’t a pattern. But it’s a heck of a start.

Finished!

Tonight will be the first night, or attempt, at sleeping in his toddler-sized big boy bed. It is exciting and sad at the same time. Good: he’s growing up into a fun little boy! Bad: he’s growing up fast!

Moved some furniture and his clothes into the room. He’s been playing in there pretty steadily and calls it the “blue room.” He even laid down on the bed and asked Mom for his blanket and pillow. Then, when she gave it to him he said “nite nite, mommy” and pretended to sleep. Possible good signs?

Oh, and I took video. Make sure to bump the res up to 720p:

The bed is assembled from MDF and particle board. Here it is unassembled – it looks oddly similar!

In most places I drilled and countersunk the screws. Then I spackled over the sunk screws so they are pretty well hidden. I left them in a few places because I thought they kind of looked like rivets, and that was neat.

Just some white paint left to handle over the next two nights, and then it’s time to actually move the boy to the bed!

Before:

Middle:

After(ish):

There’s kind of a neat optical illusion when you stand in the doorway and look at the room in full light – which isn’t any of the pictures here. If you stand in the doorway while the room is lit up with sunlight, you can’t really tell that the back wall is a darker blue, it just looks like normal contrast at a distance. Here’s the two colors up close (with tape!)

For this kid:

Still some touch-up to do. The baseboards look awful, partly because of the textured wall/tape problem, and partly because the last homeowners didn’t tape, so there are stretches of butter yellow all over the place, which contrasts sharply against the blue. Also, the lines are better, in that I made a concentrated effort, but there is still some blue bleed-through at the portions of the wall where the different blues meet.

As much as I don’t want to, I probably also have to paint the ceiling. Ugh. I was going to just leave it primed.

Progress on the rocketship bed continued. I have the frame, baseboard, and headboard assembled. All I need to do now is make a tail fin and the rocketship “sides” – which is arguably the hardest part. Oh, and then that needs to be primed and painted. No rest for the weary.