BabyBear's arrival

By now, many of you will know of BabyBear's arrival. Much of BB's fan club wanted to hear all the details. For the sake of those who read this blog while nibbling on their lunch, I'll stick to the less graphic aspects of BB's big day.

9:45 am While running some errands with my mom, I felt a few cramps.

10:30-noon Mom and I vacuumed my car in my driveway. The contractions felt real now and I had to stop to relax. Never one to miss a meal, I talked Mom into a leisurely lunch. 

1-2 pm I read a book, stopping to time my contractions. They were consistently 5 minutes apart, lasting 45 seconds each. Fortunately, I was still quite comfortable and described the waves as tightness and pressure. Relaxing through them prevented any sense of pain.

2 pm I called PapaBear at work and suggested that he come home. No big hurry, but I thought we were in labour.

2:30 pm Mom continued to time my contractions, because I could no longer concentrate on details like the second hand on a watch. My contractions had accelerated to 3 minutes apart and, for some reason, I was not the least bit alarmed. At some point in here, I mentioned wanting a bath right before we go to the hospital and Mom got the water running. I resisted because I thought it was too early, but she was confident that it was now or never.

3 pm PapaBear arrived home (after running a few errands!). He and my mom decided to head to the hospital. PB packed the car, changed into scrubs, and briefly lost his wallet. While he searched, I started to really struggle.

4 pm We arrived at the hospital. Although Mom wanted me to use a wheelchair, I walked to triage. My contractions were hitting me every 2 minutes by now, so there were a few pauses en route with some less than lady-like language on my part.

When we hit triage, there wasn't a nurse in sight. I paced, my mother tried to get someone's attention, and PapaBear parked the car. One of the OR nurses (bless her) noticed me, so she got our paperwork started. 

5 pm By the time a triage nurse and resident saw us, I had dilated to 7 cm. I was so happy to be admitted (and not turned away due to insufficient progress) that I cried. I must have also lost my mind at that point too, because I turned down the epidural and decided to continue using my relaxation and self-hypnosis tools to manage the situation.

6 pm Another progress check revealed that we had dilated to 8 cm. This baby was on the move.

6:30 pm Hoping to speed things along, the OB fellow broke my waters. I supported this move, largely because a faster labour sounded like a good idea at the time. What I didn't expect was a severe increase in the amount of pressure building in my nether regions. In short, a transport truck was parked in my lower abdomen and no amount of relaxation and "take me to my happy place" visualization could distract me.

7 pm The sight of me rolling around on the bed must have been too much for the triage nurse, because she came in to discuss my "pain management plan". In the middle of a particularly nasty contraction, I shifted from hesitantly agreeing with her to flat out begging.

7:45 pm The anesthesiologist (AKA "The Candy Man") arrived. She started explaining a study in which she wanted me to participate and I nearly lost it. Informed consent be damned, I would have signed anything to gain access to the drugs. Thankfully, she realized that I was a basket-case and moved ahead with my epidural. All was right in the world again.

Within a few minutes, I was fully dilated. I suspect that the epidural allowed me to relax and get set to deliver BabyBear. The staff OB and his entourage set up for delivery when my blood pressure dropped and BB's oxygen levels weakened a bit. After a few pushes, they decided to wait for us both to stabilize and I floated back to blissful rest.

9:40 pm BabyBear and I were in good shape and it was time to push. We went at it for an hour before the resident came to check on things. Shortly thereafter, the OB team was back and Shannon, our fabulous nurse, was hinting at the end of the finish line. After 2 hours of pushing, I was getting tired and discouraged, but the hospital staff, PapaBear and my mother kept me going.

11:53 pm BabyBear arrived! Most of this part is blurry for me. Lots of emotion and general weepiness. PapaBear cut the cord. Mom took photos. The shots are rated G (for gross), but it's nice to have a record of what went down. I was too high to notice the beaming smile on PapaBear's face or how cute BabyBear looked as she took her first gulps of air.

It would be an understatement to say that the whole experience was amazing. I can't get over how much has happened in the first 5 days of my daughter's life. We are learning all the time and figuring out how to reconnect with reality when all we want to do is cuddle our little one on the couch and watch her sleep.

And on that note, I'll sign off and take a nap.

Waiting can be expensive

Last Tuesday, I started getting mild cramps. For you runners out there, I don't mean hamstring twinges. I mean cramps in my girly regions. Like menstrual cramps, only I'm pretty sure that I haven't ovulated in many moons.

This crampy feeling often signals the pending onset of labour. Many women experience these sensations a day or two before the big event. After a couple of hours of said cramps, I notified PapaBear and my mother. In a nutshell, I didn't want them to make additional commitments for the next few days.

These cramps continued on Wednesday and intensified. I skipped work and organized the rest of my hospital bag. I walked for hours, hoping to encourage things along. But nothing really happened. The cramps got stronger and more frequent, but I was definitely not in labour.

Naturally, the most appropriate solution was to shop, nest and walk. Whenever a cramp would hit, I stopped briefly to double over with my hands on my knees. As the pressure passed, I went about my day again. I've learned to keep tissue handy, as some of the back spasms involuntarily bring me to tears.

On the plus side, amid this on again / off again silliness, I have accomplished or cheered for others working towards the following:

1. Updating my front porch with a new doormat, a planter of flowers and a welcoming wreath

2. Washing my patio furniture and polishing windows to a sparkle

3. Spreading 25 bags of mulch on our back gardens

4. Pouring a pea gravel path where muddy flagstones once hovered

5. Planting 3 climbing rose bushes

Our backyard has never looked better. As an added bonus, all that walking and squatting have nudged BabyBear towards her escape route. The waiting is tedious, but it's also nice to have dilated to 3 cm with only sporadic discomfort. 

I would wish for the next 3 cm to be as easy, but I don't think we can afford it. All this waiting has melted my Amex and spiked sales at the Leaside Home Depot.

Pregnancy by the numbers

Most readers will know that I'm a relatively numerate type. For those who share my numerical orientation, here is a quantitative update on my pregnancy.

1 and 100% - As of this morning's OB appointment, I am 1 cm dialated and 100% effaced
0 or 3 - My doc thinks I could give birth today or 3 weeks from today. It's really up to BabyBear.
5 - The number of workdays standing between me and maternity leave.
25 and 3 - I've gained 25 pounds to date, losing 3 pounds of water in the past week.
32 - The number of minutes it took me to park, pee on a stick, see my OB, and exit the hospital parking lot this morning. I love an efficient physician.

Lessons for me. Lessons for my daughter.

One of the greatest (and, at times, frustrating) things about being pregnant is the constant stream of advice. Some women really, really hate the guidance, but I'm the least capable mother-to-be on the planet. I need all the help that I can get.

Lately, I've appreciated having the sense to listen to the following tidbits:
1. Keep an extra set of undies with you at all times (very handy for when one full-on wets one's pants...at work. So much for those Kegels.)
2. Keep a granola bar with you at all times (a great antidote to first trimest nausea, second trimester cravings, and third trimester "Good Lord, my esophagus is on fire" heartburn)
3. Labor feels more like pressure than pain (work with me on this...I don't want to hear your horror stories)

As I prepare for BabyBear's arrival, there are days when I've been in a complete, flat out sprint. Too busy to really stop and enjoy this pregnancy experience, as some have instructed. This week I was forced to pause when the book publishing world took note of Randy Pausch, the well-known father, Carnegie Mellon professor and cancer patient, who offered The Last Lecture to his students, the YouTube community, Oprah's audience, and, now, readers.

Ultimately, Dr. Pausch's lecture was not meant for the millions of people who have watched or read his thoughts. Instead, he compiled his thoughts for the sake of his 3 children. Their father's wisdom will be there for them years after their memories of him fade.

I look forward to learning from my daughter in the coming years. But if she asked for my take today, I'd share these thoughts:

1. Write thank you notes. And not just the standard 3 or 4 lines when you receive a nice gift. Be specific about what people mean to you and why they matter. In turn, save the thank you notes people write you and re-read them when you need a boost.
2. Call your parents frequently after you've moved out. Thank them. Share your life with them.
3. Work very hard some of the time, but not all of the time. There will always be people who are smarter, who can get results quickly. Sometimes you can only succeed by outworking others. But if you do this too much, you'll miss out on the rest of what you should be doing.
4. Run a marathon at least once and do it with people you love. There is nothing more satisfying than working towards a goal, connected to friends and family during each step of training and racing.
5. Marry your best friend. (My mother taught me this one...although she also suggested that I find a best friend with aspirations to become a doctor, lawyer or dentist.)
6. Learning something new is never a waste of time. (See Steve Job's commencement address, particularly the connect the dots backwards take-away.)
7. Girls can be mean, even when they are grown up girls. Don't be one of those girls. And if you find yourself slipping into their ways, stop immediately and say you are sorry.
8. Read a lot. Lots of different kinds of books on lots of different topics. You'll find that the most interesting people out there read a lot too.
9. Remain friends with people years after your paths naturally cross. Keep in touch with good people, even when it's not convenient.
10. Offer to help others without knowing if/when they may be in a position to help you. This creates a virtuous cycle around your personal brand and it feels good in the moment.

What advice do you have to offer?

Kids say the funniest things

An assortment of thought-provoking questions from kids who say the funniest things:

1. "Is the queen going to be OK?" (Asked after a kindergarten class sang "God Save the Queen" for the first time.)
2. "Why does the bear wear pants, but no shirt, while the duck wears a shirt, but no pants?"(Asked while reading a children's book. Her mother took this opportunity to introduce new vocabulary, like anthropomorphism, to her 3-year old.)
3. "Will you be my valentine? But don't tell Tom. I don't want to create an environment of competition." (Asked by my then 5-year old neighbour. Where did he hear of environments of competition?)
4. "Dad, how is the dollar doing?" (Asked by me, at the age of 6, over breakfast one morning in 1981. Clearly, I was destined for business. Clearly, Dad was obsessed with the foreign exchange markets.)

What have kids asked you lately? Did you know the answers?