Saturday, July 19, 2014

Talmage Steven

Sweet heart.  You are just as mellow and relaxed as I thought you may be.  You are the most wonderful addition to our family and I can hardly wait for you to shed your caccoon of baby and grow some toddler wings.

How we have been blessed with two perfect children that are so night and day from one another, I cannot even say.  Though, as a secret between you and me, you may be just a little more perfect due to the fact that you aren't as high strung.

I can already see Alaska and I having our collisions with you as a mediator between the two of us.  Your level-headedness and compassion will get you far.

But back to you.

You are absolutely handsome.  No doubt about that.  Your fair skin and dark hair, broad shoulders and forehead makes you look all boy.  Your nose was a little mushed when you came out but I feel like its got some strength to it now.  Your hands have wide, boy palms with lengthy fingers attached.  I know they look unimaginably long right now, but as you fill out and gain some weight they will grow proportioned and will add much strength to this world.  They will be handsome.  And your feet.  Wherever you choose to go and do, those feet will take you.  And they are big.  Embarrassingly so.  With added long toes to match.  Those toes will probably add a couple of sizes to your feet that other boys don't have, you can thank me for that.  But at least you aren't a girl, trying to fit your size 10 feet into a size 8-9 world where prom shoes don't even appear to come in 10s.  Your almost black hair has a meager calic in it that sends your hair spinning into a soft part on your left.  When I comb it over, making the part more defined, you hair gathers on top of itself and looks quite dashing.  As if someone just gave you the perfect haircut.

We've already had a run-in to trouble.  You can't nurse.  You have a little bit of a recessed chin, a little bit of upper lip tie, a little bit of tongue tie and all of that together makes you chomp, rather than suck.  Nursing was going well when we left the hospital.  As in, you were nursing.  There's only so much you can tell when your baby is only sucking colostrum for 5 minutes at a time.

By the time my milk came in and engorgement was over and I was still sore all over I was grateful for the lactation appointment we had made from the very beginning as just a check-up to make sure that everything was going fine.  I was sore, but sure, who isn't.  I wasn't expecting my world to be flipped inside out.  She said you were chomping, rather than sucking and sent me on my way with a business card of a physical therapist who specializes in tongue-tied babies and something else called cranial sacral therapy.

You have been such a good sport through the whole thing.  That was only the first day, but you have been absolutely amazing, letting your little personality shine on.  Never have you gotten frustrated to the point of crying and screaming about not being able to suck a good amount of milk.  You are so calm and persistent, always willing to try again.  When I do have to set you on my lap for a breather as we try to re-latch for the millionth time it is because of me.  I need a rest.  You are so patient with me.

I love you to pieces.  It's not even scary, to be a mom.  It's just love.  Everything is going to work out just fine.  I still feel as if I am a first-time mom.  Especially in boy diaper changing and in nursing.  Probably because I have never done the first and the second I was so freaked out about Alaska losing weight and being put on the 'failure to thrive' chart and then thrush and being so conservative I wasn't about to ask for help from someone who had see my boobies (ridiculous as it seems now, that was something I wasn't prepared for).  I've got a few things figured out, and a few things we're figuring out together.  I always feel dumb, though, when someone who would see me nursing would ask if it were my first child.  I would say, "No, number 2" but I always wanted to back-up and say, "but it feels like number 1.  I never really got good with nursing."

You are so unimaginably wonderful.  Everyone is amazed at your calmness and the fact that you are so big.  Which, yes, you are only barely three weeks old and already in 0-3 mths clothes.  And even some of those are starting to look a little tight.  I can't believe how much you have grown.  Though you were big to start off with, too.  9 lbs and 14 oz isn't any small number.  I don't even want to think how much bigger you would be if you had stayed safely inside for another three days to make your due-date.  Or if you had been late.  Makes me shudder.  I am so glad you came when you did, though I was serious about being seriously ready four days before you came.  I had the house clean, your bed put together, bags packed - the whole thing.  And then you didn't come and I was so sad.

So I did a little putting around, a little moping and a little bit of nothing because everything was already done.  By the time Thursday rolled around I was so tired of just waiting that Alaska and I started a paint project, a couple, really, and had to run to Longview for some wax to finish up your dresser.  We walked around a few antique stores and by the time we got home, it had been a successful and fun day.  And that's when you decided to come.

My water broke at 8 pm Thursday, while I was reading bed-time stories to Alaska.  I had no idea what was going on, as they had broken my water at the hospital the last time.  And sometimes, when your pregnant and huge, you leak pee for no reason, without even knowing your leaking until you feel wet hit your thigh.  I know, its gross.

So there I was, sitting in the chair, and then jumping up to run to the bathroom, but it just kept coming.  I grabbed one of the sheets I had been using to protect the table from my paint projects and stood on that to keep the carpet dry.  Your dad called the nurse hotline to ask what was going on and they suggested we go to the hospital to make sure that it was a water break.  I was freaking out at this point because it was when they broke my water at the hospital that the strong contractions started and I didn't want to be having strong contractions anytime during the 45 minute drive to the hospital.  While dad was on the phone I was in the bathroom, peeling my bottom half of clothes off and getting in the shower to rinse.  Alaska was running back and forth, between me and dad, exclaiming, "Momma pee! Momma ok?"  I did my best to reassure her as I quickly found dry clothes to change into.  Grammar and Papa came down to get Alaska and we left them, me perched in the front seat on a pile of towels and a pair of jeans.  So much for changing into dry clothes.

We got to the hospital and the guy who does the valet parking wasn't as helpful as I thought he may have been.  He didn't even get a wheel chair for me.  Steve had to hop out and get that, which made me self-conscious, sitting with bodily liquid all around me, not wanting to move because that made more gush out, sitting in front of a total stranger.  A guy who just parks cars and was too young to know anything about water breaking.

They wheeled us up to the labor and delivery and stuck us in a waiting room of sorts.  Promising a quick clean-up in one of the delivery rooms and we would be settled again in no time.  No time turned into three or four hours.  After a lot of walking around and a lot of waiting we were finally moved and things were much more comfortable.  Until the contractions started.  Pity we were in a comfy place and then that's when things started to get uncomfortable.  It was a long night, no one slept.  Except your dad.  He could catch a half hour or 15 minutes here and there.  I was always up.  Always waiting for the next step.  The next change.

Nana was at the hospital with us and she did a great job, always being right there when I needed her.

At 4 am the contractions began to get hard enough I had to stop to breathe through them.  At 6 I was all the way done dilating and was biding my time as to when I started to feel 'pushy'.  I didn't want to push for very long and I wanted to make sure I was ready to push when it came the time.  You were born at 7:02 am with 38 minutes of pushing.  No epidural and all 9 lbs and 14 oz of you came spilling out.  I knew you were big when I felt your shoulders and waist come out.  Heads hurt, no matter what, but when shoulders hurt, too, you know you're in for a big baby.

The absolute grossest thing, as soon as you were out, they didn't even bother cutting the cord but took every gooey, red piece of you and held you up on my chest.  I had just pushed you out and had no interest in looking at your or holding you.  I turned my head and told your dad to get you off of me as calmly as I could, though inside I was completely freaking out.

How dare they assume that I would want to have you all up in my business when I had just pushed you out of my business.  Especially in the messy state you were in.

It was absolutely disgusting to feel every tug and pull of the umbilical cord still inside me but to have it attached to you, being outside.  It was pretty clear I wanted nothing to do with you until you were cleaned up a little as I turned my head and held my arms close.  They took you away when Steven asked and Nana cut the umbilical cord, though that wasn't really her idea of a good time, either.

I never even saw your face for the first hour you were alive.  You went from being bloody all over my chest to being swaddled and then brought over to me and pushed up on my breast to feed.  They had to do some extra tests because of your size to make sure your blood sugar wasn't too low and then you would be pushed on me again, naked and skin-to-skin, which was a huge deal.  None of the nurses wanted to miss a second of that skin-to-skin time, so I was always seeing half your face at a time.  It wasn't until much later that I was able to hold you away from me and look at your broad forehead and mushed nose and swollen eyelids and see how handsome you were.

We spent that day and half of the next in the hospital and then we were home to start as a family of 4. Four is already so much more than three.  Starting with the fact that two car seats in a honda civic is a lot of car seats and the passenger gets shoved into the dash pretty far because your car seat is so big the chair has to be pushed as forward as it will go to give you room behind it.