It's been so long without an update!

And this isn't even a real update. It's basically some bullet points.

Today, Gabe said three of the greatest things he's ever said, and I'm mostly writing this update just to document them. Here they are:

1. Gabe's current favorite activity is jumping on the bed (so much that he has actually broken our 1. bed, for real). This afternoon we were all sitting on the couch together, and Gabe said, "I want to go on the bed!" Matt said, "Hey dude, why don't you jump on the couch instead?" Gabe turned to him, a look of total incredulity on his face, and said, "No! That's too safe!" Then he stormed from the room, presumably in the direction of the bed.
2. Later today, we were discussing mommies and daddies. Specifically, Matt and I were explaining how his grandparents were our parents. He seemed to struggle with this, and said, "Grammy is my mommy?" When I explained that no, Grammy is actually my mommy, and Grandbob is my daddy, he grinned and said, "Oh! That's FAB-YOU-LESS!"
3. This evening I bathed Tessa, dressed her in her jammies, and brought her over to say good night to her brother and her dad. They were in the bathroom brushing Gabe's hair after his bath. I held Tessa up for a kiss, and Gabe, totally unprompted, leaned in, stroked her head, and whispered, "I love you, Tessa." Then he looked at himself in the mirror and grinned, clearly pleased and admiring himself. "What a politician," commented Matt. This from the man who was nicknamed "The Senator" by his law school class.

In Tessa news, I am sort of surprised to announce that Tessa is a wonderful eater. Whereas Gabe used to cry and gag and wrench his head away from the spoon, she opens her mouth as wide as she can and smiles and slurps. She finished an entire two-ounce serving of pureed apples tonight. It's amazing. It's much more in line with how I always imagined feeding a baby should be. Solids have been great fun so far, and enjoyed by all. And she has the delicious baby thighs to show for it.

I would write more but we sold the condo (THANK YOU REAL ESTATE GODS) and so I must go pack a box, then stress out for a while about how I haven't packed enough, then maybe have some wine, and go to sleep so I can have some moving stress dreams.

So long without an update

Two

Gabe Is Two! from Erin Matzkin on Vimeo.

Sleeping Beauty Update

Nap time this afternoon: five minutes of whining before falling asleep. Not even real crying, just some fussing and complaining and whatnot.

Bedtime this evening: five minutes, thirty seconds of whining before falling asleep. (That last thirty seconds almost broke me, if I'm being honest. Just as I was walking in to get her I realized she'd gone silent.)

To sum up: total freak show easy-going-to-bed-style baby. Let's just see if it lasts.

Oh, oh, and I totally forgot to mention, she rolled over for the first time ever today! I clapped for her, I was so excited! (I am lame.)

In other news, Gabe turns two tomorrow. I will probably cry because my little baby boy is not a baby anymore! He's officially a big guy now! And I will blame the crying on postpartum hormones. So there.

Sleeping Beauty

I think I'm being tricked.

For three nights in a row now the baby has easily, cheerfully gone to sleep at night like it's no big deal. I feed her, wrap her in her swaddle blanket, give her half a dozen or so kisses and tuck her into her cradle.

And then she just...falls asleep.

Tonight she sort of fussed around for under four minutes before dozing off. I put her down at 7:24 and at 7:28 I went back to take this picture:

Amazing! Or a clever trick?

Oh, the acrobatics we went through to get Gabe to go to bed when he was this age! I distinctly remember rocking him for hours and hours, walking him in endless circles across the floor, shushing him gently, singing lullabies, frantically re-reading sections of Happiest Baby On the Block on the off chance that I had missed some important clue in infant sleep... one time I even crawled out of his room on hands and knees after finally getting him to sleep after several previous failed attempts.

And this one just...goes to sleep. Has someone stolen my real baby and replaced her with a fake? Perhaps it is some sort of reality television show of which I am an unwitting participant, Candid Camera-style. I am going to check the bedroom for hidden cameras tonight, just in case.

Status Update

Tessa statistics, three-month check-up:
Height: 23 inches (40th percentile)
Weight: 11 pounds, 6.5 ounces (25th percentile)
Head: 15 centimeters (5th percentile, pea head)
Favorite saying: "Ahh-goo!"
Best new trick: Big, big grins and a noise that might be laughter.
Other notes: Residual cough/congestion from RSV is continuing to abate, thank goodness.



Gabe statistics (no check-up until next month):
Height: Unknown, but growing out of current pants size. Longer pants needed.
Weight: 25 pounds exactly, according to my bathroom scale.
Head: Unknown, but probably pea head.
Favorite saying: This one is a tie between "I want my want." and "I want no jacket, Mommy." (Stated decisively, on his way out the front door on a cold day.)
Best new trick: Singing all of "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," complete with hand gestures.
Other notes: Refused to eat a vanilla sprinkle cupcake from Susie Cakes the other day. Had I not been there when he came into this world, I would not believe he is actually my genetic child.



To sum up, all is well this week.

Baby Joy

Tess just had a dirty diaper so enormous that it required an outfit change for her, an outfit change for me, and a bath for her including a hair wash. Seriously.

It's a good thing for her that she is so darling. Also, she slept for a full six-hour stretch last night. When I woke up and saw that it was 6:00 a.m., I was so excited I almost cried. I suppose this unprecedented amount of sleep entitles her to a horrifying blowout diaper.

Twelve weeks old today! I can hardly believe it. I am relieved the toughest newborn days are behind us, and yet almost weepy that they are passing by so quickly. How did we get to twelve weeks already??

I have about four seconds to write before the baby wakes up.

True story from this morning:

Tessa is eating, and making her typical little baby grunts and smacks while she eats (very ladylike, my daughter!). Gabe comes and sits beside us on the couch.
"Who's oinking?" he asks in his best sing-song voice. "Who's like a piggy? Baby sister Tessa is like a piggy!"

I would have disagreed with him but the fact is that Tessa gained almost a pound last week. A pound in a week! I didn't even know such a thing was possible for a tiny baby!

What a delicious little piggy. She is sweet like a scone. A scone with a lopsided smile, that is.


This smiling business is a wonderful, fabulous change from a few weeks ago. I still feel a mad rush of panic and fear every time we are out in public and someone coughs, or sneezes, or gets too close when admiring the baby ("Don't breathe on her," I want to hiss). She's looking and sounding better and stronger every single day, and I have high hopes that we will never see the inside of a PICU again, ever, ever, ever. She is such a lovely baby.

In other news, we are in the middle of remodeling the kitchen and one bathroom, and our condo is sort of a disaster at the moment. I hope to be able to blog on a more regular basis when the destruction and rebuilding are complete. We'll see.

Yikes

Well last week was pretty much awful. There is no way to sugarcoat it. When I am feeling fully recovered (if such a thing is even possible), I will write in more detail about what happened. We've been home since Friday night and I still feel pretty damn rattled over the whole thing.

The good news is we had a follow up appointment with the pediatrician this morning, and Tessa basically got a clean bill of health. So apparently I do not need to stay up all night watching her breath. Just in case, you know.

I will close this brief entry with the final picture I took of her in the hospital, looking almost like her usual self. She is so beautiful.

Model Patient

Powered by Caffeine, Medela, and Fear

So this week didn't go exactly as planned. I was awfully flip about Tessa's cold in my last entry, and I'm feeling fairly guilty about that now. It turns out it wasn't just a cold.

All weekend Miss Tess became increasingly listless, and by Sunday night she was refusing to eat. The few times we did coax her into drinking an ounce or two, she would wait a few minutes and then throw it all up again in spectacular fashion. Plus her cough was worsening, and her breathing was labored. So even though I'd taken her to the doctor on Friday, I hauled her back to the pediatrician's office Monday.

After watching her eat-then-throw-up routine happen twice in twenty minutes, the pediatrician sent us straight to the emergency room for some IV fluids. "They'll give her the fluid and she'll perk right up, you'll see. But be prepared to be there a few hours," she cautioned.

HAHAHAHA.

That was Monday afternoon, and we're still here. In the PICU, to be specific. Her cold is actually RSV with bronchiolitis, and part of her lung is collapsed.

Tessa is making slow but steady progress. The good news is she's eating really well on her own, so yesterday they took her off the IV fluids she'd been receiving since Monday afternoon. They have also changed her breathing treatments (which she gets every six hours) from albuterol to just saline solution. Now the big goal is to get her weaned off of her oxygen cannula so we can get her out of the ICU and into the regular pediatrics ward (and then home!). She's currently on 30% oxygen at 8 liters per hour.

This morning the doctors tried to turn down the oxygen to 21%, which is what we regularly breath at room air, but her blood oxygenation immediately dropped down into the low 90's (they like it to be 95-100%) so they had to bump her back up. I am hoping the doctors will try again tomorrow and it will go better.

ARGH.

As I was typing that last paragraph her oxygen levels dipped again and they had to increase her to 35%. This is clearly the wrong direction. I fear we will be here for many more days, and believe me it is neither restful nor calming for any of us.

They are going to increase her chest physical therapy (which she is getting every couple of hours) and hope that breaks up the mucus in her lungs a bit more. I will try to update tomorrow.

Powered by Caffeine and Medela

Tessa has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cold. Newborn with a bad cold = parents with no sleep. Like, almost none at all. I think in the past two days I have gotten five broken hours of sleep total. Yikes.

Here is what happens: It is 3:00 a.m. Baby begins to cry. Baby is picked up out of the crib by one of her exhausted parents, and then fed/changed/walked in circles as required to calm her down and get her back to sleep. (Bonus points to the parent if a blowout poopy diaper is discovered, such as the one that happened last night around 1:15 a.m. requiring a full outfit change and swaddle blanket replacement.) The parent continues to soothe baby until she is clearly deeply asleep, perhaps even snoring. Then the parent continues the soothing process for an additional ten minutes, just to be absolutely positive that baby is now sleeping soundly and can be returned to cradle with minimal risk. Parent lays baby very gently and slowly down into her cradle and makes sure she is comfy and warm. Parent lays back down in own bed; pillow feels blissful. Ahhhh, bed. Glorious bed.

Parent has bought himself or herself perhaps ten minutes before the crying begins again. Only now the baby is angry, because seriously, who gave you permission to put her down in the cradle, you evil parent? Quite obviously the baby will only tolerate sleeping in your arms, and not any stupid cradle. Or swing. Or bouncy seat. Or strategically-angled car seat propped on bedroom floor.

The fun scenario described above is made more interesting by occasional pathetic coughing, sneezing, and snorting from the newborn. Tessa is so congested that is she refusing to breastfeed. She does not want her little nose or cheeks touched or squished in any manner, and thus will only take bottles. This means I am spending even more quality time with my already close friend the Medela Symphony to make sure my sadly mediocre milk supply doesn't drop any further.

To sum up: newborn with a cold = bad bad bad.

The good news is that the baby is, snot nose and all, so adorable. I mean it. She's much more alert and looking around (somewhat suspiciously) at her surroundings, and I am waiting with baited breath for her first real smile. Please send us some good thoughts that this cold passes quickly and we can return to our regular, non-snotty, occasionally decent-sleeping baby ASAP.

In which I am exhausted

Newsflash: having a newborn baby come and live at your house means you will be very, very tired. Bonus newsflash: if you have a toddler who already lives at your house, and then you add a newborn baby to the mix, it means you will be so tired you can hardly see straight. Literally. As in, last night my eyes wouldn't really focus and I ran into a door frame so hard that I am sporting a sizable bruise on my hip. I swear, that doorframe jumped up at me out of nowhere.

In lieu of an actual blog entry, please accept this very long video of Gabe singing most of the ABCs, followed by his rousing and enthusiastic rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.



Oh wait, I do have one thing to add. The Canadian ice dancing team won the Olympic gold medal last night. The woman ice dancer's name is Tessa Virtue (for real). We tried to pick something not terribly common for our kid's name, and now I am convinced that every other baby girl born in Canada in the next few months will be named Tessa, because those Canadians are pretty fired up about the ice dancing gold. Awesome.

Lazy Morning

By some miracle, Tessa is napping in a location other than my arms! I should undoubtedly be using this precious, precious free time to be folding the laundry in the dryer, or writing a myriad of overdue thank you notes, or perhaps sleeping myself.

But I just can't resist squandering the time by posting this picture:


We have a somewhat similar picture of Gabe and Magnum taken when he was just about this age. But in that shot, Magnum looks much more dubious. Here, see for yourself:


See the suspicious look in his lazy, lazy cat eyes?

By now Magnum is kind of over the whole baby thing. He'll probably get interested in Tessa when she's old enough to eat real people food and drop bites on the floor for him. That's about when he decided Gabe was OK and we could keep him.

Teeny Tiny Tessa

Tessa Paige
Born January 25, 2010
9:42 p.m.
7 pounds, 11 ounces
19 1/2 inches
Beautiful.

Much to my surprise, I had the baby a week before my scheduled c-section. I totally brought this upon myself, because on the morning of January 25th my good friend J called to check in on me, and I told her something to the effect of, "I am the greatest baby incubator ever. This kid will never come out on her own; she will have to be forcibly removed." Approximately five hours later, I was in full-blown labor.

That's right, around 3:00 in the afternoon I started having contractions. Bad ones. Painful ones. Contractions so sharp I could not speak until they passed. And they were close together, too, varying from about eight minutes to about four minutes apart. After about a half-hour of watching me moan, my mother, who was spending the day with me, started giving me the side-eye and suggested I call my doctor, to which I responded, "I'm not in labor. These are just more Braxton Hicks, and they'll go away." Then I doubled over as another one hit.

The whole thing was made almost comical because of the two twenty-something-year-old workmen who were in my house installing a massive wall unit (a combo desk/TV stand/storage cabinet). Let me tell you, nothing instills fear in the heart of a twenty-three year-old guy like a woman in labor. These poor people could not get the wall unit finished fast enough, and spent most of the afternoon looking at me in poorly disguised panic and screwing pieces together as quickly as their hands could possibly manage.

After an hour of contractions coming five minutes apart, I broke down and called Dr. M. "I think you should come into Labor and Delivery to be monitored," he said .

"I don't want to," I replied, as my mother glared at me with disapproval. "This baby is supposed to stay in there another week."

"OK..." said Dr. M, sounding surprised and possibly a bit annoyed. "Well, in that case, drink a lot of water and put your feet up, and if they don't go away in another hour call me back. You'll have to come in then."

So I did as he said, and while they didn't go away, they did seem to slow down and ease up a bit. "See," I told my mom smugly around 4:30 p.m. "I told you it was false labor." Then I doubled over as another contraction hit.

By 6:30 p.m. the contractions were coming every five minutes apart or sooner, and they were more powerful. I broke down and agreed with my mom that perhaps I should be checked. "After all," she said, "would you rather be checked now, or at 3:00 a.m. if they don't go away?" She had a good point. So I called the doctor's office, called my husband and told him to start heading home just in case, grabbed a book and a sweater, and my mom and I headed over to the hospital.

I felt sort of embarrassed heading into the L&D wing, and I apologized to the nurse right away. "I'm so sorry to cause trouble," I told her as she strapped a fetal heart monitor and contraction monitor around my belly. "I really think it's just false labor, and you'll be sending me home in a couple of hours."

She smiled and switched on the contraction monitor, which immediately displayed a contraction registering about an eight on a scale from one to ten. I stared at it in shock. Then the three of us, the nurse, myself, and my mom, watched as about two minutes later another contraction showed on the monitor, also about an eight. "I don't think I'll be sending you home tonight," said the nurse.

Sure enough, about thirty minutes later another nurse, named Sarah (and possibly one of the ten greatest people I have ever met in my life), confirmed that although I was only about one centimeter dilated, I was in labor for real and Dr. M and Dr. D were on their way to the hospital. "You're going to have the baby tonight," said Sarah. "You're scheduled for next week anyway, and the baby is full term and healthy, so there's no reason not to deliver you now."

At this point, I remember feeling:
1. Scared.
2. Cold.
3. Really sad that I hadn't had a chance to kiss Gabe goodbye since I'd now be admitted to the hospital for four to five days.
4. Sort of relieved that I wouldn't have to spend the next week obsessing about the upcoming surgery.
5. Vaguely alarmed that Matt was stuck in traffic on the 101 freeway.

That's right, Matt came thisclose to missing the birth because he and Gabe were stuck in rush hour traffic. Only the amazing Sarah prevented this from happening by telling the doctor we had to wait for the father because he had my suitcase with the cord blood kit. (Yes, we left my house in such a rush, and I was so convinced that I was not in labor, that I left the house carrying only my purse and a book, and left my halfway-packed hospital bag at home.)

But thank goodness the doctors agreed to wait and push back the surgery half an hour, and Matt arrived at about 8:50 just as they were preparing to wheel me down the hall for the 9:00 start time. I don't know if I've ever felt such relief in my whole life as I felt when he walked through the hospital room door.

The surgery itself is a bit of a blur, for which I am thankful. I remember that the lovely anesthesiologist had trouble getting my spinal in, which hurt, and that immediately upon it taking effect I freaked out and briefly fainted, and that I threw up quite a bit because I hadn't fasted for the requisite twelve hours pre-surgery. But mostly what I remember is that they didn't bring the baby over to us immediately like they did when Gabe was born.

Tessa was born at 9:22 (although someone wrote down 9:42 on her hospital records, so there will forever be confusion regarding her real time of birth), and she took a big lungful of amniotic fluid before she came out into the world. After she was born Dr. M briefly held her up so we could see her, then whisked her off to the team of doctors in the corner, who began to work to clear the fluid out of her lungs. They had to put tubes down her throat and down her nose, and they worked on her for over two hours. During the rest of my surgery I could periodically hear her cough and cry, but it wasn't the big, lusty, angry cries that Gabe had made when he was born.

Matt was a champion and walked back and forth between Tessa and the doctors and me to give me updates on her condition. The doctors repeatedly assured us that nothing was seriously wrong and this was not unusual, and that she would be just fine, but I've seen the pictures Matt took while they worked on her and they are awful. I remember lying on the operating table and vacillating between focusing on not passing out and not throwing up, and then focusing on how utterly terrified I was that something was seriously wrong with my baby.

Thank heavens, it appears that nothing was seriously wrong. I was eventually moved to recovery and Tess was wheeled to the nursery for more monitoring. Matt went with the baby, and my parents and Matt's parents came in to see me while we all waited for updates. Sarah continued to tell me that all was well, and she was proven right sometime around midnight when they finally declared Tessa to be breathing nicely on her own, and allowed her to be sent to me in the hospital room.

My beautiful, beautiful daughter.

She has been sleeping and eating like a champ and is gaining weight nicely. I love her. I love her so very much.

And to end this post on a high note, here is a list of amusing things that have happened since her birth:

1. On my third day in the hospital, Gabe woke up in his crib and asked for me when my mom came in to get him. She explained to him that I still wasn't home. His face fell, and he said, "My heart is broken." Lest you think his heart was permanently broken, I can report that three minutes later he asked to dance to the Chipmunks movie soundtrack.

2. When we got home and gave him his new ukulele, he looked at it and cried, "Oh me goodness! Holy cow!"

3. He has only said "All done baby sister" about a dozen times so far, which is better than I expected.

In short, all is well. Life is full of wonder and we are so blessed.

It must be this crazy weather.

We had a bit of a rough evening here. Gabe did that awesome toddler thing where he would intentionally create a small disaster, and then while I was cleaning it up, he would relocate and create another small disaster. For example, he refused his dinner in a definitive manner (he threw part of it on the floor), then while I was cleaning up dinner, he got into the pantry and managed to create a small shower of Rice Krispies in one corner of the kitchen. Then, while I was cleaning that up, he got a mostly-empty Diet Coke can out of the recycling bin, some orange peels out of the trash can, and combined the two decidedly icky items to make a very sticky art project in the opposite corner of the kitchen floor.

Wheeee.

Just when I was feeling super exhausted and approaching the end of my rope (and huge to boot - I look like a cartoon character with my ginormous belly), it was bedtime. We did our normal bedtime routine of milk and stories and rocking, and then I dimmed the light. We cuddled in the rocking chair for a few minutes when Gabe suddenly hugged me very, very tightly and said, in his sleepy voice, "I got you. Doan worry. I got you."

Much to my surprise I felt tears in my eyes. (Damn pregnancy hormones.) I hugged him just as tightly and said, "I got you too, baby." Then, after a moment or two, I settled back in the chair to rock more easily.

He was not having that. He grabbed my wrist and placed my hand on his back, where it had been during the hugging a minute before. "More hand, Mommy. More hand."

"Of course, baby," I replied, tears blurring my vision now. "Of course." He nuzzled his chin into my chest, curled his body around my belly as best he could, and thirty seconds later he was fast asleep.

Orange peels, Diet Coke, chicken, Rice Krispies all on the floor...all forgotten. It sometimes astonishes me how very much I love that little person.

Books, etc.

I keep seeing all these blog posts where people have committed to reading 50 books in 2010, or even 75 books in 2010. I could get that done no problem, assuming "Meet the Gabba Gang" with Yo Gabba Gabba counts towards my total. If you count "Professor Wormbog and the Search for the Zipparump-a-Zoo" then I am well on my way to 100 books and it's only January.

(Off-topic note: I went on Amazon.com today to try and buy a copy of Professor Wormbog for a friend's child, only to discover it is out of print and worth $125.00. One hundred twenty five dollars, people. Clearly I should not let Gabe be touching our copy with his grimy applesauce hands, ever ever ever.)

So I rule at reading books. I kind of fail at blogging though. I kind of fail at a lot of things related to motherhood these days, including:

• Uploading/organizing Christmas and Hanukkah pictures. I have not done any of this. I haven't even looked at them to delete the bad ones. Instead, the approximately 658 pictures we took throughout the holidays are merely cluttering up every single one of our memory cards, thus ensuring that if Baby #2 decides to make an early arrival there will be absolutely no way to document the momentous event. MEMORY CARD FULL, you know. That's what we will tell her.
  
• Organizing Baby #2's room. This one is not strictly my fault, as we are waiting on some minor construction on the condo to be finished. It's scheduled to wrap up January 25th, which gives me five full days to assemble the baby's room. Don't say I don't plan ahead. Because clearly, I timed this one with excellent precision.
  
• Convincing Gabe to brush his teeth in any sort of effective manner. I live in constant terror that he's going to be the only two-year-old ever with cavities. The toothbrush spends approximately twelve seconds in his mouth, and then twelve minutes "cweaning walls. I cweaning." It's gross.
  

In better news, here are some things I am good at:

• Having heartburn.
  
• Growing a really gigantic baby. Seriously, at my 35 week appointment last Monday the ultrasound technician told me the baby was estimated to weigh in around 7 pounds, 3 ounces. Dr. M predicts a nine-pounder if I continue at this rate. (!!!) Then he laughed heartily about how her head was measuring huge and I was lucky I was scheduled for a repeat c-section. Ha ha.
  
• Throwing up. (Sorry. Pregnancy is not pretty, kids.)
• Frantically trying to wrap up projects at work since this Friday is my last day before maternity leave, several of which I am behind on because I have spent too much time at work staring out the window and daydreaming about/mooning over upcoming baby. (Not doing anything practical like ordering newborn sized diapers or onesies, mind you. Just mooning.)
  
• Laughing until I cry when Gabe says "Peace out, friends" and flashes a peace sign at his teachers and classmates as we leave daycare. (I have some stellar video of this action, but putting it into this post would of course involve me actually, you know, uploading some video, and clearly that's not going to happen tonight.)

OK. Must go to sleep now. Will try to do better. I probably won't, because of the newborn coming to live at my still-under-construction house, but I promise to try. Peace out, friends.