Introducing the Newest Charley!!

Bryony Sedona Mittman was born Sunday, 31. May. 2009 at 12:10am, and came in at 6 lbs, 8 oz, 20 inches. Complications arose during labor and we had to transfer to hospital, ultimately to undergo a cesaerean section. Bryony is healthy and strong and (sometimes) happy and we are both doing well. Many thanks for the barrage of well wishes from our wonderful friends and family. If only I had enough time to write everyone back individually. Here are a few early photos (Days 1&2) to keep you entertained. Again, many thanks to you all for your love and support; Adam and I are humbled and misty-eyed by the wonderful support system we've surrounded ourselves with.

Love
Lauren, Adam, Bryony, Kika & Greg House

It's All In The Way You Moan

So I have a confession to make.

I've been experiencing pretty intense pain the last two days, in addition to the loss of my mucous plug. The pain (maybe I should rephrase this as "achy cramps"; not exactly pain) started two nights ago and cost me an entire night of sleep. Last night was a repeat performance. I officially started losing the mucous plug yesterday afternoon. I didn't want to say anything for fear that it was all a bunch of nothingness, and would get everyone's expectations up, only to have baby not arrive for another 1-2 weeks. In fact, we decided not even to tell our families, knowing that most people hear "achy contractions" and assume that labor is near. Since I didn't know for sure that I was experiencing true labor contractions, and had no idea how soon baby would come, Adam and I decided to stay mum about everything.

I had a scheduled appointment at the birth center this evening, so rather than make a special trip because of my discomfort, I decided instead to labor at home all day. As difficult as it was to go through a second day of achy contractions, it was also a special time, lying in bed all morning with Kika and House snoozing next to me. I half-listened to my favorite NPR talk radio shows while dozing all day, then got up around 3pm to wash a sinkful of dishes; I wanted to feel somewhat productive around the house considering Adam has been balancing his law firm, his Army JAG clients, house construction and taking care of me. I had 2-3 contractions while washing dishes, but I managed to get through them all, and I felt proud of my clean kitchen.

At 6pm, we made it to our appointment at the birth center. Immediately, my midwives came to give us big hugs; it wasn't long before they noticed my compromised gait. After telling them that I've been having repetitive pains (I was hesitant to call it contractions, since the pain was not accompanied by any squeezing feelings), they took Adam and me into consultation straight away. Luckily, I had a series of contractions in front of the midwives, and midwife Clarice was able to feel my uterus as the contractions were occurring. She sat and thought for a few minutes to digest the details of the last two days before diagnosing me as being in the midst of prodromal labor, meaning that the front-end of labor has been prolonged. I was just happy to hear that what I've been dealing with for the last two days has indeed been labor! The idea that the contractions I've been feeling could not even be a part of labor was an exhausting thought.

So, prodromal labor. This unto itself doesn't mean a whole lot. Clarice said that while it's likely baby will come in the next day or so, there are no guarantees. In fact, it could still take several more days, and we should be prepared for that. I am trying hard to master the breathing exercises I've learned by following the Bradley method of natural childbirth, in addition to the breathing and relaxation techniques I was taught in yoga. They really do help a lot, and part of me feels lucky to be going through this "practice labor" period that's allowing me to master the techniques before active labor begins. On the other hand, one can only have so many contractions before being really over it all. As it is, I've had to stop typing this blog post five different times to make way for contractions. I think Adam, while sympathetic, and really helpful, is also a little bit over all my moaning sounds, deep and throaty, that sound like I'm starring in the latest remake of "Debbie Does Dallas." He has a slightly skeptical look on his sympathy-filled face after each of my contractions. I've already told him that despite the extreme achiness of it all, there is a distinct sexual quality to the contractions, too. I said, "You know how you can get achy when feeling extreme sexual desire? Imagine that achiness multiplied about 1000 times, to the point that you are barely aware of the desire part anymore. That's what this feels like." He just shook his head, completely in awe that I could attach a sexual quality even to something as seemingly non-sexual as labor contractions. Hey, it's all the same body parts, right??

I guess I'm totally getting the "natural childbirth" experience that I signed up for. If I were working with a hospital, I'd probably already have been admitted and on the schedule for induction by now. So, I'm glad that the midwives are allowing nature to take its own course, even if it means a lot of discomfort along the way. Basically, I've just been told to conserve my energy, rest A LOT, eat well, and monitor the contractions for signs of a pattern developing. I'll admit that I'm not answering my phone at all these days so as not to have to tell the same details over and over again, and to conserve my energy (and sanity). I am overwhelmed by the love and concern from everyone who has called, e-mailed and facebook'd to find out the latest progress, though. Many thanks! Please don't take it personally if you don't hear from me; at this point, I only have the stamina to communicate with Adam's and my families. Friends and colleagues will hear details of baby's arrival via this blog or over e-mail as soon as we can post the news.

In the meantime, I'd better go for now...another contraction is coming on...

Spillover

Today has been one of those weird days that seemed to have passed by mostly in a fog. I literally slept the majority of the day away, as I've been dealing with some minor cramping and discharge (no water breakage yet), and just felt like taking it easy.

But don't be fooled; I earned my day of relaxation. Adam, Christine and I woke at 4:45am to get her to the Detroit airport for her early-morning flight out. Since we'd gotten to bed only about 4 1/2 hours earlier, I made it my personal mission to try to keep Adam awake during the 1 1/2 hour drive to the airport. We listened to NPR (it's been awhile since I've actually been awake to hear the first broadcast start at 5am), chatted about the stormy weather, and gazed with sympathy at opposing traffic, lined up back-to-back on the highway. We made it to the airport in record time and bid Christine a fond farewell, as she really kicked ass this week and got our basement into a functional space that will no longer pose a mold threat to me or baby. There's a reason I love that girl, and it has only a little to do with her construction/demolition skills.

Since I decided to brave the long carride to the airport, I thought I'd go prepared with an incontinence pad in case the urge to pee hit me. In the 4 1/2 hours of "sleep" I got last night, I got up four times to urinate, so I knew there was a good chance I'd need to go sometime during the drive. I was right. Somewhere around mile 45 of the trip, when the road was getting disturbingly bumpy, my bladder started screaming at me for relief. I tried to relieve myself, with no luck; I think I was too tense sitting in the car to properly go. Once we arrived at the airport, however, it was a different story. As soon as I stood up to give Christine a hug good-bye, everything loosened up and I started to pee, happily and freely into the pad. If you've never done this, I must tell you the odd combination of relief, freedom and self-consciousness that the act brings on. I was extremely proud of myself and announced my urination to Adam and Christine. She grinned and asked if we should wait to hug until I'd finished. Just as I was trying to finish up, an all-too-familiar warm feeling started to gather at the front of my jeans. I looked down, but couldn't see anything past my belly; Christine started ordering me to "Stop! Stop! It's coming through!" My pad had failed me and there was spillage. And I still had some urine left to release. I gave Christine a quick hug and then climbed, hang-dogged back into the car. Adam was a little disturbed. About ten miles down the highway, I mimed excitedly toward the reststop on the side of the road, and he made a quick departure just before missing the exit. I peed, cleaned up the spillage, washed my hands, then decided to try to pee again one more time for the rest of the hour-long trip home.

Just as we got back on the road, Christine called to let us know that she'd checked in okay. Just a moment later she laughed and said, "Lauren, I felt so bad! As soon as I walked into the airport, there was a restroom right by the door. You didn't need to pee your pants after all!" Oh well, if I'd peed at the airport, I'd have had a much less interesting story to tell.

D-Day

26 May. Due Day. The day we've been waiting for for the last nine months has finally arrived, and so far, there's no indication that Baby Mitt is planning his/her trip out. The signs of eventual labor have shown up--less movement from baby as s/he has grown too large to have much freedom of movement left; baby's head has dropped into my pelvic region; gradual loss of the mucous plug; decreasing belly size as baby gets into position for take-off; and then, many other signs that while biological, are kinda graphic, so I'll leave them to your imagination. Some of you might still be shuddering from the mucous plug thing as it is.

For the last week and a half, I've been getting constant phone calls, e-mails, facebook posts, etc., asking me if "that baby has come yet?". Funny because all the books and all your female friends who've been through this before tell you that people will continually ask you a) if you've had the baby, b) why you haven't had the baby, and c) when you think you will have the baby. The only one of those questions I can definitively answer is a). As my midwife says, we all crap on our own time (no one asks you when you think you'll take your next poop, or expects it to happen on a certain timeline); baby will come on its own timetable, too. So I am content to wait. I will allow this little one to be a free soul as much as I've always tried to be one myself.

Lots of work going on in the house right now--Adam, sister-in-law Christine and friend Scott have completely demo'd the basement, gutting it of all paneling, partitions, walls, etc., so that now it's just one big empty shell. There was lots of mold on the materials they got rid of, but luckily, the mold hasn't appeared to do much travelling into the floor joists or permanent structures, so we've lucked out. Today they are scraping paint, bleaching the mold and eventually they'll paint all the walls with a mold-resistant white paint, which will brighten up the basement and deter new mold growth. Already, it's like an entirely different basement down there.

So for now, D-Day has arrived and we are happy about it, but not really spending a lot of time thinking about it. Although, this morning, I got up for my 5th trip to the bathroom, and unable to fall back asleep, I stood in the window and listened to the dawn chorus of birds, as they woke from their slumber and stretched their vocal pipes. I whispered to baby that the birds were singing for him/her on the expected day of arrival. I knew it was silly, but it made me smile anyway.

26 May. Perhaps not a day that will live in infamy or be a cause for ticker tape parades, but one that Adam and I will think about with fondness in the years to come. And for now, it's all up to baby...let the games begin!

Dumpster Diving

Lots going on here at Chez Bailey-Mittman, so much that I think it'll be easier to make a list rather than go through the motions of explanation. Hope you'll humor me.

1) Adam called for a dumpster and haggled between two companies before finally settling on a dumpster priced roughly $100 less than the original quote. Good negotiating, hubby! Dumpster arrived on a huge 8-wheeled dump truck this afternoon, and it took the driver about 25 minutes to back down our narrow driveway to deposit said dumpster in front of our garage. It felt like the good ole days of childhood where watching a big truck was big news; I think I stood in the doorway and stared the entire 25 minutes. It's the little things, I guess.

2) My sis-in-law Christine arrives in town on Sunday to help Adam gut the basement of all moisture/mold trapping structural materials. And where will all this refuse go? See 1).

3) Rearranging is the name of the game. After moving our entire office into the living room, we decided (aka: Adam suggested, I concurred, Adam renegged, I pushed, Adam relented) this morning to rearrange our bedroom, too! Rearranging is fun, fun, fun, so why not work it into the entire house? The big issue was trying to get our newly-acquired bassinet into the bedroom; shifting our furniture around did the job, and also forced us to take a look at the various sundry items we've been accumulating in the bedroom for the last several years...not THOSE items, you dirty-minded people! I'm talking about trinkets, receipts, random business cards, lanyards, foreign coins, etc. Also known as, stuff Adam puts in his pockets during the course of his day and then unloads on the bedroom dressers before bed at night. Now they're gone, matie!

4) I couldn't resist talking a little about this, considering it's funny, and I alluded to it several months ago. I've been volunteering with an organization called Walk & Bike Lansing , which is trying to make Lansing streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and disabled folks. Anyway, I've been spending two evenings a week walking around the city, going door-to-door to get signatures to get this petition on the next ballot. I realized that my frequent urinary needs would not be accomodated while walking around, so I finally, after nine months, broke down and wore an incontinence pad! I was actually quite excited about the idea of peeing my pants with no one around me knowing...but wouldn't you know, I never ended up using it! I think the heat that day caused me to sweat out all potential liquids in my body, so I reluctantly removed the pad when getting home. Shucks. However, a few "incidents" along the way made up for my disappointment. I went to the door of a house that stank so much I about wretched, and was about to leave when the morbidly obese resident opened the door. I kept my gagging to a minimum as I gave him my spiel, and luckily after all that, he signed the petition. When visiting his next-door neighbor, she commended me on being able to stand the smell of his house long enough to get a signature. She informed me that at one point, he had harbored twenty-nine cats in his house before she called the humane society to have them removed. Based on the "aroma" at that house, my gut tells me that his sweet little kitties have gotten back into the business of reproducing. Later, I knocked on the door of a house that I could see through the window had dozens of parakeets flying around. Luckily, they didn't open the door.

5) Two more babies of friends were born in the last few weeks--welcome to the world Orlo Izaak and Ryan Timothy! You kids have got some great parents!

6) My prenatal visit went smoothly yesterday. The only big change was that my belly is starting to measure smaller than before, suggesting baby has dropped into my pelvic region, ready for eventual delivery. This doesn't give a timeline for when labor will begin, however. For all we know, I might still be two weeks away (or two hours, who knows?). In any case, all is well, but for the fact that my belly has evidently stretched as much as it's gonna, and baby is cramped and uncomfortable, to the point that the midwives could barely distinguish all of baby's body parts. They just kept saying, "Wow, your belly is just full of baby!" No surprise to me after nine months.

7) I found Greg House in the bassinet this morning (we had it out in the living room all night), so we will definitely be shutting the bedroom door off to him once baby arrives, so he doesn't decide to cozy up next to baby and accidentally-on-purpose suffocate the poor tyke.

8) Kika was in rare form this evening at the park. After walking a good 45-minutes, she broke into a bit of a run when her 14-year old body should've been tired and sore and asking for an ice pack. Upon getting back into the car, her nose and chompers promptly headed straight for an open bag of kettle chips.

Lesson of the day: Despite all of the shifting and rearranging, some things never change.

Amongst Good Friends

A couple weeks ago, some very sweet friends threw Adam and me a "Welcome-home-Adam-Congrats-on-getting-married-and-Welcome-baby!" party. It was fantastic, low-key and filled with lots of our wonderful friends, some of whom we hadn't seen in months or even years! Loads of kids were around, too, so we got a taste of what our house will be like in just a couple years' time...Thanks to Sarah M, Sarah P, Sherry and Emily for all their hard work and nice gestures. We had a great time!


Sarah M. and I yucking it up for the camera


Steve, Adam and Max canoodling...


Sherry helping with indoor/outdoor communications


First comes love, then comes marriage...you know the rest...!


Isaac beaming for the camera


Andrew smiling after feeling the baby move in my belly


Not quite sure what Luke was drinking...


Kids at play...


And the wine was flowing that day...


Thank goodness it was a large living room, with all the kids and toys!


Sarah P. trying to get the pregnant lady drunk!


George and Em catching up with Jim


"Balloon, daddy!"


I got to see Tameka and Li'l Benny after two years!!


Cecilia's 5 1/2 month baby belly meets my 9 month baby belly

Birds of a Feather...Nest Together

First and foremost, I'd like to send out massive apologies to the many people who thought I'd officially gone into labor, based on the vague post I left on Facebook a couple days ago. I should have been a little more clear, in that I'm starting to feel the first signs that labor is approaching, not arriving. Sorry, everyone! Hopefully, still another week or more left before baby makes its grand entrance.

The last week and change has been wrought with my increasing anxiety (and constant nagging toward Adam) about the state of the house. The office-turned-baby-room still had not one piece of furniture swapped out, piles of paperwork everywhere, and there were no signs that the big change was going to occur anytime soon. Knowing that babies come on their own timeline, and not necessarily sensitive to their future parents' planning process, I felt like it was time to step things up. We did get the car seat installed by one of the midwives, who is a certified infant seat inspector, so that was a weight off our shoulders; at least baby could legally come home with us after it was born! But home was the operative word...what would be the state of this place once baby arrived here?

This past weekend has set a lot of those worries aside. Adam (and friends) did an amazing job of rearranging the house to accomodate our new arrival. The office has been moved into the living room (we actually really like the new arrangement, almost to the point of wondering why we never did it before!), and the office is now being converted to the future baby's room. Notice I've never called it a "nursery", since neither Adam nor I has a creative or decorative bone in our bodies, so we are literally just going to be putting a crib, a rocking chair and a dresser in there, and calling it a day! I doubt the baby will care if there is Pooh Bear or Kermit the Frog on the walls, anyway...

Tomorrow, I will wash all the baby clothes and cloth diapers we've inherited from friends, load up the dresser with all these goodies, and then finish packing my overnight bag for the big day. Adam has been patting my belly a lot more recently, talking directly to the baby to let him/her know of the life s/he will have upon birth. I think he's really excited, even through our mutual terror at the idea of a newborn in the house. Oh! One more serendipitous occurrence...I was talking to midwife Shelly about not having a bassinet for baby (I never thought I'd need one, but have been convinced by several women that I will NOT want to get up five times per night to nurse the baby in its room if I can just grab it from where it's sleeping in the bassinet beside my bed...hey, I'm all for getting better sleep!). Anyway, she told us that she had one at her house that she'd been trying to sell on Craig's list with no bites, so she's going to let us borrow it for a few months! So glad to not have to buy this, since we'll use it for such a short period of time. We've gotten so many nice hand-me-downs from friends and family over the last nine moths, I look forward to being able to pay the favor forward to some other friend or relative in the future.

So that's that. Adam and I are savoring the last few days of childlessness together by gorging on desserts, rented movies and sleeping in till 10am. It's been good. Speaking of sleep, it's about that time now; I think I can already hear Ads snoring.
'Night.