Family Ties

We drove almost two thousand miles this week, and it was all worth it for this...



...the beaming faces of Matilda's grandparents, who haven't seen her since she was two weeks old. She is inches longer, pounds heavier, and an entirely different baby since they met her. It was also worth it for the quieter, poignant joy of introducing Matilda to my father's parents, her great-grandparents:



I am the oldest of their fourteen grandchildren, and Matilda is the youngest of their four great-grandchildren. There are only four years between the youngest grandchild and the oldest great-grandchild, so we are the beginning and end (for now) of a 26 year long family baby boom.

Matilda also met several of my mom's siblings and my cousins when we stopped in upstate New York on both ends of our roadtrip:



And she spent hours being held (wrangled, really - unless she's sleepy, she's more curious than cuddly) by my brothers and my Massachusetts aunts, uncles, and cousins.



These aren't even half of the family members who loved on her, snuggled her, exclaimed how much she looked like me or Joshua or one of my cousins, and treated her as if she was just known to all of us forever.

My brothers were laughing about how many photos Joshua and I took every day. Besides the fact that we love (too much? can there be a too much?) documenting Matilda's life, we are also having fun playing with our new camera's lenses and settings and seemingly boundless options that hopefully end up as glowing, gorgeous photos. But along the way to this emotional moment as my parents were saying goodbye to Matilda:



We also had some moments of rage against the paparazzi:



What can I say, Matilda may be completely immune to the shutter click of the camera, but obviously my dad was still getting used to it. I'm sure by the time we left days later he barely noticed it either.

Some people, like my brother Aaron, just embraced it -and he will kill me for posting this, but I don't think he reads this blog. Ha. So yeah, it was also worth the 2000 mile drive to see him in these girly sunglasses and scarf:



What a delightful trip!

Our Traveling Companion's Just 10 Weeks Old...

...and she's now survived the infamous drive from Chicago to Massachusetts that Joshua and I have made countless times over the past seven years. Literally, we tried to figure out how many times we've done the 1800 mile roundtrip, and we cannot. We've done it with friends, with our dog; we've left in the morning, at night, and a few crazy times Joshua picked me up after a 12 hour night shift and off we went. It's not a terrible drive, but it's long, not particularly scenic, and not the kind of experience that would inspire one to think, "yes, a baby in the backseat would really improve everything here." But it's shockingly cheaper than flying (it cost us $77 in gas to get here - we've never been more thankful for our little Prius), and it allows us to stop in upstate NY to see my Mom's side of the family. We can also pack the hell out of our car and not worry about lugging a carseat, a travel crib, and clothes for three people (plus my fear-of-flying emotional baggage) onto a plane. Really, once we get ourselves and our ridiculous amount of luggage into the car and onto Lake Shore Drive, we always remember how much we love our crazy cross-country trips.



Bonus points if you can easily spot the sweet baby all ready in her carseat at 5am Saturday morning, surrounded by said ridiculous amount of luggage. More bonus points if you don't judge us on the cleanliness of our countertops, which is hovering somewhere around Don't Eat Off Us, It's Just Not Safe.



I'm going to use this picture as evidence of what I've been saying to Joshua since we got pregnant, which is that this wonderful, incredibly efficient, one-child car will need to be upgraded the second we start thinking about number two.



We make a big point of only eating healthy when we are road-tripping.



That's a huge lie. We actually go all out with the greasy road trip food and excessive caffeine consumption (breastfeeding put a damper on this, sigh). What I failed to photograph here, out of shame and also complete lethargy, was a bag of Whoppers and fries, and just to balance out the sodium content, a pair of Oreo McFlurries that we had to have about an hour before we arrived at my aunt's house in New York.

But our biggest question was not how many bags we could squeeze into the car or how many calories we could stuff into our sedentary day. Many years of experience have left us feeling confident that the answer to both is: A Lot. We were mostly worried about Matilda, who is becoming more vocal and alert and opinionated about how she spends her days. And while she loves to sleep in the car, we weren't sure if she would handle an entire day of being strapped down without a change of scenery.



She was...a total rockstar. These are all pictures Joshua took when I was driving and he was sitting in the backseat expecting her to wake up on the crabby side of life - instead, she was all sunshine and miracles.



Incidentally, this is how Joshua was even able to sit in the backseat - we strapped all that junk into the front seat. Because it weighed as much as a large child, we literally had to buckle it in to stop the fasten seatbelt alarm from repeatedly dinging off. We travel so light and efficient!

Matilda did have a brief breakdown as we were driving through that All-America city Buffalo, NY (no idea what qualifies Buffalo as so apple pie, but there are signs everywhere proudly boasting this status), but she also fell back asleep quickly once we started playing her favorite tune:



Am I advocating that your baby is lulled to sleep by the Glee Warblers singing Katy Perry? No. Is it totally creepy to be singing "put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans" as part of a desperate attempt to quiet a hollering child? Yes. But for some reason, we stumbled upon the fact that this song puts Matilda into a daze, and for the road trip at least, we decided to just go with it. If you have a suggestion of more lyrically appropriate music for an infant, maybe in the male acapella style, we are taking suggestions.

One of the things we've always done on road trips is read books out loud. Technically, I read them and Joshua listens while he drives, which keeps him from falling asleep and me from noticing how much he tailgates, and all in all this keeps our trips from turning into a slugfest. We weren't sure if that would work out on this trip because we didn't know how much baby-soothing we could expect. But thanks to our sleepy backseat traveler, we made it almost a hundred pages into this new Bill Bryson book:



It's a little bit rambling, and I would recommend some of his other books more highly, but it is funny and informative and I'm sure we will get 100 more pages knocked off on the way back.

We decided to take this road trip now when Matilda is still wee, mostly so all my family could meet her in this adorable stage of life, but also because we were hoping a sleepy infant would handle two days on I-90 much better than a finicky older baby. I know we'll end up doing it again at that point, but the 'practice run' wasn't anywhere near as horrible as we'd expected. We actually had a lot of fun.



Which is why we ended up having the time and energy to take a million silly, artsy pictures of us driving, including the always important feet-on-the-dash shot. And the lesser known diaper-bag-on-the-floor shot. And the witty no-I'm-not-looking while-I-drive shot.

Oh, we crack ourselves up. When Matilda is old enough to realize that twelve hours in the car isn't actually the world's longest and most comfortable nap, we are probably going to annoy her at least as much as she annoys us.

PS: coming soon - pictures with Matilda's Gramma and Grampa, uncles, and about a hundred doting relatives. Also, Baby Care on the Road: We Can Cloth Diaper Our Way Across the Country.

Responsible Parenting? Not Winning!

So this is my ever-more-lovely firstborn child:



And this is her best friend, our handsome pup Helo:



And this is a stock image of house keys, as I have seen a Lifetime movie or two in my day and don't want a photo of my own on here. So pretend these are my house keys:



And now guess which two out of the three things pictured above I took with me yesterday afternoon on a quick walk around the neighborhood. And which one I left behind.

Hint: the baby was Moby wrapped to my chest and the dog doesn't generally leave the condo unsupervised. So! After more than a year of successfully walking our city dog, which always requires multiple keys to get into gates, entryways, lobbies and apartment or condo doors, and after two months of obsessively checking the diaper bag, my jeans, my jackets, and any pockets on me to ensure I will be able to both lock and unlock my doors with a baby in tow - I suddenly lost my mind and just plowed out into the world without them.

I am definitely the girl whose keys are always 'missing'. I tend to throw them randomly into my bags and or a different pocket every time I go out. But I'm so used to this delightful habit of frantically searching for my cell phone, my keys, or my wallet that I always make a point to 're-find' them before I leave. I'm not sure how I failed this step, because I actually remember patting my jacket pocket on the way out the door and feeling remarkably confident my keys were there.

Anyways, I found myself locked outside our condo building in barely 40 degree weather with a rambunctious dog and a crabby baby who was due for both a diaper change and a feeding. Neat.

This really wasn't a dramatic lockout because we conveniently live across the street from Jessica and Jakob, who happened to be just walking out the door with their new puppy Marshall. After retracing my steps (because I was convinced I had dropped the keys and the idea that I left them sitting on the counter never once crossed my mind), I just plunked down at their place. Helo thought this was a surprise bonus round to our walk and Matilda spends almost as much time there as she does at our place, so those two just carried on as usual - he ran around in happy circles, she was quickly distracted from her crabbing by the riveting ceiling fan.

Joshua borrowed his coworkers car, drove into the city during rush hour, and let us back in to our place before Matilda blew through a diaper. Then, because Joshua's work life is a little intense these days, he drove back out to the burbs to work for a few more hours.

None of the really awful things that crossed my mind (the baby gets frostbite! my cell phone dies! it begins hailing!) came close to happening. It wasn't much more than an annoying hiccup in an otherwise very nice week. However it was quite the responsible parenting fail, and I felt terrible for inconveniencing Joshua and for allowing even the possibility of all those worst case scenarios (I thought up one where I didn't have my phone, no one was around,I had to feed the baby outside,she soaked through her outfit in the cold and Joshua found us huddled up by back gate sleeping under the dog at 10pm - dramatic!).

Then today I was holding Matilda while Marshall was visiting, and in all of his adorable gangly excitement, he nibbled at her hand with his sharp puppy teeth. She was absolutely fine, there wasn't even a dent on one of her pudgy fingers, and she hollered for a second and then promptly fell asleep. But this does make me the mother who locked herself out of the house with the baby (who could care less) and then less than 24 hours later, let her wittle sweetheart get snacked on by a poor puppy who certainly cannot be faulted for wanting to get as close as possible to all those delicious baby smells (and again, after her initial surprise, she could care less).

So despite my best efforts, everyone is surviving and thriving around here.

Babies Who Brunch

Now that I finally, finally, finished Matilda's birth story (thousands and thousands of words and really, I cut out a lot - you're welcome!), let's move on from all the transcendent, emotional hoopla and talk about what we have really been doing since her birth.

Brunch.

Matilda went to a restaurant for the first time when she was 14 days old. She had already been to the pediatrician several times, the hospital for a few blood draws (she was a bundle of jaundiced joy), Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, the airport to pick up my parents, a Super Bowl party at Jessica and Jakob's...actually, looking back on it I can't believe it took us two weeks to park her carseat on an upside down high chair and re-enter the delicious world of bottomless cups of coffee (yes, I switch to decaf...eventually), crispy hash browns, and sweet stacks of pancakes.



We love brunch. And we're picky about it. So yes, that sure is a Tre Kronor menu in her carseat for those of you who are also discriminating about brunch. That was the first restaurant we ever went to when we moved to Chicago and we have spent more time downing coffee and sharing cinnamon rolls in that little yellow room than we have in any other place in the city. So when my parents were here visiting Matilda, we decided Tre Kronor had to be the first restaurant we ever brought her.



This was her second trip, at seven and a half weeks old. In the meantime, she had been to m.henry, Southport Grocery, and Wildberry. Since then she's been to Wishbone. And if I'm going to get serious about the restaurants she's been in, not just for brunch, Matilda has slept happily at Orange Garden, Prasino, Chilis, Garcias and I'm sure others that I can't even remember. Oh yes, her one and only meltdown was during a dinner at Andies. I hope that doesn't mean she won't like Lebanese food, because I was sort of planning on pushing hummus as a nutritious snack.



She was drowsy and sweet when we brought her here to Matilda, which has a nice website and a great menu and so was a little bit of a surprise when we walked in to realize it's basically a bar. With good food, but still. We took our baby to a bar. Luckily my parents were with us so it didn't look quite as Teen Mom as it could have.

We absolutely love exploring Chicago's restaurants - it's what we do instead of going to a movie or a show. While I hope little Miss Matilda will grow up to appreciate living in a city of boundless dining options (and will not be a picky eater!), we are definitely trying to take advantage of her sleepy babyhood to enjoy going out to eat with our friends. The toddler years will probably find us at home a lot more, wiping yogurt and veggies off our own floors instead of those that are open to the public. But for now it's a lovely little luxury for me and Joshua to wake up late on a Saturday after a crazy week of baby-wrangling and extra long work hours, and decide poached eggs sound delicious. And I have no idea how to recreate that at home. It's also nice for me to get out of the house and see my friends during the week. I may need to pick up overtime when I go back to work to support our now-more-passionate-than-ever brunch habit, but we all must make sacrifices. In the meantime, Matilda sleeps like a dream in her carseat, wakes up wide-eyed and happy to find new things to look at, and has no problem eating her own meals on the road under a nursing cover. As an aside, those things are supposed to make nursing in public more discreet, but I think it's funny how many older people have come right up to me to tell me how smart they think I am for using one. I am scared to think how many bare breasts hanging over toast you would have to see before crossing a restaurant to basically thank someone for keeping her chest to herself.

So we love our brunches and breakfasts and coffee dates with our little urban baby. And every time I see a kid in a high chair (right side up!) grabbing eggs off his parents' plates at Tre Kronor, I am so excited for Matilda. I can't wait for her to realize how fun and delicious her little life is going to be, whether we are out or at home.

In the meantime, we have big plans this week for brunch at Bongo Room. Bring on the overtime!

The Longest Birth Story of All Time, The Part with the Birth

I never intended for Matilda's birth story to turn into a two part novel, but I realized after reading through my last post that it's divided exactly the same way on the blog as it is in my mind. Although the shift was definitely not as distinct on that day as it is in hindsight, I now think of my labor with Matilda as separated into the Part Where I Coped Well and the Part Where I Just Got Through It By Screaming A Lot.

I know that my contractions hurt, and I think if I had actually written this story in the few days after Matilda was born, I would be able to more accurately find words to describe them. All I can think of now is everything surrounding the pain: I had to hold on to something or someone; I unconsciously made those low, animalistic groans ("the universal noise of childbirth') during each contraction; my midwife kept telling me not to lock my knees when I was swaying back and forth. But the memory of the contraction sensation has really faded for me. I can see the pain in the twisted, teeth-baring expressions on my face, but I can't really remember what it felt like.



Since I am standing up and Joshua looks peaceful, this picture was definitely taken in the dreamy haze before I started pushing. I made my inane comment about labor not being as bad as I thought it would be immediately after I found out I was almost (almost! this is foreshadowing) ten centimeters and my midwife said I could start to do 'light' pushes. I was riding the adrenaline rush of knowing that pushing could not possibly take as long as everything that had happened up until that point. I distinctly remember thinking I stayed lucid! I never felt like I couldn't do this! I am actually doing this! Everyone says pushing is such a relief! and other giddy thoughts.

Pushing was not a relief.

I know women have described the visceral pain of a child descending through the pelvis in far more articulate, spiritual terms than this but in summary, it totally and completely sucked. Really, words fail me.

Because my body was pushing through every contraction whether or not I helped, the midwives started checking me more often to make sure I was that I was completely dilating to ten centimeters. I don't know how many times they checked, and I have a vague memory of being told to just blow through some contractions. I couldn't find as many positions that were comfortable to push, or not push, as I had when I was just contracting. The nurses changed shifts, the midwives were suddenly both there to stay, and the room was louder, brighter, and busier than it had been when just Joshua and Jessica were supporting me through labor. For the first time all day, I started to feel bad - annoyed, distracted, tired, dehydrated.

Within an hour, the part of my cervix which hadn't fully dilated and moved out of the way of the baby's head started to get swollen. Since too much swelling could block her head from descending, the midwives really wanted to get that cervical 'lip' out of the way. This the part of Matilda's birth story where I start to get foggy on the chronological details - at some point, the midwife used her hands to manually push the lip of cervix around Matilda's head, at another point she broke my water (we had two midwives and the less experienced one did this - oh my god, if I am ever in this circumstance again and find myself repeatedly stabbed in my unmedicated lady bits with a sharp hook by someone who doesn't seem entirely sure of where to stab...I may just do it myself. The look on Joshua's face was horrific), there was a lot of flipping me from my hands and knees to my back, I was constantly asking if the baby was ok and was always reassured that she was fine.



It was...hellish. I really don't know how long it took for that small part of cervix to dissipate, but every contraction and push was absolutely agonizing. I had my eyes shut so often during this part of my labor that I have almost no memories of anything but the pain. At one point, I was hanging off the head of the bed, the midwife was stretching my cervix away from the baby's head, and the only insane thought running through my head was how I could be somewhere or someone else. I started having surreal swings between thinking rationally (you have to push through this, it's too late for pain meds anyways, if you want to avoid a C-section she needs to get your cervix out of the way) and totally irrationally (maybe I'll just go home instead of having the baby). Even though the room was full of people encouraging me, I have never felt so desperate and removed in my entire life.

At some point the cervical lip finally moved out of the way of Matilda's head. Given the excruciating experience of getting past it, you might think I would remember the moment the midwife told me it was gone and I could just push. I don't. There are actually whole chunks of time that have just disappeared in my mind. I remember crying into my blanket because it smelled like home and I so badly wanted to be out of pain and in a comfortable place. My next distinct memory is laying on my back holding my legs up to push and everything starting to seem too bright. I looked at the clock and it was nine, I pushed a lot and as I so eloquently mentioned, it sucked a lot, and then it was ten. And then eleven.



I think my face really says it all.

I was so exhausted that in between contractions I literally fell completely asleep. I would wake up when I felt a contraction start and I would just croak out, "Now" and try to get as many pushes out of it as I could. Usually three, sometimes four, always ending in this horrible, uncontrollable yell. The room was almost silent when I was passed out between contractions, and then I would start to push and everyone would cheer and hooray and tell me how much more of her head they could see. Someone brought in a huge mirror and I would sometimes remember to look at the progress I was making. It didn't even occur to me until afterwards that we never counted during pushing - my urge to push was so overwhelming that I really had no choice about how long I could do it for.

It sounds strange, but for almost the entire time I was pushing, nothing was farther from my mind than the thought of the baby actually being born. During my early labor at home, and actually up until the late afternoon, I was intensely excited to meet our daughter. Then my baby-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel mentality was completely swept up in the pain of the cervical lip and pushing debacle, and it wasn't until her head and shoulders completely slipped under my pubic bone that I snapped back into the moment and realized she was coming out. She had been moving reassuringly throughout my entire labor, but I suddenly felt her whole body for the first time - completely different from a roll or a kick, just a long swift movement that left my upper abdomen empty and soft.

There was more pushing, my legs started cramping, and then her head was just there. There were more people in the room getting everything ready for the baby's arrival, and I suddenly had a huge rush of adrenaline. I definitely wasn't falling asleep, because there wasn't really an in-between-contractions anymore. Everyone was talking excitedly about the blizzard that was peaking in intensity outside the window - no one was going to be able to leave the hospital that night. The midwives were pouring olive oil over the baby's head and putting counter-pressure on my skin as I pushed. Although crowning was the only part of labor that felt exactly like how I had always heard it described - fire - I didn't anticipate her crowning through so many pushes. The midwives kept saying, just one more! One more push! and then I would do five more. I've heard some people describe giving birth as feeling like they are splitting down the middle. I felt more like a bomb that could explode all over the room. I was terrified to actually push her out because it didn't seem possible that my body could stretch one millimeter farther. My midwife was incredibly encouraging - she just said, "This is horrible. This is the part where you just scream. It's the worst part, and it's unbelievable pressure, and you don't have to hold it in, just scream."

So I screamed.

And then, shockingly, in the midst of all the pressure and fire and olive oil and screaming and the frenzy of snow outside the windows, Matilda was just out. There was literally no more pain, just the feel of her warm sticky skin and her little bones sinking into my deflated belly.



This is the very first picture that was ever taken of Matilda, and she is approximately 2 seconds old - thank you again, Jessica. She was born with the cord around her neck, quite stunned, and very blue. The nurses whisked her off to the warmer (I helped by pushing her at them and yelping, "Take her! Take her!", as every NICU nurse out there will understand) and Matilda was hollering within seconds. It happened so fast that I never felt even a twinge of the panic I would have expected when my baby was born blue and not breathing.

I didn't get to see her face until they brought her back to me pink and screaming and wrapped in a blanket and a little cap. And while words fail me to describe the pain of labor, they cannot even touch the emotions of holding Matilda for the first time. This baby, with her big feet and puffy lips and long fingers, was the child we prayed for and loved when she was just a second pink line on a cheap pregnancy test.



Her birth was without a doubt, the most joyful experience of my life. The pain that proceeded her arrival really only heightened the exuberance that I felt afterwards. It sounds absolutely crazy, but I found myself saying less than 24 hours later that I would do it all again. I meant it then, although I was probably riding an endorphin high and sounded a little psychotic, and I mean it now with all the benefits that hindsight brings. Yes, the pain of natural childbirth is horrible (perhaps you feel like getting an epidural after just reading this?) and yet I am actually looking forward to experiencing it again someday - not that soon, I'm not completely insane. I do cherish the fact that I was able to feel everything, all the tiny, excruciating movements that brought her out into the world. And I appreciate every opportunity that it gave me to rely on Joshua during the most physically and emotionally draining hours of my life. Since getting pregnant was a struggle and made me feel like a failure so many times, giving birth to Matilda was an incredibly redeeming experience.



This is obviously, the worst picture of me that has ever happened, and if it wasn't the first picture of the three of us together I definitely would not be sharing it here with the world. Four and a half hours of pushing left me wrecked - my face was hugely puffy, my eyelids were swollen halfway shut and I had huge burst blood vessels in both eyes. Let's be serious, I looked like my six chins and I had lost a bar fight.



It was also, obviously, worth it.



This is the last picture of Matilda and I in labor and delivery. I'm getting wheeled up to the postpartum floor where we spent a quiet, sleepy, snowed-in two days with Jessica and the other wonderful nurses on her floor who are really more our friends than anything else. This is where Matilda's birth story ends and becomes just her story, the sweet unfolding of her life that Joshua and I are privileged to be responsible for right now.

It may have taken me eight weeks to finish this and it may be more of a short novel than a blog post, (and it is possible that no one will ever make it to the end and I would completely understand!) but I hope Matilda will appreciate it when she's older. I know I absolutely cherish having all this down here to remember myself.

One more picture of our baby girl...



"What a wonder it is - this miracle of birth that happens
Every day and every hour!
Only the unusual strikes us more.
God is always doing wonders."
George MacDonald