I’m going to have to wake Callum up in a few minutes so that I have time to feed him before we head off to our latest doctor’s appointment this afternoon. And some all important Dollarama shopping. I am hoping that he will be back to his birth weight today – it’s taken long enough.

For a number of reasons, I’ve been supplementing with formula. The reasons being (a) when he first came home, there was no evidence he was peeing at all (I know disposable diapers absorb well but they were light as a feather when I changed him) and I was worried about dehydration; (b) he started looking a little yellow and the way we got rid of Oliver’s horrible three weeks of orange-ness was formula; (c) it’s easy to fall into old habits – this is how I know how to feed babies!; and (d) I am still convinced that I am not a great milk producer.

(if you don’t want to read about nursing, look away now)

I wondered if it would be different breastfeeding this time, but it was the same – no engorgement, no way to tell when my milk came in, no cup size increase! I mean, it was generally easier – I pretty much knew what to do, and Callum has no problem latching on. I got through the pain barrier in a week with the help of some much-loved Lansinoh, and I did my best to keep him satisfied. But after a few nights of hours of crying and frustration (on both our parts), I knew that I was going to start supplementing more. And 2 oz per feed, for most feeds, seems to be doing it.

Some people love breastfeeding. I don’t. I actually prefer bottle feeding. I feel more confident because I can see how much he’s eating. I actually feel better knowing that he’s not completely dependent on me for survival. But I continue with the breastfeeding because I want him to get the benefits of it, even if I actually sort of still hate it. Though I also hate the expense of the formula and the evilness of the companies and all that complicated stuff. And for some reason, all the formula here says not to sterilise equipment using the the microwave. Well, I am still using my Avent microwave steriliser and it never killed Oliver, so I am going to continue using it.

Right on cue, he’s woken up hungry and we’ve got to get ready to go – good timing, kiddo.

***

Edited to add:

An afternoon of accomplishments. Birth weight achieved, kicked some Christmas butt at the dollar store, and received scorn from a pharmacist who clearly thinks I am neglecting my child as he already has fierce diaper rash requiring an antibiotic prescription. Okay, so if I am already changing 15 diapers a day, how can I possibly change him anymore frequently?

Torture:

Taking an almost 2 year old and a 2 week old to a Wal-Mart portrait studio on a Saturday morning for passport photos. And then getting staff to get your children to meet Passport Canada’s photo criteria. Literally, hours of hell. Eyes open, mouth closed, no hands showing?? Good luck.

Moron:

The person who didn’t read the passport application for children, who thought that things still existed for us under old rules and that we had to run around the province trying to find a guarantor that could sign it who was either my old dentist who I haven’t seen in years, or my lawyer uncle who lives 2 hours away. Me, that is. Luckily my parents like to read things closely and pointed out that either of them can act as guarantor. Of course, if we didn’t have to run around getting an emergency passport for a 2 week old child, that would be helpful too.

Satisfaction:

• Organizing our wedding photos into an album after 2.5 years of managing to not do it
• Getting that giant Billy Ikea order made and delivered with relatively little pain (ooh, I can not wait for our library/office to be set up)
• Currently cooking for dinner one of my favourite meals that I make – Annabel Karmel’s turkey meatballs and pasta

We had a rough night last night. Probably the worst so far. The kid is hungry and apparently I wasn’t meeting demands. Last night was so rough my day started at noon. I used to enjoy sleeping in till the late hours. Not that you can call what I did today sleeping in (as it entailed about 4 hours of sleep), but I feel groggy and useless and the day is almost over and that’s not nice.

So there are many random thoughts in my head and I can’t string too many of them together to put into action…

• What I’ve learned from all the helpful mums (commentators and others, thank you) is that unfortunately there is no easy answer to entertaining Oliver, but I need to have a plan and get my act together. This will involve finding activities (indoors) we can do, getting some supplies (need to buy that special Crayola paper), and possibly spending some money. We didn’t get a double stroller. Should we have? I might get him a proper table and chairs that he can sit at and colour and do whatever. I think I need to plan my day like I am running a daycare for one. I think I will even be brave and put out a call on some websites for potential playgroups or whatever (we don’t exactly live in a communicative and family-friendly neighbourhood). And sometimes I’ll have to pay some attention to Callum! I think there is going to be some tears on all our parts, though…
• The snow is coming. Big storm tonight. Ugh.
• I thought Oliver would be happy when he came home last night that Callum was asleep in the sling on my chest, that I could pay him some attention. Instead, as he was cranky and tired anyway, he completely freaked out and wouldn’t let me do anything with him or for him. Joy.
• There are quite a few people who don’t know how to pronounce Callum. It’s so interesting to me that it’s the 13th most popular boys baby name in England and Wales, and 3rd in Scotland, but it totally does not exist here. I mean, there’s very few Olivers here either but at least people have heard of it! The story on Callum’s name is that it’s about all Mark and I could compromise on. His idea of a baby name is Thomas, James, etc. My idea of a baby name is Finn, Quinn, Max, etc. He was almost a Julian – I wasn’t sure, nearing the end, about how Scottish Callum sounds as we aren’t really Scottish. But I am getting used to it. It’s so hard, the naming thing. The middle names, John and Stewart, are after our father’s (both Mark and his dad have the middle name John, and my dad is Stewart – Oliver’s middle names are after our grandfathers).
• Ikea is having a ‘don’t pay for one year’ offer, which is appealing when you are barely getting paid until a year from now, and I am desperate to turn this room I am sitting in now into a library. With wall to wall bookshelves, a proper desk and chair (I am using a little kitchen table that I had when I was a student, with a chair that makes my butt turn numb if I sit here too long) – it’s desperate for a makeover. Now if only I could sit down and plan out my Billy configuration, we’d be in business…
• We were considering getting a nanny from October 2008, as it’s a lot cheaper than having 2 kids in daycare around here. And we have the space for a live-in nanny, in fact we have the intention of turning a good chunk of the basement into an apartment. And it’d be neat to get a British au pair – I’ve been in touch with some who are interested. But Oliver’s daycare just made us an offer, which means getting a nanny and 2 kids in daycare is going to be about the same price. I am really tempted by the daycare offer as it means they will both be out of the house doing lots of busy activities. It’s difficult to do that from home as we don’t even have a park to walk to. And that daycare, being a giant evil for-profit business, is very good at being open ALL THE TIME and only turning kids away when they are truly sick and infectious. Decisions. Decisions that require an Excel spreadsheet and number crunching – when to get to them?!?
• My goal for today was going to be to get dressed and get Callum in the Baby Bjorn and take the poor dog for a walk. The poor dog – I mean, Piper is thrilled not to be home alone for 10 hours a day as she is when we are working. But she is still being neglected. I can’t let her outside as much as she wants. I think she must have read my mind – she just stuck her nose into my hip and tried to kiss me. But time is getting on and I need to worry about what to feed the men when they come in for dinner and I am so tired…

Hey, maybe if I stopped writing about this stuff and actually did some of it, I could stop complaining about my lack of action! Silly woman.

Probably the first of many, many comparisons (2 boys, same clothes, it’s easy).

Oliver first, then Callum. Same jacket, same age. When I hold Callum, he seems so tiny, and he still has really skinny legs like Oliver did. But then I look at this and realize just how different in size they are. Callum is still really scrunched in as well – he obviously really did want to stay in the womb, he still prefers the fetal position. God, Oliver really was minuscule.

My scale is off completely, anyway. I could still sometimes pick up Oliver right up until the end of pregnancy. Now I am groaning with his weight. And his hands and legs and everything seems so massive!

Everyone in the house is asleep except me. Yes, I probably should be napping, but at a time like this, freedom is a little too precious. And it gives me time to ask a burning question.

Yep, it’s time for my regularly scheduled post natal breakdown. It started on Friday night when Mark brought Oliver home from daycare.

<deep breath>

What the hell am I going to do in 2 weeks when I have Oliver at home 2 days a week?

How am I going to take care of both of them at the same time?

Believe me, I am acutely aware that there are people, saints actually, who choose to be stay-at-home parents, who do it all the time. And have to do it more than 2 days a week!! But considering how much trouble we are having keeping Oliver happy on weekends when we are both here, I don’t know how to cope.

All I can see is that the first thing that is going to have to go is Callum taking 1 to 2 hours, sometimes, to feed. I can’t be sitting on my butt for 2 hours while Oliver runs around the house drawing on walls and sticking his fingers in outlets. I can’t see any other way than to bottle feed while I have both of them on my own.

And considering that winter is pretty much here, easy activities that I can handle taking them both to, like the playground, go out the window. What do people do? Oliver doesn’t sit still, except for maybe 15 minutes for the Teletubbies.

HELP.

It’s the dance of new parents – baby is sleeping, what should I do? So many options. Sleep, eat, use the toilet, have a shower, let the dog out for a pee, do laundry, wash dishes, just sit and enjoy your coffee, blog? All of these things are appealing. And you never know how long you are going to have.

It’s easier this time, though (well, at least during the day when I am home alone with Callum). I probably don’t jump up as quickly, and I am definitely not worried about every noise or whatever. It feels safer to be slightly more selfish this time.

So I am blogging, drinking lukewarm coffee, and I’m dressed. This is good. I’ve also had some breakfast. I haven’t been eating as well as I should as I haven’t been eating very much this week, at a time when I should be eating more than normal. So yesterday, after driving to the municipal office to register his birth, I got myself some slightly more convenient foods (e.g. ranch dip to go with carrot sticks) so I am make sure I am eating something vaguely nutritious – rather than living on ice water. I seem to be managing to provide us all with dinner – it’s just during the day that I am neglecting my food intake.

Oliver is being a textbook toddler with new baby in the house. I was surprised that he wasn’t surprised to meet his brother – like we had actually managed to prepare him about the baby on the way. Times like that I realize he’s smarter than he lets on.

So he oscillates between giving him kisses and wanting to console him when he cries, to trying to squash his limbs and getting jealous when Mummy holds the baby. These are all things I expected. He got gifts from Callum, and from my parents, and that obviously helps with change when there’s something new and fun to play with. He’s also had an ear infection this week, which has meant he’s been more miserable than normal anyway, and his routine was out of whack at the beginning of the week with lots of family visiting. I think as we achieve some sense of routine in this house, he’ll be fine. Still early days though.

I wish I had blogged when we got home on Saturday. Heck, I wish we had brought a laptop and the hospital had wi-fi and I would have blogged about 10 minutes after he was born. Because I felt like I was capable of running marathons, of kicking ass, full of relief and joy and whatever else that is good. Now, of course, it’s several days later, I need some sleep (anyone got any sleep, like 20 minutes to spare?), I look like crap, and I don’t have a lot of time to blog anyway.

Anyway, Callum John Stewart was born on Friday afternoon at 16:49 EST, weighing 9lbs 1oz. We all couldn’t believe it when the nurse called out the weight from the scale.

Some of you may not want too much information. If you don’t (family members?), go away. Not that I am going to get graphic. But still. Not to make it sound epic, but it’s one of a few pretty major failures that could have given me some serious post-traumatic birth stress disorder (again), but the end result has sort of fixed that.

Mark and I turned up for my scheduled induction on Friday morning just before 9am. They examined me, said I was 3cm dilated already, and wondered if I was noticing those contractions on the monitor. For the last 2 days, I felt them (sort of) but didn’t have any pain with them. Then, we did a lot of sitting around and waiting. Mark snored in a chair.

I got moved to a labour and delivery suite (one of the new, nice ones) around 11am. During the day, we repeatedly had the discussion about size of baby, about what happened with Oliver, about the possibility of a c-section. At least they were well informed, and I knew they were going to do what they could to avoid the dreaded surgery.

Soon after, they started a pitocin drip. Here was the first failure – my lovely nurse (who was mostly lovely, and with me all day) couldn’t get the IV in my left hand. I still have residual trauma from the pain of having an IV in with Oliver. It was one of the most painful things, particularly during recovery. So I especially enjoyed her internally stabbing my veins repeatedly. First set of tears.

Once that ordeal was over and the drip started, I knew from the monitor that the contractions were intensifying but still couldn’t feel them. I watched tv, read a couple of magazines, and sent Mark home to let the dog out/eat lunch/check his email.

At 1pm, the doctor (who had truly great bedside manner, I enjoyed having her around) came in to break my water. This pretty much immediately sped things up. By 2pm I was asking for an epidural. Thankfully, the doctor was able to get that set up pretty quickly.

Mark had returned, but left while the guy did his thing in my back. I can’t really write about this, but it was pretty bad – basically, he couldn’t find the right spinal space in my back to put the stuff in and I was in a LOT of pain. During a time you aren’t supposed to move. And I was beginning to think I was going to end up paralyzed from the damage being done. And then we all sort of thought he had gotten it.

So I lay down, tried to deal with the pain and contractions (in very active labour at this point, it’s around 3pm), and realize that I can still feel everything and it’s not being reduced in any way really. The nurse offers gas and air to temper things while we see if the epidural will work and I readily request it.

Failure number 3 – gas and air ain’t working in that room. At this point, I am thinking (in between contractions when you are able to think), what the hell is this, I should have had a damn c-section! No pain relief, only extra pain on top of normal pain. Actually no, I should have stayed home and we could have done this ourselves.

So basically the epidural only worked on the right hand side of my stomach. Everything else – full on pain. However, for the most part, I could actually deal with it (despite repeatedly exclaiming that I couldn’t). It was bizarre to experience it almost naturally – I felt almost normal in between contractions. One thing similar from last time – my body was telling me when it was ready to push before the medical staff knew it was ready.

The end is more of a blur, but (a) it hurt; (b) I felt everything, good and bad; (c) I DELIVERED A 9LB 1OZ BABY MYSELF. Holy crap. And all done on the same staffing shift – woo hoo!

So after freaking out last week about what I did wrong this time, it turns out that whatever happened with Oliver was way more wrong than this. Because a meager 6lb’er should not have required forceps or any other intervention I had that day.

He’s waking up, I gotta go, but I hope to be able to blog a bit more in the next few days, as we settle down to some normalcy after a lot of visitors and such.

On Tuesday night, after crawling around on the floor picking up Oliver’s toys, I started having mild pain and contractions.  I went to bed, slept for a couple of hours, but couldn’t lay there any longer (anticipation + pain = no time to sleep).  I got up at 3:30, cleaned the kitchen, had a cup of decaf tea, watched some BBC Canada (Blackadder, The Office, Little Britain – at least they have some halfway decent stuff on for night owls!) and tried to stop my mind racing.  The mild pain and contractions continued all night and morning, but didn’t get any worse.

I notified my mother and warned her she was probably going to have to come and stay with us (to take care of Oliver).  I sent Mark to work anyway, as I think we would have enough time for him to get home before I would need to head in to hospital.  I got a few hours’ sleep on the couch from around 7am to 10am.  I then called my OB’s office to get some advice on whether or not I should come in for my scheduled 41 week appointment.  They said if I felt I didn’t need to be in hospital, I could still go.

The first part of the appointment was a scan to make sure everything was okay – my OB indicated the week before that there is a certain number of ‘points’ you need to achieve on this scan, and if there’s any issues (e.g. low fluid), they’ll send you to hospital right away.  The technician said everything was fine, and sent me up to the OB’s office.  They send up the results of the scan, and the admin assistant helpfully says to me, as I sit and wait for my appointment, HOLY CRAP EMMA, 9lbs 15oz!!

Can I just point out that’s over 3 pounds more than Oliver weighed.  Bloody hell. Also, I am well aware that these scan guesses of weights are quite inaccurate (they predicted Oliver was bigger than he was), but still.  Scary.

Anyway, the scan sort of did me in a bit (I felt like the contractions and pain were getting worse as she prodded me), but I still had to lie down and let my OB hear a heartbeat and do bump measurement and all that stuff.   And then we had to have the nice chat where we both freak out about what weight they are saying and she has to tell me that if he weighed anymore, she’d be booking me in for a c-section.  And because Oliver was stuck at 6lbs 10oz (I never wrote his birth story, mostly because I didn’t want to, but it involved a failed ventouse/suction and eventual forceps), someone at the hospital is going to have to make a clinical decision about how we are going to proceed if I need to turn up for my scheduled Friday induction.

But, you know, I was already having contractions, so everyone in the office wished me luck, and that they continued, and that things would proceed as they should.

Last night my mother came over to stay in case we needed to head to hospital, I maintained some sort of balance between moving around a lot (possibly getting things going?) and sitting still (resting is good when you are in pain), and went to bed at normal time.  I felt as if the contractions and pain got slightly worse at bedtime.  But then, really, slept not that badly because I stopped having contractions and being in any pain.  So my mother has gone back home, to go to work.  Mark is at work.  And I am at home again, having a normal day.  Except I did go back to sleep from 7am until 10am because Oliver was awake at 5:30am for some unknown reason and I was just exhausted from entertaining him.

So tomorrow, I will get called in the morning and unless everyone else in this part of the world is having a baby tomorrow and there’s no room at the inn, I will have to go in for an induction.  And maybe it will turn into a c-section.  Exactly what I wanted to avoid both pregnancies.

This has just been so different compared to how things ended with Oliver (water broke at 39 weeks, and things proceeded from there).  I totally don’t understand.  Is there something I should have done differently?  How the hell did I end up 41+ weeks pregnant with a gigantor baby??

I’ll update again after I deal with the unpleasantness of this weekend.  At this point, I am thinking I would rather just continue being really pregnant.  I mean, the baby seems happy in there, can’t he stay?  I’d prefer that to surgery.   Wish us luck.  Or just survival.

Today I

• shaved my legs (sort of)
• had Pad Thai and a spring roll for lunch with Mark
• strolled the aisles of a wonderful dollar store
• bought some breastfeeding and bottle feeding supplies
• went food shopping
• didn’t find a book I wanted to read in the bargain section at Chapters
• picked up Oliver from daycare early and spent too much time entertaining him on my own
• actually managed to give him a bath on my own

And

• didn’t have a baby

I am so going to end up being induced on Friday.  Oh well.

Just moved in to WordPress. Gotta get a good picture together for the header. Gotta sort the place out, make it my own. But a fresh start is nice. And gives me a good task while waiting for OFFSPRING NUMBER 2 TO JUST TURN UP ALREADY AS YOU ARE REALLY RATHER LATE AND YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM GETTING A PASSPORT SO WE MIGHT HAVE TO LEAVE YOU AT HOME WITH THE DOG WHEN WE GO TO ENGLAND NEXT MONTH. Sorry. I’m fine really.

I took Hallowe’en photos on the weekend in case I wasn’t going to be around to celebrate it (sorry, not because I died, in case I was in hospital…where I’d only be feeling like death), but I was here, and I could have just taken these yesterday:(he learned the word ‘heavy’ when lugging his pumpkin around)

Oliver came home with loads of treats from daycare (of course, we didn’t send any, we are the evil cheap toddler parents), and then Mark took him to a few houses in the car. We live in a fairly sparsely populated part of our neighbourhood – everyone has very large lots, the houses are far apart and it’s generally very quiet. So we anticipated that we might not get any kids coming to the door, but I had to buy candy just in case we did. And literally – not a single knock or door bell. Now I’ve got mini chocolate bars to munch on all day, and little packs of candy to take to the hospital, whenever it is I might end up there.

I am not technically overdue yet, in a way. I was given so many different due dates that I had arbitrarily picked October 30th for myself. But my OB has November 2nd, so it’s not like anyone is pushing for an induction yet. If I am still sitting here middle of next week, then she’ll want to take some action. Truthfully, I am actually not that bothered. It’s been sort of nice to have more time at home than I thought I would. It’s more time with just Oliver, who has now reached that milestone of being 22 months older than his sibling.

And although I feel very large, I am not feeling any worse than I did a few weeks ago. And I don’t think I’ve gotten much bigger in the last few weeks. I think from the scales at my appointment yesterday, I’ve gained maybe 10 pounds this time. Which means, again, I’ve actually lost weight. And my weight has been stable for weeks now. So I can look forward to a big dip when this child actually appears…