The Score Has Been Evened

This time I got everything I always envisioned labor and delivery was, just like on TV.  With each of my previous babies I’ve been admitted to the hospital before labor started and although I’ve never had to have any Pitocin or real strong induction techniques, my entire labor was in a hospital setting.  It wasn’t bad, I just had always had these visions of being at home, wondering when to head in to the hospital,  the drive there, all that good stuff.

Anyway, my due date was Friday the 19^th and no surprise that it came and went without any fanfare.  I’m used to being late so at my midwife appointment I made all the non stress tests, additional appointments and talked about what had worked for me before when I was two weeks overdue since I assumed I’d be waiting for quite a while longer.  The weekend seemed long and I felt heavy and bulky, but hey, who doesn’t at 40 weeks pregnant!

Monday morning (October 22nd) a little before 4 am I woke with a pretty strong contraction.  Convinced it would fade away like all the others had, I went back to sleep.  They kept coming for an hour and finally when I couldn’t sleep anymore I got up and started to clean my nasty house (like I said, I was tired on Sunday!).  As they got closer and closer, instead of being concerned I just started cleaning faster between each one.  After 45 minutes of this I finally started timing them because it seemed like I could hardly get one thing put away before the next contraction came.  I quickly realized they were already four minutes apart and getting closer.  Discovering that it was almost six o’clock and going into Honolulu rush hour traffic I quickly woke James and we decided to get going to the hospital before it was too late.

I won’t bore you with all the rest of the details, but the short story is the first half of the hour car ride was easy and pretty peaceful.  Halfway there my water broke (see, I told you- just like in TV!) and all of the sudden it was like a tornado hit- contractions were all of the sudden hard and close together.  By the time we were pulling up to the hospital we had to go straight to the ER door.  No one was very concerned how close I was to delivery and the TV drama continued with James getting very ‘stern’ with our intake nurse about how close I was and begging them to just call labor and delivery so we could go straight up.   They finally listened to us when I told them I was going to drop a baby on their floor in a few minutes and got them to take us up.  Our boy was born about 20 minutes after making into our delivery room after a few quick pushes at 7:31 in the morning, just three and a half hours after I felt my first contraction.  

It was a boy!  We knew Louis would be so excited to have a brother and it’s a good way to go out- two boys and two girls.  He was 8lbs and 10 oz and 21 inches long.  Lots of hair like everyone else, but we couldn’t (and still can’t) tell if he really looks like another sibling.  He’s got his own look.  We named him Charles Thomas Ho’omaluhia Faustino.  Charles (Chuck) is my Dad’s name and for some reason I just really, really, really wanted to name this baby after my Dad.  Louis is named after James’ beloved Grandpa Faustino and I just wanted our two boys to have two strong, good, kind males as their namesakes.  We’re still going back and forth between calling him Charles and Charlie.  We’ll see what sticks.  Thomas is James’ first name, his Grandpa Selfaison’s  name and my great Grandpa Duncan’s name.  Ho’omaluhia means peace maker.  We had some other Hawaiian names we were considering, but James wanted a name with that meaning.  We need some more peacemakers in our house- we’ve got enough (myself included) that like to stir the pot!

The kids came to meet him that night, and I will let the video clip of them tell the story of their excitement…..

We came home the day after he was born to the chaos of having four very young children, but really it hasn’t been as bad as I had envisioned, or even as bad as when we brought Pearl home.  Louis and Elsie are really helpful and Pearl is not having a terrible adjustment period like Elsie did.  Of course the house is messier than usual and I am tired all the time, but that is just to be expected.

And now because I’m running out of time to write the rest, I’m going to post an excerpt from my journal I wrote during that first week.  It is more personal than I usually share and I get embarrassed showing emotion, but I think a new baby warrants the sap. 

“….I will never feel a baby kicking inside of me or the extreme discomfort of fitting an 8lbs baby in my stomach, but it is so beyond bittersweet.  I am ready to move on with our growing family…. but oh, a baby!  They are so amazing, sweet and beautiful.  My first one was so confusing and seemingly so tiresome.  I wanted James to help so much.  Sometimes it seemed almost a little boring just to be with baby all day and night long.  By Pearl I knew better.  I knew it was going to go fast and I loved every minute.  But it was all marred by the chaos of moving, not having our own place for a while and the postpartum stuff.  Her birth was hard and recovery was hard.  So though I loved her being a newborn, it was muddled and I didn’t get to cherish everything about it.

This time I am setting down the dishes and the cleanup and just snuggling him this first week.  Right now James and the kids are at the trunk or treat and he is sleeping in the swing.  The living room is a wreck and yet I just want to write instead of worrying.  I want to remember this last time, because I don’t have a chance to do that again…..”

“I find it interesting how they hand you this squalling baby and you know nothing about him / her.  Not how to help them, hold them comfort them- they are a stranger to you.  That whole first day, though I think they are cute and are glad they are here, I usually don’t feel this overwhelming connection with the baby for the first little while.  Charlie was the same.  I felt like strangers just meeting and I was a little worried.  As we settled in for the night I was absolutely exhausted and fell straight asleep.  But somewhere between 3 and 6 am while getting up to feed him and holding him in the dead of the night with no one else around, I fell in love- and nothing will be the same again.”

“I can’t help but be so nostalgic and sad about this being my last baby.  This nestly, cuddly, needy newborn phase is going to fly.  As I write it is already Sunday and my magic week of newborness, my LAST week of magic newborness is gone tomorrow.  James goes back to work, Charlie is going to start changing magically overnight and life will go on.  I wish, I so wish there was some way to bottle up this memory and time so that someday when they are grown and gone I can crawl back into that memory and feel his breath on my neck, his tiny hands gripping mine and his soft hair underneath my chin.  These moments of welcoming life are the most spiritual, magic moments I know and I am truly, truly going to miss them.  I will miss the magical, primal hours of giving birth, of feeling something so much larger than yourself take over your body.  I will miss all the surprises of gender, when and where they will be born.  There is so much anticipation and excitement with welcoming a new baby that just isn’t present anywhere else in life.  It has been an awesome ride and I’m glad I had four so that as each one came I’ve learned how to let go of the stress and petty stuff and just enjoy the magic.  I feel like this fourth time, I might have finally got the enjoying part right….”

End of Summer

So yesterday I thought I was in preterm labor and headed into the hospital.  Luckily, everything baby related was fine, but I had my first (and hopefully last) experience with kidney stones.  Sorry boys, it was painful, but kidney stones got nothing on labor and childbirth.  Today I am feeling fine and finished my consult with almost all the necessary peeps (seems almost going into preterm labor makes more hurdles to jump through before they release you) and am just sitting here for literally hours just be discharged by the peri-neonatolgist does the final check off.  So why not blog while I sit here bored and can't stomach any more TV or Netflix episodes of Middlemarch?  

We had a fun summer that consisted of 3 weeks in Alaska for me and the kids.  It was lots of fun and was great to be there with my Mom while she recovered from her mower accident and subsequent back surgery. Unfortunately, pregnant single parenting didn't leave much time for taking pictures except for the two following taken at an indoor water park.   You'll just have to believe it was really, really fun and really cool.  

A few days after the kids and I got back from Alaska I got to head to Kauai to meet up with some mission companions from my time in Taiwan over 13 years ago.  It was great.  James stayed with the kids and was apparently very entertaining.   

 Louis the Mummy and Elsie with some improvised make up (marker) 

 Beach day at Turtle Bay with Dad and the kids.

Getting buried

According to the rest of my pictures of the summer, all we do is go to the beach and the pool.  I guess that' s not surprising considering how pregnant I'm getting.... and how hot it is.  The water is my only solace.

Pearl getting ready to jump in the pool.

 Elsie's mad belly flop skills.

 Pearl with her Uncle Jared at Waikiki beach.

 Louis digging 'train tracks'.

 Helping Pearl swim.  This is all she wants to do and it breaks my back!  And all Pearl wants to do at the beach is be in the water.  She thinks she's a fish.

 No matter how many times you see it, babies are always cute in sunglasses!

So that has been our life apparently, though we've been busy with lots of other stuff that fills the day.  Louis finally got to start preschool this year and he loves it.  I still work a few mornings a week so the girls have a babysitter until I take maternity leave in 5-7 weeks.  The kids play like best of friends and fight like enemies 50x a day.  Louis loves to play super heros and Elsie loves to play 'family', so they constantly have to compromise on whose turn it is to choose.  Often times Louis is the Dad who is also a superhero or Elsie is Spiderman who is also the baby.  Somehow they work it out and they are usually extremely sweet with Pearl  whenever she tries to join in and play.  Pearl is talking up a storm and combining lots of words- her favorite being labeling items that are hers.  Unfortunately she calls herself 'Pearl-Girl' like everyone else around here, so she marches around the house saying 'Pearl-Girl chair', "Pearl-Girl doll' etc.  She also has taken to calling Louis 'Doo-da' and of course, so have the rest of us.  Louis thinks its hilarious.  He has had more weird nicknames given by himself or others than any kid I know.  First we was  Widdie, then Weejus, then Beejus, then Weebie, then Weebs and now Doo-da.  Maybe someday one of his siblings will pronounce is name right.  

Well blogosphere- until next time... likely when I'm hospitalized with the new baby.

I’m often asked what it’s like to have children so close together.  Mostly it’s asked in kind of a mystified pitying sort of way, often preceded with a phrase like ‘You’ve got your hands full!’.  Then people usually conjecture whether it is easier or harder to space children out, relate their own experience and proclaim that James and I definitively crazy (maybe they just do that last part with their eyes, but almost everyone says “       I could never do that”).   

Just to clarify, we certainly don’t have the closest children I’ve seen, particularly in Mormon families.  Louis and Elsie are 21 months apart.  Elsie and Pearl are 18 months apart and Pearl and the new baby will be 22 months apart, our “record” for child spacing.  Louis will have just turned five a month before this new baby is born.  So they are close, but nothing to make the Guinness Book of world records.  I see plenty of families here with kids that close and they do things wonderfully.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post.  I get a lot of questions and people always weigh in on whether it is easier or harder to have them close together and it’s made me think- is it easier to have them close together or further apart?

And here is my glorified opinion: It is harder to have kids close together….. about half of the time.  And it is easier to have your kids close together … about half the time.   Translation: That’s a really dumb question.  The longer I have my own kids, see my family members and friends with theirs and just live life I think speculating like this on family size, spacing and methods are just plain old waste of time. 

Having kids close together is a lot of work when they are young.  There are constant messes to clean up and for a while you are just a servant to little mouths and insistent demands.  The first six months after Pearl was born were particularly demanding for me.  But now that she’s 18 months there are definite advantages- they will disappear together and play for significant amounts of time!  Louis and Elsie are constantly chatting and playing- running around making up imaginary worlds that are just adorable.  I love to listen to them play.  They have built in playmates and the play dates I used to crave and need when Louis was two don’t have the same significance anymore since they are always playing together.  Will this make them better friends later in life?  I’d like to think so, but all the research indicates that not really the case- it is more a matter of luck and whether they actually like each other as adults.  I’ve seen families with lots of space in between siblings that still have very tight knit relationships.

There are things that I do worry about- will they get enough attention as individuals?  I love my big family, but absolutely craved individual adult attention.  Will the middle children feel neglected?  Did they get enough attention as babies when they were pushed out of the nest before they even turned two?  I see families with three to four years between each kid and watch how much they are just able to enjoy their little babies, without a toddler also needing a lot of love.  It looks delightful. 

Anyway, I think you get the point.  There are advantages and worries to anyway you create your family.  The only thing that makes it perfect is that it’s your family.  I absolutely love having our kids close together despite that chaos and hard work of caring for multiple young ‘uns because they are ours- and this is our family’s story.  So when people ask me dumb questions like if I’m tired or tell me I have my hands full I just smile and tell them it’s great, because really, it is.

Slice of Life

A few weeks ago, Louis brought home some caterpillars from his cousins house to feed and watch turn into butterflies.  This was significant because we’d never done this before AND because did you know my sister in law actually calls me and offers to watch my kids while I do shopping in town?  It’s like Christmas every 3-4 weeks!  I drop them off and weave through COSTCO with time to actually look at the labels and consider my purchases.  It’s a little slice of heaven.  Then I come back and they run away and don’t want to get back in the car with me.  They’ve obviously been having fun too.

Anyway, the last time they went to their Aunt’s house they found some caterpillars and brought them home.  Louis has been a very concerned steward over their well being and made sure we found the right kind of leaves for them to eat.  When they made their cocoons he could hardly contain himself and asked multiple times a day if they were ready to hatch.  Finally on Saturday, the glorious day arrived.  They hatched out and we spent a minute or two with them until they flew off to their new adventures in the great wide spaces of Hauula.

My kids are sprouting into little people before my eyes.  They run around like little hooligans together and Pearl never wants to be left out of anything.  

Pearl is saying 'cheese' in this picture

 Elsie is no longer a toddler but a full fledged little girl with multiple wardrobe changes every day and a huge vocabulary.  She always tells James and I how much she loves James and I and I have to coerce her into doing ‘pretty hair’ (she tells me she likes it when it looks scary).  She loves dolls and princesses -how they crept into our house I have not idea- but she is always telling me she needs to look beautiful.  She is stubborn but helpful and finally loves to play with her brother.  If she gets mad at me she announces how many days she's not going to love me for [usually 2-3].  Thankfully, she forgets the punishment within a couple of hours.  I can’t believe she’s three next month.

Pearl runs everywhere and is an amazing little talker.  Most mornings she and I are up before everyone by almost an hour and she loves to sit on my lap and try to communicate.  She tells me ‘fish’ and ‘bathroom’ (we have ceramic fish on the wall), ‘Elmo’ and ‘book’ so we have to go find the Elmo book we read last night and says thank you to everything.  She’s 17 months and very tiny for her age, but she's not quiet.  She fights for toys, books and food and runs up to me holding her head yelling 'ouch' if anyone hits her.  She has turned into a terrible napper, but since we’re on the go a lot, it’s probably not her fault.

Louis is still our jumping, running, villain fighting little boy.  The other day his Grandma got him a swimtsuit with long sleeves and a hood for sun protection.  He looks like a complete weirdo in it since he is so dang skinny and he is convinced it’s not actually a swimsuit, but a super hero outfit.  Now he wears it around the house screaming ‘Electric Blue!’ – the superhero name he dubbed himself and jumping from dresser to bed to floor.  Louis has so much energy and seemingly little ability to hear anything that comes out of my mouth, but his adventures are so funny, I usually can’t help but just smile and enjoy his enthusiasm (and then yell for him to stop climbing the neighbors tree, or light pole).

The other day we were driving in the car and we told the kids them that we had a surprise for our family.  It was something for all of us, but it wasn't something you could eat and it wasn't a toy, and we'd tell them when we got out of the car.  They were silent and thoughtful for about 3-4 minutes and then all of the sudden Elsie pipes up with a happy, hopeful voice and with eyes as big as saucers- "Is it an elephant????!???".  Sorry Elsie, no elephant, but you are getting another brother or a sister in October [technical due date is October 19th].  We're all excited to have another baby to love on and since I feel like I've already hit rock bottom in terms of house cleaning, meal pre and general productivity, we're feeling OK about adding another to the mix.  Its not an elephant, but its pretty good.

Pics for a Rainy Day

I know any complaining about the weather here will be met with derision, but this rain stinks! My kids all took turns getting a flu two weeks ago that kept us housebound for a week and then the day we were feeling better, the rain started and its been another week of trying to dream up how to keep everyone in the house occupied, sane and happy. One day the camera kept us occupied for about ten minutes.

Here's Elsie'e hair, untouched by human hand. I love this wild mane.

Pearl was not as cooperative. Her poses were so amateur compared to the older kids.

She's an excellent artist though.