Tears

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Here's our little monkey boy enjoying some R&R with his stuffed monkey. If this were meant to be a pun, it would be something about the monkey on his back. But really, I just thought the monkey was cute and Simon while he sleeps is a mystical little creature.

Sadie's asleep and Simon is asleep so mommy better get her chance before it's too late.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Feeling humbled here in the snow-covered Midwest. My breasts hurt. They really hurt. I can't believe I am struggling with breast feeding. Sadie and I did this for 10 minutes, not more than 35 weeks ago. I talked to the lactation consultant last night at bedtime, but I can't get a visit until the 12-foot snow drifts melt enough to make driving in a car safe. Damn. First the C-section that I was hoping to avoid, then the breast feeding issues. I can't tell you how compromised I feel walking around with pain in my abdomen and pain in my breasts. I won't say it's not fair because I have 2 healthy, gorgeous children so if we want to talk about fair we can discuss how it is "fair" that I get these two amazing gifts. It is annoying and sort of painful. I walked Sadie and Jeff to the door so they could go to their playdate with a neighbor and the minute I opened the door and the Arctic air hit my sore nipples (for the record, I was wearing clothes) and I got the wind knocked out of me.

Anyway, to the extent that sharing the pain lessens the pain, maybe writing about the angst will help. I am grateful the milk came in and Simon's systems seems to be working very, very well. Now if we could just get mama's up to speed!

Snowmaggendon

Dear Simon,

Mommy is so glad you didn't come on your due date, which would have required us to travel to the hospital in a blizzard. We just got 21 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, making this the third worst snowstorm in Chicago's history. It's nuts. Your YaYa is in town from Texas and she's never seen snow like this. Tonight the temperatures are going to plunge to the negative single digits, so YaYa is getting a real Midwest education. I keep thinking to myself: What would Laura Ingalls Wilder do? Given her early days as a pioneer on the great American plains.

We ended up leaving the hospital early with you so we could avoid any wild traffic scenarios. It was nice to get home even though last night was a little rough getting settled. We are going to have to learn to read your signals and your body language so we can take good care of you.

As for your voice....Son, you've got a set of lungs that rivals your sister's. You kind of sound like a mini- Sam Kinnison. And you go from fast asleep to screaming in less than a heartbeat. Other than your manical cry, you seem really mellow and very sleepy. Right now YaYa is holding you and Daddy and Sadie went to a neighbor's for a playdate. I sense that cabin fever may be developing for all of us. For my part, I am concentrating on healing and getting up on my feet so I can enjoy my early days with you. We're doing fabulously with the nursing, though sometimes Mommy gets lazy and our latch gets askew. I gotta work on that.

My little January baby boy-- we are so glad you are here. I still sometimes I feel like I can feel you kicking inside of me. Can you believe you went from inside me to sitting in my mother's lap?

I am going to get ready for our next feeding and also get a little pain pill. I hope to be done with the strong stuff soon, but I am not quite ready to wean from the Narco.

Here's to the rest of our lives!

Love,
Mama

SIMON SAYS: I'M HERE

The littlest lovebug has arrived and he's so sweet and so delicious. I am so excited he's here! Friday's contractions were the real deal, and I will forever be branded a bad ass for going to work with labor contractions that were 9 minutes apart.

We are still in the hospital and likely to be here until Wednesday because of the C-section but we are getting great care and my mom came in town for some Sadie care and they have great drugs at this joint.

Still processing birth experience and I want to focus on Simon, who is gorgeous, looks like his sister, and has the longest feet and hands I have ever seen. He's a great eater and has been nursing great. We have a bit of a latch issue as of this morning, but I am going to get some help with that today.

He's pretty quiet so far, but he can peel off a scream when he needs to. So much of the caretaking of a newborn I expected to come back to me, but the information is coming up scrambled. I spent some time wondering if I should burp after every feeding, even though it's just that pre-milk colostrum coming out of my breasts. And, swaddle? I forgot all the fancy tucking and draping moves.

We love our baby naming story with Simon. As of 7 hours after his birth, we were narrowed down to two names: Simon O'Brien and Henry Alexander. Comments have been made that those names are not remotely alike. I think I agree with that. Jeff's frontrunner was Simon and mine was Henry, but we were really close. We spent some time practicing with both names.

Then, my afternoon nurse came in to "check my vitals," and we were chatting about the fact that we hadn't picked a name. The nurse, Ann, went over to get a good look at the baby. I said, "What does he look like to you?" She hesitated and I told her I wanted to hear whatever she thought. (BTW, this nurse has 5 children and all of them had gorgeous names.)

Ann peers into the baby's face and says, "I think he looks like Simon."

CHILLS.

Jeff and I looked at each other incredulously. I asked Ann why she said that and she said she didn't know, it just popped into her head as she looked at him. I told her that was Jeff's top pick. I knew that was a sign we couldn't ignore. It was the best feeling to have this incredible "coincidence" unfold right before our eyes and ears.

For the record, Simon hasn't been in the top 100 of American names since some time in the 1800's. So, it's not like Ann hears that name all day long, unless she watches American Idol all day long with Simon Cowell, or The Mentalist with Simon Baker, who is very hot.

Simon current ranking as boy's name:263. It means: "to be heard."

We also love the pairing of Sadie and Simon: both have 5 letters. Both start with S. Both are Hebrew.

O'Brien is his middle name, which is also my middle name, my mom's middle (and maiden) name and a genuflection to my side of the family.

SOE. Our little prince.

Simon O'Brien Ellis. How we love thee!

"And eyes of sweet amethyst"

In college, there was a band called Jackopierce that was really popular down in Texas, even though I am not sure how talented they were. They had a song called "Vineyard" that my sister included on her wedding CD, where I fell in love with it again. It's about a forlorn boy who escapes to Martha's Vineyard to nurse his broken heart and falls in love with an amethyst-eyed woman.

I love the amethyst. I love its purple hues and its delicate shades.

But I am not sure we're going to have a baby during amethyst birthstone month of February. Things are moving. And they're shaking. And they hurt. Not horrible hurt, but there is like a menstrual cramp type feeling that gets kind of intense. It started last night at 2:00 a.m. and it's been sort of consistent today since noon. Maybe longer.

In short, I am having contractions; they aren't killing me, but they hurt. They come THIS CLOSE to taking my breath away, which was the criteria the doctor gave me for coming in. It's confusing to actually be in pain and not remember what kind of pain I am supposed to be in to call the doctor. I actually talked to the doctor's office once already and they told me to keep track of the contractions and if they get either (1) more intense or (2) closer together to call back and maybe get admitted to the hospital.

And, then I talked to a colleague at my office whose second child was born in triage. That's still the hospital, right? She said it was the hospital, but she gave birth while BY HERSELF IN HER TRIAGE ROOM because she had sent her husband out to get the nurse. Let's just say that there are lots of things I want to do by myself, but birthing a baby doesn't make the top 100. Or 200.

PLEASE GOD, can someone be in the room with me when I have my baby? Preferable someone with a degree from a top medical school with gentle hands and a soothing voice. Oh, and Jeff can be there too.

Anyway, I am keeping track and counting the contractions and wondering when the sh*t will hit the fan physically. We have dinner plans tonight; brunch plans tomorrow, and a playdate Sunday morning. I wonder, which of those, if any we'll make it to.

OH MY GOD, I AM GOING TO HAVE A BABY.

When Life Hands You Lemon Cravings, Order Yellow Shoes

Yesterday at work I kept smelling my grandmother O'Brien's lemon bundt cake. No one was eating anything lemon-flavored and there was no bundt cake around either. It was very strange how I could smell it so clearly that I could almost taste it. I remember pulling a stool up to help my grandmother put the sugary-lemony glaze on the bundt cake when I was little. I didn't really like the glaze that much, but I loved helping and I loved my grandmother. I remember the cake being very moist and not too lemony. I remember picking up delicious little crumbs from the center of the bundt where the cake was the most soft and moist. Yesterday, I even looked up lemon bundt cake recipes to see if there was an easy way to whip one up when I got home, but I got overwhelmed when I saw that most of the recipes require more than 3 ingredients. (3 is really my limit right now.)

Anyway, that intense craving has passed, and how I am obsessed with lemon-colored wedge sandals from Boden. Technically, the color is called "straw" but lemon sounds springier and happier to me. I write this as a little winter snowstorm that is expected to yeild about 1 inch of snow is blustering outside my window. (The snow actually looks like it is falling upwards because the wind is so intense by the lake. The PERFECT weather to dream about lemon sandals, no?) This obsession with these shoes is not helping my secret vow to be less driven by consumption and more attune to enjoying what I have (and to my budget given I am about to embark on a 14-week unpaid expedition into motherhood). But, damn those shoes make me think of hope: hope that my legs will be able to support my body in those fine shoes even as a mother of a toddler and a newborn. Hope that spring will one day (soonish?) descend on the stark Midwest. Hope that I will have a place to go that will require me to be shod in buttery/lemony wedge sandals.

This all sounds ridiculous, but I can't control where I find my hope. By the time I am sashay-ing around this city in those shoes, the question of how our son is born will be resolved and already processed in the memory bank. He will have a name. He will have preferences. Given how long it takes spring to come in this area of the country, he'll probably also be eating solid food. The yellow of that sandal matches the yellow tops of the Medela bottles we'll use to feed him breast milk I have pumped (maybe while wearing the shoes). Time will march on. These wedges will give way to the next shoe obsession of Fall 2011-- the perfect boot; the updated UGGs, the shoes that will bring hope for whatever psychological ailment plagues me at the time.

We'll have two children. We will all have plenty of shoes, a fact I pray ardently not to take for granted for one second. Sadie either will or will not be accepted into Montessori School (for which we either will or will not pay premium Montessori prices) and I either will or will not be able to drop down to 80% work so I can spend time with my children. (And my shoes.)

It would be way more "responsible" to find hope in a learned text or some internal resource I tapped into through yoga or meditation or even pilates. That's not the provenance of this particular brand of hope. It's from an on-line website, which, for the record, I have never ordered anything from. But, when you need a little hope, do you care where it comes from?