DIAPERS!!!

We've been using cloth diapers and although they are saving us money, they are requiring a lot of loads of laundry. The lazy side of me wonders how long I will continue to use them when disposables are so easy. But while I am still at home on maternity leave doing my daily load of diapers and hanging them to dry in the sun has me feeling seriously pastoral. Who would have thought the daily load of diapers would be so much fun? 

New Mom Neurosis

    During my trek through pregnancy and the first month of being a mom (yes, little man is four weeks old!) I have received volumes of advice and anecdotes from my many friends and family members. I have listened patiently to everyone's input and tried to give each opinion some consideration or at least an attempt to understand where they come from. Being new at this, I am cautious to form any strong opinions knowing that they could immediately go wrong. In the many months of preparation and pregnancy I can officially say that my favorite piece of advice and the one that has rang true for me is from my good friend Liz. Liz and her husband Brad were friends of ours before they had kids, then when their first daughter Scarlet came along they became those friends who have the kid you want to have. Scarlet was (and still is) such a doll, so cute and fun and good. Easan and I marveled at how awesome she was and at one point I asked Liz how she did it. Liz said "It's not that complicated, you get what you put in, you put in calm, you get calm. You put in crazy, you get crazy." I have remembered that advice ever since and in the last four weeks of being a new mom I have made it my mantra. 
    There is something about being a new mom that makes you a little bit crazy. I am sure the hormones have something to do with it. I am a pretty calm and rational person, but I have been feeling some of the crazy creeping up on me so I decided to write this blog post about the neurosis that have accompanied my first month as a mom. Maybe venting my anxiety will make it a little less frightening inside my own head. 
   I am furiously in love with my baby. Oliver has become my everything, and I cannot imagine a more amazing little being. But with this insane love comes an insane fear, that some how he is going to be taken away from me. I feel as if I am too lucky to have him, and that he cannot last long. He is just too good to be true. My rational mind tells me this is crazy and that I have no reason to fear this. But the stronger crazy new mom side of my brain is doing a constant running tally of all the things I have read or been told to watch out for. Offender number one is the giant looming specter of SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This terrifying anagram can actually encompass any unexplained death of an infant under the age of one. Sometimes they get smothered in their sleep by getting caught in their bedding or sometimes their heart stops for no reason while sleeping. It is always without warning. Although SIDS happens enough to be a recognized threat, it is still very rare. So rare that I shouldn't even allow it to scare me. But it does. Every single day. I find myself thinking about how horrible it would be to find his lifeless body in his crib one morning, or how to call my parents to tell them that Oliver is no longer with us. Sounds crazy right? I know it does, yet still I do it, all the time. I won't go into all the crazy scenarios that run through my brain, because there are a lot of them, and they are all completely unlikely and completely pointless for me to worry about. 

The most precious...

   So what do I do? Is this "normal" for me to feel this way? Some people would say that I am jinxing myself to talk about it, but I don't agree. I feel like the more that I examine it, the less power it has over me. The less possibility it has statistically to occur. I don't know what statistics have to do with this, but I feel like vocalizing my irrational fears will lower the probability of any of them happening. As if they are some kind of monster that lives and grows inside my head and by speaking about them they deflate and look stupid. I write this in the hope that it is enough. That I can use my mantra from my friend Liz to keep the crazy down to a manageable level. Deflate the giant specter of the unknown to a shriveled and basically impossible statistic that has absolutely no ability to touch my sweet little man. Remove all trace of irrational loony tune fears so that all I put into my child is calm and mellow good vibrations. Stop feeling guilty for feeling so much love, because being filled with love for your child is not a punishable offense. That is my hope. I guess now all I can do is wait and see if it works. 

Major Milestones

Oliver at two days old, barely awake.

   Oliver is almost two weeks old and I find myself brimming with pride over some funny little things. First is his prowess at breast feeding. This may not be impressive to anyone else, many of you might think, "he's a baby, that's what he's supposed to do..." But breast feeding isn't necessarily something that comes easily to all babies and all moms. Some babies get it right off the bat, and some have troubles. Oliver had some trouble at first for a few reasons. First of all, he had a more than normal amount of jaundice after he was born. All babies are born with a small amount of jaundice, in the womb the placenta does the job of removing old red blood cells for the baby, and after they are born their liver must take over, and it takes a few days to get the levels under control. Perfectly normal and not at all harmful. However for some babies their levels are higher than normal and in the worst case scenario they go under special blue lights to break down the blood cells through photo therapy. Oliver had a bruise on the top of his head from the delivery (sorry for 

Oliver at almost two weeks old,
looking suave

that little man!) As a result he had more red blood cells to break down making him more jaundiced than normal. He wasn't so bad that he had to go under the lights, but he did struggle with extreme sleepiness as a result (also a totally normal side effect.) This creates a major problem when trying to feed him because we couldn't wake him up to eat. Breastfeeding was basically not possible at that point because he wouldn't wake up to do the work to get the food, so I ended up using a breast pump to get him the necessary food and we also supplemented with a little formula. I wasn't really happy about having to give him formula, but the nurses explained to me that the best way to get him over the jaundice is to help him pee and poo as much as possible. The broken down blood cells would come out in his waste and help to lower his bilirubin levels. So of course, you do what your baby needs. Luckily we only had to supplement him for a few days until my milk came in. The jaundice started to lighten up after about four or five days and Oliver started to be more awake. Once he was more awake, he took to eating like a little shark, his appetite has been really healthy ever since and he is already two ounces over his birth weight! I may be over analyzing him, but I am pretty sure I can see his cheeks already getting chubbier and a little double chin starting to develop! I am so excited because I absolutely LOVE chubby babies. 
  

This face says it all!

   The other major milestones that we have hit may only be funny to me, and I am not sure why I am proud of them. My family has always been amused by poop and fart jokes and having a baby acquaints you with poop, pee, puke and farts on a daily basis. There are many things I have heard about having a baby boy, and I think all of them have come true in the first two weeks. I couldn't be more pleased to be pooped on. People have all told me to expect golden showers. Not that I didn't believe them, I guess I just didn't realize how often it could happen. Everyone told me to watch the cold air hitting his little weiner when I took off his diaper, that it would make him pee right away. Totally true, and it happens almost every time I change his diaper. He peed on me four times in two days! Then this morning, he peed up in the air all over his own face! The look of confusion he got was priceless. I know this is a strange thing to be proud about, but for some reason the fact that my little boy is living up to some of the earliest expectations of his gender fills me with motherly joy. 

And then there was Oliver

How quickly things change...

My last post seems like ages ago, as you can see there is a good reason for that! Welcome to the world Mr. Punch, or more officially Mr. Oliver William Selvan!

Just as I had been contemplating writing a blog post about how impatient I was getting for Punch to be born and my efforts to induce labor naturally (eating jalapenos, talking three walks a day, incessant bouncing on the yoga ball...) Cinco de Mayo rolled around and with it a busy Saturday. We had two standing invites: my friend was hosting a Kentucky Derby party and another group of friends were having margaritas and nachos for Cinco de Mayo. I was sick and tired of my fruitless efforts to make myself go into labor and decided that a busy day with friends was just what I needed to take my mind off being 39 weeks pregnant with swollen feet the size of Easter hams. The weather was absolutely beautiful and Easan and I drove around in his Jeep Wrangler with the top off all day. I refer to the car as his Monster Truck because it has huge tires on it and makes a healthy amount of noise. All day I was secretly hoping that the bumpy Jeep rides and full schedule of events would help me go into labor, but I wasn't going to voice my hopes for fear that I would jinx myself and nothing would happen. The day was excellent, the Derby party was filled with mint juleps and great hats and I went to bed around ten thinking all was normal. 

12:00 am, I wake up to use the bathroom and wonder if my water has broken. I start having pains, but they are coupled with some serious bathroom action and I was pretty sure that the nachos might have given me some kind of stomach bug. I thought that it would pass eventually and I could get back to sleep. It is funny to me that after an entire week of trying to induce labor, I didn't recognize it when I was in the thick of it. I guess I was thinking that I would have the gradual labor that all the books and birth classes told me to expect. For those of you not familiar with child birth, the SOP of labor that I was lead to expect was six to twelve hours of early labor, starting with light cramp-like pains 20-30 minutes apart that gradually get stronger and faster. They tell you to practice pain management techniques such as breathing and various positions and movements that help you deal with it. They advise you to eat and distract yourself with movies or card games to pass the time. You aren't supposed to even think about the hospital until your water breaks or your contractions are five minutes apart and one minute long. For me, the pains (that didn't exist until I awoke at midnight) started at five minutes apart and one minute long. And they really hurt.

I dealt with that, persisting in the notion that I had a stomach bug, for about three hours. When I started puking, I decided that I should at least call the doctor to ask for a professional opinion. She advised that I come in to the hospital and they would check me out and see if I was in labor. I woke Easan and we went across the street to the ER (my house is literally across the street from the hospital, very convenient.) By this point, I was in so much pain that I was having trouble functioning, I couldn't walk through the contractions, I couldn't talk or think to answer the questions that the ER staff was asking me. All I could do was clutch something and grit my teeth and wait for it to pass. We got up to the labor and delivery ward and they put us in a room to get us started. There was no question to them that I was in labor and at that point I made a pretty serious decision. Throughout my entire pregnancy I had wanted to do a totally natural child birth. Everything I read indicated that it was the best choice for the welfare of the baby and mother and that with coaching and pain management techniques it could be an amazing and rewarding (but challenging) experience. I was determined to try my best to do it without pain meds or induction drugs. Perhaps if my labor had been the way I had been told to expect, I could have weathered the storm but at that point, I had just about reached my max. My pain was at a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale, I couldn't get any relief from changing positions and I had little relief in between contractions. I had been standing for the last four hours because that was the only position that wasn't excruciating and I was exhausted from it. I decided that I wanted the epidural. Easan did everything he was supposed to do, ask me firmly if I was sure I wanted this,  reminding me that it could lead to other interventions. I was positive that if I was to gain any control over my experience I needed the epidural. I wasn't disappointed, the drugs allowed us to get a few hours rest before the hard work began.

Overall, I was in labor for just under twelve hours. Punch was born at 10:17am. Like we knew it would, the epidural lightened up my contractions and I ended up pushing for almost two hours. But it was in relatively little pain and I was very calm and able to enjoy the experience. The medical staff tried to get me to agree to some Pitocin (an induction drug that makes contractions stronger to speed up labor) but I maintained my stance that I wanted to avoid it if at all possible. They didn't force me and we got through just fine. Punchy came into this world 6 pounds 13 ounces, 20.5 inches long with a decent amount of blonde hair. Easan cried like a baby and so did his dad. It was very sweet. We named him Oliver William, Oliver after Easan's Grandfather and William after my father.

Oliver ready to leave the hospital,
his pants are a little big on him!

Who is Punchy?

I realize that most people don't know the reason behind the name of my blog. Meet Punchy:

This is when he was just ten weeks old. We went in for our first appointment to hear his heart beat. Since this is our first baby, we were pretty excited about it and Easan left work to come to the appointment with me. The doctor couldn't find his heart beat with the doppler since he was still really small, so she did a quick and clandestine sonogram. We couldn't have been more thrilled. There he was, on the screen, the reality of the situation hit both of us, and I think Easan teared up a little. 

As we stared at the very first images of our baby (we didn't know it was a he or she yet) he started moving. He bounced up and down and threw a few punches. From that point on he was named Punchy. It has stuck ever since.

This is him at 20 weeks, when we found out he is a boy. I will spare you the fetal weiner images, I would hate to have him accuse me of embarrassing him before he was even born. This was a really exciting appointment to see how much bigger he had gotten and to have our suspicions confirmed. I had thought all along that he was a boy, and because of that feeling I had to find out his gender because if I had been wrong the entire time and Punchy came out a girl, I would feel like a total putz. 


So now, Punch is 38 weeks old, nine and a half months. That may confuse people because the common belief is that pregnancy is 9 months long. Not so my friends, pregnancy is right about 40 weeks, and if we all do our math, that is actually ten months. So, without further ado, I am going to do something I have been excited about since the beginning. I am going to post the monthly belly pictures. I always loved looking at the progression when my friends did this, so I started taking belly pics at 4 months right about when I started showing. I wore the same shirt every time to try to make comparison easier. Check it out!

4 Months

                                                                           5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9.5 Months

Welcome to Punchy Love

  My first blog post! I never thought I would be into blogging. I enjoy reading them and think they are a neat way to chronicle interest and activities, but never thought I would have the time or patience to do it myself. Then I got pregnant and somehow all things have changed. I am now nine and a half months pregnant and have the desire to document and preserve these amazing times mostly for myself and if anyone wants to follow along with me, that's great too.
  I probably should have started blogging nine months ago because a lot has happened and I feel the need to play catch up. Instead I am just going to post about my favorite projects that have come from my journey to motherhood, and the feelings that have gone along with it. Soon we will have a new little person to occupy the posts of this blog. In the mean time, here are some of the topics that I have mulling around in my hormone addled brain: 

• Getting pregnant 
• Fish-tatos - the smells of being pregnant
• The baby room - probably the most thought I ever put into one room
• There's another human inside me and it's a boy!
• Why are my feet getting so huge? And other physical maladies.

  Those are just a few of the post-worthy ideas I have wanted to write about so I can remember what the last nine months have included. First things first, check out the neat maternity pics my good friend Beth took of me and my husband Easan. These were almost a month ago and I am much bigger now. Taken at the family vineyard right before our baby shower. Enjoy!