About his name

We've gotten a lot of questions about Callum's name. We know it's not the most common name in the US, and that a lot of people here haven't heard of it. But the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, so that's nice. And who knows? Maybe people hate it and just aren't telling us. But that's fine. It's his name, and I have no need to know if people dislike it. That's the whole point of not sharing the name until the baby is actually born.

Edited to add: His name is pronounced CAL-um. Same Cal sound as Calvin, or calorie. Just for those who were wondering! (Though the automated appointment reminder we got from the children's hospital for our lactation consultation a couple weeks ago pronounced it kah-LOOM, which was a new one.)

We picked the name by process of elimination, really. There wasn't a lightning bolt moment for us. It wasn't that we hit upon the name and knew instantly that it was THE name. It was a contender for a long time, but there were other contenders too, and nothing that was far outpacing the others.

But it was one of the only names that neither of us vetoed. One of the only names that stuck as we kept thinking about it. And when we finally decided at 30-something weeks that it was the name we were going to use, we both felt really good about it. And now that he's here, I LOVE his name. It's such a great name. And it suits him so perfectly. I love the way it sounds, the way it fits with our last name, the feeling it conveys. Everything about it is exactly right.

Our naming philosophy was basically this: there is no name that everyone will like, so let's pick something that we ourselves like. We wanted something that was at least two syllables to balance out our shorter last name. We wanted something that had nickname potential. We wanted something that sounded pleasing. We wanted something that worked on a baby or an adult. We wanted something that was a real name, not made up, but had a fresh sound to it. We wanted something that would work in both English and German.

Callum is actually a Scottish name. It is relatively uncommon in the US, but it's very popular in the UK. According to the UK government's name statistics website, Callum was the 28th most popular boy name in the UK in 2009. And in the '90s, it was even more popular in the UK: number 8 for boys overall in 1998.

In the US, on the other hand, Callum was the 864th most popular boy name in 2009. It was number 967 in 2008, and never in the top 1,000 boy names before that. So it still has a ways to go. But its popularity is definitely climbing. In fact, if you look at the Social Security Administration's non-top 1,000 forms (which I found via Swistle), which lists every name that was given to at least five babies in a given year, you can trace it back to 1983 in the US. Based on that data, I made a little chart in Excel to show how the name has changed in popularity in the US from 1983, when five babies were named Callum, to 2009, when 239 babies were named Callum.


So you can see that his name is on its way up. We don't expect it to rise quite as fast or as far as Isabella, for example, which hit the top 1,000 in the US for the first time in 1990 as number 895 and shot all the way up to number 1 less than 20 years later, in 2009. But we do expect it to become more popular, and therefore we also expect that people will become more familiar with it over time.

So hopefully he won't spend his life having people ask how to spell his name when he introduces himself. But if he does, so be it. Torsten has that issue and it doesn't bother him at all. But if it bothers Callum, he can introduce himself as Cal and be done with it. That's what's nice about a name with nickname options.

Also, you'll notice one criterion that was not on our list: meaning. In general I couldn't care less about name meanings. It seems they all mean something like "light" or "gift from god" or whatever, and I just don't care about that. But somewhere along the way I discovered that Callum means "dove," and I just LOVE that meaning. I think it is beautiful and unusual and perfect.

Just like him. And his name.

One month

Dear Callum,

Today you are one month old. It has been a fantastic month. As every new parent says, it is simultaneously shocking that it's already been a month and amazing to think we ever had a life without you. Though I will say that I very much can remember what life was like before you. It just feels like it was a long time ago.


You are an incredibly calm and laid-back baby. You have slept well from the start, waking up only every four hours at night to eat. You sleep peacefully in your crib, in the car, in your stroller, in your swing, in the Moby, and in our arms. We have tried really hard not to get complacent about this, and keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and you to stop sleeping entirely and become fussy. So far, this hasn't happened. Your dad especially has been waiting for this day, because he asked the pediatrician in the hospital when we would know if you were going to turn out to be a fussy baby, and she said that if you weren't fussy by a month, you likely never would be. God, I hope she's right.


In the past month you have become very alert. By now you stay awake for long stretches, not because you're hungry or uncomfortable but just because you are checking things out. You are captivated by your toys, and in the past week or so you have started being interested in not just black and white things, but colorful toys as well. You can spend 45 minutes or more just watching a toy as we shake it, squeak it, and move it around in front of you.


When we smile at you, sometimes you smile back, though not consistently. This may just be a reflex, since sometimes you also copy our faces when we raise our eyebrows or stick out our tongues at you, but that doesn't make it any less adorable. We still haven't managed to get a photo of your full-on smile, but last night I did manage to snap the tail end of a grin.


You are incredibly strong. Doctors and nurses have been commenting on this since day 1, and it's only become more and more apparent over time. Your arm strength is particularly striking, especially when we are getting you dressed and trying to maneuver the sleeves. Your neck strength is also quite noticeable, and not just during tummy time--whenever we hold you on our chests, you lift your head and look around for many seconds at a time.


I know you're only a month old and therefore it's a little early to tell, but it seems like you are just head over heels for your dad already. Everyone says you look like him, and it looks like you're a huge fan of him as well. You are totally captivated by him and can stare at him for ages. When you're crying he can calm you down just by picking you up or talking to you. You respond instantaneously to the sound of his voice, and you can sleep peacefully on his chest for hours. I could just die of combined happiness and cuteness whenever I watch the two of you together.


You are a champion eater, and you're growing accordingly. We last weighed you at the pediatrician's office last week, on your three-week birthday. At the time you were 9 pounds, 3.5 ounces, which put you in the 52nd percentile for weight. By now I'm guessing that you're over nine and a half pounds, which would keep you in a similar percentile. At this point you are finally starting to grow into your 0-3 month outfits. I have been waiting for this, because you have a whole drawer of adorable 0-3 clothing, and I am very much looking forward to dressing you in all of it. You are going to be one very well-dressed child.


Montana is the only one of us who is still undecided about you. Recently she has started acting a little concerned when you cry, and she sniffs you occasionally, but for the most part she just ignores you. Or when she hears us talking to you, she noses herself in the way and starts pawing at us to pay attention to her instead of you. But I'm pretty sure her main thought process at this point is something along the lines of, "If I lie near the baby but face the other way, then I can guard him while also pretending he isn't there."


We, on the other hand, are the very opposite of undecided about you. You are pretty much the best thing to ever happen to us. We can't get over how amazing and adorable we find you, no matter what you're doing. I'm incredibly glad to be sharing this experience with someone who's as invested as I am, because I don't think anyone else would be as interested in talking about every little thing that you do. To us, you are the most fascinating thing in existence.


We are so glad to have you in our family.

Love,
Mama

Postpartum modesty

You know, before I gave birth everyone told me that when you're in labor you lose all modesty. That made sense to me, and I was expecting it. And it definitely happened.

But what I didn't realize is that after the labor, your modesty doesn't come back, exactly.

I mean, it's back now, for the most part. I'm not about to whip off my shirt entirely when I nurse in public. I don't have any photos of my placenta or anything, and if I did I certainly wouldn't be showing them in public. I wouldn't answer the door naked or anything like that.

But we were in the hospital for two days after Callum was born, and during that time, I did not get dressed.

Maybe this is just me? I honestly don't know because I haven't heard anyone else discuss this. But when I was in the hospital with Callum I pretty much spent the whole time just wearing those awesome mesh panties they give you. I also had a hospital gown, which I wore from time to time, for photos, and certainly whenever I had to leave my room. But we were having nursing issues, and also focused on bonding, and one of the ways to address both of those is skin on skin time, and you know what gets in the way of skin on skin time? A hospital gown.

So for the vast majority of those two days, I was in the my hospital bed, sitting on a disposable protective sheet, wearing only mesh underwear, as people came in and out of the room.

Not visitors. I mean, if friends or family had come to visit us in the hospital, I would have gotten dressed, or at least put on my hospital gown. I didn't lose my modesty to THAT extent.

But I also didn't realize how many non-visitor people would come into the room during those two days. There were the nurses, of course. There were also the other people who would come in regularly to check my vital signs or Callum's. (These were checked at separate times by separate people. I don't know if they were nurses or medical assistants or residents or what. But since the baby and I did not get checked at the same time, it felt like they were there a lot.)

Then there was the pediatric resident who came in a couple times to get Callum for his routine exams. And the pediatrician who came in several times to discuss his jaundice treatment. And the med student who came in offering a free massage. And the different lactation consultants who came in to help us at several different points. And the volunteer who came to do Callum's hearing test. And the room service people who brought us our meals. And the housekeeping staff who cleaned the room. And the maintenance guy who fixed our broken clock. And so on and so forth.

Other than the maintenance guy (for whom I did cover up... because he knocked!), all of these people saw me in my mesh-undied glory. And none of them blinked an eye about it. And what can I say? If they had blinked an eye, I would have blamed them... because they didn't knock before they came in the room. So I can only assume that they were expecting to see me in a state of near-undress.

Of course nothing was quite as awesome as the nurses who would stroll into the room and casually pull aside the mesh undies to check on my bleeding level. Is this normal? Again, I don't know, because I haven't heard anyone discuss this situation in much detail. Maybe they did it more often in my case because I passed a very large blood clot a few hours after delivery and they wanted to make sure I wasn't having bleeding issues after that. Or maybe it's standard for all postpartum women. But either way, I definitely got used to having people I'd never seen before, or only seen once or twice, look in my underwear. And then push really hard on my uterus for good measure, to make sure it was tight and small the way it was supposed to be. (It always was. But that didn't stop them from checking again the next time.)

And the thing is... writing this is making me cringe a little bit. Like maybe I really am the only one who had this experience? Maybe all the nurses were sitting at the nurses' station being like, "Oh my god have you seen the woman in room 506? The naked one? What is she thinking?" and playing rock, paper, scissors on who had to come check on me and who got to go take care of all the other post-partum women who were fully dressed and beautifully made up.

I'm guessing not, somehow (and when I mentioned this to one friend from our Bradley class she told me that she also hung out in her room in just the mesh undies til she was discharged, so at least I know I'm not TOTALLY alone), but my point is that while in retrospect this makes me cringe? At the time, it didn't. It just felt normal. Everyone acted like it was normal, I got used to people poking around in my underwear, it was fine. I guess I took my cue from the nurses, and they very much acted like it was normal.

Also, you know, I HAD just pushed a baby out while squatting on the floor and grunting in front of a midwife, a nurse, and a med student while wearing only a sports bra. Then several other nurses had shown up and cleaned the blood off the floor and watched me have a very private area stitched back together. Then ANOTHER nurse had shown me how to use the peri bottle to avoid wanting to die every time I had to pee. So, you know, before I even got to the recovery room there were already quite a few people who had seen me quite intimately, and I guess that changes your standards a little bit.

So yeah. I'm glad to be home now, wearing clothes and not having people barge in on me naked all the time and grab my underwear to see what's going on down there.

I tend to get sick of people saying that nobody ever told them X or Y about pregnancy, because I feel like in general, and especially online, people really do talk about most pregnancy things, including the very un-glamorous stuff, and thanks to that openness, I didn't encounter many surprises in labor and delivery. But this one genuinely caught me off guard, I really had never heard people talk about this before, and therefore I'm writing about it even though it's making me cringe.

So please, please, please: tell me I'm not alone.

Two years in Denver

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the day Torsten and I drove into Denver for the first time, in our newly purchased Honda Civic packed with our more fragile and valuable belongings. Neither of us had ever been to Colorado before that day.

When we got here it was just the two of us. Our car was our biggest shared asset. There was nothing tying us down. We had both kept our jobs in DC, so we could have moved anywhere. But we picked Denver sight unseen because we knew that it had what we were looking for.

When we got here we had been married for a couple of months. We didn't have a dog, or a house. We had talked about kids but we knew that we wanted to be married for at least a year, possibly a year and a half, before I got pregnant. I hadn't had my lap-band yet. Owning his own company was just a vague half-thought for Torsten.

All of that stuff... our lack of mortgage, kids, anything tying us down... that's what allowed us to move to Denver. That's what allowed us to pick a town based solely on internet research, purchase a used car, pack up our stuff, and go.

Not that it was a straightforward process. We decided we wanted to move away from DC over a year before we made it happen, and we picked Denver at least six months before we moved. Getting the details straightened out was a slow, painful process, but only because we weren't aware that we'd be able to keep our jobs and were desperately looking for new ones. That was our only concern.

Now things are different. Now we have a mortgage, a dog, a baby. We have a house and quite a bit of furniture. Torsten has a company that is very focused on the Colorado market. We have friends here. We're putting down roots. Roots that have been demonstrated to us so clearly over the past few weeks by the incredible number of amazing local friends who have called, texted, emailed, brought over food, and generally been wonderful and helpful and supportive.

It would be a lot harder to pick up and move now. Luckily, we don't want to. Denver is as perfect for us as we were hoping it would be. And we're planning to stay here for the rest of our lives. Preferably in this house, even. Because this is exactly where we want to be.

And now we're raising our very own native Coloradan:

My experience with breastfeeding (so far)

Before I get into the details of this, I have to say that I'm a little wary about posting about this topic. The last three weeks have involved an onslaught of information from a ton of different people, many of them experts in the field, and much of it conflicting or at the very least involving incompatible suggestions and approaches. This is one of the very few topics where I feel that Google has failed me; every website contains such different information that it is impossible to get any clear understanding of best practices, and instead research becomes overwhelming. At this point I feel totally maxed out on suggestions, resources, and new approaches. I have hit the limit of new websites I'm willing to check out and new people I'm willing to turn to for advice.

However, I'm posting about it anyway for several reasons: a) we now have a lactation consultant we trust and a plan that is working for us and that seems to be sustainable in the long term; b) when I first posted on Twitter about our breastfeeding issues, the outpouring of support was so helpful and encouraging, and I think that this supportive blogging community is the one place that I am not yet maxed out on discussing this issue with, even if this post does generate a few comments that I'm not prepared to deal with; and c) this has been a very important, if challenging, experience for me and I want to record it and share it in hopes that others can relate.

So! That giant disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about my breastfeeding experience.

At one day old Callum was diagnosed with a mild case of jaundice. The way to get rid of jaundice is for the baby to pee and poop out the excess bilirubin in his system. The newborn has 24 hours to pee before the doctors start getting concerned, and Callum didn't pee for the first time until more like 36 hours. And, even when he did start peeing, it wasn't very much or very often, and his bilirubin levels stayed elevated. Meanwhile, I was producing only a couple drops of colostrum at a time. I thought this was totally normal; everything I'd read said that you only produce a bit of colostrum until your milk comes in, but that it's all the baby needs. But the hospital seemed to feel otherwise. One nurse told me that I should be producing multiple teaspoons of colostrum at a time. The lactation consultant came in and pronounced that there were several "red flags" about my ability to breastfeed: the low colostrum production; the fact that I have a thyroid issue (though it is well-controlled); the fact that my breasts are "widely spaced"; the fact that my breasts didn't grow during pregnancy, although my nipples did. (Others have since told me that all of this information was actually inaccurate.)

There were also some positive signs: when I nursed, we could hear Callum swallowing, though not that often; his glucose levels remained stable; he only lost 3% of his birth weight before discharge. But nobody focused on those. Because of his jaundice, the baby needed to eat; I wasn't producing food to give to him, so we started him on formula supplements. I refused to give him a bottle because of everything I'd read about subsequent latch issues and nipple confusion, so first we tried a supplemental nursing system (SNS).

The SNS seemed like a great idea--basically it's a bottle of formula with a very small tube that is taped to the mother's breast so that when the baby suckles at the nipple, he also pulls in formula from the bottle. That way he is still stimulating the mom's milk supply and getting the nursing experience, but also getting the extra nourishment that he needs. But in practice, it was a huge pain in the ass. We only had the disposable one, which required two people to work: me to nurse with the tubes taped to my breasts, and Torsten to hold the bottle upright and pinch off the flow to the tubes whenever Callum stopped suckling so that milk wouldn't keep pouring into his mouth and all over his face. It was really hard to attach the tubes correctly so that they ended up in the right part of Callum's mouth when he latched. The tubes were also incredibly narrow so that the formula passed through them very slowly, meaning that every feeding took an hour or more. Plus, as we discovered later, Callum wasn't getting enough food through them, so he kept waking up hungry even shortly after being fed. You can imagine how fun it was for both of us to get up every hour or two all night long our first night home and spend an hour trying to feed our baby together.

The day after our first night at home, Callum had a pediatrician appointment at which we discovered that he had lost another 5 ounces since his discharge the previous day. The pediatrician was not happy about this, even though he had still lost less than 10% of his birth weight overall, and started talking about switching to a bottle. This was after Callum had been screaming in the waiting room because he was hungry, and I had been trying to nurse him and he kept latching and pulling off because there was no milk yet. We did this over and over again while he screamed and eventually he was crying and I was crying and then the pediatrician was talking about bottles and that just sent me over the edge.

So, on the way home from the pediatrician I called our Bradley childbirth class instructor, who is also a lactation consultant, and she totally saved my life. She talked me off the ledge and gave me a workable plan. She suggested that we dump the stupid SNS and switch to syringes, which would allow us to feed him more efficiently without worrying about nipple confusion. So we did that, he ate great, and when we went back to the pediatrician for a follow-up appointment the next day he had gained 5 ounces, so that was good news.

Then we started the process of trying to nurse him as often as possible to get my supply to come in, and cut down on his formula in hopes of weaning him off it entirely. At this point my milk seemed to be in, sort of: there was definitely something, but it was hard to tell how much. I wasn't engorged, I wasn't leaking, I never felt let-down, I didn't feel pain or fullness. We rented a Medela Symphony from the hospital, but when I pump, almost nothing comes out. I could hear Callum swallowing when he nursed, but not that much. And he hadn't pooped in several days, though he was peeing regularly. It was also hard with the syringe because it felt kind of like we were fattening up a goose--we were basically shooting formula directly down his throat, and while he happily took all that we gave him, it was really hard to tell how much he actually needed and how much he was eating just because we were pumping it into his mouth.

At 10 days old, with my milk supply still in the same questionable state, we went back to the pediatrician for Callum's two-week visit. Having not loved the first provider we'd seen, we switched to someone else, who we liked much better. She was great and very supportive and spent over an hour with us, discussing the situation. Callum had lost two ounces since his previous appointment, so that wasn't good, and she suggested a new feeding plan: nurse him every 2-3 hours, and not more often, because if he snacks all the time he will never fully drain my breasts and they won't be fully stimulated to refill, and give him a bottle after every other feeding. At that point he seemed to have a good enough latch that there was no concern about nipple confusion.

So, we went home and started this plan, and it worked pretty well. By the beginning of last week, he was back to his birth weight, which made the pediatrician happy. He had no latch confusion issues, but his nursing still wasn't awesome. Sometimes he would happily latch and suckle for 15 minutes each side. Sometimes he would be really sleepy and not willing to latch. And sometimes (and these were the worst times) he would scream and scream and scream and be in total hysterics and it would take me 45 minutes to an hour to calm him down enough to latch. And no matter which of the three it was, I always had milk left after he was done, and he would always drink several ounces of formula afterward, which was very disheartening. But at least he was eating.

So, last Wednesday I took the pediatrician's referral and went to see a new lactation consultant, who is also an MD, at the local children's hospital. And it was like FINALLY there was someone who listened, who paid attention, who saw what was happening, who was encouraging and helpful and suggested a truly sustainable plan of action. And things have been SO MUCH BETTER since then.

First, she took one look at Callum's latch and said it was way too shallow. He wasn't latching on deep enough to pull down a lot of milk, which is why I always had milk left even when he was nursing for 15 minutes per side. She was very surprised to hear that I hadn't experienced any pain while he was nursing, given how shallow his latch was. She checked in his mouth and said that his lingual frenulum was too tight, preventing him from opening his mouth wide enough to latch properly, and also from sticking his tongue out far enough to suckle properly. The convenient thing about having her be in the hospital is that she was able to page the ear-nose-throat doctor on call and he came down and cut the frenulum that same day. She also had us start using a nipple shield to teach him to open his mouth wider when nursing.

She also said that in general he is a very laid-back baby, which is great in a lot of ways but not when he's nursing. He is very lackadaisical about nursing, and will often stop nursing entirely and every effort I make to stimulate him to start again won't work. Lactation consultants, nurses, and doctors had suggested all different ways of stimulating him: his face, his ear, his clavicle, his hands, his belly, his feet--but this lactation consultant suggested pulling gently on his arm and moving it back and forth, and that is the only thing of all these suggestions that has actually worked.

She did say that I have a somewhat compromised supply--and we may never get to an exclusive breastfeeding relationship--but that I definitely have enough milk to make it worthwhile for both him and me, and that even if we always have to supplement with formula, I should definitely keep nursing too. And it was so encouraging to hear that. By the time I met with her, I was mentally preparing myself to be told that I had no milk to speak of and should just give up on the nursing thing altogether. And it was really nice to be told that I do have milk, even if it's not a ton.

AND she told me that if he screams, it is absolutely not worth trying to get him to nurse. She said if he is hysterical we should give him a bit of formula and see if that takes the edge off and makes him willing to nurse. If not, just try again later. So far since then he has only had one screaming fit, and after half an ounce of formula he was perfectly happy to settle in and nurse for half an hour.

She told me something that has really stuck with me: the first rule of feeding is that the baby needs to be fed, and the second rule is that the parents need to enjoy feeding him. This principle is so helpful to refer back to whenever we are struggling with the feeding. Callum is fed, he is gaining weight and he is healthy, and after that the goal is to find an approach to feeding him that we are all comfortable with.

So since then things have been so much better. His latch is much wider and with the arm thing I have consistently been able to motivate him to be a much more efficient eater. He pretty much always nurses for half an hour, and I know that he's getting milk, even if it's not a ton. He's still eating plenty of formula, but that's totally OK.

The thing about these struggles is that I wasn't expecting the emotions that would come along with them. When I was pregnant I read this great article about breastfeeding vs. formula feeding, and I thought after reading it that if breastfeeding ended up not working for us, I would be OK with that. I didn't realize how emotionally attached I was to the idea of breastfeeding, or how much of a failure I would feel when I thought that it wasn't going to work for us.

But the thing is that when I sat down and tried to work through my feelings about the whole thing, I realized that the vast majority of reasons I wanted to breastfeed had a lot more to do with me than with Callum. Breastfeeding is great, and it's good for the baby--but formula provides everything that he needs. I do want him to breastfeed so that he can get my antibodies, especially while he's too young to be vaccinated. But most of the other reasons are really about me. I like the convenience of it, and the fact that it's free. I like the relationship that comes from it--but I think that same relationship, or a very similar one, can be built through bottle-feeding. And honestly, I wanted the weight-loss benefits of the extra calories burned.

I had a conversation with Nilsa (who's been through something similar) last week about this whole experience and she pointed something out that really resonated with me: this is just the first of many times as parents that we will need to take a step back and ask if our concerns are actually about our child's health and well-being or if they have more to do with our own expectations. It's a lesson that we all have to learn, as parents, and while I certainly would have been thrilled if we'd been able to have a straightforward exclusive breastfeeding setup, and would not have minded learning this lesson just a little bit later, I do think the experience has been good for me. Though I still wouldn't choose it.

I'm still hopeful that now that Callum can open his mouth fully, and now that he's nursing more efficiently, my milk supply will increase. But an exclusive breastfeeding relationship doesn't seem to be in the cards for us at the moment, and I'm OK with that. I still feel a pang every now and then when I hear another mom say that her baby has never eaten anything but her breast milk, but that's just not how it's going to be for us. And that's fine too.

And lastly, some more photos, because I hear that it's a prosecutable crime to write a post about a baby and not include pictures:

Callum's birth story

Depending on how you count it, my labor was either very long or very short. If you include pre-labor (the less intense contractions that got me to 4 cm), I was in labor for a total of 33.5 hours. But if you only count active labor (from 4 cm to delivery), it was only 5.5 hours.

It's weird because the time kind of blurs, and so does the memory of it all. My memory of what happened during his birth isn't chronological. Like, I know at one point I cried, but I can't remember when. And I know that I was at 4 cm, and then I was at 6.5 cm, and logically I know how much time passed between those two things, but in my memory it doesn't feel that way.

Anyway, let's start at the beginning. At around 8 a.m. on Sunday, January 23, I woke up and felt a pop low-down in my abdomen. It was in the vicinity of the baby, but I could tell it wasn't a baby kick. I thought to myself, "I wonder if my water just broke." Then I stood up and fluid gushed down my legs all over the floor. So that pretty much confirmed it.

I wasn't really in labor at that point--I had been vaguely crampy all night, and had woken up a few times wondering if something was on its way to getting started--but soon after, the contractions started. At first they just felt like period cramps, and were very irregular and mild. Over the course of the day they got progressively stronger and closer together. I spoke to my midwife, who said that she wanted me to check into the hospital 12 hours after my water had broken, but that we wouldn't even discuss induction until the next morning--she just wanted to keep an eye on things.

So, I labored at home for most of Sunday. I took a shower, Torsten and I went for a walk, I ate some lunch, and I spent most of the day on my yoga mat and birthing ball. We watched the Packers-Bears playoff game and timed my contractions. By around 4 p.m. they met the criteria for going to the hospital--less than four minutes apart, lasting at least a minute, and had been that way for an hour. I still wasn't sure that I was in active labor, per se, but since we had to go to the hospital in a few hours anyway, the midwife said we might as well just come in now.

When we got to the hospital, since my water was broken they did not do an internal exam to check how dilated I was. I was also able to skip triage and check directly into labor and delivery. My contractions had slowed down somewhat in both frequency and intensity ever since I'd gotten off the birthing ball and into the car, so we waited for them to pick back up. Torsten and I walked and walked around the hospital halls, and I spent a lot of time on the birthing ball. Both of those things caused the contractions to pick back up, but whenever I would stop doing that and just lie in bed, the contractions would slow down again. The midwife said this was not a good sign as far as labor progressing on its own--in true active labor, nothing would be able to stop the contractions. But the contractions that I was having were definitely quite painful--every time I had one, everything else would just kind of stop, and I would lean into Torsten and groan through it and try to breathe, and he would hold me and rub my lower back until it ended.

We continued like this for most of the evening and then the midwife suggested that I take a sleeping pill so that I could get some rest. She was concerned that I was going to use up all my energy in early labor and then the next day would come, I wouldn't have progressed much, and I would already be so exhausted that I wouldn't have the energy to get through active labor and delivery. So, we agreed, I took a sleeping pill, and I managed to get about five hours of sleep.

In the morning a different midwife was on duty and she came in to discuss the options with me. My contractions were still only about 6-8 minutes apart at that point and while they were painful, they weren't incredibly intense (especially in retrospect now that I can compare them to the much more intense contractions I felt later on). They still had not done a cervical check at this point and did not want to because of the infection risk with the broken water.

The midwife said that since it had been 24 hours since my water had broken, and I still wasn't in active labor, we needed to discuss options for augmenting the labor, such as Cytotec or Pitocin. I asked if I could have another hour to walk, spend more time on the birthing ball, and so on, and hope that those things would naturally kick my body into active labor. She said that was fine, and one way or another I would soon be on my way and then we could set up the birthing tub. However, before I started walking and all that again, she wanted to check on the baby with the external monitor.

When we put on the monitor, we discovered that the baby's heart rate was dropping during every contraction, and not coming up fast enough after they ended. The midwife wasn't overly concerned about this because between contractions his heart rate was nice and strong, with lots of accelerations and variation, which is what they look for. But they weren't happy about how low it was dipping during the contractions or how long it was taking to speed back up afterward.

They decided to keep him on the monitor for a bit longer to see if anything changed. But we had a lot of trouble with the external monitor--I needed to change positions during each contraction, and whenever I moved we would lose his heartbeat, and they would struggle to find it again. It was also hard to time his heart rate against my contractions to figure out exactly how long it was staying low after the contractions ended.

After awhile of the extended external monitoring and ensuing confusion, the midwife said that we needed a new plan of action. Since his heart rate was not improving, she really wanted to get the labor started--and Cytotec was not an option since once it's taken, it can't be controlled, and she didn't want to risk having it cause strong contractions that put the baby into distress and couldn't be stopped. So, she recommended Pitocin, since that can be turned on and off instantaneously. And with the Pitocin, she wanted to use an internal monitor (the kind that screws into the baby's scalp) so that we could have a better, more consistent understanding of what the baby's heart rate was doing during and after each contraction.

I think this is where I cried--I was terrified. (But I'm not sure... because I have a vague memory that the crying was at nighttime, and this was in the morning.) I'd heard all sorts of terrible things about Pitocin and the really strong contractions that it causes. The internal monitor meant that not only would I not be able to do the water birth that I had planned (and that was my main plan for pain management), but that my range of motion in general would be severely limited for the rest of the birth. I was also scared that the baby would respond poorly to the Pitocin, which would have left a c-section as the only option.

Luckily, everyone who was there supporting me was so great. I love love love my midwives--and I loved that I was able to know without a doubt that her recommendation for next steps was the right choice. I loved that I could absolutely trust her opinion and that I knew she was doing what she felt was best for the baby and for me. And Torsten was wonderful--not just in supporting me and making me feel better about the change in plans, but in general throughout the entire birth. Our nurse was also awesome... incredibly supportive and encouraging, and stayed with us during the entire birth.

They hooked up the internal monitor late in the morning, at maybe around 11? And since they had to go internal to do it, they were able to finally do a cervical check, and they found that I was dilated to 4 cm and 90% effaced. The internal monitor was a great idea in theory--not only did it provide continuous monitoring of the baby's heart rate, but it also monitored my contractions, so it was able to tell us exactly how the contractions were affecting his heart rate.

However, in practice they had major issues with the internal monitor. Something about the connection to the machine wasn't working right, so it kept losing his heart rate for many-second periods of time. They tried everything to fix it, including reconnecting it to his scalp (so he came out with two little cuts on his scalp instead of one), but they weren't able to solve the issue. It worked well enough, however, for us to see that while his heart rate was still dropping during contractions, it wasn't yet far enough to be an issue--just something to keep an eye on. And it monitored the contractions perfectly, so that helped us see the timing of his heart rate against the contractions.

At noon on Monday, when I was at 4 cm, they hooked up the IV and started the Pitocin. They put it on the very lowest dose--1 milliunit per hour (apparently it can go as high as 20)--and kept a careful eye on the baby's heart rate. At first he didn't seem to be responding very well to the Pitocin contractions, so they briefly turned it off, but since Pitocin was the only option left other than a c-section, they decided to turn it back on for a little while longer to see how he would handle it.

And, miraculously, his heart rate actually started to get better, and not drop so much during the contractions. So, they cautiously turned the Pitocin dose up to 2, the baby's heart was still handling it fine, and it turned out that I didn't need any more than that--the small dose I was receiving was enough to kick my body into active labor. The contractions started coming closer together and they were much more intense.

At this point it wasn't possible to get comfortable, even between contractions--I would try to sit on the bed and then a contraction would start and I would HAVE to get off the bed, the contraction was compelling me to stand up, and I would yell, "Ball! Ball!" and Torsten would get the birthing ball and put it on the bed and I would lean on the birthing ball and sort of sway with the contraction and the nurse would remind me to breathe slowly, try to breathe the pain away, and Torsten would massage my lower back and tell me I was doing great and remind me that the contraction was almost over and I would feel better in a second. Sometimes the midwife or the nurse would try to rub my back but I shooed them off--the only person whose touch felt good was Torsten's.

Then the contraction would end and I would need to sit down, so Torsten would take the birthing ball back off the bed so I could sit, but it felt like as soon as I managed to sit down the next contraction was already coming and I would have to get up and do it all over again. Sometimes I would have a double contraction, like a double wave in the ocean where just when you think you've crested it and you're on your way out, there it comes rising up again, and those were especially excruciating because there was no recovery time between them.

After a couple hours the pressure low down was so intense that I started to feel like I might need to push, so the nurse called the midwife to check me and I was at 6.5 cm. This was apparently actually a good thing--they only expect you to dilate 1 cm every two hours--but to me it felt so daunting, like I'd only gotten 2.5 cm in all that time and it was going to be hours and hours before I got to 10, and it was already so intense and painful, and the pushing pressure was so much and how could it not be time to push? Because it really FELT like it was time to push.

At that point I moved into transition, which I guess took a couple more hours? But it actually felt like time moved very fast during that part. The contractions felt like they were coming nonstop, like even when they broke and I was between them, there was still so much pressure that I couldn't get a break. There was definitely some announcing that I couldn't do this anymore and that I was going to die. I reminded myself at this point that our Bradley instructor had taught us that when you get to the point where you think you can't do it anymore, you're actually very close to the end--but I was convinced that for me it would really be several more hours before I was ready to push, because I had only been at 6.5 cm during the previous check, and I was really not sure I was going to be able to make it.

I was also a little worried that the baby might be in the wrong position, because I was feeling the contractions not just in my belly but also in my lower back, and that can be a sign that the baby is facing the wrong way. The contractions were so strong in both the front and the back that it felt like my entire pelvis was being crushed between boulders during every contraction. I couldn't escape from the pain no matter which way I went. I couldn't imagine taking contractions at that level for another several hours, and then still having to push for possibly several hours after that.

But then I started REALLY feeling the urge to push. Like, I couldn't NOT push. With every contraction I was pushing and moaning and I couldn't stop it. The nurse called the midwife and she checked me and said that I was at 10, that there was just one tiny bit of cervix left that she was moving out of the way, and then I could push. Since I was on the bed for her to check me, she asked if I wanted to try pushing on the bed, and I said NO, absolutely NOT, that sounded like the worst possible idea I could imagine. So she said OK, get out of bed and just do whatever feels right, and she asked the nurse to get a squat bar but there was no time for that.

I squatted down on the floor and held onto the bed and just pushed and pushed. I could tell people were doing things behind me, putting a mat on the floor and moving monitors and my IV pole around, and Torsten was there rubbing my back and the nurse was coaching me on breathing, and then the midwife was behind me and the baby was crowning and I was pushing and pushing and the midwife told me to reach down and feel the baby's head and I did and it was soft and downy and she told me to just keep pushing, that I was doing great.

I could feel him in the birth canal and it was incredibly painful and all I wanted was to have him out, have the pressure end and the baby born, and the midwife was telling me I needed to keep pushing, I needed to get him out, she told me his head was out and all I needed to do was push his shoulders out and I would be done, and I held onto the bed and pushed as hard as I could and I felt the strangest sensation, almost like a tiny wet tornado, a huge flopping fish kind of feeling, and I couldn't tell if the baby was coming out or moving back up and the feeling went on and on and I pushed and pushed and then suddenly he was out and Torsten and the midwife sort of caught him together and handed him through between my legs to me and they had trouble getting him to my arms and I could hear the midwife say, "Short cord, short cord," and suddenly I was holding Callum in my arms. I had pushed for 10 minutes total.

He was tiny and dark and bloody and his head was soft and elongated from being pushed through the birth canal so fast and his nose was all mashed and he was grunting but he wasn't crying and the midwife and the nurse were trying to get him to cry and then another nurse was there also trying to get him to cry. And then he did cry, only for a second, and then the cord stopped pulsing and the midwife had Torsten cut it, and then they took Callum away from me because he was still struggling to breathe.

I got back in the bed and birthed the placenta, and then it turned out that I had two second-degree tears so they stitched me up while Torsten was with Callum across the room while they checked his oxygen saturation and tried to help him breathe. The pediatric nurse who was dealing with him really overreacted a bit--she gave him a 5 on his Apgar at one minute and a 7 at five minutes, and the midwife and the delivery nurse both told me later that those scores were way too low for his condition--and she said his oxygen saturation was 90 even though it was actually 94--and the midwife told me she wasn't concerned because even though he didn't pink up right away, his lips were pink from the start and that's a sign that he is just fine.

I could hear Torsten from across the room, constantly pestering the pediatric nurse to bring me the baby. It was like a broken record: "Can my wife hold the baby now? Can we please bring the baby to her?" and I'm sure he was pissing the nurse off but I felt such an overwhelming wave of love and gratitude to him for being so insistent and demanding, and eventually it worked and after a few minutes they brought him to me and I held him on my chest and nursed him and cuddled him, and it was perfect, and the few minutes that he'd been across the room from me didn't even matter.


He looked like the tiniest baby in the world to me, but everyone kept saying that he was huge, and guessing that he was over 9 pounds. I knew that he wasn't over 9 pounds--I knew that he would be 8 pounds something, and when they did take him away to weigh him he came in at 8 pounds 12 ounces. Everyone kept going on about how I did such a good job in labor, and they couldn't believe that I'd pushed such a big baby out in only 10 minutes.


After it was over I felt such a huge sense of relief that it was done. And I feel so, so happy with how it went. It wasn't exactly according to plan--I had hoped to avoid Pitocin and internal monitors, and I had wanted to do a water birth--but part of the plan was knowing that you can't plan for everything, and I feel really comfortable with the decisions that we made and the way everything turned out. And I'm really happy that I was able to have the natural birth that I wanted despite some of the unexpected snags along the way. And I still can't get over what an incredible coach Torsten was--how great and loving and supportive he was. During the labor he was all that I wanted, and he was everything that I needed. I know he was worried beforehand that he wouldn't know what to do, but he was perfect.


And Callum is perfect too. I know some people say that you forget about the pain after the labor is over--and for me that's definitely not true--but what is true is that it doesn't matter anymore. It was by far the most painful experience of my life, but now Callum is here and that is more important than any amount of pain. All that waiting and all that work--and now he's here, and we are a whole different type of family. And it is wonderful.

We're all alive. Thriving, even.

You guys. I have so many posts I want to write: Callum's birth story, my experience with breastfeeding, maybe some more details about his name. And general updates about our first week with a newborn.

But. Well, I'm tired. I'm actually getting a decent amount of sleep, so it's not exactly that--it's more just a general feeling of being worn out. Which also goes back to the breastfeeding thing: we are working on my supply, and that means spending as much time as possible skin on skin with Callum, and when you are holding a baby round the clock, it becomes harder to do things like write blog posts.

So, I don't have a lot of details to share right now. Suffice it to say that while it's exhausting, it's not exhausting in the way I was expecting, and the good parts are so, so good. I imagine that I'll love it even more as he gets older and develops new ways of interacting and expressing his personality, but it turns out that I love the newborn stage too.

Because seriously, who wouldn't love spending all day with this little guy?