Zadie and the black belt

The night after Lochlan was born, Zadie received her Tiny Tiger black belt in karate. Now she has moved up to the Little Dragons class, where she will work to get another black belt before she enters the Juniors class. So don't be fooled if she tells you she has a black belt in karate. But still...

I've been wanting to write this for a while, but it's hard to get time with both hands free with a little one around. And I really wanted to give it some serious time and attention.

I am SO proud of her. Let me give you a little history. She started karate with a free month the instructor offered after her pre-school class took a field trip to his dojo. He (or possibly the organizing parent) had mixed up the times for the class visit, so he offered everyone a free month. Not a bad marketing strategy, though, as I can think of at least five kids from that class who still take karate there.

Anyway, Zadie had previously done soccer, which was a non-starter. I wanted her to have some dad bonding time, so I signed her up for Daddy and Me soccer, but he would get so frustrated with her that I ended up taking her. And it was awful -- she mostly just ran for the street and tried hard to make it into traffic.

Then she tried ballet. Ballet was also awful. Ballet class, for her, was 30 minutes of fidgeting and trying to hang from the barre and being told not to fidget.

We found a ballet/tap class at another studio, and they had older, more experienced instructors there. It was basically the same deal, though. She made it to a recital (although she almost experienced her first stage dive at the dress rehearsal), and there, we saw the kids' hip-hop group.

I thought it would be perfect for her -- it was much more active and energetic than ballet. But she was in it for just a few months, and she was in trouble and time-out more often than not. She distracted all the other kids from their learning. With a heavy sigh, with most of her costume for the next recital already purchased, and without finishing out a month we'd paid for, I quit.

Karate was different from the start. Not a LOT different, mind you -- she still fidgeted, got in trouble, and had to sit in the hall. But the instructor was so patient, so firm, so... zen? She listened to him better than to the other teachers, and there was a tangible reward for good behavior at each class, too -- a stripe of tape on her belt. After a certain number of stripes, they could earn a black stripe, after which, they were eligible for promotion to the next belt color.

White belt - 4 years old.

There were plenty of days when she didn't get stripes. And less than a year into the class, she got into some serious trouble and was asked to take a month off. We did.

But when she came back, it was better. Mostly. Nothing's ever, like, 100% good with her. She kept earning stripes, she kept going up a belt level, and she eventually got her green belt. But there was some personal drama with another girl in the class, and Zadie was having a rough period, and she got asked to take a break again. A long one. We took a couple months off.

When we came back, she was behind all her former classmates. She quickly got to purple, then to brown, but her classmates were already brown belts, and they were already working on their black belt projects. At one point, he told us she was eligible to be promoted, but the next ceremony was just too soon for her to promote to black belt.

So she watched while pretty much everyone she'd been taking classes with got their black belts, and then they all disappeared from her classes. As it turned out, though, this was a blessing! Suddenly, she was the most-experienced student in almost all her classes, and she became the class leader about 85% of the time. She liked the extra responsibility (although she was still often silly), and she stepped up to it.

In about May, around the same time, she got her sparring gear and started attending Saturday morning classes, where she got to spar with other students. She loved it! She was really blossoming. At the same time, she had to start planning her black belt project.

One thing I love about her instructor is that he's very community service-minded. No one gets a black belt in his dojo without a service project. Kids have collected books for schools, games and art supplies for Shriners Hospital, blankets and newspapers for the animal shelter, and they have done river clean-ups, built bat houses, and so many more things. Zadie wanted to help the homeless, but she was a little unfocused as to how to do it. I suggested helping Tubman House, a local organization that helps homeless teens who are pregnant or have children already. It's a great organization, and I contacted them about what they needed. Over the course of a few months, she collected a good deal of stuff -- it took several trips from the car to drop it all off!

And in September, in a ceremony that I missed (we just couldn't get out of the hospital fast enough), she finally earned her black belt.

It was later than all her friends. It was after some long breaks. It was despite a sometimes uphill battle. But for me, that makes it even more something to be proud of. Zadie, the flighty, the ADHD, the girl who reads books by opening them in the middle, reading a couple pages, then flipping elsewhere... she set a goal, and she worked toward it, and she made it!! A lot of things come easy to her, but this didn't. And the fact that it didn't, but she did it anyway, is what makes me the most proud of my little black belt.

Warming up with side kicks before class.

Sparring (she's in the teal in each of these photos)

Point!

Point! 

Two weeks (sigh... and a day)

Well, Lochlan is still doing life very well. He eats, sleeps, pees, poops, and sometimes looks around and smiles a bit. And that's pretty much his whole day. He has been (KNOCK WOOD, people) sleeping through the night. I mean, to me, that means 10 to about 4, and he does wake up to nurse at 4, but even then, we're not up for the day. He drifts back off, and so do I, until about 6. Honestly, it's a dream compared to his sister, who screamed and did not sleep. Apparently she's been telling people that he is loud, and I just wonder what she'd have thought about her baby-self!

He does have a mild condition called torticollis, and we had our first physical therapy appointment today. It basically just means the muscles on the left side of his neck are kind of short, so we need to help him stretch and help him build some strength in turning his head both ways. We've caught it and are treating it very early, so we should be able to fix it completely. We have appointments scheduled every two weeks for a while, and in the meantime, we have lots of things to do at home to help. It's probably because of his position in the womb -- I could even tell that for the last couple months, he was always lying on the same side. Anyway, it does not decrease his perfection in any way. And we quite liked Miss Julia, the physical therapist. So it's all good.

We're working hard to increase the amount of formula he takes so that he continues to gain weight. He's, like BARELY meeting his healthy weight gain goals. So I've about doubled how much formula he takes. He still nurses, of course, but I'm making an effort to make sure he stays awake to take some supplement, too.

You know -- I mean, if you read this, you KNOW -- I love Zadie, but I have to admit, we were very stressed at this point in her life. And I always hoped for a cuddler, which she was not. If you tried to hold her, she'd push her legs straight as if to try to stand. This dude LOVES to cuddle. He's been happily snuggled against my chest for two hours at this moment, and I'm going to have to wake him up to get him to eat. If he is on a warm human body, he is pretty much content (barring hunger or a wet diaper).  So I'm really enjoying this happy new baby time, and my cuddlicious oxytocin high.

And have I mentioned? He's totally gorgeous. You can just see how content he is.

One week!

Okay, a week and a day. Come on, it's hard to get the time to sit and write (or, while nursing, to type with TWO hands).

Anyway, knock wood, but this is like... the BEST KID EVER. No offense to his sister, but she never slept and cried a lot. He's the opposite. Like, here's our typical schedule:

6am: Nurse 20 minutes, sleep until 8.
8 - 10: Nurse, diaper, nurse, cuddle, nurse, diaper.
10-12: sleep
12: Nurse 20 minutes, maybe some looking around, diaper.
12:30 to 3: Sleep (during which time I could garden, strap him in and out of the carseat at multiple locations, or even -- I really did this today -- do some hammering with him in a sling on my chest)
3 to 3:20: Nurse.
3:20 to 5:30: sleep
5:30 to 6: Nurse
6-8: cuddle and sleep
8: Nurse, sleep, cuddle, look around
9: Nursing marathon with sleep breaks
10:30 to ?? (can't see the bedroom clock): Sleep
4ish: Nurse, back to sleep

It's so... peaceful.

And he's such a good communicator. Like, in parenting class, they tell you what the "hunger cues" are. They stick out their tongue, put their hands to their mouth, or turn their heads as if looking for a boob. He does all three, without any fussing or crying, as if to say, "The time to eat has arrived." If he could ring a tiny dinner bell instead, I think he would.

Diapers are a different matter. He first looks really pouty, then cries, and he cries throughout the diaper change until you've got the new one completely on. Then he seems to think, "Oh. Okay." And he stops.

People will tell you that babies don't smile until they are older, but this is BULLSHIT. I saw a smile yesterday, and then this morning he clearly smiled at me (perhaps it is telling that it was in response to me saying "Mama makes the milk"). I then took a video and captured a still from it (there's no way I'm fast enough to actually take a picture of a smile).

And this isn't even as big or definite as the one he made earlier. He also smiled when a stranger cooed to him in Home Depot (although this was in his sleep, as it was during the 12:30 to 3 period).

I'm sure there are tough times ahead -- I remember Zadie teething -- but for now, we are in a very peaceful, blissful, well-rested, happy place. And we love our little man.

By the way, we are nickname people. Zadie has many (in fact, Zadie IS a nickname). And so of course he is Lochie and Loch Ness Monster and Lockerbie (I know I will come to regret that) and Mister Man and Bossman ad infinitum. But more than probably anything else, we have been calling him Buddy. Which was also my grandfather's nickname. And there's something I like a lot about that.

Random leftover tidbits

After the delivery, I went into the restroom and I heard a nurse ask the midwife something. The answer was, "we red-robined her." I finished up and said, "Uh, hey, what's a red robin?" I guess it just means they catheterized me to get some pee out, but they had done it after the birth because they hadn't had time to do it before the epidural. It just sounded so much like short-order cook talk! And of course, that was exacerbated by the fact that Red Robin is, in fact, a burger joint. With a memorable jingle and everything.

When we checked in, one of the first nurses asked what we were going to call him. I answered Lochlan, and she was like, "Oh, I know that name! There's a Lochlan on a reality show!" She couldn't remember which one. Mom and I both discreetly grabbed our phones to try to figure out what she was talking about. I mean, I don't mind him having a name that people are familiar with, but not if it's because he's some gel-haired douche on Jersey Shore or The Bachelor. (Although we couldn't figure it out that day, yesterday I found out he's on Last Comic Standing -- and he was funny, but didn't win, so all the better.)

The very first woman to greet us for some reason found Sweetie and me hilarious. I mean, a couple of well-timed quips about not having any more kids after this, and she was eating out of our hands. Unfortunately, it seems like this may have distracted her. When she came over with my ID bracelet, I raised my left hand (it seems to me that they usually do stuff on your non-dominant hand, and she approached from my left side). She was like, "Oh, do you want it on your left?" I said I didn't care, and offered up my right as well, but she was thrown for a loop. She said it didn't matter, so I held up my left again, which is where she affixed it. But then all night, the other nurses said things sotto voce to each other like, "Well, it's on her left wrist. Do you want me to move it? I don't know why..." I think she also may have missed a few things in admitting us, because I even heard one of the nurses say, "It seems like I'm doing the secretarial work, tonight, too."

They stressed early on that security was very important to them - when Sweetie and Mom came in, they had to get buzzed in, and they mustn't let anyone else through the door. We should not see anyone in street clothes. Everyone who came in would introduce themselves and tell us what they were there for, and we should be able to see their name tag. No one would take the baby away from me without Sweetie going with him. There was a long lecture. So the next day, when a nurse came to take him for his circumcision, she was pleasant, introduced herself, told me what was happening, and then put her hands on his bassinet thing to roll him away, and I was like... Can I see your ID tag first? She was the only one who had the thing tucked into her pocket, and also the only one who was set to take my kid out of my sight!

Lastly, one of the big issues we had with Z's birth was that the first midwife we saw did not do a fairly simple test, and turned us away instead. That sort of started the whole shitball rolling. I don't know that she did anything (or failed to do anything) that unusual, but naturally she stuck in my mind. So when she returned late Friday afternoon to discharge me and the baby, it seemed in some ways to bookend a 6 1/2 year story. Zadie's birth was so traumatic, and Lochlan's was so relatively easy, and it felt like a circle was complete. With a happy ending.

Let's hear it for the boy!

So the birth story was largely about me and our experience. Let's talk about Lochlan and who he is so far.

He is pretty easy to calm down. He cries, but it doesn't take much at all to soothe him, and he is extremely content to be held on my or Sweetie's chest. He likes to be patted on the back and butt, and he responds calmly to music, either played or sung. So far so good on the car (fingers crossed!): he gets cranky when we buckle him in, but then settles down for the ride.

Physically, he runs a little warm. Today was the first day I actually bothered to put clothes on him, because we seem to wrap and unwrap him a lot to help him not overheat. When he does get hot, he turns beet red!

He was circumcised, and he's healing nicely from that. In fact when we left the hospital, they said we'd have to put Vaseline on it for about a week to keep it from sticking to his diaper, but this morning the doctor said we didn't need to anymore. It does appear to bother him when he urinates. He screams bloody murder as soon as he wets a diaper!

(I know circumcision is a hot-button issue, and I weighed the pros and cons really carefully, aesthetics and tradition being pretty low on the priority list, and ultimately the pros came out about an eyelash ahead. I promise not to judge your choice if you don't judge mine.)

Anyway, back to him! He has a very strong cry, but otherwise doesn't say much. He squeaks a little when he's dreaming. He has very long toes and fingers, and I can tell right away his fingernails are like mine, with long nail beds.

He has the wispiest little eyelashes, and very fine blond eyebrows (so different from his sister!). He has a medium amount of hair that will probably fall out, but at this moment it's sort of a strawberry blond, much to our surprise! Zadie's was dark. Also, that coppery color is a genetic possibility, though a slim one: his paternal grandmother had red hair in her youth.

He sleeps a lot during the day, and we've only had two nights at home to determine this next bit, but he does seem to have a pretty active period from 10-1. He fusses, nurses, dozes, cries, nurses, dozes, fusses... The first night the cries were louder and longer and more disruptive. Last night, we tried to keep him awake a little more in the evening, and then we fed him a little more at the beginning of that period, and it was quite a bit easier. Plus, he slept until 7:40 this morning! I mean, we woke to nurse a couple times, but still, we weren't up for the day until then.

He does have one tiny area of concern -- he laid on his right side for, like, the last two months of my pregnancy, so the neck muscles on his left side are a little less developed. That can turn into something called torticollis, which requires physical therapy, or it can resolve itself on its own.

Anyway, it's been lovely to have him home so far, and he's really a blessedly mellow kid for the most part. Keep your fingers crossed that this continues to be the case!

Lochlan is born!

Birth story

On Thursday morning, I woke up prepared to meet my third day on maternity leave with no baby! I did a few tasks around the house, including getting Z ready for school (Mom took her), and then settled in to boredom. I was just about to take a long walk, probably to Tupelo, and I had gathered my thank you notes for the baby shower gifts when my dad called.

He had offered to pressure wash my hardscaping in the back before the garden tour that week, and was prepared to come over. He suggested jokingly that maybe the sound of water would bring on labor. "It couldn't hurt!" I answered.

He came over, and we passed the morning with him mostly working and me mostly reading my book, with occasional stops to gab passionately about politics. As we do. When he finished, he said he was going to load his stuff into the truck, and I, feeling something unusual, said, "I'm just going to check something and I'll meet you out front."

Well, unlike with Zadie, this time it was abundantly clear; my water had broken. I shuffled to the front door and blew Dad a kiss, letting him know what was up, and then I called Sweetie, Kaiser, and Mom. Sweetie didn't have his phone on him, and I told Mom we weren't in a terrible hurry, so I took a shower and packed a few things (I remembered my phone charger but forgot my toothbrush-- messed up priorities, man!), and I tried to reach Sweetie a few more times. Mom got there, fed the cats, and loaded my bag into the car, and then we headed to Sweetie's work in the hopes that he'd get the message on our way there. He did, and met us at the car pretty quickly.

In hindsight, we probably could have waited to hear from him and then taken him home to get his bag, because he was cold all night. Such is life.

Anyway, my biggest fear was that, like last time, my water would break without labor starting and I'd have to be induced. And it sort of seemed like that was happening. We got to the hospital and got checked in without me having any contractions of note. The triage nurse did check to see if it was a leak or a "gross rupture," and was rewarded for pulling back my pantaloons with a clear confirmation of the latter. Bloosh!

So they got me into a room, and the first nurse was kindly, but honestly seemed a little confused and hard of hearing. She kept mistaking me for the woman going into the next-door room, who was being induced, so I kept having to interject, "that's not me, right? Not pitocin for me? No induction for me at this point!" The funny thing is, though, when she was doing her job communicating something to the other nurse at the shift change, she repeated a story I'd told her practically verbatim. So she was sharp, it just didn't seem so at first.

Anyway, they had to monitor his heartbeat for 20 minutes straight before they could allow me to get up and walk around, and between all the intake paperwork and the fact that he kept going off the monitor, that all took until about 5. (We had gotten there at 2.) So then we walked around for a while, and my contractions were becoming more regular and more intense (I think at that point I called them a 3/4 on the pain scale), and after a while I was kind of bored and tired of walking, and I asked if I could have something to eat. They brought a roll, a salad, tomato soup, juice, and grapes and a plum. For some reason, as I sat and ate, my contractions got a lot stronger. Which was good! Labor was progressing, which meant I wouldn't have to be induced. Furthermore, when I was at 6cm, I could use the labor tub, which in my head, was going to make the whole thing a great deal more bearable (no pun intended).

At that point, my pain was increased significantly, and as we waited for the tub room to be ready, I was in full-on moaning/leaning/swaying/getting-my-hips-pushed-on mode. And they were coming a lot faster. We waddled me over to the tub room, got me undressed and unhooked from various things, (whilst I had several painful contractions), and got me in the tub.

So, here's an interlude. I haven't watched the TLC channel in a long time, but I remember watching A Baby Story. And in the intervening years, I've seen several short YouTube videos of water births or women using laboring tubs. And they kind of universally show the woman going from massive pain to relaxation and near-bliss. So I was sure that if I was going to have a natural birth, it was going to be with the help of the labor tub.

Yeah, I think that might be more useful *before* you go into hard labor. By the time I actually hit the water, I was having minute-long contractions that started every two minutes. I just didn't have enough downtime to really relax, and although I was trying to use my low vocalizations to relieve the pain, I think it ended up sounding more like this:

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHOLYSHITTHISREALLYHURTSOOOOHHUUUGGGHGHHHHH

OOOOOOOOOOOOOMOTHEROFGODWHYDIDN'TWEJUSTADOPTOOOOHHHHHHUGGHHHHHHH

OOOOHHHHHHNOSERIOUSLUGUYSTHISWASTHESTUPIDESTIDEAEVERANDI'MGOINGTONEEDANEPIDURALIAMNOTFUCKINGAROUNDUUUGGHHHHH

TUVAN THROAT SINGING INTERLUDE

OOHHHHHHMOTHERFUCKINGCHRISTONACRACKERWATERSKIINGBABYJESUSHELPMEUUUGHHHHH

So then I did say I was sorry, but I needed the epidural. The nurse told me not to say sorry -- I had tried, and I knew my limits. Which is, basically, true. I really wanted to try a natural birth, but I'm telling you what: it hurts like a motherfucker.

Anyway, I went through several (like, SEVERAL) more unmedicated contractions while I got out of the tub, got dried off, put a robe on, went back to my room, got monitored, and Jojo the anaesthesiologst got set up. I was supposed to lean way over and stick my rounded back out for her, but I was having a really hard time doing anything, so it took a little time. But Jojo, Blessed Jojo, started me off with a dose of painkiller turned up to eleven, so very shortly I was feeling a lot better. In fact, my last epidural was either turned down or wearing off when I had Z, so I felt a lot. This time? Oh hell no. It reminded me of the scene in the old Roseanne TV show when her sister Jackie has the epidural and then gleefully stabs herself in the thigh with a fork. At some point I mumbled, "Tell Jenny I have a new best friend -- Jojo."

They were having a hard time finding his heartbeat again, so they needed me to roll to my side, then to my other side, and I was like... how? I could not even move my hips, let alone my legs. I ended up having to pull myself by my arms using the handles of the bed while a team of people dragged my sheets underneath me to roll me! I think we have a picture:

Anyway, there was a mostly blissful, if short, interlude where nothing hurt and everything was kind of calm.

Then the midwife announced that it was about time to push. I was a little surprised, because I think I thought I was only around 6 cm when I went into the tub, and I hadn't been in there long, then I thought epidurals sometimes slowed the process. From the time I got the epidural with Z to the time we pushed, there were hours. This had been... well, I lost track of time, but less than an hour for sure. (My only real timeline is that I ate dinner in the 6 o'clock hour, and I started pushing at 9.)

Anyway, they said he was face up, which can make delivery more difficult, so the midwife (Anna), said she would see if she could coax him to turn around. And she did. Or he did! Whatever, it worked. So I started to push at 9pm. The epidural was so serious Anna had to tell me when I was having a contraction, so I pushed on her cue.

Very quickly (after the third or so set of pushes?), Mom and Sweetie both said they could see him, and then Anna invited me to feel his head. For the record, it felt gooshy. But it was also OUT. I thought she meant he was crowning. No, his whole freaking head had exited the building, as it were.

And then I felt something weird -- him squiggling out without any assistance from me or anyone else. He was just like, "I got this."

So Anna guided my hands under his armpits, and I helped pull him to my chest. It was 9:13 p.m. He was 8 lbs, 2.4 oz (although they didn't actually take him away from me for over an hour to do the weights and measures bit), and 20 1/2 inches long. Roughly the same size as his sister, but such an easy delivery in comparison. He then proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs for a little over an hour. Then we nursed for the first time, and he was scored a "ten" for his awesome latch.

I had just a couple stitches (in fact, Anna debated whether she would even do them, but chose to because of the location). There was kind of a lot to do after that -- getting all his stats (Apgar of 9, baby!), getting me ready to move to the mother and baby unit, Mom and Sweetie making calls and texts, and who knows what all else (to be fair, I was just staring at him and my thoughts weren't on the kerfuffle).

And the overnight was kind of like hospitals are overnight. Loud and interrupty. He was supposed to try to nurse every two hours, but he was not into it -- he was really sleepy. So we didn't worry about it until the morning at around 7, when he nursed voraciously. I got a shower, and Mom brought coffee for us and a breakfast sandwich for Sweetie.

Zadie had stayed the night at Mom's -- Boompah fed her dinner and got her to bed -- and Mom got her ready for school in the morning and dropped her off. Then all day had stuff happening at intervals: nurses checking the baby and me, a lab assistant taking his blood (which made him so upset he puked), a photographer taking pictures, the nurse coming to take him for his circumcision, people coming to collect consent forms and birth certificate forms, etc. Mom and Sweetie took off for a while to do a few things at their respective homes. We weren't 100% sure we were going to get to go home that night, although all the staff understood that it was our preference to, because he had to have at least one wet diaper first. So Sweetie packed me another change of clothes and my toothpaste and a book, just in case. But by the time they came back, he had peed and we were looking good for getting sprung!

We left the hospital at about 6:40 in the evening, and I called my dad, who had taken Zadie to her karate black belt ceremony (I was SO sad to have missed it, but sometimes life has its own plan for you), and he offered to come by with frozen yogurt. It was a lovely cycle -- having said goodbye to Dad at the start of it, and Lochlan saying hello to Dad at the end of it all!

Special thanks to Dad, while we're speaking of him, for doing the pressure washing, taking Z to karate, getting us froyo, and another favor today.

Special thanks to Mom for taking us to the hospital, making us minestrone soup, going back home to take care of Z (who decided to wake up at 3 and read books) and take her to school, for bringing coffee and breakfast, for taking Reza home, getting Z's karate things, picking Z up from school and taking her and her booster seat to Dad's, then coming back yet again with Reza to be our designated car-seat-owning baby transporter.

Special thanks to Boompah for picking Z up from school, making her dinner, entertaining her, and tucking her in. The two of them are thick as theives, but he's not usually solely in charge, so this was a little out of his wheelhouse. But he rocked it!

Special thanks to Sweetie, who rubbed my back, reminded me to breathe, pushed my hips (it's a thing), told me "you're doing great" about a hundred times (even when I wasn't doing great), made low moaning noises along with me for encouragement (and stopped when I told him, "Okay, that is going to annoy me"), and probably had to watch some stuff he really didn't want to watch (a nurse whisked away a chux pad really quickly, so I think I know what happened -- and poor Sweetie is pretty coprophobic).

Special thanks to the nurses, midwives, doctors, and everyone else, who helped make this a much easier experience than last time.

And finally, I am lucky beyond measure to have the family and friends we have, who have sent an outpouring of love and support and enthusiasm, and not a few gifts and messages for the new big sister. We talked about community this morning, and we expressed that we are very lucky to have all these wonderful people in our lives. Zadie said she didn't expect to be the recipient of so many big sister gifts, thinking that all the attention would be on the baby. And I'm sure sometimes it is (and will be). But the thoughtful people in our lives have bent over backward to make sure she feels included and loved and appreciated, too, and that speaks volumes about them, I think.

Okay, I think there are things I need to add, but another time. Right now, rest and some tidying are vying for my attention, and Lochlan, beautiful boy, is sleeping on my chest.

Weights and measures time. 

Skin time with Dad

Listening to dub step (No, just kidding. This is the hearing check.)

Grandma

Grandpa and Zadie

Dad, Lochlan and Zadie

Another post will follow with more about the little man himself and what it's like at home so far. I think it probably goes without saying that I am crazy in love with him. But still... I am crazy in love with him.