Well today is the day that Nathan and Mallory started school!! I am so excited for Mallory to start school so that she has some other activities to do and some of the attention can be about her. Nathan is only going one day a week but it will be nice for him to have other things to do also. So that means on Wednesday I get three hours of free time. Well actually it is breaks down to 2.5 hours, since I drop them off and pick them up. So what did I do today? Did I sit on the couch and eat BonBons? No I dropped them off, peaked in there rooms for awhile, went to the store and bought classroom wish list items, bought Julianne her birthday bike and other miscellaneous things. I came home went running for an hour, cleaned our dirty bathroom, changed our sheets, picked up the upstairs, folded Nathan's diapers, checked my e-mail and I am now updating my blog. So it is now time to go and get the kids from school.
I think that this time will be useful because I can get so much stuff done without distraction. It would have taken me all day to do the things I have just done so that is good in that sense. I am just too busy to take that time to relax, plus it is hard for me to lay down in the middle of the morning. I have a tendency to get tired during the 2-3 o'clock time of which I do sometimes lay on the couch with Mallory but the mid morning is my most productive time. I think I will mostly use that time to clean the house, run errands and work out.
There are a lot of house chores that get neglected because it is too hard to do them while the kids are running around. If I try to do the house chores too much then I get mad at the kids because they are in my way and I do not like yelling at my kids because I am trying to clean and they are dirtying the house. I used to be anal with a clean house when Julianne was younger and I just did not like who I was because I was always worried about her making a mess or not picking up her toys properly. So I dropped that perfection and just went with the theory that the house is just a house and Julianne was my daughter. Why should I worry if my house is perfectly cleaned when she is alive and existing right now. There will be plenty of years when D and I will have our house to ourselves and it can be cleaned and orderly and then I will miss the chaos that comes with children. Life is too short to worry about a supper cleaned house. My house is generally picked up at the the end of the day. The bathrooms could use more cleanings but the toilets are generally cleaned the bathroom counter tops get wiped off weekly but more importantly my kids are not overly anxious about being clean or having a clean house. I think that is important to pass on. They clean their rooms when I ask them and as they get older they will have more chores so that will help. Anyway, enough about that silly topic.
Back to the Nathan and Mallory's school... Nathan and Mallory both did very well when I dropped them off. Mallory had a good time and she told me that she saw one of her friends from last year. Nathan was really tired when I picked him up and he had his pacy and blankie with him. The teachers said that he almost fell asleep while they were eating snack.
Julianne's actual birthday is today. It is amazing that she is seven years old. That seems so old. She is such a fantastic child. Her teacher and classmates made a book and a list about her.
It goes like this:
Julianne is special because:
-she helps change her brother's diapers
-she is a gymnast
-she feeds her two dogs, fish and frog
-she can swim in 4 feet of water
-she was in my kindergarten class
-she is my friend
-she is my neighbor
-she is very nice
-we play together at recess.
It was cute that they put this book together for all the children for their birthdays. it will be fun to go back and look at the book years from now and who is still her friend.
Julianne was born at 3:45 in the morning after about 12 hours of labor. I work up on Sunday morning with contractions but they did not hurt and were happening every 15 to 20 minutes. So in order to distract myself, I worked out, put concrete on our front walkway and worked on our ongoing 1000 piece distraction puzzle we were working on the past few weeks. The contractions keep getting closer and closer together. At 4:00 pm we went to the grocery store and that is when I really felt like this was real. They were starting to hurt and they got to a point when I had to lean over on the grocery cart while I was having them. I remember that his teenager girl saw how pregnant I was and asked when I was having the baby and I said I did not know but hopefully soon. She kind of kept following me around the store. When we got home I had to lay down on the couch. Then I moved to our bedroom because they were starting to hurt. D brought in the tape player and played relaxing music for me. At about 7:00 pm. I told D that I wanted to go to the hospital so that I could get an epidural. He took his time getting us ready, that is what they taught us in Bradley class, and we got to the hospital around 8:00. I was 6 cm when I got there and everyone was supportive and saying that I was doing great. I got hooked up to the monitors and everything was going well. I got off the monitors and got into the bathtub, which did not help much with the pain but I think that moving around and getting into different positions was a distraction which did help with the pain. At around 12:30 a.m. I started pushing. The pushing part was the hardest part. I would get a few minutes of relief and then the contractions started and I really had to push. The pushing urge was so overwhelming. The nurse even asked me when Julianne was about to come out to not push and I was like "whatever" you try to not push when you have the biggest involuntary urge to push. The doctor came in and Julianne was born about 3:45 a.m. It was the best feeling to have her out. I specifically remember the feeling of her in one second and her out the other second. The pain immediately stopped and my stomach felt a ton lighter. She did not start crying right away so that was a little worrisome. She finally did after a couple of minutes and then they put her on my lap after she was cleaned up and bundled. It was amazing to look at her and know that she had just come out. Additionally, the thought of how she grew in my uterus was just mind boggling and amazing. We stayed up until the morning and then called all our family members.
Right after I had Julianne, the doctor was then massaging my uterus from my stomach and I remember telling him that that hurt and if he could please stop it and they kept pulling on the umbilical cord for the placenta to come out. These were both unnecessary kind of painful actions that they were performing. Additionally they gave me an IV and gave me pocitin (sp?) after I delivered which I thought was totally unnecessary and they never really asked me, they just did it. But at that point I was tired and did not really care but was a little bothered by it. It was an amazing experience and I remember it so clearly but I wanted to re-remember it since it was such a special moment. D was so supportive and was by my side the entire time. He was very attentive and tried to make me more comfortable, even though I was mean to him and did not really want to talk to him. Our nurse was great. We requested a nurse that was more familiar and supportive of non-medicated birth and she was great. She had her babies without medication also so that was very helpful. The doctor was OK, not very supportive but he did his job. So overall the experience was positive but we knew that, if possible, our next children would birthed at the local birthing center where a non-medicated birth is more supported, the act of labor is considered a natural normal experience, and the staff is more knowledgeable in natural pain reduction strategies.
So happy birthday to my sweet Julianne. I love you.
Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing my daughter celebrate her 7th birthday
-having a great preschool to send my younger two
-having 2.5 hours to myself every week
-seeing Julianne pretending to be her teacher while she reads to Mallory
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