Sarah's Birth.

Sarah's Birth.

***note: if you are Sarah, please ignore most of this. Everything is under control! Just be happy and birth well, Ina May insists!***

A while ago, Sarah (who lives in Orange County) asked me to be her doula at the birth of her third child, due December 10th. I won't go into the sappy details on how honored this made me feel, and how excited and nervous and amazing I am at the prospect of witnessing my first birth-not-directly-involving me. (But I totally, totally, insanely am all of those things).

Sarah was out of town until this afternoon, at her parents' house in Sonoma. She was having daily mild and painless contractions since earlier in the week, but decided to stay up there for Thanksgiving, and come home normally, even if her contractions upped a bit. It's only an hour and a half flight to Orange County.

As some of you know, Sarah is my best friend in all the land, and was our doula. In fact, she was the only person at our birth other than Roberta the midwife and Karlee the amazing nurse with great taste in music and fabulous hair. In fact, Sarah, Roberta, and Karlee were the only people who knew we were in labor. Wait, I take that back. We had dinner plans with Tessa and Chris that night, and had to cancel. Hah. We really loved the idea of a sort of intimate birthing family. Sarah was incredible. in.cred.ible. She said all of the right things, in all of the right ways, at all of the right times. And also mopped up puke in all of the right ways.

When Sarah told her daughters, Grace and Natalie, all about my birth and what she did to help, she was hoping to impart on them excitement about being there for the birth of their future sibling, and maybe to begin to think about preparing them for loud noises and perhaps the odd "FUCKING POOP!" yell or something. Because Sarah spent most of my labor pushing against my back or pelvic area (which strangely seemed like it would hold all my innards in, lest I turn completely inside out), the girls really latched onto this idea of "pushing the baby out." They couldn't wait to help push their mama's baby out. Swoon!

The main issue with being at Sarah's birth is Oliver. He's exclusively nursing, because we don't count the daily half-spoonful of food that he usually lets fall out of his mouth anyway. And he's taken maybe 3 bottles his whole life, only one of them remotely well. The other times, he begrudgingly drank it, but fussed the whole time and had to be rocked to sleep while crying, which breaks my heart. I have a little hang up that I like him to fall asleep happy.

Tonight, we tried a bottle again, and it seemed fine. However, since he recently cut a tooth, the early part of the night has been really restless for him. He'll fall asleep just fine in our arms, perhaps even too easily, but go instantly from asleep and quiet to crying when we try to put him down. His crying started to get hysterical so I went in there tonight to nurse him and gradually try to lie him down. He's been asleep for over four hours now, which is good for him. I was hoping that he'd wake up so that Erik could maybe see if he could give him the rest of the bottle while he was lying down to quickly get him back to sleep.

I've never left the boy for more than 2 hours, and only once at bedtime (with Erik), which didn't go well at all. Say what you will about me needing my personal time or Erik and I needing dates, but whatever. Me leaving him would be infinitely more stressful and work than just taking him places or staying home. Totally not worth it, and besides, babysitters cost money. Going out takes on a whole new level of budgeting now. I'm sure I will change my tune when he's less dependent on nursing. Or when I find a good wet nurse. Hah.

But in the meantime, I've dusted off the pump and started building up a freezer stash. I've never had a stash before! Pumping is pretty much my personal hell, by the way. I'm also cutting it down to the wire here. Basically, if Sarah goes into real labor tonight or even tomorrow, there's no way I'll have enough milk built up for the trip to Orange County and however long her birth will be (12 hours? who knows. Grace was a multi-day affair, but with Natalie, she got to the birth center at like 9 centimeters, ready to go). I also have no idea how much Oliver eats all day/night. The night thing is because I'm usually half asleep, but we also don't measure anything or have any gauge for how much he eats at a nursing session. As someone in newborn breastfeeding support group once lamented, "boobs aren't clear." He also eats pretty inconsistently throughout the day, which is fine.

Another really sad kink in the plans is that my uncle suddenly passed away yesterday. My parents are leaving for England on Wednesday to be there for the funeral. He probably had a heart attack, because one minute he was complaining about chest pain, and the next minute he just fell over dead. He was my mom's little brother. I'm not going to ramble on too much about this, so I'll just say that logistically it means that my parents won't be able to babysit Oliver while Erik is at work.

This was a long and rambly way of saying that we're basically flying by the seat of our pants at this point, hoping that Oliver will magically be fed and happy. And if there's anything Ollie's good at, it's being fed and happy, so I probably shouldn't be too stressed, should I?