Xiobhan: All About the X

Green Bay = Greatness

You have no idea how homesick for Wisconsin this makes me feel:

Sorry. This is what you get on four hours of sleep a night. Note to any one-childers out there contemplating a second: Do it while you are still young. The older you get the more it kicks your ass.

Loo loo loo

Courtesy of Jon. Thanks for that little ear worm. I think. I made the mistake of showing it to Beck, "Again!" and "Again!" and "Again!" and now I have my own little blond Butters running around the house.

I've had a few inquiries about the name, "Lucille Marian." My son just had a tantrum to end all tantrums and has, from lack of oxygen, passed out next to his bed. We'll call this little break, "nap time" and I will resist sharing all of the sordid out-of-control hysterical fit details. I will share that at one point I yelled, "the power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!" and an "A Your Adorable" board book came flying at my head.

Lucille
My Husband's god mother. When I first met Lucille, former model and opera singer, she was wearing red leather pants and at 65 girlfriend was wearing them well. He could never pronounce Lucille so he called her Lulu. It stuck. She lives up in Ottawa with her former hockey playing husband Rod. When we told her what we had named the baby, we could hear her yelling at him, "HEY! Hey RAHD! Dey named dah baybee LOO LOO!!!" (That was the best I could do phonetically on a very thick Canadian accent.)

Marian
My aunt in Ireland. I have written about her before as she is simply my favorite. She is wonderful and wise. Kind and generous. She never had kids of her own. Never found the right person. She came over for my brother's wedding and while at a bar the night before I whispered in her ear the name. It was a mistake and bad timing. She started crying and spent the next 20 minutes in the bathroom pulling herself together while everyone asked where she was. She later said, "This gives my life so much meaning." I don't think she understands the impact she has had on all of our lives. I hope she does now.

Here is Beck singing the Lululu song to his little sister after a little new baby photo shoot (go to Flickr for a sample of those.):

Lulu

Lucille Marian
October 8, 2007
6:27 am
7 lbs, 19 inches

Not a great shot, I know. All babies look like this, red, squishy and swaddled. I could have stolen it off of Flickr, right? But it is not just any baby -- that is my baby. Baby Lulu.

So we all know the story. That I was due October 26th, but was circus freak big, so they were inducing me on the 15th. Well, she came on the 8th. I am about 90% sure that we had our due date right because I was tracking these things. I also drank loads of free wine that night and looked like this.

So, on Sunday night we were having a nice dinner with friends and family when I started contracting. "No big deal," I thought. I took breaks between steak, potato, grilled portobellos and chocolate mousse to manage them. Given that this little dinner party was at our house, I didn't feel right making a big deal out of what I thought were just really big Braxton-Hicks. (Have I been in Virgina too long? Is that a Southern thing? "Don't want to upset the guests by giving birth during dinner! Lordy what a perfect way to ruin a nice party!")

I started timing them. It's crazy! It's just like WebMD says! The minute that microwave clock turned, bam! Contraction! 7:00. 7:10. 7:20. 7:30. I called my doctor and they said to go in and so we did, but not before I had a nice piece of angle food cake. (Hey, labor makes you hungry. Little did I know that I would have to suffer alone for another 5 hours in Labor and Delivery because I had a) sent my husband home, "This will pass, you go home and sleep." and b) couldn't be scheduled for anything because of my full stomach.

By 5am I called Sand back who felt properly guilty for being at home while I was there gritting my teeth watching Donal Trump Foreclosure infomercials, and told him he better get back to the hospital. I'm still not sure which is more painful, the contractions or the 3am programming but the TV went to 100 and had to be clicked through ONE WAY before you could start over. I was getting a blister.

So in I went for a C-section. I considered VBAC, but only for about 5 minutes as there was no telling how much longer my labor would go on for before the rest of my body caught up. Everything was great and fine, but I will say my epidural sucked. I was in a bad position, tense, and contracting. It was really, effing painful. I tell you all this because two days later, my head started to hurt. And then I couldn't move my neck. I had an "epidural headache" which meant that there was a slow leak in the fluid surrounding my spinal column and it was affecting my brain. Read about it here. Go on. I'll wait.

Epidural headache

So, the cure for this unpleasantness? (And by unpleasantness I mean, "ohmyfuckinggod remove my head right now and just throw it away.") ANOTHER epidural. Basically, they take blood from your arm and shoot it into the same hole in your back to block the leak. This is called a "blood patch." The first one didn't take, ("Yes! The head and neck ache came back!) so I had to have ANOTHER. I was in the hospital for five days. It has been a week and the pain in my back is still so great that I am useless with out consistent doses of major narcotics.

I hear squeaking, so I'll need to finish this later. The good news is that I have a beautiful little girl. And some sweet, sweet drugs.