baby

Alexander’s Birth Story

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Alexander’s story kind of starts out like the beginning of a tall tale:

“Alexander was born in a snowstorm. Some say he was the size of TWO babies….”

The legend of Snorty Pig. No sign of a blue ox yet.

I was just so absolutely sure that Alex was going to be born the week of the 14th. As it crept closer and closer to Christmas, I really started to worry he would be born on Christmas Eve and we would end up missing Christmas morning with the kids. After we made it to Christmas day, it felt like a huge weight just lifted off my shoulders.

Then it was the 26th…the 27th…the 28th…nothing. When someone is significantly past their due date, one thing you don’t want to do is keep asking them how they’re doing or if there is a baby yet. Sara was fielding like a text an hour at that point, but there simply wasn’t anything to report.

I went to work on Monday, and the weather was just terrible. Slush and ice, strong winds, just basically a nasty winter day (something we haven’t had a lot of this year). Around 1:30 Sara called and said, “I’m not sure, but I think you better come home.”

By the time I got a train home and got the kids packed up and shipped off to a friend’s house, she was a lot more sure and we left immediately for the hospital. (Side note: Sara’s parents were standing by, but we didn’t want them to travel all the way to Chicago in the storm. Surprise, Erielle! Two extra house guests for the night!)

We walk out in the cold and snow to go to the car and, I kid you not, someone had their car stuck in the snow, blocking the parking lot of our building. What are the odds of that?? I went over to help push the guy out and I thought, “this guy is never going to believe me”. However, he was doing a pretty good job getting himself out and I decided it would be quicker to let him do his thing then stop to explain “you’re blocking my car and MY WIFE IS IN LABOR” (although I guess it would have been a good story for that guy to tell).

Finally, we made it to the hospital at about 5:20. Unfortunately, so did everybody else. No room in the inn: every room was full, including triage, and there was literally a line of people waiting to get into labor and delivery.

However, to be quite frank, I’m really not sure what all those women were doing there. They were just chillin’ in wheelchairs, checking their phones or whatever. Sara, on the other hand, was in all-caps LABOR.

The rest of them were made to wait outside in the waiting room, but they told us to stay inside the doors so as not to “scare” the others. It was probably for the best, since it meant that Sara spent the worst hour and a half of labor holding onto the wall a couple of feet from the check-in desk. I think it really gave them a little extra…encouragement to finally find us a room.

Sara kept repeating two things to anybody who came into the room:

  1. My right foot is broken
  2. With both of my previous children it took over 2 hours to get an epidural; let’s see if we can do better this time, shall we?

Despite various snafus due to the overcrowding, they did manage to get her an epidural about an hour after we got into the room (we’ll just forget about that hour and a half in the hallway), and things got a lot easier after that. Even though it took another 4 hours from that point, there was always progress, so it seemed like time was moving relatively fast.

And then it was time, and 10 minutes later (!!!) Alexander was here!

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Now, with both of the other kids we found out the sex before the baby was born, but this time we didn’t. We have all the girl stuff and boy stuff, so we figured we were covered either way (in other news, looking forward to finally getting rid of half of all of that stuff!) (Scratch that, 2/3rds — most of it is girl stuff.)

Having done it both ways, I have to say, I much prefer to know. “It will be a surprise!” everybody always says. Yeah, well, it’s always a surprise, whenever you find out. One minute you don’t know, and then the next minute you know. Surprise!

I found the biggest downside of not knowing is that we couldn’t officially settle on the name, and we didn’t have a pronoun to call the baby. “It’s going to be so cute when it’s born, isn’t it?” just seems wrong and saying, “your little brother or sister” every time is a mouthful. So I just didn’t feel as much of a connection to the baby before it was born.

I guess it was a surprise when Sara said it was a boy, but at the same time there was a lot going on just then (too much for them to comment on the sex, I guess). I was feeling very emotional anyway, and I don’t know that I really registered much of a surprise in the moment.

What definitely did surprise everybody was how big he was. 10 lbs 2 oz. and 21.5 inches.

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That was about a full pound bigger than we had expected based on his last ultrasound, but I have to say I’m glad about that. If they had realized how big he was going to be, they probably would have pushed for an induction (or even worse, a c-section). But they didn’t know, and what they didn’t know didn’t hurt them!

So Alex was here; our big baby in a snowstorm.

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Finally it was time for Evelyn and Oliver to come and visit.

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Were they excited? Well, you could say they were.

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I’m sure there will be more updates as they come, but expect them to be in fits and starts as our lives find their new levels.

(Note that the last two photographs come from our lovely photographer / surprise babysitter Erielle…more on that in a couple of days.)

That’s one good looking baby

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara and I have been debating on whether he looks more like me or more like her. Thoughts?

good looking baby

What a difference a year makes

/ Shane / 1 Comment

See if you can guess which one of these sleep reports from Sara’s fitbit is from last night (WITH a brand new baby), and which one is from one year ago today (WITHOUT a brand new baby):

one year later

Close call, I know. I guess this is the new normal…

My First Sweater

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I have knit my very first sweater!

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Okay, so Sara says that picture might be misleading, so here’s one with a dinosaur, for size:

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That’s right, I knit a huge, dinosaur-sized sweater!

Alright, alright, so it’s a baby sweater. But still, a sweater’s a sweater, right?

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I think my knitting has improved at some point without me realizing, because this was actually pretty easy. Plus, it gave me something to do every day on the train. That’s right, I was that guy (hey, it was less weird than the lock!) I was a little nervous about finishing this in time, but it turns out I needn’t have worried.

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I will certainly add an “in-use” picture when applicable!

The Miracle Cure for getting your kids to sleep

/ Shane / 2 Comments

When we last saw our heroes, they had completely given up on getting Oliver to sleep. Boy how two months can change things!

After the last post, it got worse if anything. We had him back in our room, but it was unpleasant for everyone. At night he would be tossing and turning in bed like a maniac, punching me in the face, and just generally keeping us all up all night. It didn’t help that he happened to be getting 3 molars at this time, but I remember there was even one night where he was awake for 4 hours right in the middle of the night. Brutal.

The worst part is, the 6 weeks we spent trying to get him to sleep on his own in the other room seemed to have done some permanent damage. He was very, very suspicious that we were going to leave him, so every little sound would bring him instantly to his feet, screaming. Since we would wake him up whenever we went into the room, Sara and I took to sleeping on couches in the living room every night until he woke up the first time. Putting him to sleep was a challenge as well, since he was suspiciously alert for any kind of attempt to leave the room. So turning the pages of my book would wake him up, to say nothing of actually trying to creep out, open the door, etc. My only recourse was to wait for at least an hour until he was deeply asleep before I could sneak out. This was a very frustrating hour! We got used to walking on eggshells to avoid waking him.

Now, we put him into the crib in his bedroom with Evie and he quietly goes to sleep by himself. A couple of times he’s slept through the entire night.

Believe me, being able to type that sentence is more flabbergasting to me than anyone. So what was the miracle cure? Waiting until the time is right!

It’s very clear to me now that there was nothing we could have done to make him go to sleep easily back then. This time it went so smoothly and easily, that it was clear the time was just right. Why was the time wrong before? Who knows. Maybe he just wasn’t old enough to have the skills to be able to do it. Maybe it was the molars. Maybe he was in too much of a “mommy” phase. Every kid is different, and every kid is in different situations at different times.

The first time we tried to let him “cry it out” for over an hour multiple nights, and it didn’t work. This time it took 20 minutes the first night, and that was it. The first time it went on for 6 weeks. This time it was over in a matter of days.

It still hasn’t been perfect. The first few days he was getting up at 4 a.m. But that is a different problem, and that problem we could work on (we’ve had some success in the past with this issue). He’s still waking up a time or two some nights. But again, this is vastly better than it was. And sometimes now he can even put himself back to sleep! Also, his awakenings are increasingly after 4, so I think that it is all related to him wondering when we are going to come in and get him. Hopefully the “ghost light plan” (a lamp with a book in front of it in this case) will solve this issue.

I have to say, the whole thing makes me feel so much better. You hear these stories about parents who let their children cry it out when they’re 10 months old, and it only takes 5 minutes and then they sleep blissfully through the night. I used to think that these stories weren’t true (lies, all lies I tell you!) because the alternative was that I was somehow a bad parent. Now I think they might be true after all. Your kid is ready when he’s ready. Maybe for some kids, that’s 10 months. For Oliver, it wasn’t.

So, just like all Miracle Cures, it’s not as easy as it sounds. You have to determine when the “right time” is for your child. That part has no easy answers. But the good news is you have permission to stop and wait if it’s not working. I wish we would have done that the first time, instead of trying to force it for 6 weeks.

But when it finally does work, boy is it fantastic! Sara and I feel like we have a new lease on life. The sun is brighter, flowers smell better, food tastes better. We even had two nights in a row where we played board games, since the kids were asleep early at the far end of the house. Board games!

It’s almost like I’m human again.