Oh Henry! (The Long Version)

Saturday, October 16 (4 days past due date)

I feel much more calm today about being overdue, and nest all day long methodically. I get all the laundry done, I write thank you cards. I clean our bedroom and bring the Moses basket down and place it next to our bed. After dinner I drag the whole family on a walk to deliver two baby gifts to friends. Three miles later we get home in the dark, and I can barely walk! We all go to bed (except Rich), calm and well-exercised.

Sunday, October 17 (5 days past due date)

12:30 a.m.

Rich goes to bed after finishing writing his high council talk he's assigned to give in our ward and the Leander Ward.

2:48 a.m.

Russell and Graham have both come to our room with bad dreams and camp out on either side of our bed with their blankets and pillows. When Graham joins us, I stumble to the bathroom to find that my mucus plug has started coming out. "This is good news," I say, trying not to be too excited. When I get back into bed, I start feeling contractions! After a while, we start timing them. They seem consistently 6 minutes apart. Is it time?

5:00 a.m.

We call Grandpa Ross and Nana Gurney in Dallas and tell them to get here quick, because we think the babe might be coming soon. Rich starts changing up his talk to be word-for-word in case he needs to have our home teacher read it for him. Contractions are still coming, but not quite so regular.

8:00 a.m.

Rich starts calling people to line up his substitutes. I call my visiting teacher to have her pick up the kids to take them to church. I get in the shower and the contractions stop completely! After a while we decide to cancel our backups and just go to church and see what happens.

9:00 a.m.

We go to sacrament meeting and Rich gives a great talk on prioritizing your life, despite his exhaustion from talk preparation, frightened kids and contraction-timing all night. One of the great parts of his talk is about how we can walk long distances like the pioneers if we can but focus our steps in one direction, instead of walking in circles all the time (my labor apparently wasn't listening!). I feel four or five wimpy contractions during the meeting and text the high councilman Rich lined up to substitute for him in the Leander Ward, telling him that labor has stalled and Rich will be there after all.

10:30 a.m.

Mom and Ross show up at church. Ross stays with Rich, and Mom and I go home and start walking. I feel some really sporadic contractions and decide to take a nap after a while.

12:30 p.m.

Everyone comes home from church and Ross leaves to go to Bentonville to visit Amy. We call Katie in Katy and ask her to come help with the kids so that Mom can come to the birth. I say to her, "I'm pretty sure this baby will come tonight."

6:00 p.m.

Katie shows up with Ellie. We play card games and hang out with the kids. I remember thinking that within an hour or so we will start heading to the hospital. But the contractions won't get regular enough.

8:30 p.m.

Rich and I retreat to our room and start getting more serious about this, with relaxing music and him rubbing my back while we time the contractions. At 11:15, I call and talk to the midwife Lianne. I tell her that my contractions are 4-8 minutes apart, but I hear my voice sounding far too cheerful and excited. She hears it too, and encourages me to take some Tylenol and try to get some sleep until things pick up. Skeptical, I take the Tylenol and go to bed. Sure enough, after a few hours the contractions get to the point that they cease to be worth timing, and I get a few hours of sleep.

Monday, October 18th (6 days past due date)

7:15 a.m.

Send the kids off to school (with Katie's help), telling them that the next time we see them we will probably have a baby. Rich gives me a blessing before they go, blessing me that all will go well. I do some prenatal yoga and cross off more things from my before-birth to-do list.

12:30 p.m.

I finally start feeling contractions worth timing again, just after I finish up working through the stack of papers on my desk. They are 5-8 minutes apart again mostly. Rich and I take another walk. I start packing up the birthing bag again for what seems like the hundredth time.

1:30 p.m.

We leave (with Mom) a little early to go to the doctor's appointment, hoping to just go straight to the hospital. We stop at the Brushy Creek Lake Park for another walk.

2:45 p.m.

We hang out at the doctor's office for a couple of hours for a non-stress test, ultrasound, and appointment with Kathy. I tell the receptionist and Kathy that I am in labor, but nobody seems to really believe me. Thankfully, the non-stress test of 30 minutes confirms what I say, showing 6 good contractions and a baby with a strong heartbeat. Kathy tells me that sometimes dehydration and lack of sleep can stall labor, so I should go home and rest. She examines me and finds that I'm still only dilated to a 2 and 80% effaced, just where I was two weeks ago when they examined me first. How can that be after 36 hours of so many contractions?!?

5:10 p.m.

We start driving home and my contractions finally start becoming longer and stronger and closer together. We decide to stop at Chipotle for dinner. At first we are just going to send Mom in for the burritos while I nap, but I have to go to the bathroom, so we all go in and sit down to eat. By the time we're done eating our burritos and I've been to the bathroom again, we decide it's time to go to hospital. I am getting serious now, the contractions require much more concentration. Rich calls Kathy, and she says to come on in.

5:40 p.m.

We get back to the hospital and get all checked in. I put on the breezy gown and the nurse with lots of makeup (Heather?) stabs me a few times for the hep-lock in case I need an IV later. We turn down the lights and turn on the iPod music.

After this, things get a little foggy, I guess because I'm finally in active labor and I can focus on little else. This part was really really hard! The baby is turned posterior, so I have horrible back labor. I have to have Rich rubbing my lower back HARD during every contraction, or I get panicky. In fact, when everything is said and done, the most noticeable pain is the pain in my lower back where Rich had been rubbing, trying to take the pain away. Mom was also very helpful during the time at the hospital, lifting up the birthing ball, giving me sips of water and ice chips, and gently rubbing my arm and telling me I was doing great. I felt lots and lots of love and support from everyone, and that helped me get through it.

I remember I changed positions a lot. The nurse brought a bar that attached to the bed, and I spent a lot of time squatting on the bed holding the bar during contractions, and falling back onto the bed in between contractions to rest. I also spent some time on my hands and knees with my arms and head on the birthing ball on the bed. When Kathy (the midwife) came into the room in the later stages, she gave me a foot massage with lotion and then suggested that I lay on my side during the contractions so I could get some rest. I think it was at this point that I started moaning during the contractions and feeling like maybe I couldn't stay in control.

Tuesday, October 19th (1 week past due date)

When I looked up at the clock to see that it was past midnight and we had entered into Tuesday, I asked if we could do the epidural now (mostly joking, but not completely). Kathy said it was probably too late now. Then she broke my water all the way and saw that there was meconium in it, so they called in the troops for that (two nurse practitioners). Around 12:30 I was ready to start pushing, and I pushed through 5-6 contractions. Miraculously, a beautiful baby boy popped out just when /i was ready to give up!

1:07 a.m.

Baby born after over 46 hours of labor!
9 lbs. 2 oz.
22 inches long

Yes, I've done this three times before, but I had a hard time believing it was real and that it was over. I sobbed. And sobbed. They whisked this mysterious child to the warmer to clean off the meconium and clear his nasal passages. He cried right away, but you could tell from the raspy sound that his passages were clouded with something. They brought him to me all wrapped up for a few minutes before they whisked him off again to the nursery (with Rich) for more tests. So there I sat (this is always my least favorite part, but at least Mom was there with me) while Kathy helped me push the placenta out (took me about 30 minutes!) and then sewed me up with one stitch where I had torn.

5:30 a.m.

After they poke and prod him in the nursery, give him a bath, then make him sit under the warmer for two hours to recover from the bath, they finally bring him to me to nurse. At first I can't get him to latch on, and I start worrying that I won't ever be able to. But a skilled nurse from Kerala named Manju helped me get him alert enough so that he finally latched on.

Hooray for new baby!

Ready or not, here he . . .

. . . hasn't come yet.

Father-in-law came for a while. He did gazillions of honey-dos while watching me closely, sure he would come at any moment. He didn't.

Dad came for the weekend and we walked the neighborhoods over and over, got excited over extremely irregular contractions, went to Carraba's for the famous labor-inducing dish. He left disappointed.

Isaac prayed over Sunday dinner, asking Heavenly Father to make Mommy start having contractions in the next thirteen minutes. Nothing happened.

Last week and the week before I carried my birthing bag around with me everywhere, just in case. To the temple, stake conference, had it packed up every night before I went to bed. Now its contents are strewn around the house, the house that reached a reasonable level of order so that I felt ready, more or less. Now it's a mess.

Mom came three days before the due date. She watched me, walked with me, shopped with me, ate ice cream with me, helped me primp for a maternity photo shoot (which I was sure I'd never have to go through with), and took me to get a pedicure. This morning I sent her on a train to Dallas to see Amy do her flutterby-butterfly thing and the giant baby Reed. At least there's a baby there to cuddle.

I've never gone past my due date. This is new territory, and it's sorta scary. Is it me? Am I standing in the way somehow? Does this have to do with faith? readiness? worthiness?

The slightly crunchy doctor suggested at my appointment today that I go see my acupuncturist ("You have one, don't you?") and try to get a break from my responsibilities (sideways glance at Graham) for a while and relax.

Relax. Breathe.

The trouble is that I don't think I'll ever feel 100% ready. Did I with the others? I can't remember.

I do believe the mind and spirit have great power over the body. But I wish my body would take over and just push this baby out. Then maybe my doubting mind and spirit could just rise to the occasion.

The thing about due dates . . .

. . . is that they are almost always wrong.

Not the kind you had in college for papers and projects, but baby ones.

And there's the rub. Nothing they taught me in college prepared me to wait for a baby. Nobody told me that after learning how to take charge of my destiny, make my own future, succeed and conquer, that I would then spend ten years learning over and over again that most things in life are out of my control. My job now is all about adapting, waiting, worrying, working toward something that is usually intangible, immeasurable, unpredictable, sometimes unattainable.

And that's harder.

Yesterday on October 12, this baby was due. Or so every one of the 7 or 8 ultrasounds said so (I lost track of how many—remember that I've been learning to focus less on measurable numbers and more on intangibles). But I knew that the baby was due October 22nd. I knew when my LMP was (January 15) and that the child could not easily have been conceived until January 23rd when we arrived in Panama and the romance and "trying" began anew.

Yet I believed the perinatologist, two sonographers, and the many images I took home with me with the due date of October 12 consistent.

But the day has come and gone, and October 22nd feels more like the day now. Can I trust that feeling? I also thought the baby was a girl and that I would have pre-term labor. Ha!

Already I have had 2 grandpas come and stay for awhile, watching me closely and making predictions that surely the baby will come tomorrow . . . or maybe tomorrow. And now I'm about to send 1 Nana Gurney off to Dallas on a train until further notice. I've received around 27 phone messages from people that all say the same thing: "Hi Mindy, are you in the hospital?" Last week I was dilated to a 2, effaced 80%, with the baby's head at +1.

But they are all numbers. And babies defy numbers. They start with due dates, then move on to feeding times, nap times, potty training timelines. Numbers tell me that one of my children is a more advanced reader than the other, but the one with lower numbers actually LOVES reading. Numbers tell me that one of my children is not growing and thriving, but I don't worry because I know he eats and feels happy almost all the time.

Numbers. Due dates. Hogwash.

Over A Decade Ago . . .

I wrote a few poems about being a mother, when my first child was only a fetus. I found them this week, tucked inside a pregnancy journal:

August 31, 2000

Mother me:
a holiday
a heavenly climb
with pain of dreaming,
running . . .
cloud nine inside
the school about why
the Teacher in love above
leads me in
a fantastic flight.

September 7, 2000

This creature under my dress—
We made it.
Our boy will laugh and
smiley dirty
delightfully sleep
Walk in sunshine
shout about
crawl while spring plays
brother be . . .
ours . . .
a boy . . .
made by we!

And 18 days later, Isaac was born.

12 more days to Baby's due date, with me now the mom with a decade of experience (though feeling much more clueless and much less romantic about things than I did back then). Today it feels like this babe might punch his way out any second. Bring it on, Baby!

Boys, Boys, Boys

Though I am not a Twilight fan, I'm intrigued by the phenomenon. I've read the first book and listened to many friends talk at length, squeal with delight, and even decorate their homes with Twilight. Lots of people I know feel groggy today because they stayed up all night to be one of the first ones to see the new movie.

Stephenie Meyer intrigues me. First of all, she's a BYU graduate in English (like me) and she has three little boys (like me). She loves her (mostly female) fans, can't get enough of them, and says one of the saddest days of her life was when she moved out of her apartment full of girls to live with her husband, who happens to be nicknamed "Pancho." So is it any wonder that she would write such girly books? I will make no comment here about what I think about said books, but I do wonder what being the only woman in this family full of boys (did I mention they tell us our new baby is a boy?) might drive me to do.

Here's to hoping I seek other outlets (sorry, Twilight fans, but my writing aspirations don't include vampire books). Oddly enough, I've been into sewing lately (which I've always HATED) and I find myself smiling wistfully at and cozying up more to the little girls in my life. A friend told me that her mother-in-law who had all boys told her that they had been praying for their future daughters-in-law for years and years. Maybe I could expend some of that girl-longing energy with such praying. The most frightening outlet I can think of would be pro-creating over and over from now in hopes of finally getting that girl! With my luck, it would take twenty tries. Must think of other ways to connect with girls. . .

No, I'm afraid I just need to learn to love my boys and be happy with what I've got. Four missionaries, eight smelly gym shoes, four hungry and loud mouths, four kids who are in love with their mom, four daughters-in-law someday.

Summer Snippets

Graham: "Mom, I want to go to THIS preschool where I can learn another language." (after checking out a bilingual Spanish preschool where Graham might go instead of kindergarten next year, mostly because his late birthday would make my baby still four years old for the first two days of all-day kindergarten—so happy he's buying into the plan so far . . .)

Russell: "Didn't my lego ship turn out awesome? Thanks for helping find all the pieces, Mom." (after I spent a long 30 minutes on the floor combing through the legos for the bits his instructions prescribed)

Isaac: Silence. Because he was at scout camp today, where it rained all day but he still had a great time fishing, shooting, playing and learning.

We're on day three of summer. So far my house has been cleaner than it's been for weeks, thanks to boys motivated by dimes to do chores. But part of me can't believe this is only day three. The days certainly stretch long!

How Rozann Woodward (Wherever She Is) Saved My Day

My motivation and energy is almost nil these days. When does the second-trimester burst of energy enter? Any day now would be LOVELY.

This afternoon I was laying down after a long morning with first-graders at the swelteringly hot park. One by one, my mind drowsily browsed through my meager ideas for dinner. Baked potatoes? I'd have to scrub them and wrap every one . . . nope. Spaghetti? Ugh . . . I don't think I can ever eat spaghetti sauce again. Then it came to me, like a burst of light from heaven:

Rozann Woodward's Taco Soup.

Rozann was my amazing roommate my sophomore year of college. She had a car she'd bought herself (a blue sports car!), she had a sassy short haircut to match her short stature, and was majoring in business. She had this great laugh that got her lots of dates and made everyone want to hang out with her. And she came from a family with eight or ten children (can't remember which . . . I had several roommates from large families and I get their family sizes mixed up!). So her mom's recipe for taco soup was easy and cheap:

2 cans creamed corn

2 cans stewed tomatoes

2 cans red beans

1 pkg. taco seasoning

1/2 lb. ground beef (thanks to Katie, I had this in the freezer cooked and ready to go)

Heat and eat with corn chips and cheese.

This afternoon, this recipe saved me. There I was poised for another evening of exhausted failure to produce dinner, and within five minutes I had dinner simmering on the stove, ready for when Isaac had to rush off to Scouts and Rich rushed in on the way to a church meeting. I even fed the neighbor kid, who said with admiration, "When did you make this?"

"Oh, about an hour ago," I said casually, like I've always got dinner ready to go on the stove before 5 pm.

They gobbled it up.

And then, later, my sweet neighbor Kris brought me a gourmet zucchini tomato casserole from her farmer's market surplus, saying, "I remember you made me something like this a while ago," [I did?!?] "and since I had so many tomatoes, I thought I'd share it with you."

In one sweet gesture she fed my still-hungry stomach with vitamin-packed fresh vegetables, and reminded me that I did once cook good stuff and enough to share (and could possibly do it again in the future). Thank you, Kris.

And Rozann, wherever you are, thanks for the taco soup that saved me and my family today. I needed that.