Return of the charts! G = 18 months, F = 3 years

Apparently it has been TEN MONTHS since I updated this sucker. Pathetic. Insert usual disclaimers here about them not necessarily having their appointments at the same week of age, etc.

Probably we also need a disclaimer about taking the measurements with a grain of salt because of the small numbers we're dealing with, the fact that we've switched doctors a couple times and they measure a little differently, and also that small boys are wiggly. I think the main takeaway is that our boys are large, and will continue to be large. What you can't see here is that Finn's added another couple inches to his height since last November. The kid is TALL, or at least he seems that way to us.

My mom visited last week. This was great fun, as always, but this time it was also extraordinarily fortunate because the boys' day care closed for a week for spring break. Spring break!! Don't get me started. One of the days she was here we actually remembered to take a few photos. This is probably the best one.

And here's one of the outtakes that should give you a flavor for how the session went.

Jonathan is out of town again for a chunk of this week. The boys and I aren't letting it get us down, though. For one thing, Finn is very excited to be moving up to a new room at school, the Busy Bees. He has been itching to get over there, and apparently his "visit" to that room to start settling in today lasted from an hour after he showed up at school until the time I came to pick him up. Both the teachers told me he was a lot of fun to have in class.
In case that wasn't enough, the weather has finally turned gorgeous. We ate outside tonight even though the logistics were a little daunting for a single parent evening. Well worth it, I think.

Graham is nine months old. (And I got a new job and we're moving.)

We had Graham's nine month appointment yesterday. As expected, he's still chub-o-licious.
22 lbs., 11 oz. (81st percentile), 28 1/4 inches tall (50th).
And for those of you who read the blog but aren't on Facebook, I got a new job! In August I will be starting as an Assistant Librarian at UC Santa Cruz, where Jonathan is a professor. Sometime around then we will also be moving, hopefully into the house that we had a bid accepted for on Monday. It's been a pretty exciting week! We'll provide full details on the house once it's closer to actually being ours, but it's 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, about 1300 square feet, huge great backyard, hardwood floors, built around 1950, and we love it. Especially because it's conveniently near a pond, a great elementary school, and the university. So that's awesome.

Cool things about Santa Cruz include being able to have your first kite-flying experience happen to be next to the ocean.


Not cool things about Santa Cruz are that it is farther from Helen and Happy Hollow.

Also farther from our pediatrician, Dr. Lee, who was already a bit of a drive north. Fortunately, he's recommended a couple folks in Santa Cruz. Now I just need a dentist, optometrist, primary care doctor for grownups, and a stylist. Bakeries appear to be covered, so that's good. Here are the boys with Dr. Lee yesterday. He's been absolutely great, and Finn is always excited to go see him. Yesterday he insisted Dr. Lee listen to his chest as well as Graham's, but didn't seem to mind skipping the ear light.

Graham's officially big now

Graham had his six-month checkup Monday. He weighed 19 lbs., 4.5 oz, measured 26.5 inches tall, and had a head circumference of 44 cm. This puts him ahead of Finn, who was 18 lbs. 11.1 oz at his six-month checkup. Hooray charts!

Dr. Lee was impressed with how well he sits, unconcerned about his complete lack of interest in rolling over, and predicted the arrival of the second tooth any day now. And the day after his appointment, there was the second tooth. More will be coming soon, I'm sure. This week he's going to try avocados and carrots, and last week he added sweet potatoes to the list. We have yet to find anything he doesn't like. This includes paper. Mmmmm, paper.

Finn just came in soaking wet from playing in the "raindrops," which he enjoys immensely. I dumped about half a cup of water out of each rain boot - very effective accessory, obviously. He seems very glad to have both of us around so much (Jonathan even stayed home most of Tuesday and Thursday), and is back to his standard hijinx. Current favorite phrases include "Ready to play ball," "Sock it to me," "Don't play with me Graham!" (when Finn's upset and Graham smiles at him) and "What are you talking about, Mama?" (when I've been discussing things like smartphones or carseat specs with Jonathan).

Four month checkup!

Graham had his four-month checkup last Monday. He's about a pound lighter at 18 weeks than Finn was at 19 weeks; we think Finn's gigantic head is responsible for most of the difference. 16 lbs 8 oz., 25 inches tall, head 42.5 centimeters around. Other than his current cold, everything looks great. Look, new chart!

And Graham has a a new hobby: blowing raspberries. He mostly does it when bored or frustrated. It seems to be his way of saying "I tire of you. Something else, please." Other times he does it just for fun while sitting in his chair riding his invisible bike. Here's a movie:

Graham says ppbbblllt. from Katie on Vimeo.
Finn had his first parent teacher conference on Friday. Well, I suppose Jonathan and I did, since Finn wasn't there. We learned all sorts of interesting things - did you know Finn can count to ten? We didn't. Apparently we had never asked right. It seems like every week he's doing something new - this week he suddenly seemed to get the hang of first person pronouns ("I like Liam." "I would like some more water." So much better than "more water! more water!") and this morning he rode his bike all the way to and from the farmers market instead of riding in the stroller. That's a little over a mile and a half total, hills and all - a long ride for someone who'd never really made it off the block before. On the way there the pace was pretty slow, but on the way home he really kept us moving, especially on the hills. I left my camera at home so I could carry more goodies, but here's a shot of the kind of attitude that got him there.
More at Flickr.
One more thing, speaking of the conference - I mentioned earlier how Finn has a giant head? We heard from his teacher that he likes to follow some of the 3 and 4 year old boys around to try and play like/with them. They wear buckets on their heads to be "soldiers," but Finn's head is too big for the bucket to fit. Poor Finn!

2 year & 2 month doctor visit

It was a full day here yesterday: the boys had back to back doctor's appointments for their 2 year and 2 month checkups. Both are doing fine, and I finally had enough stats to make a cool chart (Graham is red/orange/yellow, Finn is green/blue/purple):

It's a little misleading because Finn was 10 weeks old at his 2 month appointment, and Graham was only 8.5, but you get the general idea. The most interesting tidbit is that while Finn's head size was always in the 70-85th percentile, Graham's is more like 30. So no giant noggin for him, although he is trying to make up for it in overall head mass by adding on the chins.
After seeing Dr. Lee we checked out the new Sunnyvale Target, where they have carts that seat 3 kids. Finn was very excited to ride in the "trailer," as he called it.

And then before Jonathan headed in to work we squeezed in a pre-Thanksgiving haircut for Finn. This was the first time he sat on one of the chairs (well, horse) by himself rather than in his Daddy's lap, so that was exciting.

And here's a video of Graham from about 10 days ago in what seems to be his favorite spot in the universe: his changing pad. Last week I just left him there while I went and showered and got dressed, and he was still having a great time when I came back.

Graham on the changing pad from Katie on Vimeo.
Monday Graham started at day care, and seemed to enjoy it - he was grinning and watching a mobile when we came to pick him up. We thought Finn would be super excited to have Graham come to "school" with him, but so far it hasn't made much of an impression.
Things are almost kinda sorta starting to calm down around here (I still need to log 50 or so internship hours by the end of the semester), so hopefully I'll get Flickr updated soon. Happy Thanksgiving!

A busy morning

Yesterday Finn had his 15-month doctor's appointment. Everything went well, and he took his shot like a champ. 15 seconds after it was done, he was all set. He's got a short memory. He's now around 75th percentile in height and weight. Previously he'd been middle of the pack in terms of height. Presumably he'll end up pretty tall, since Katie is 5'8" and I'm 6'2". You know that he's a big boy now because he got to stand on the real scale. They didn't lay him down in the baby scale. No sir!

That morning we drove Katie to work, went to a park, and then went out for fluffy restaurant-quality pancakes (at a restaurant). He is a big fan. Finn was popular at work. Here he is in Katie's cubicle. The shirt is "Germagnet.'

At the park there was a busload of 3/4-years olds, so for quite awhile he just stared in awe. Eventually "we" decided to just hang out in the little-kids side of the park, and we had a good time. He's never been a fan of swings, but he enjoyed this ride for almost a minute. Later on there was also a squirrel that took up a lot of his attention.

He's a swinger from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Sleeping through the night?

I don't believe it! I don't be-lieve it! He made it through the night! First time ever, at age 54 weeks. We only even heard a little peep from him at 10 pm, and then at 5:40 a.m. the whining started, but since we get up at 6, this counts as making it! It'd be pretty sweet if we could assume that he'll stay asleep, so that we could go to bed at 10 often, instead of, say, 9. Also, at daycare today he napped for 1:45. Only my Mom has ever got him to sleep longer than that. He apparently wakes up calmly and looks around, rather than screaming bloody murder. Strange. So maybe we need a napping mat at home, too.

Finn was in good shape for his 1-year checkup with Dr. Lee. Finn was a little afraid of him, though. 65% weight, 55% height, and 84% head. So, he's slimming down a bit, and the height and large head are tracking about the same. Seems good to me.

When my parents were out for his birthday we made a little trek out to a neighborhood park that has swings on a couple of slides. He'd never done either one. Both were fun, but his favorite was the slide. We'd just set him up there, and he'd decide when he wanted to go down--he did the slight inching forward by himself. It was really interesting to see him make the decision (time and time again) to throw caution to the wind to throw himself down the slide. He LOVED it. It strikes me as a very different decision than, "I want to eat this," or "I'm going to walk over there." It was very cool to see.

Videos of standing and making noises

For those of you who wanted more than percentiles, Finn's stats from his last checkup, when he was 9 1/2 months old, are: weight, 21 lbs 11.8 oz; height, 28.5 inches; head circumference, 47 cm. Why that last one's in metric, I have no idea.

Our doctor asked whether Finn was pulling himself up to stand yet, and I said "yeeees, he HAS pulled himself up." He'd first done it nearly a month earlier, but now, as Jonathan mentioned, he does it constantly. He's also good at sitting himself up from a lying down position, and spinning around, and scooting, and standing on his hands and knees, and cruising. Last week he'd been standing, sitting, standing, sitting, standing, over and over again, so I went to get the camera, and got this instead:


Standing and being goofy from Katie on Vimeo.

It's a good example of his "omygod this is the coolest thing ever" face that usually accompanies the Darth Vader breathing that he does about light bulb packaging, pieces of bread, and other extraordinary objects. I've watched it about a hundred times so far. This one, from a few minutes later, actually shows him pulling himself up:

Standing, squeaking, and growling from Katie on Vimeo.

It's also got him shrieking and a bit of him making his weird growly noise. He growls A LOT. We're always expecting him to bust out with "THERE IS NO BABY ONLY ZUUL." Is this normal?

Bonus video - putting the balls in the ball drop toy:

Showing off for Mama from Katie on Vimeo.
I don't really have any new photos - just some cabbage and my cubicle at my internship. Maybe next week?

Back from Bern, See More Chubs

Apparently Finn sleeps better when I'm home. Why that might be is not clear. Maybe I wear him out more, and he enjoys the peace of mind (not piece of mind) of having daddy at home. We're still not at "no wakeups," but a few nights recently his only wakeup was at 3 to 4 a.m. Of course, he woke up for the day at 5:45.

Bern, Switzerland, was . . . pleasant. A nice and pretty town, but not one of the jewels of Europe. It is on a river. It's old town is famously nearly unchanged since the 1300s. Below is the tallest building in town--a church. I went up about 2/3 of the way and got some nice shots.

The best part of the church were the fantastic stained glass windows. The sun came out when I was inside, and I got some great shots. This one below is my favorite.

Finn is pretty much a little maniac now. He can pull himself up on anything, sit back down, and do it again and again. He can move from chair to chair, and move across small gaps. A chubby little Spiderman? His excited noises range from loud squeals to loud Darth Vader breathing. He's trying to give up the army crawl for real crawling now, too. Also, his 5th tooth is coming in, so drooling is at its highest levels in 6 months. Katie brought him to his 9 month checkup recently. 48% height, 62% weight, 84% head circumference. Big noggin!

Leaving on a Jet Plane / 6 months!

Tonight we'll be packing up a large suitcase, a big backpack, a small backpack, a purse, another bag, a car seat, and a diaper bag, in preparation for our non-stop flight to Boston tomorrow morning. In Boston I have two scientific meetings (I'm giving a talk at each), and we'll be staying at 2 different hotels and with 2 different sets of friends.

Thankfully we won't have to bring all of our baby gear, as we'll be renting a stroller and exersaucer from www.babysawaynewengland.com. They even deliver! The family has emerged relatively unscathed from Katie's final school projects, which are now essentially done. Katie is looking forward to relaxing in Boston Common with Finn while I'm droppin' my science. This will also be a nice test to see if Finn starts feeling better after 12 days away from the Northern California air / daycare air.

His 6-month checkup yesterday went as well as expended. (Yesterday was also his 6 MONTH BIRTHDAY! Where has the time gone?!) He still has the crud, but is otherwise healthy. His growth is slowing a bit: 18 lbs, 11 oz (73rd percentile) and 26 inches (50% percentile.) He's still got a big noggin though (80th percentile). I think the next solid food we'll try will be bananas.

Is it vacation yet?

Look, he got bigger again!

He's slowing down, though - only 18 lbs 8.5 ounces when we took him to the doctor last week (us? at the doctor? really?).

My mom was here last week, which was great, especially with finals creeping up on me. I think if I can just make it to the end of the semester, I can breathe again, but it's been pretty intense lately. Homework, baby stuff, house stuff, work stuff, planning this Boston trip (a trip I'm looking forward to very much, by the way)... I've been going a little nuts lately, when I'm not just curled up in a ball humming loudly. The sleep deprivation doesn't help. It was nice to be able to hand Finn over to Grandma Sheryl in the mornings and grab a nap, and he seemed to have a blast. He was a real chatterbox while she was here, but seems to have quieted down a bit since she left.

The LASIK went great, and I'm seeing better than 20/20. The surgery itself wasn't painful at all, but it was WEIRD. I mean, I've walked into a candlelit restaurant in Vienna to hear tuxedo-clad musicians playing the Chicken Dance. I've moved to New York, sight unseen, from Iowa. I've been to a completely dry wedding reception. But this was the strangest experience of my life, easily. You're awake the whole time, and all you feel is pressure, just staring at these lights, and then the lights disappear, and ... I guess you just have to try it. The end result couldn't be better though, and it's nice to join the land of the seeing. Yay for no more glasses with baby fingerprints!

Finn's a great sitter these days - we got a video of him playing with Murray today that I hope to get up later in the week, but in the meantime, there are a boatload of new photos over at Flickr, and here's one with my mom:

The Soft Underbaby

Finn is pretty big, as babies go. We already knew that, but his 4-month-old appointment confirmed it. He is 17 1/4 pounds, which is 86th percentile. Doctor Timmy even asked us what we were feeding him. Big, but not nearly as big as me; I was 20 pounds at his age. He's also 68th percentile in height.



Since he's got such a prominent 2nd chin, it is necessary to clean the crud out of there pretty frequently. We've taken to calling it the soft underbaby. He's usually pretty good about it, and he'll even giggle because he's pretty ticklish.

Finn has a cold, but he doesn't let that keep him from having a good time.

Finn's caught his first cold. It's mostly just a throat/sinusy-sounding-thing- no fever, hardly any runny nose, and it doesn't seem to bother him too much most of the time. He has been sleeping more (though not as soundly) and eating well. He just gets cranky a little more often, for which I can't blame him, since it must suck to not be able to control when you cough or sneeze, and then to add insult to injury we keep sticking stuff up his nose.
It was officially more than normal baby snortiness as of about Saturday, so we started running the humidifier and having him sleep at an incline then (well, actually, he sleeps in an inclined position most of the time, so we were a step ahead on that one). The cough and congestion got a little bit worse every day over Presidents' Day weekend, and we weren't sure how long these things were supposed to last, so we called the doctors' office yesterday. They said that it sounded like a basic cold, but since he was so little, we could go ahead and come in and they'd squeeze him in to check on things. Dr. Lee confirmed that his lungs sounded fine, much to our relief, and there really wasn't anything to do but keep an eye on him and wait it out. So that's what we're doing.
But - as a bonus of making the trip to the office, we have more official weight data: 15 pounds, 13.something ounces. Big Finn!
In other news, Finn is officially ticklish. Here's proof:


The best and biggest giggles, of course, we never have the camera handy for. For instance, just now he was getting cranky while I was writing this, so I danced and sang a bit to the Cake song that's playing on the stereo, and he thought that was hilarious.
To be fair, it probably was.

6 out of 7 babies agree: He's a big'un!

We took Finn in for his 2-month checkup. The fun news: He's in the 87th percentile in height and 85th in weight. So we'll say 86th overall. He's a good eater and shot way up in percentiles since week 2. The not-so-fun news: 3 immunizations! But he did very well, and within 3 minutes he was calm, and within 15 minutes (including some milk from Katie) he was back to normal. The doctor said that his "neck deficiency" was normal for a 2-month-old. So we can look forward to the day he has a real neck and maybe only one chin.

Finn is 24 1/4 inches and 13 lbs, 14 oz. He has a long way to go to get to 20 lbs at 4 months, like his daddy. My head was way bigger though.

Quite interestingly, one's head basically stays the same size, relative to others of the same age, with time. Finn's head circumference is in the 70th percentile, and should always stay there, approximately. Unless he hits the HGH too hard like Barry Bonds.

In other news, the professorin' is going well. It is a long commute door-to-door (55 to 60 minutes), but I can handle it. I'm excited.

Tids and Bits

We're back home in California. I'm sure that we'll post even more about Christmas in Minnesota and Iowa in the comining days. Finn was even better on the flight back than he was on the flight out, so that was a great relief! Today I thought I'd write on the status of various Finn aspects, as I see them, from the past couple of weeks.

Weight: Although we thought he was about 11 pounds by now (almost 7 weeks), jumping on and off the scale with and without him this last week yielded something around 12.5 pounds! I suspsect it is mostly in chins 2 and 3. Last week we met Owen Schnell, son of Sarah and Evan, who is a very big 18 pounds at age 4 months. I was describing his, ah, incredible girth to my Mom when she cut me off to tell me that I was 20 pounds (!) at that age. We'll see where Finn ends up.

Sleep: We may have tricked you into thinking that he sleeps in his crib. Ha! Actually he sleeps on his bouncy chair in the crib, which is a habit that we need to break ASAP. He likes the vibrations and the slight incline. Luckily we had such chairs in MN and IA.

Car seat: He's not very good at it. The back-seat rear-facing car seat has got to be pretty lonely for him. More often than not, Katie sits in the back with him and he holds one of her fingers. So I feel like a chauffeur. It also allowed us to monitor his temperature in the back seat. He, um, kinda overheated in Iowa while wearing his super-thick winter sack during a long car ride. We felt pretty bad and pretty stupid.

Eating: He was doing great with the 1-bottle-of-pumped-milk-per-day program until about 10 days ago, he just stopped without warning. He'd eat 1/3 of a bottle scream a lot and give up. This is not a good situation, since he'll have to eat via bottles all day at daycare. Katie decided to buy some nipples that allow for a faster flow into his mouth, and that seems to be going much better, although it has only been 2 days.

Smiling: He likes to smile! He does not scowl all day long! I promise.

Activities: Mornings and evenings are fun and happy with lots of kicking and noisemaking. Afternoons are grumpy times with sleeping and crying. You'd have thought that this would have become clearer to us sooner, but it took the trip to the midwest to make his patterns clearer. Jeanna (my sister) and Mary (my Mom) said that he managed to flip over from his back to his tummy on the bed, an advanced "5-to-6 month" maneuver. I was skeptical, but then Katie and I saw him flip to his side. I think that the soft bed allowed for an easier flip. He really has a strong kick.

The most important thing for our family over the next 2 weeks is to get into a good routine such that we can all go to work (Katie: 3 days a week, Jonathan: 4) and daycare (Finn: 2 days a week) without being harried messes.

2-week weigh-in

The kid is chubbin' up nicely. :) He is above his birth weight by 2 oz and is now at 8 lbs 13 oz. That means he is eating well. I could have told the doctor that from the stunning number of diapers that I've changed in the past 2 weeks. In another few weeks he may transition to only several poopy diapers a week, rather than 8-10 per day. Maybe the doctor was just kidding me. FYI, our doctor's name is Timmy, and he looks about my age. I guess I'm a doctor of Planetary Sciences, but there is a big difference! He seems outstanding, of course.

The Fortney gang headed out yesterday. We toured the Bay area a bit and visited family from Sacramento (shout-out to the Blahas) and Salinas (the Reeves-Fortney clan). Finn was much prodded and much admired. He seems to be re-adjusting to his usual schedule now.

This week I'm going to go into work at NASA Ames for at least a half day. :)

And they said the learning curve was steep in law school

Trixie Tracker updating has fallen by the wayside, as anyone who's checked will have noticed. Right now we're focusing on accomplishing the eating and sleeping. We'll work on recording it later. Clocks have much less meaning than they used to - all time has become relative, and runs in three to four hour cycles. And the crib cam will be more interesting once we can get him to sleep in it for longer than half an hour.

We had a pediatrician appointment yesterday, and Finn's weight has already leveled off, at 8 lbs 3 oz, so that's good. Last night he slept for two THREE HOUR stretches. We're trying not to extrapolate this few days of data into believing that we have the easiest baby ever, but it's hard. Also, at first he had three modes - screaming, eating, and sleeping. Over the past few days there's this new category, "nothing's-wrong-I'm-just-awake-and-looking-around" that I must admit is my favorite, and there's more of it all the time.

My mom has been here since Friday. Before the birth we weren't sure if we would want anyone around the first week or two, but I'm so glad she could come earlier rather than later. I'm not sure how we would have survived the weekend otherwise, and today will be ... interesting... after she leaves. She got in a lot of Finn-holding time, picked up after us when we weren't looking, and even made us a cake. Thanks to her we actually went out to dinner for Jonathan's birthday last night, which was exhausting but fun. I realize this reveals what a dope I am, but I didn't expect to be this ... beat. I think I thought, sure, I'll be sleep deprived, but we'll deal with that. I completely failed to take into account the physical toll of pushing another human being out of my body and then having to put myself back together again. So I'm trying to take it easy, and this blog post is the most challenging thing I have lined up for the day.

Day 0-1

Short version: Finn McGovern Fortney was born Tuesday, November 13, 2007, at 9:20 am. He weighed 8 lbs., 11 oz., and was 20 1/2 inches long. He has lots of pretty dark hair and blue eyes. Labor started about 3:30 am on Monday morning, and we went to the hospital around 7:00 at night. He came out the old fashioned way, with help from drugs (and lots of people), and started screaming right away. Got a 9 on his Apgar at 1 and 5 minutes (for those of you in the know on such things). The pediatrician says he looks great, and both Jonathan and I are tired but good, and very happy.

Now, for those of you who want the long version...

Finn was in no hurry. At 41 weeks, still no contractions that were strong enough to be uncomfortable, and few that were strong enough to feel. We went down the list of things that could/should get things started; I went to an acupuncturist; we waited. Our midwife, Lin, did an ultrasound and stress test last Thursday and said that everything looked fine, but that she'd like to do prostaglandin gel on Sunday night, and if that ripened my cervix, start me slowly on pitocin on Tuesday. I was a little nervous about pitocin, but willing to try the gel and go from there. So that's what we did.

Sunday night we went to the hospital for the gel. I was at 1 cm. Everything was fine, normal, and uneventful. We went home.

Monday morning I woke up with contractions I couldn't sleep through... although I tried from about 3:30 to 4:30. At 5:00 we got out of bed, and they were 3-5 minutes apart. We already had an appointment to see Lin at 10:00 so she could see how things were going with the gel, so we just kind of puttered around the house until then. When we went in Lin said I was at 2 cm and that everything looked good, and sent us home, telling us to keep her posted. It looked like we weren't going to need the pitocin after all, which was nice.

We managed to sleep a bit when we got home, and the contractions slowed to almost 10 minutes apart for a while. They were pretty erratic for most of the day, but got stronger and stronger. We tried to reach Lin, but... um... Jonathan and pagers don't get along. We won't dwell on that. We reached Olga, the other midwife, who said we could go ahead and go in if the contractions were pretty intense and we wanted to get checked. So we did. And I was still 2 cm. I think they were going to give me something so I could sleep and send us home, but they put me on the monitor to see how Finn was doing for a while, and by the time an hour had passed and Lin had come in to see us, I was at 4 cm, so they decided to keep us. It was around 9:00 p.m., it was the real thing, and the only way I was going to be sleeping between then and having a baby was an epidural.

We walked around a bit to see if that would help move things along; it didn't. Both Lin and the nurse pointed out that if we just let things move slowly I would probably be completely and utterly exhausted by the time I had to push. That sounded reasonable, since I'd been up since around 4am, so we decided to have Lin break the bag. I think that was around 10:30, and I was at about 5 cm. As expected, the contractions felt a lot more intense after that, and were coming closer together. Lin recommended I try the shower, so we did that for a while, and it helped a bit. But for the hours after the bag was broken, I had a really hard time finding a comfortable position either between or during contractions, and didn't feel like I was getting any rest in between, especially in my back. At some point after midnight, I have no idea when, I felt like I was at the end of my rope. I couldn't focus on anything; I just wanted to cry and for it all to go away. But Lin had had the nurse get the warming table ready, and the cart full of instruments and stuff, and from the questions she was asking me about what I was feeling and where, I got the impression it might be time to push soon. So she checked me for the first time in hours... and I was still at 5 cm.

This was when I finally truly understood what people mean when they say that there are times when having someone stick a needle into your spine sounds like a reasonable, nay, a brilliant idea. So they called Dr. Brown, the wonderful anesthesiologist, and he came and did the epidural. Good thing: I could function again, and think about sleeping. Bad thing: Finn's heart rate wasn't doing so good. They thought it might be related to the epidural and my blood pressure, so they gave me something for my blood pressure. It helped a bit (I think; I was not at my most alert at this point), but his pulse was still falling during contractions, and in between them not getting up as high as it had been. Lin called the doctor on call, Dr. Barrett, and he looked at the readout and said that if it went that low again, they getting him out. Period.

I was so out of it and so tired by then that I probably would have done anything anybody told me to. But Lin was great. She thought that he was coming up high enough between contractions, and as long as he kept that up, we'd watch carefully, give me very small amounts of pitocin, and wait for my cervix to catch up. Apparently some (most?) of the nurses in labor and delivery really thought we should have a C-section, and if Dr. Barrett had come back to check on us, we probably would have, but we didn't hear about any of this. We knew there was concern, and monitoring, but from our perspective the positions I was in and the fluid they put back in had gotten things back in a good place, and everything was fine. Thank you Lin! We slept a bit; they checked on us periodically, and we got through the night. It was scary to go from a free-range person to one attached to no fewer than six instruments/bags/whatnots in such a short time, but we were doing okay, and so was he.

When the new nurse, Maria (who replaced Maria, who replaced Emily) came on sometime around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I'd been awake for about an hour. Finn's pulse was now good (back up to pre-bag-breaking-levels) after every contraction no matter what position I was in, which was great. I could still feel the pressure of the contractions, and I couldn't get entirely comfortable, but my attitude was a lot better. The pressure was telling me it might be time to push, so I told Maria that, and she checked me - completely dilated, and ready to go. She said if I felt like pushing, go ahead. We started pushing; Lin came; and then at 9:20 we had a baby! I guess it must have been about an hour and a half of pushing, but it really didn't feel that long. The cord had been wrapped around his neck, which was probably the problem in the night, but it was around loosely, just once, and he's very healthy. And loud. And has a full head of hair. And is a skilled eater.

We like him. We're going to keep him.

-Katie