Adjusting

Things are going well in our little family of five. Elinor is a good baby who sleeps all day and wants to be up all night. I have spent a lot of time sitting in the recliner with her while the rest of the family is sleeping. Joseph has been able to take more time off from school and work than he could with either Emily or Caleb, for which I am very grateful. When Emily was born Joseph was scrambling to finish his thesis so we could move the following week. When Caleb was born Joseph had an assignment due on campus thirty minutes before we were released from the hospital so I ended up dropping him off on campus and heading home by myself.

We didn't have any family come into town for Miss Elinor's birth (our apartment is way too tiny to accommodate extra people) but the ward really stepped up. Emily and Caleb were passed between three neighbors' houses on Friday while Joseph and I were in the hospital all day. I actually had one amazing friend come to our apartment at 4:30 am so we could make it to the hospital by 5:00. Kim gets extra visiting teaching points for this month. Probably enough points to cover visits for the next six months! :)

Things went fairly smoothly at the hospital. It was a scheduled induction, so Elinor was born at exactly 40 weeks. I figured that since I was induced for Caleb at 41 weeks, there was a good chance I would end up having to be induced again, and if that was going to happen anyway, I might as well not suffer through 41 weeks of pregnancy. They started the pitocin around 5:30, broke my water around 8, and I decided I was ready for my epidural around 10 or 11. I wasn't really too uncomfortable, but things were picking up and I could tell it would get a lot more intense pretty quickly. So the anesthesiologist came in and did his thing. He was pretty arrogant; by far the least pleasant person we dealt with the whole time we were there. It became clear shortly after he left that the epidural was not affecting the left half of my body, which happened with Caleb as well so we were kind of worried about this. I rolled onto my left side in hopes of spreading the anesthesia via gravity, but it wasn't working. The nurse was reluctant to repage the anesthesiologist because she was afraid it would kick in just as he was walking through the door (and because he was scary and kind of mean). Finally she did and by this point I was very uncomfortable. He walked in and the nurse checked me right then and announced that I was complete and ready to push. And then he redosed me, completely numbing me very heavily. This was nice because I couldn't feel any more contractions, but also super duper frustrating because I couldn't push. The delivery team was waiting for half an hour for baby Elinor because I was too numb to do anything. She finally did arrive and was perfect, but this experience was enough to make me reconsider my strategy. I am pretty fed up with epidurals not working and now that half of me has experienced labor all the way through I think I could deal with it without the epidural. Part of the problem was that I was not mentally prepared for this since I depended so fully on the anesthesia. But maybe next time if I am prepared I could handle it. We'll see.

Caleb and Emily are doing so well adjusting to having a baby sister. It was scary at first when she was brand new and treated like an exciting new toy. Now that the newness has worn off things are a lot more manageable. I have decided that when Emily was Caleb's age she was much more ready than he is to be an older sibling. Caleb is having a hard time realizing that I can't carry him everywhere anymore but an easy time realizing that I can't enforce a lot of what I say while I'm feeding Elinor.

I have been struggling a little with giving Emily and Caleb individual attention. I know they still need it and I miss being able to pick Caleb up to cuddle with him and spending time reading or cooking or playing with Emily. Hopefully as things settle down I will be able to set up some special time with each of them so they don't feel like they are just part of the crowd.

Emily is awesome. Right now she is picking up all the clutter in the living room. Just because she wants to. I asked if she wanted help and she said no. Now she is asking me to turn down the music because baby Elinor is sleeping. And now she wants a story, and since Caleb and Elinor are sleeping and she just did all that work, she probably deserves some one-on-one time with me.

Our poor, exhausted little mama bear:

All three (I can't believe how big Caleb is!)