So much to say, so little time

Oh, I had so much fun in the last twenty-four hours, watching people weigh in on my little test! Thank you for humoring me. For what it’s worth, Alex identified Michael correctly (“it’s his hair, Mommy”) but my mother mislabeled the older two boys.

The answer key is:

EXHIBIT A: NICHOLAS (And Kelley B., that’s you holding him. And Chrissy, I agree @ the personalities coming out; there’s something supremely self-satisfied, um, maybe even smug, in his expression in this picture!)

EXHIBIT B: ALEX (he still knocks me out with how beautiful a baby he was)

EXHIBIT C: MICHAEL (I cut out the pointsettias in the background, figuring that would be a dead giveaway)

What I learned from this is that however much they look alike, they really don’t. Look alike, I mean. I have a feeling that for the first ten to fifteen years people will be able to distinguish them by height, and once they hit young adulthood, everyone who doesn’t see them daily will get them mixed up. But hey, there’s no question about parentage on either side, right?

Well, folks, it’s here at last.  Here’s a little slice of what’s on my mind two days before Christmas (along with poor latch, new computer, messy house, more sleeeeeeeepppppppp)….

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Image via Wikipedia

Julianna celebrated the beginning of Christmas break in the following manner: 7:08 a.m., unroll the last 1/4 of the toilet paper and put it ALL int he toilet. 7:10 a.m., decide it’s not in the water, and STICK HER HAND IN TO PUT IT THERE. 8:02 a.m., pull out the hand mixer, which happens to dislodge the rice jar, which pops open and spills all over the floor. 8:50 a.m., rip open the box of “Your Baby Can Read” cards that I JUST TAPED BACK TOGETHER YESTERDAY.

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In the news yesterday, we heard that “U.S. officials on Thursday accepted some blame” for the air strikes that killed Pakistani soldiers…but they refused to apologize. What’s wrong with this picture? We teach our children that if you hurt someone, even unintentionally, you apologize. I can’t go on at any more length on that topic because I don’t want to get into politics. But it really irks me. How can the world function if governments can’t be held to the same standards of common decency that we expect our children to follow?

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Maybe I just found this so hysterically funny because, I don’t know, IT’S ME.

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Speaking of hilarious, surely you’ve seen the Star Wars Cello wars?

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My baby is 3 weeks and 2 days old. And his sibs have officially given him a cold. (What else can you expect when they lean down two inches from his face, say, “Hi Michael! Hi Michael! Hi Michael! Hi Micahel….aaaaa—-CHOOO!”) Ugh. It’s gonna be a long winter, isn’t it?

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The "magic tree" at a local shopping center, a must-see every year. Photo by NJOPhoto, via Flickr

It seems there’s something about driving around looking at Christmas lights that causes vomiting. Last year, it was me, nausea hitting me out of absolutely nowhere, such that we had to pull over on a semi-busy street while I hurled the contents of my stomach onto the grass in front of a preschool. This year, it was Alex’s turn. Thank God he told us in time to get out of the car first!

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The next week is historically the lowest-traffic week of the whole year. So I’m giving myself permission to take some time off. If I feel like posting, I will, and if I don’t…well, I’ll see you after New Year’s! Have a blessed and holy Christmas and New Year’s!

(PS: If you’re seeing an ad at the bottom, I have no idea why. It just popped up on my computer this morning. Bizarre, bizarre!)

http://seg.sharethis.com/getSegment.php?purl=http%3A%2F%2Fkathleenbasi.wordpress.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost-new.php%3Fpost_type%3Dpost&jsref=&rnd=1324641896861

I missed the Sunday Snippets roundup last week because we were coming home from the NICU and I needed to spend time with my family. So I hope you’ll all forgive me if I give you the highlights of two weeks. As you might expect, it’s a lot about NICU and baby and transition. Sorry, that’s what I’ve got on the brain!

NICU: Soul Sucker, Soul Food

This Hallway

Worry: A Birth Story

A second round of quick takes from the NICU

Transition #4

Advent in the Year of the Baby

The photo post to illustrate the birth story I wrote in the hospital w/o being able to upload

I Guess It’s Postpartum Blues (before you read, I need to say that the last two days have vastly improved my outlook!)

Quick Takes: The Baby Terror Edition

There you go. Sorry for the overload!

Unexpected nany, crazy long hospital stay or no, how can I miss Sunday Snippets? However, since I’m still working on an ipad keyboard that refuses to let me see what I’m typing,it seems safest to send you to the blog itself and have you navigate your way through my crazy week without trying to link individual posts, as I’m quite sure they won’t link properly anyway.

www.kathleenbasi.com/blog

And I can’t find the end of the last post to add an addendum, so I have to write a new post!
Anyway. Thhe nurse practitioner said Michael’s continuing unclearXrays indicate a pneumothorax, a partially collapsed lung. He is therefore stuck in the hospital through Wedneday morning to complete a round of antibiotics. Now we’re trying to figure out the logistics involved with discharged Mommy who can’t drive, two hours from the rest of her family who needs to go back to work and school, while the local grandparents are deathly ill.
Seriously. Can’t we EVER have a baby without drama?????

How to begin?

Well, after 3 C sections, I am not allowed to go into labor anymore. When I began having intermittent, irregular and disorganized contractions, it made my doctor nervous. He told me before Thanksgiving that he didn’t think we were going to make it till the scheduled section on Dec. 15th. I have been in contact with him all this week and basically sitting around doing as little activity as possible in the hopes of warding off early, unplanned labor…because you don’t deliver a baby casually at 37 weeks. Usually they’ll be fine, sometimes they’ll have problems: respiratory, blood sugar, body temperature, neurological immaturity.

I had contractions all afternoon Monday, and when I called on Tuesday the staff scolded me for not calling on Monday. Tuesday night things were quiet after a semi-active afternoon, but I woke up with contractions on Wednesday. I called and the doctor said, “Get your affairs in order and get here.” (The added complication to this story is that our doctor, who we go to because he has been so good to us over the course of infertility and three previous drama-filled births, is two hours away.)

We arrived at the hospital yesterday at 3:10. I had two significant contractions on the way from the car into Labor & Delivery, but of course, being a hospital, they stuck me in bed on a fetal monitor and made me lie in bed. I don’t contract when I’m lying down, only when I”m, you know, up and around taking care of kids. It was clear they didn’t want me there, but when the doctor finally finished his patients at 6:30 p.m., he came in and had a 45-minute powwow with us. We had to weigh the risk of uterine rupture if we wait too long against delivering a baby too soon. (37 weeks.)

Well, obviously we went ahead, although as I sat on the operating table getting my spinal I had to clamp down on a wild scream, “NOOO! STOP RIGHT NOW! WE CAN’T POSSIBLY HAVE A BABY WITHOUT DRAMA, THERE’S NO WAY THIS BABY WILL BE IN THE 95% OF KIDS WHO ARE ABSOLUTELY FINE AT 37 WEEKS!”

…. and I was right. Michael was born with a little difficulty breathing, swallowing some amniotic fluid as he was coming out, and that — plus the fact that he is early — means that he was having trouble regulating his breathing, so they put him in the Neonatal ICU (NICU).

This is why you don’t causally take a child at 37 weeks.

But after chatting with the neonatal specialist this morning, he is doing well. He is on about 35 percent oxygen (we breathe at 21 percent oxygen) and we’re hoping that he’ll be able to start nursing tomorrow.

And we wanted to share a picture. I’m sure I’ll have much to say next week when I get home.

At my OB visit the day before Thanksgiving, the doctor put me me on the fetal monitor for a while to make sure the placenta is functioning properly (a concern after multiple C-sections). I firmly believe I am carrying the wildest child ever to be monitored–they could hear it kicking through the walls. But the point is that I’m having contractions. Right now they’re little, irregular & ineffective, but the doctor said if it builds up like it looks like it’s trying to, I’m not going to make it to the 15th of December. (How ironic is that? I’ve carried three children to term and never once gone into labor, even when I reached 41+ weeks.)

The concern is uterine rupture. He said he’s only seen it happen once, to a woman who had had quite a few more C sections than I have. Nonetheless, we’re not allowed to be cavalier, especially considering I live two hours away from the doctor. Basically, for the next 2 1/2 weeks, if I have anything that peeps like real labor, I’m supposed to drop everything and head his way. So everybody please pray for a nice, quiet uterus for the next 2 weeks, 4 days and one night. Not that I’m counting.

Now…on to the real business of the weekend! Thanksgiving or not, it’s Sunday Snippets time. I have three posts to share:

Does Jesus Laugh?

Superhero Squad

Vignettes (a Thanksgiving post)

Time for another roundup of Catholic bloggers at Ruth’s place. My contributions this week:

Time, Talent and Pride –a reflection on last weekend’s Gospel

Blowing in the Wind

The Name Game (parents, you know you’ve all played this one!)

What I Have Seen With My Own Eyes (Seven Wonders)

And I guest posted on The Practicing Catholic blog . My topic: why I believe 90% of children diagnosed with Down’s are aborted, and more importantly, what we can do to change it.

Tis the weekend again, and we’re gathering at Ruth’s place for a weekly roundup of Catholic bloggers. My contributions:

“Learning to Let Go,” a parent’s reflection.

In taking Unisom last weekend in an attempt to ease third-trimester nausea, I discovered that what I preach to my children is definitely true: there is definitely such a thing as TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING–even sleep.

As I continue my slow crawl through the last, often-difficult weeks of pregnancy, I finally wrote something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: “When it’s time to say, enough.” And the next day, “What I Will Miss About Pregnancy.”

“David”, another short work of fiction from the story of Carlo and Alison. It was hard for me to read some of the comments this week, because I wanted so badly to explain where this particular piece fits into the whole. But I resisted. Can’t tell the whole thing ahead of time, can you?

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I’ve been reading “No Ordinary Time,” a very dense book about the Roosevelts during World War II. Interesting read, but slow. Very slow. However, this I found so funny I had to share. It’s about wartime rationing.

Women took the loss of pleated skirts and one-piece bathing suits in stride, but when the rubber shortage threatened the continuing manufacture of girdles, a passionate outcry arose. Though government sources tried to suggest that “women grow their own muscular girdles, by exercising,” women argued that “neither exercise nor any other known remedy” could restore aging muscles to their original youthful tautness. Without “proper support from well-fitted foundation garments” to hold the abdomen in place, there was no way, jouranlist Marion Dixon argued in a contemporary health magazine, that a woman past thirty could keep her posture erect or do physical work without tiring.

Hear that, ladies? All of us past thirty are DOOMED! DOOMED to flabby middles and wilting on couches!

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Perhaps I find that funny because I worked in the lingerie department at Sears for several years, and I sold many a girdle, in many a form, to many an older lady. They smell really weird. (The girdles, I mean.) I always felt torn–who wouldn’t want their flabby parts sucked in?–but I couldn’t imagine wearing such a thing.

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This lovely little trinket is on my wish list. Easier to keep track of it this way.

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One night this week, Alex was messing around on the bathroom stool instead of getting ready for bed. Nicholas came over and looked up at his big brother. “Peas Aweh, tan you moo o-er? I need bwuh teeth.” My jaw dropped–even for Nicholas, that was pretty eloquent!–but Alex, who was shadowboxing his reflection, didn’t even notice. ”Alex,” I said, “did you hear your brother? He asked you very politely to make some room for him!”

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It’s been a weird writing time lately. Two story rejections, but one of them told me I made the semifinal round, which they didn’t have to tell me. A “no thanks” from an agent. But lots of encouraging developments on some flute and piano Christmas arrangements I wrote…and a note from Chicken Soup that a story I wrote made the final round for next year’s “Bride” book. My project list is now 9 items long instead of 15…but I don’t have on it “revising novel” or “publicizing Advent & Lent books.”

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And this morning, I really just didn’t want to get out of bed. My brain is all hazy. I can’t seem to wake up.

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Oh yes, and I’m posting fiction today here. Hope you’ll come read it!