Rachel, Rachel, Rachel

A couple of weeks before Phoebe was born, my friend Rachel finally gave birth to her baby boy—well past her due date! She had been nervous about his size because at an earlier ultrasound the doctor warned her the baby was measuring large, about eight pounds...and there was still time to grow. Friends tried to assuage her anxiety by telling her that estimates from these scans can sometimes be off—even by a pound or two! 

And so it was...but in the wrong direction!

The baby was delivered weighing 10.935 pounds and measuring 21.64 inches. 

That's a whole lot of baby!

*****

Another friend of mine, also named Rachel, was surprised to go into labour a couple of days ago—five weeks early. This is her sixth baby and she had never gone into labour naturally, has always been induced, so it was quite a surprise for her to find herself in labour, five weeks early. 

The baby was delivered weighing 10.9 pounds and measuring 22.25 in long.

Five weeks early! 

I'm sure he is simply incredible to behold in the NICU. I joked to my friend Rachel (who is a nurse, and who knows about my preemie, so she "gets" it and wasn't offended) that he's a macro preemie! What a whopper!

*****

I told my kids about this sweet, gargantuan preemie on the way to the pool today, referring to my friend as Sister So-And-So, since we used to be in the same ward years and years ago. Not that the children remember her. But just in case.

So after I told this story, my Rachel asked, "How big was your friend Rachel's baby?"

I glanced at her and said, "I just told you...oh. Okay, so it just so happens that this friend is also named Rachel. But, yes, my other friend Rachel had a big baby right before Phoebe was born. I think he was about this size, but he wasn't premature. So having a premature baby weigh nearly 11 lbs. is truly impressive."

"They were both named Rachel?" Rachel gasped. "Are Rachels just doomed to have ginormous babies?! I hope not!"

"I also hope not," I told her. "For you, I wish all 7 lbs. babies. Nice and average."

First Tooth Stats

I didn't always make a grand pronouncement when my babies cut their first teeth, so finding the exact date of "the first tooth" for each of my babies was tricky. Of course, some babies are more vocal about these things than others. They cry, they fuss, they drool, they bite. Others just had their teeth pop right through. So I suppose making a big announcement (or not) depended a bit on that. Or perhaps it had more to do with nothing at all.

I feel like my kids have been "early" teethers, though now that I've looked up the dates of their first tooth cutting, I don't necessarily think that's the case. 

I think the reason I feel like that is because when Zoë was a baby and had two little baby cousins her very same age, she got teeth at five months, while her cousins were showing no sign of teething (and I thought it was a teensy bit unfair because I was breastfeeding while her cousins were bottle-fed (and nothing is wrong with that, except that it seemed cruel to me that their little mouths were soft and gummy for their bottle nipples, while Zoë's little mouth seemed to be full of razor wire)). 

But, on the whole, I don't think my kids were particularly early teethers.

Here's the breakdown:

Rachel: January 2008, ~6 months
Miriam: May 2010, ~7 months
Benjamin: January 2013, ~8 months
Zoë: October 2015, ~5 months
Alexander: May 2018, ~6.5 months
Phoebe: August 2022, ~9 months and 10 days

So Phoebe is definitely my latest teether because her mouth is still gummy, gummy, gummy and she's 8.5 months old. I'll have to come back here to update her information when she does get her teeth. Not that I'm in a hurry for that (but I have been wondering when my other kids got their teeth).

It's funny to me that Phoebe—who is most enthusiastic about the idea of eating—is a relatively late teether, while Zoë—who hated all foods—got her teeth so stinking early! 

(I, for the record, cut my first tooth on my mom's birthday—December 12, 1985—when I was just 5.5 months old. You're welcome, Mom!)

Phoebe's Birth: Initial Reflections

For the past several weeks our ongoing motto has been "don't have a baby." Every night Andrew would say to me, "Don't have a baby!" Every time he left the house he would say to me, "Don't have a baby!"'

Last night he said—rather seriously—"Don't have a baby!"

We had both stayed up late working. I was finishing up a final project. He had a book to lay out, some urgent revisions to make on a paper, and a number of other projects. 

"So really don't go into labour tonight," he said. "My Saturday is packed!"

It was 1:30 in the morning. I was not in labour. I hadn't even had very many contractions that evening.

So I said reassuringly, "I don't think this baby is coming for a while."

We stayed up until around 2:00 making plans for the next day. We needed to finish tidying the house to get ready for Grandpa to come. We needed to pick Grandpa up. We needed to finished all the multiple projects we listed previously. We needed to...we needed to...we needed to...

Andrew let me do my verbal nesting (although I had been nesting...and making the children nest along with me (they were great helpers!) all day long) and then we decided that it was late (it was) and we should do no more talking because we really needed to go to sleep (we did) and we turned out the lights.

Then at around 3:00 I awoke to a pop and a gush. So I reached over and...

Did I mention that I got my COVID booster yesterday? I did. My arm was incredibly sore.

A Baby...Monsoon

You've heard of baby showers, I'm sure—a little party to welcome a new life into the world and equip new parents with all the stuff a baby requires (or that society thinks a baby requires). Well, by the time you're expecting your sixth baby people tend to assume you have all that baby stuff, which I'm sure is often the case...

Unless you happened to have moved across the country and the child you thought was your caboose is well past babyhood. Then you've been offloading baby stuff for years, so when you find out you're expecting again you kind of panic realizing you've got...nothing (or, at least, very little).

Lucky for me—and parents everywhere—there are usually other parents who are offloading baby stuff when they think they've reached the end of their baby-rearing years. 

And that's how you get a baby monsoon. 

My cousin Dylan came by this afternoon with her car overflowing with baby paraphernalia!

Baby #6 is a...

I had my 20 week (and 6 day) appointment today, which included an ultrasound and a glucose test. I managed to keep the glucola drink down, so that was a bonus, but my blood draw went a little horribly. There's this one nurse that I'm never sure about...and I got her today. And when she looked at my veins and said, "This will be a tough one," I thought to myself, "Maybe we should wait for someone else..." because I've often been told my veins are like plump little juice boxes. 

Let's just say she did not do a great job and forty minutes later I was still bleeding. She ended up slicing my vein a little bit? It's fine now; it just hurts and is bruising. 

The ultrasound took quite a long time because baby was in a tricky position. The ultrasound technician found everything she needed measurements for except for the head. Baby is already solidly "presenting vertex" and no amount of prodding was going to make it budge (although it was certainly flip-flopping all over the place). I had to get up to empty my bladder in the middle of the ultrasound so we could keep trying to measure baby's brain (because that darn bladder was in the way). 

But we finally got a clear shot. Everything's looking great.

20 weeks

We've officially reached the half-way point—I'm twenty weeks today! Our anatomy scan is scheduled for next week and everyone's very anxious to learn the gender of this next baby. 

Benjamin is firmly on team boy because he would like our family to be equal. 

Zoë is firmly on team girl because she feels sandwiched between boys and because she's so much younger than her older sisters they never spend a lot of time playing with her, which leaves her with only boys to play with, which is sometimes unfair because the boys don't always want to play the games she wants to play or tell her that she can't play with them.

"Oh, if this baby is a boy, I will play with him all the time," Benjamin said to her. 

"THAT'S MY POINT!" Zoë wailed.

I didn't point out to Zoë that there will be a bigger age gap between this baby and herself than there is between Miriam and herself. I think she'll have fun playing "little mommy" no matter the outcome, but she very much wants a girl. And Benjamin very much wants a boy. 

And there's really only one way to solve this argument and get everyone excited and on the same page by the time the baby arrives...so we'll be revealing the gender next week (assuming baby cooperates).

Happy birthday to me

My birthday was on Tuesday and it felt like a somewhat important milestone for me because I thought that turning 36 was what would define me as being of "advanced maternal age," but as it turns out, any pregnancy at age 35 or later is considered a "geriatric pregnancy" so apparently I've been plain old this whole time. 

It's kind of strange because I feel no different than I did at 21 when my first OB/GYN called me a "spring chicken." I went from spring chicken to geriatric in 14 short years! Those 14 years flew by.

Rachel, my spring chicken baby, made a birthday cake for me. She carefully researched the most diabetic-friendly cake she could find—a carrot cake (vegetables!) with applesauce (that's healthy, right?) and cream cheese frosting (cheese is protein!). It was a very delicious cake (I had a slice because I technically haven't been diagnosed with gestational diabetes yet, though I'm sure that's coming). 

Name Generator

My favourite baby naming website (nymbler) is now defunct. You used to be able to insert your inspiration names and check off al sorts of parameters and it would generate ideas for you that you could like to save in a list and then generate more...and...I wouldn't say that we necessarily found every name that way but it's definitely something I played around with when we were in the process of naming our other kids. It's a terrible platform now. 

I've seen a few places recommending Name Berry's Name Generator, so I'll have to check that out (but I doubt it will be the same as nymbler was). 

The good news is we have plenty of helpers to come up with good names. 

Zoë recently handed me this list of suggestions:

A train! A train! A train! A train!

For FHE, Andrew decided it was high time the kids got a lecture reminding them of our COVID family motto: We are going to ROT together. Respect. Obedience. Tolerance. 

So the kids got a lecture over dinner. I'm not sure it helped because today we ran into the same problem we've been having of me asking the (younger) kids to do things repeatedly and them completely ignoring me until Andrew opens his office door and then they suddenly spring into action. But it was worth a shot.

(And if they don't watch it, I'll get so tired of their behaviour that I'll just start the school year for next year...)

Anyway, when I felt that the lecture had drawn on long enough, I said, "Okay, so we did Dad's idea for family night, but I had a different, funner idea in mind..."

The kids immediately wanted to know what it was.

"Well, we need to finish eating, clean up from dinner, go on a walk, and then...I thought we could all go down to the basement and..."

"Clean it?" Rachel moaned. "How is that any more fun than Dad's idea. Like, I'd rather endure another lecture than clean the basement tonight..."

"Build a LEGO train together?" I suggested. "I thought we could each make a train car that represents us and then make a little stop motion movie of our train rolling along."

The kids agreed that this idea actually did sound like quite a lot of fun, so that's just what we did. It took us far too long—we were still finishing our creations at 9:00—and Alexander ended up having a complete meltdown about having to go to bed before we made the movie, but really I think it was better that we made the movie after we put the youngest three to bed. At any rate it was a lot less chaotic.

Here's our finished movie (which I'm sure I'll talk more about later):

Milky milestone

When I input this evening's pumping session to my spreadsheet I realized that I hit a milestone of sorts—6912 ounces! That's 54 gallons of milk. 

My original goal was to hit about 72 gallons of milk (since that's approximately how much a baby might consume in the first year of life), but I honestly don't know that we'll get there considering I quit my morning pumping session mid-June. It was just getting too crazy trying to squeeze that in every morning with all the kids home from school and Alexander getting mobile.

I mean, when it was just me, Zoë, and Alexander in the mornings and all Alexander ever did was this:

...pumping in the mornings was relatively easy. Once he got mobile it was...not so easy.

The Longest Day

I found the mother's lounge on Sunday, not because I wanted a secluded place to nurse my baby (I'm totally cool with nursing in public...so that when your baby has a poop-splosion while nursing in the middle of Sunday School it gets all over your lap and the chair you're sitting on (but you just keep on nursing while your husband uses a burp cloth to mop it all up because if you stop nursing the baby would start screaming, bringing more attention to your slightly disruptive, poop-covered family (not that I know from experience))) but because baby's big sister wanted a closer look at baby...but then lost her balance and face-planted on baby's face.

He was not happy about that so I fled the chapel before he could really start crying.

Big sister, likewise, was rather unhappy so Andrew scooped her up and fled the chapel as well.

Tears all around!

I ended up in the mother's lounge, rocking Alexander. Another mother was in there trying to nurse her baby (who had reached the curious stage and wanted to eat but explore (life's one big conundrum)). She ooohed and ahhed over how new and tiny Alexander was, but also mentioned not missing that stage.

"They grow so fast!" she said. "It's like you blink and they're six weeks old and out of that newborn stage. Of course, that could be because everything is a blur. It's like a six-week-long day where you never really fall asleep and never really wake up."

And that feels pretty true. Alexander has been up every two hours (at least) for the past three weeks. But last night? Last night he slept for four hours without a break. So we're both feeling pretty great this morning (but still, as always, ready for a nap).

I've got this...or not...

Last night I grabbed my toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste on it. As I was raising it to my mouth I happened to glance at the toothbrush holder and saw...my toothbrush.

My mind started going a million miles an hour...

"Wait a second," I thought to myself, pleased that I had caught myself before brushing my teeth with someone else's toothbrush (one of the worst feelings in the world (not that I know from experience or anything)) but a little confused because I could have sworn that I grabbed my toothbrush.

Indeed, the toothbrush I was holding was my own. But the toothbrush still in the toothbrush holder was also my own.

Oh, that's right. I replaced my toothbrush the night before with a new—but identical—one. Had I forgotten to throw my old one away? No, I distinctly remember tossing it into the trash, which means...

"Ew!" I squealed, jerking the toothbrush away from my half-open mouth.

"What?" Andrew asked.

"This is my old toothbrush," I said. "The one that I threw away yesterday!"

"That means...ew..."

Yes, that means that one of my well-meaning and oh-so-very-helpful children dug it out of the garbage can and returned it to the toothbrush holder.

Postpartum walking

Just a few days before Alexander was born we went on a walk to the train tracks and for the very first time (that we had all the kids with us (Andrew, Zoë, and I walked along beside one while the other kids were in Grover)), a train came by. You guys, these tracks are pretty active. We can feel (and hear) trains rumbling by all day (and night) long (I joke that if there's ever an earthquake we won't even know because we'll just figure it's another train), so you'd figure that we'd have the pleasure of watching the trains go by more often than we have.

At least, I've figured it.

We've walked to the train tracks several times a week the whole time we've lived here. I've taken the kids to the little park by the tracks and we've camped out with picnics and outside activities just waiting for a train to come by. One little boy in particular (ahem, Benjamin) has been hoping to see a watch a train go by with all of his little boy heart. Yet every day he remained disappointed.

He was over the moon when we walked past the tracks at just the right moment. He stood at the fence and jumped for joy the whole time the train was passing. It didn't take long—it was just an engine and a caboose, the shortest train in history—but it was a rather thrilling moment for him.

After the train passed, he ran around and gave everyone a big hug.

"He waved at me! The engineer waved at me!" he told everybody.

Well, yesterday, I took the kids for a walk to the train tracks again and this time they saw an honest-to-goodness train—complete with 32 cars—which was way more exciting than the first train we managed to spot.

Belly Button Boy

On Saturday I went to a cousin's bridal shower with my mom and Rosie. And Alexander, of course. Zoë wasn't thrilled about being left behind but she was even less happy with the idea that I'd be taking the baby—her baby—with me.

"Take my baby," she said, shaking her head at me. "No, Mommy. No."

As sorry as I was to disappoint her, I told her that Alexander was coming with me. End of story.

So I took the baby and we left for the bridal shower only a half hour after we were planning on leaving (getting ready with a newborn takes forever).

At the end of the shower, the hostess'/my cousin's children came home from their grandparents' house and little Everett watched with horror as I prepared to change Alexander's stinky bum.

"That's hurting your baby!" he said, pointing to his umbilical cord stump.

"Oh, that doesn't hurt him at all!" I assured Everett. "It's going to turn into his bellybutton!"

Everett's eyes got wide and he shook his head at me.

"That's hurting your baby," he repeated.

"It's really not," I said and tried again to explain the wonder of the umbilical cord/belly button to him. He did not respond well at all. Soon others in the room joined in the effort to soothe poor, traumatized Everett.

"Don't worry," his dad told him. "In a couple of days it will fall off and..."

"FALL OFF?!!" Everett repeated, now cowering across the room from that icky, icky umbilicus.

Look at my wonderful village!

Not that we had any sort of spectacular plans for fall break anyway, but Alexander's arrival meant that I, for one, was completely out of commission—hunkered down, in bed, with a newborn. I admit that I was a little worried that the kids would be bored out of their minds their whole vacation and would go to school with no news other than "newborns are actually quite boring" while their friends were telling tales of camping and road trips and Disneyland and so forth. 

Fortunately, our wonderful village didn't let our children idle away their time. 

On Thursday morning, Grandma bravely took all four kids to a pumpkin patch. It cost $3 to "get in" but then all the "attractions" (except horseback rides) were free, so it ended up being a good deal. My mom was impressed with the idea because all the rides used farm equipment, which, in her opinion, makes the best sort of playground (it's the sort of playground she grew up on). I'll admit that climbing around farm equipment is rather fun (I've done a bit of it myself, though not nearly as much as my mother).

Here they are on the horse-walker-turned-swing-set:

One week later I'm feeding my baby nightly...

This week has been a blur. It's been full of tears and laughter, naps and homework, store-bought lasagna and Relief Society casserole, more bodily fluids than I'd care to mention, and a whole lot of cuteness. But mostly it's been a blur.

Look around, look around!

Alexander's birth story

I had my last prenatal appointment yesterday afternoon (and by yesterday I mean Friday, October 13, because I started writing this on Saturday). Of course, I didn't realize at the time that it was going to be my last prenatal appointment so when I was told to strip everything waist down so my doctor could see how far along I was I asked if we could skip that part. I might be at risk for preterm labour but my cervix is super competent, like A++. I'm locked down at a big, fat zero until labour starts and then I'm a zero-to-sixty (or zero-to-ten, if you will) in no time flat kind of girl.

Later in the afternoon I began to feel...icky. Not terrible, just...irritable...

Andrew texted me that he was leaving his office to go pick up my race packet—because I may or may not have signed up for a 5K at BYU (The Sugar Rush, for diabetes research, and, yes, I was planning on walking it)—and then would be on his way home. I was like, "Perfect. Thanks for doing that for me," but by the time he finally made it home I was like, "Yeah, I dunno if I'm even going to need that anymore," because I'd begun having rhythmic-ish contractions.

Still, rhythic-ish contractions is nothing to get one's hopes up about. So I didn't, though I did admit to Andrew that they were "different" from my other contractions because I could feel them coming in waves, wrapping around my body from the back to the front...which should have been a clue. Honestly though, I always have a lot of contractions and these weren't that painful. The weird thing was that nothing would stop them (sitting, eating, walking, "napping"). They were relentless...but a little tricky to decode.

6:07
6:15 (8 minutes)
6:27 (11 minutes)
6:34 (7 minutes)
6:50 (15 minutes)
6:58 (7 minutes)
7:12 (13 minutes)
7:37 (23 minutes!)
7:51 (13 minutes)

I had been having contractions for two hours, but was still wondering if I was truly in labour at all. Because 15, 7, 13, and 23 minutes apart certainly doesn't scream "longer, stronger, closer together," does it?

What baby?

Last night Andrew formally admitted that he hardly gets a chance to think about our impending addition during the day and when he gets home he's always a little surprised to see me waddling around, large with child. Like, "Oh, yeah! She's pregnant!"

I've suspected as much for quite some time now. Most telling was one evening a few weeks ago when I was shopping online for a new car seat. Both Andrew and I were in the office (he was working; I was shopping...obviously) so when I'd mostly made up my mind I asked him his opinion.

"I'm just going to go ahead and get another car seat like Zoë's because I know I like it. It's not an infant seat but it says 5 lbs. and up, and I never carry around my babies in their car seats anyway, so it feels like a waste of money to get one of those to use for a year when we can just get a convertible car seat and use it for several years, ya know? So, what do you think—blue or grey?"

"Do we need an extra car seat?" Andrew replied, slightly distracted. "I guess that's a good idea if, like, Zoë's car seat isn't around and we need to take her somewhere in another vehicle or..."

"Honey," I said in a chastising tone, glaring at the back of his head.

He turned around in his chair to face me.

"What?" he asked innocently.

"I'm not getting an extra car seat. I'm getting a car seat for the new baby..."

"Oh, yeah!" he gasped. "Ummm...blue."

Good recovery.

A name for baby

When we told the kids that this baby was a boy, I presented a list of names that Andrew and I had compiled, just to test the waters (because naming a child when your other children have opinions is a little more difficult than when you just get to choose).

Daniel...meh.
Oliver...meh.
Jonathan...nothing.
Stephen...well...
Theodore...sure.
Samuel...well...
Alexander...THE CROWD GOES WILD!
Lucas...nothing.
Nicholas...meh.
Philip...well...
Timothy...nothing.
Jeremy...nothing.

"Yahoo!!" the children whooped, dancing around the room excitedly. "Alexander! His name is Alexander! His name is Alexander!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said. "This was a poll, not a vote."

"She'll come around," Andrew said with a smirk.

Miriam's maternity misconceptions

When we told the kids we were having a new baby, one of the very first things they requested was to feel it kick. Although I had felt a few flutterings, I explained to the children that the baby wasn't quite strong enough to feel his kicks from the outside quite yet. A few weeks later, however, there was one morning when the baby was kicking up a storm, so I called the kids in to feel him moving.

I thought they'd be more excited about it, but they honestly weren't that excited at all.

Rachel gave a little, "Huh."

Benjamin put his hand on my belly declared, "Yup! I felt 'im!" when I knew full well that he hadn't felt anything (because if I didn't feel anything from the inside there's no way he felt anything from the outside).

Miriam was the most animated, yanking her hand away from my stomach and squealing, "Ew! It feels like milking a cow!"

"Like milking a cow?!" I sputtered.

"Yup."

"Feeling your little brother move feels like milking a cow?"

"Yup."

"I don't think you're entirely qualified to make that comparison," I sniffed, "Having never milked a cow."

No one has asked to feel the baby move since then (it's been weeks), but perhaps they'll be more interested in feeling the baby when he starts to really wobble around in there.