It's been one week since you looked at me...

I tried to get breakfast before Zoë woke up this morning but I had hardly managed to walk out of the bedroom when she started to fuss. So I sat down and made Andrew bring her to me.

"She's a little escape artist," he said.

Oh, Baby Zo!

I believe I mentioned earlier that I found Anne of Windy Poplars in a long-neglected diaper bag. Well, I finished it before Zoë was born and even started in on Anne's House of Dreams during the non-stress test I did at the doctor's office a few days before she was born (only to realize that I was impatient and read that book on my kindle so I was just rereading, which wasn't as exciting because I actually wanted to be reading Anne of Ingleside but...it was fine).

Various lines kept jumping out at me, so I put little bookmarks in so that I could find them again (and I did find them and I'm going to share them all). They all seem to share a common theme; it's like I was thinking of babies and "the future" a lot while I was reading this book. I really think that if I could meet L.M. Montgomery that we'd be "kindred spirits." She says things so beautifully and when I read her words—whether in her books or quotes from her journal—I always think, "We could be friends."

Without further ado, here are a few quotes from Anne of Windy Poplars:

"Babies are such fascinating creatures," said Anne dreamily. "They are what I heard somebody at Redmond call 'terrific bundles of potentialities.'" (p. 157)



Thanks for making me cry, Maud. Look at my bundle of potentialities! I'm so in love it hurts!

Rhubarb

I remembered the other food story I was going to tell! My visiting teacher made rhubarb crisp for us.

Andrew, as you probably guessed, turned up his nose at this.

"Do people really eat rhubarb?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "It's good. It's super sour. And this stuff has strawberries with it, too!"

"You can't just combine anything with strawberries and call it good," Andrew said.

He might have had a point. Just the day before Rachel had bitten the top off a grape tomato, sucked the guts out, stuffed it with a plump blueberry and ate it.

"Well, that ruined that blueberry," she declared.

You really can't just combine anything with blueberries and call it good. The same holds true for strawberries and just about anything delicious.

"But rhubarb and strawberries is good," I assured him. "It's like lemon and strawberry. It just works."

He wouldn't try it so I did the only thing left to do: I ate his piece for him.

We were still talking about rhubarb at bedtime (it was light-hearted and probably falls under the category of "fake fighting" that our children insist we do).

"What even is rhubarb?" Andrew asked.

Zoë's homecoming: May 25

It's hard to believe we've been home for four days already and that tomorrow Zoë will be a week old! We actually went in for her one-week check up today and she's already back up to her birth weight so—hallelujah!—we don't have to go back in until her one-month check up.

Zoë had to go in for a check up the day after we got home and at the end of the appointment the NP who saw us said, "Ordinarily I'd have you come in for another weight check tomorrow but since you have so much experience with breastfeeding I guess we can wait until your one-week appointment, which you can make for this Friday."

I was floored. I mean, a two-day appointment is fairly routine. But they wanted to see me the day after we got home and then again the day after that and then again for a one-week appointment and then, in theory, again for a two-week appointment?! At what point does it stop being "support" and start being "harassment."

Support, in my mind would be a home-visit from a nurse. Dragging mothers and babies out of their house to sit in a germ-infested waiting room so many times in the first week of a baby's life seems...cruel. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, thanks to my epic milk supply and Zoë's fabulous nursing abilities she was already back up to her birth weight when we went in for her appointment this afternoon. Our prize is that we can skip the two-week appointment (because in theory she has two weeks to get back up to her birth weight).

When she was weighed before we left the hospital she was 6 lbs. 11 oz.

She was 6 lbs. 13 oz. on Tuesday (and the NP was like, "Gee, I don't know if she's gained enough weight since coming home..." less than 24 hours ago...).

Now she's back to 7 lbs. 2 oz. and she's going to get rather chubby until around 4 months old when her growth will start to slow down and then doctors will start to get on our case about keeping her weight up. But that's just how my kids have all grown.

Anyway...we came home from the hospital four days ago and this is what Zoë looked like (we've since found the head support that goes with the carseat):

Disjointed stories...mostly about food

"You look like you're having an internal debate over this meal," I said about the perfectly innocent broccoli/macaroni-and-cheese casserole my visiting teacher brought by.

"How could you tell?" Andrew asked.

"I just saw you eyeing it as you piled your plate with salad. It's good. I don't think there's anything in here that you don't like," I assured him.

"Penso che ci potrebbe essere tonno," he said in Italian so the kids wouldn't hear his food fears.

Why you speak foreign language at me? said my I-just-had-a-baby brain.

"Tonno..." my mouth managed to echo.

"Un pesce di mare..." Andrew prompted.

Guess how many times I used that word in Italian 101. Zero. Zero times.

"Oh," I said. "Credo di no."

"Pollo?"

"La'a."

Wrong language. Whatever. He ate the casserole, which is more than I can say about the casserole we got the night before (which everyone else thought was delicious).

Zoë's life: day two

Andrew took the kids to church by himself on Sunday. Miriam ended up going home with her friend Lily and Rachel went home with her friend Carolina (and having her first sleepover, which she loved). In the afternoon Andrew brought Benjamin in to visit (and to watch Zoë so that I could finally take a shower). I spent the day napping and admiring this sweet baby:

Human again! I feel human again!

Holy cow. Literally. Holy. Cow.

Zoë has been a phenomenal nurser, right from the get-go. She latched on and nursed away for an hour and a half. For the rest of our stay in the hospital she'd nurse every one to two hours for a good twenty to forty minutes at a time, which meant, of course, that Mommy got very, very tired of getting up to take care of her.

I was in the hospital alone with Zoë for two days, which was both wonderful (so quiet) but also lonely (best hour: Face Time with my family—it was like having visitors) and taxing (Daddy wasn't there to help with diapers or fetching baby when I just didn't want to get out of bed...again). We had to stay the second day because I didn't have time to finish the antibiotic before Zoë was born (in our defense we did get to the hospital with four hours to spare; they were just slow administering the IV).

Anyway, she nursed well. Her latch? Beautiful. Her endurance? Amazing.

And then my milk came in and suddenly Zoë couldn't nurse for twenty minutes on each side every time she ate. Instead she'd nurse for two minutes on one side before collapsing into a milk comma.

Meanwhile, my body was like, "MILK! Milk for everyone!"

I can honestly say I have never been so engorged in my life. Not with Benjamin because I was pumping on a hospital grade pump so...I just pumped my mom's freezer full of milk. Not with Miriam because—I don't even know why! Looking back it's a huge blessing that I didn't get completely engorged with her because all we brought to Egypt was a dinky hand pump that didn't work well at all (I eventually tossed it). And not even with Rachel, although I did get mastitis a few times when she was little I don't remember ever being engorged quite like this.

To give you an idea: I weighed myself when we got home from the hospital, just because I was curious about how much everything weighed. I was down about fifteen pounds from my peak pregnancy weight, which makes sense. Seven pound baby, big ol' placenta, all that fluid and stuff. Sounds like fifteen pounds to me.

Then my milk came in and I was so engorged it would be comical were it not for the fact that it hurt so bad. I couldn't lift my arms to reach for anything, but I also couldn't put them down all the way. I had plugged ducts in my armpits, up by my collar bone, and basically everywhere else. I was waddling around like Anna in Frozen after she falls into the river...

Zoë's life: day 1

Even in the throes of labour it was difficult for me to imagine actually having another baby. I couldn't picture another baby. Even with her feet jabbing my rib cage constantly I somehow couldn't all the way believe there was an entire human being inside of me the past several months. And yet--look at that--there was! 

If Andrew or I have any concern about bringing another child into our lives, our family, the world, we are not the only ones. Concern Baby is concerned.

Zoe has some concerns about the hat the nurse slapped on her head after her bath...

A memorable Memorial Day weekend: Zoë's Arrival

"I'm not even going to set an alarm," Andrew said when we went to bed on Friday night. And for once there really was no need to. No soccer, no church, no school, no plans.

"Sounds good. But I'll probably wake you up at four o'clock in the morning to tell you I'm in labour," I joked.

I was decent though and waited until six o'clock in the morning to wake him up. I was not in labour when we went to bed but I woke up at 3:08 with a rip-roaring contraction. Ten minutes later, there was another one. Nine minutes later, there was another one. Six minutes later. Seven. Six. Seven. Eight. Eight. Eight. Finally a holding pattern. Just kidding! Seven. Ten. Ten. Ten...

Fourteen...Fourteen...Thirteen...Twelve...

"Maybe I'm not in labour after all," I thought to myself at 5:40.

With contractions now fifteen minutes apart it certainly didn't seem like real labour. What happened to longer, stronger, and closer together?

5:51
5:59
6:07
6:12

Wait? Five minutes now? Maybe I should wake up Andrew...

Chilly swimming

The high today was a surprisingly cool 75°F but we went to the pool anyway because that's how we roll. I suppose the water itself wasn't too bad, but the air was rather chilly once you were wet. We stayed for about an hour.

Rachel was the first one in, of course. The little ones (and I) were a little more hesitant but eventually we all hopped in, though the hopping in didn't last long for the smallest among us.