:: Finally, In So Many Ways ::

{self-portrait, taken as we left the house to drop evan with his grandparents and head off to the induction.}

this week has been a "finally" kind of week. i finally had the baby. i finally posted pictures in our flickr account for our families to gawk endlessly at. i finally got the twelve orders i received while in the hospital all made, packaged, and posted (and they'll be at the post office before tonight's last pickup). and now i'm finally getting around to a blog post to announce...


miss emily aerin green, born at 2:57p.m. on monday afternoon!


the induction went smoothly, the labor quickly (as expected and hoped), and the delivery uncomplicatedly (i know it's not a word, but i'm all about parallel construction in my sentences -- call me a freshman comp instructor if you want to, i won't be offended).

evan seems smitten with emily most of the time. he's prone to petting her head the way he pets the cats, sort of soft-scratchy, and leaning over in the middle of what he's doing and kissing her on the legs (which is usually all he can reach at the time as she's often being held or sitting in her swing or sleeping in her pack-n-play) and saying, "i love you so much em-ee-yee."

i swear to god it's sweeter than aspartame.

all in all it has been a good week. it's going to be insane learning how to balance everything and figuring out how to spread my attention and my patience. i'm amazed by how much easier having a newborn is the second time than the first, and also by how much easier it is than having a toddler, all things considered. i'm amazed by how much brian and i remember about the first time as much as how much we've forgotten.

and i seriously can't even believe that christmas is only a week away. where in the name of all things good has december gone?

i suspect this is only going to get worse before it gets better, this sense that time has sped up. just thinking about brian going back to work in january almost just made my burst into tears, which means it is time for me to stop writing and go jump back into my life and my newly-bigger family.

be well, friends.

:: evil cranky and some fabric pom poms ::

i am, i'll be perfectly honest, evil cranky today. i'm trying hard not to be cranky all over everyone around me, but damn it's hard.

i am so freaking tired of being pregnant. i am so uncomfortable. i am so ready.

my doctor is inducing labor on monday morning assuming that there is a bed available in the birth center. and of course i just keep thinking, oh my god. they are so not going to have a bed and i am going to be pregnant forever.

thankfully, i am nearly all caught up with the crazy number of orders i've been getting and so i think i'm going to spend the afternoon making other things to try to cheer myself up. embroidering one last thing for the baby's walls (pictures coming soonish). working on some christmas presents. trying to beat down the evil crank rising within.

one of the projects definitely on tap is this one:

the tutorial is here and it really couldn't look any easier. i'll be using solid kona cotton that coordinates with the fabric in the quilt i already made. i think i'm going to like the solid look a little bit better than these above made with multi-colored fabric. but that's just me.

the pom poms are also for the baby. i think i'm going to try to replace the stuffed animals from evan's mobile with them, made small so they don't break the mobile. then they'll go above her changing table as a nice little something to look at.

:: still pregnant: a creative commons post ::

i've chosen my favorite numbers-related creative commons pictures for this week's creative commons feature. you can see why after the pictures...


1. Numbers, 2. numbers, 3. Numbers, 4. numbers.jpg, 5. Yin and Yang numbers, 6. used numbers, 7. Odd numbers, 8. numbers, 9. Numbers Racket, 10. Colour by Numbers

so now the story...

this week's pregnancy adventure by the numbers:

1. the number of night i spent at the hospital as an admitted OB/GYN patient
2. the amount of time, in minutes, between contractions on monday night while i was admitted to said hospital
3. the number of OB/GYN residents who examined me throughout my visit
4. the dilation of my cervix, in inches, in the middle of the night on monday

and yet no baby. i had crazy contractions all night, so much so that i had to be on oxygen for a little while and they contemplated giving me medication to slow them down, and had IV fluids and everything, but then by morning my cervix still hadn't dilated any more and my contractions weren't hurting anymore (but oh! i'm still having them at regular brief intervals -- whee!) and so they sent me home.

which is where i am now.

because i am never having this baby apparently.

i think it's probably just a kicky tumor after all.

(a note: all ten pictures above are licensed under the following creative commons license: you can copy, distribute, and transmit the works PROVIDED YOU do NOT alter them, you attribute them to their original owner, AND you do not use them for commercial purposes.)

:: with a cherry on top ::

** edited to add this little bit of adorableness, intended to distract you from all the crankiness that follows below: after he saw this picture of me evan asked me to take a picture of him and his belly. so that's what we're going to go do. **

{ tele-flection: i couldn't resist snapping a quick shot as i walked past the TV yesterday }

damn. damn. damn. i am still pregnant.

i know i'm only 37 weeks and 2 days pregnant and i know i have no actual right to think that i've been pregnant forever and that i will be pregnant until i die a slow, painful, unwieldy death. but all i want right now is to be unpregnant.

and if i can't have that, then what i want second most is to curl up in bed with some distractions and my TV remote and stay there until the baby comes.

my pregnancy with evan was all roses and sunshine and i was all sweet-talk and long walks and happiness. i was, as they say, glowing. and my pregnancy with this one? it's more like shooting pains and uterine cramps and canceling plans and oh-dear-god-baby-get-out-of-me-now.

please please please!

:: orders out, shop in order ::

{orders assembled and stacked}

{sending out 28 desk calendars and some feelgood cards}

i'm not sure what it means that my shop is far more prepared for this baby's birth than any other aspect of my life. i've spent the last few weeks listing new items, preparing for the holidays, printing and cutting and assembling inventory, and getting everything organized for when i've got orders coming in and a newborn crying in my ear while i play with a toddler.

i'm hoping that it means i'm just naturally ready for the baby. this second time around maybe i'm just more confident that she'll come and it will be hard but not as hard as last time and we'll get through it. she's got some clothes. she's got a place to sleep. i'm pretty sure she's got diapers. maybe i'm just not as worried about the chaos in my real life as i am about the chaos in my business life.

or maybe it's just that i know that if i have chaos in my business life i'm going to have that much MORE chaos (and stress!) in my day-to-day life.

:: ready ::

i distinctly remember saying once, after evan was born, that i missed being pregnant. i assure you right now: i will not say that this time. i am so freaking ready for this child to come. in my moments of greatest pain and discomfort i have considered reaching up in there and yanking that child out with my bare hands.

i was hoping that working on this sweet little baby's sweet little quilt would be a welcome distraction, but just pin-basting it last night i had to take two breaks. and it's only about a square yard in size.

if anyone out there knows how to remove one's own baby before going into labor, please let me know. i'd really appreciate it.

(p.s. can i just say how much better wood floors are than carpet? sandwiching and basting the quilt at our old place used to be a nightmare but this was super easy (except for the pains shooting down my leg and the fact that my belly was hanging down all pendulous over my pajama pants). hooray for hardwoods.)

:: I Can't Stop Making Things ::

my postpartum depression after evan was born is how this whole up up creative business started: i couldn't stop making things. and now here we are again. it's like some kind of primal urge. feel bad, busy your hands?

i don't claim to understand it.



the good news is that evan and the baby are really going to benefit. this week i made a tie for evan and i'm finishing knitting the baby the cutest knitted pants ever made.

(these are just previews; i'll post a better pic of the pants when they're finished and i'll post a picture of evan wearing his tie at my sister's wedding next weekend, where he will be the most handsome kid and probably the only one wearing an honest-to-god tie and not some clip on piecce of ugliness. but then i'm biased.)

:: Wanna Know Something Good? ::

do ya?

i'm feeling pretty great these last couple of weeks. i'm feeling pretty much like myself. evan's twoness is trying at times, of course, and i can't stop thinking about houses, but i'm handling it a-ok. i'm so glad about that.

all of this was confirmed for me yesterday when i met with my new therapist. she's a social worker i'm going to meet with once a month or so as needed until the baby comes. we're working on a prevention plan.

anyway, it was our first meeting and as we talked about my life a year ago when i was in crisis and my life now, i just realized how different things are. with my life. with me. with my ability to cope. with my inner turmoil. i told her about leaving my ph.d. program. i told her about moving home. i told her about house hunting. i told her about the second baby. i told her about joining the mommy group. and i felt so powerful. i felt so empowered is maybe the better way to say it. i felt like yeah, sure, stressors will always be stressors. yeah, sure, there'll be bad days. yeah, sure, having a two year old and being pregnant with another is both exhausting and sometimes scary. but i'm ahead of it. i have learned to sit out here in front of it and assess it. watch it. stay on top of it. keep it from getting too big or too scary or too hard to talk about. i have learned that putting off decisions i know i'm going to make anyway only makes me more miserable.

i did tell her about my new-found over-attention to my moods and reactions, and she said it's probably not such a bad thing but that maybe i should try to keep the obsessive self-reflection to once a week. one day when i take a few minutes to review the week and think about how it went. and i'm okay with trying that.

as for the prevention plan, she also recommended carving out more time for me-just-me. i admitted that i spend all my supposed me-time now doing work for the shop, and she challenged me to try to find some time each day when i can do something that's not mothering and not wife-ing and decidedly not working.

we'll see how that goes. i know something'll have to give somewhere to make this happen. wish it could be eating oreos that i could give up, but oreos and pregnancy are just two things that go together in this body of mine. i actually dreamt about them during my nap yesterday.

sigh. oreos.

:: :: things i know and don't know :: ::

from camil tulcan's photostream, and available in the EPP creative commons group

what i resent most about the postpartum depression, the zoloft, coming off the zoloft, is that i have lost my sense of normal. not society-normal but me-normal. i have lost my inner compass. furthermore, i have developed an attendant need to second-guess every single emotion that flits through my poor, confused, hormonal brain.

i resent that i can't really tell how i'm doing right now. i'm moody, which i usually am not, but i'm also pregnant, which i also am usually not. so am i okay? am i not okay? and am i supposed to always feel okay? because i'm positive i didn't always feel okay before; i'm positive i often felt sad or confused or indignant. i'm positive i used to feel a frequent sense of, what? twenty-something angst?

i'm also positive that i was starting to outgrow that.

something inside me is saying, "hey, lady, you might not be doing so great right now" but then something inside me is also saying, "but hey! wait! who said you'd always be doing great?"

i do know that i'm not doing as well as i was a few months ago, but i also know that my life has changed a lot in the interim. is it fair to expect that i would still be feeling the same?

i thought i would know right away if i needed to go back on the zoloft or if i needed to talk to brian so that he could tell me to go back on the zoloft. i thought i'd know if i was feeling good or bad. but instead i'm feeling everything. i'm good and bad. i'm confused and scared and resentful. sometimes. and i'm stressed out. sometimes. we have two months until we're leaving my mom's house and we still haven't sold the condo in ohio. i know it's normal to be stressed out, but is my reaction to the stress normal? me-normal? am i coping okay? i don't freaking know.

i thought i would know.

:: :: just one :: ::

well, the news of the day is that i'm definitely only carrying one baby. yesterday we had an ultrasound (not the ultrasound - still no idea if i am having a boy or a girl) and within about one second of her putting the goop on my belly and then pressing the wand somewhat uncomfortably into my abdomen i saw it: just one baby.

i've got boy-girl twins on both sides of my family -- my mom's siblings and my dad's aunt and uncle and maybe others. and the first time around i never even had the inclination that i might be having twins, but this time i was getting the vibe.

don't get me wrong, i'm relieved that i'm only having one because oh my god we would need two new cars and some serious babysitting help with twins but there was a definite twinge of disappointment in there, too, which shocked the hell out of me.

but today i'm back to just feeling relieved. one baby. just one. yay for one.

:: :: yay! :: ::

{from torinodave72's Flickr photostream}

so is it controversial because you think i should have gotten off it the moment i found out i was pregnant, or because you think i should have gotten off before we even started trying to have a kid? or is it controversial because you think i should have stayed on?

whichever reason it may be controversial, i am off my zoloft. today was my first day without it, although i've been stepping down gradually and have been doing just fine. i have moments of anxiety or dread, but i know what they are now and i see them coming from so far away. i am learning to manage them. i am learning to name them so that they can disappear.

i was on the drugs for eleven months to the day, which is a total coincidence. it was longer than i initially expected, but for me it was the exact right amount of time. and to anyone out there in the middle of a complete breakdown like i was eleven months ago, let me reassure you: i'm glad i went on the drugs even though at the time i was both terrified of them and convinced that i didn't need to be medicated.

if i need them again i won't wait as long before i talk to my docs. i hope to stay off for the rest of my pregnancy, but as my OB advised, anxiety and depression have shown to have strong effects on the fetus, risks which may outweigh the possible risks of being on zoloft while pregnant. so we'll see. i just want to stay healthy. i just want to feel like myself.

right now i'm hopeful that i'll accomplish that without the zoloft.

yippee!

:: :: luckiest baby :: ::

maybe i'm biased about the baby. or the hat. but i think that this little baby in here, this little belly friend of mine, is going to be the luckiest baby, and not just because he or she will get to wear this freaking adorable hat.

i got the pattern from one of debbie bliss's books. i already returned it to the library but i'm pretty sure it was this one.

the hat was knit flat and then seamed, which i have mixed feelings about. i hate knitting on double-pointed needles, so it was nice that i didn't have to do that, but the seam is annoying me (especially because i had to reverse the seam for the rolled-up part and that was both annoying and not super slick, as you can see if you look at the somewhat gnarled part there on the roll).

:: :: tonight's top news stories :: ::

{ photo credit: alphabet soup II by cdw9 }

the weekend's top stories:

(1) evan started sleeping in a big bed. his room looks like a freaking bedroom now for godssake. he loves it and stays in it (so far) for the whole night and all of naptime. no climbing out. no funny business. i think he hasn't really processed the fact that he is freefreefree!

(2) the baby is officially a fetus now (this is according to one of those books. you know, the pregnancy books. the ones you buy for your first pregnancy and then tell yourself you don't need for the second but still find yourself poring over).

(3) (related news) i am officially tired of being pregnant. i can't wait for the part where i am all happy and pregnant. the part where i'm like, "i actually kind of like this" and where the baby kicks me but doesn't yet lodge his or her foot in between two ribs.

(4) i graduated into the scary bra size. i don't know if you're like me but i have a size. a size that i never ever thought i'd be. and it's not like it's any big deal or anything, but dear god almighty i am already that size and i'm only ten weeks pregnant. i had to go bra shopping today (best advice i will ever give you: go to victoria's secret, head straight for the fitting room, ask for a fitting and then a bra box. they bring you every single bra in your size and you don't have to wander around being perpetually invited to apply for a credit card, put your bras in a bag, or learn about some new high-tech bra system or another.) and when she measured me i wanted to be like, "oh, no thanks. i'll just go with my usual size" as if she were offering me an upgrade instead of a proper fit.

(5) (related) my boobs now fit fully into my bra cups. it does not look like i have four boobs anymore. this makes the scary size sort of okay.

anyway, that was the big news around here. what big news do you have to share?

:: :: water balloons :: ::

water balloons mosaic, originally uploaded by brianjulieandbaby.

inspired by my previous post. : ) you can find the links to each photo by clicking on the mosaic above.

:: :: divulgence friday :: ::

can i admit some things?

1. i'm not really enjoying writing each penny pretty as much as i hoped i would. i feel very constrained by my own commitment to writing about affordable art and design. i find gorgeous things i'd rather write about but they're too expensive. too out of reach for anyone i know. plus it takes so damned much time to keep up with. i'm not sure my birthday present is the kind that's going to keep on giving. at least not in the way i had hoped.

2. i really really miss my sewing machine. it's still here, don't get me wrong. but it's in the (cold, dark, lonely) basement. and i don't have any house projects to work on because i don't have a house yet. and plus i have my hands full with (a) evan, (b) my growing business, and (c) all the progesterone coursing through my body (my obie-gynie - that's what we call her in my family, who knows why - says progesterone is a sedating hormone and BOY OH BOY is she right). it all adds up to a dusty sewing machine. it's so sad.

3. i've got a new shop in the works. it may be awhile but i'm going to open up my own shop at my own personal URL. i'll keep the etsy shop and they'll have the same things in them more or less, but if i hope to grow the business and get more exposure, it's really important that i have my own shop.

4. i am trying to be all zen about it but i feel like my whole body is swelling right now. the best word to describe my boobs lately is pendulous. it's like i've got two water balloons suspended by just their ties and they're all swingy and heavy. unlike water balloons, though, they hurt, too. and of course every time i see my swingy pendulum-boobs, I go down this whole mental path that includes the complete destruction of my body and its replacement with a whole lot of big marshmallows stuck together in the sort-of shape of a woman. it's not a good path to go down.

okay. enough admitting for now.

feel free (no, actually, i encourage you) to share your own admissions in the comments. you can go anonymous if you really want to. it could be all post secret.

:: :: a curse upon all you cavewomen :: ::

to my evolutionary foremothers:

i really wish that you had found a way to nurture and protect the women who didn't feel crappy during the first trimesters of their pregnancies. it's just not fair that the women who survived and reproduced and thus passed their genes on down the long, long line to me had to be the ones with the nausea and headaches and exhaustion.

damn you, foremothers. my head hurts. i can't eat. or i'm starving. i feel nauseated half the time and sleepy the rest of the time. i pretty much hate you, ladies. sorry, but it's true.

:: :: more on the rally :: ::

wow. i just started reading some of the letters at postpartum progress. you really need to get over there. it'll help you know and understand me better. it will help you know and understand all moms better.

{see post below for details}

:: :: mother's day rally for moms' mental health :: ::

today, instead of writing something here on my blog, i'm writing over at a katherine's blog. please head on over to postpartum progress to read my letter (and 23 other letters) to new moms.

i'm really proud to be participating in this online rally that started at midnight last night and runs until midnight tonight. the rally features open letters to new mothers on the importance of maternal health. one letter will be published each hour on the hour.

i don't know what time mine will be, but just head over and keep checking if you must. (oh, okay, i'll post a link here to my letter when it's published...)

and to all of you, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

:: :: i guess i really am pregnant :: ::

ME: what was the best part of your day?
BRIAN: (after some thought) i think it was the look of satisfaction when you finished your chicken selects.

a moment later.

BRIAN: what was your best part?
ME: i think it was the chicken selects.

true story.

(i was going to add a picture of chicken selects here, but when i went to get one they looked so good i realized i might go buy chicken selects for breakfast if i had to look at that picture much longer.)

:: :: meeting the mood :: ::

the common advice for dealing with anxiety is to relax, take deep breaths, etc. sometimes i find that lying on my back and breathing all the way into my diaphragm helps. but sometimes the thing that helps the most is meeting the mood. taking the anxiety and turning it into excitement or joy.

here's some of my best therapy. come, meet me in that place where you feel so happy you want to scream.