Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Kathryn

Pride, Prejudice and Zombies

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I made the mistake of blogging or tweeting a while ago that Little Baby McSquidge had slept 6 hours in a row one night. Yeah. Jinxes are real and pounding on wood after the jinx is enacted will do you no good whatsoever. It may even wake the baby.

So now she’s on a decent schedule. She sleeps for 2.5-4 hours at a stretch all night long. I go into her room and feed her, fall asleep while she’s nursing, wake up 2 or three hours later with a crick in my neck, do the other side, fall asleep, put her in bed and then head to my bed just in time for her to wake up again. It hasn’t been particularly restful. Luckily Dan’s home on paternity leave so he does pretty much everything around the house that doesn’t require mammaries.

He’s going back to work in a few weeks though and I’ve been working towards getting some sort of restful sleep schedule going. I told Dan I needed to find a way to stay awake while feeding her so I could feed her, burp her, give her a new bum, and put her away in time to get some sleep before she woke up again.

His suggestion was that I watch movies while I nurse. We have a small TV and DVD player in the nursery for that purpose but I’ve been too lazy to bring up any movies. So last night, I looked through what we had, trying to find something that could keep me awake long enough to feed but wouldn’t hold my attention so completely that I couldn’t turn it off at any point and go back to bed when she’d finished eating me.

So I started the new cinematic nursing plan last night with the short Pride and Prejudice. It was a success I think. Each feeding lasted only one hour and I was only a little bit wound up when I got back into bed. I think it took me maybe 10 minutes longer to fall asleep after each feeding, what with the drama and romance and passion and such pumping through my veins. I think this is still better than drifting in and out of unrestful sleep while sitting upright in a rocking chair.

Today at naptime I finished off the movie. Maybe tonight I’ll give Colin Firth a go. Although I still consider the BBC adaptation to be the authoritative P&P, it is a bit more mind-numbing with its slow pacing and copious discussions of gowns, propriety and fortunes.

Whatever happens, I need to find a way to feel less zombie-like. Perhaps a year or so from now, I’ll magically find the solution…

I Plan to Become a Millionaire

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This morning I was spending some sweet quality time with my squishable water-filled newborn. Sunlight was filtering in through the window of my cozy bedroom and I was sitting next to her on the bed. She looked so precious and perfect except for a bright red gash, newly carved into her pudgy cheek.

“Stop scratching yourself baby!” I urged, “I think we’re gonna have to start calling you Scar Face.”

I’ve filed her nails. We’ve tried the little mittens and the pjs with the fold-over sleeves on the ends. She gets the mittens off like a fat little cross-eyed Houdini with dark duck down for hair. She spends her life trying to punch through those fold-over sleeves. They are a great burden to her.

Looking at her latest injury, I thought of the perfect solution – plastic face shields like you can buy for your PDA but made for babies! I know, right? Best idea ever. They would stick onto the baby’s face with a light, dermatologist-tested adhesive, completely covering baby’s face except for the eyes, mouth and nostrils. They would be transparent so you could still see your baby’s face, although it would look a little like you were viewing it through a window that it was being smooshed up against. But who doesn’t think it’s cute when tiny little kids smoosh their faces up against windows? Tell me. Who?

Then the baby could scratch and scratch all she wanted without doing any damage. She’d be happy and ready for her next photo shoot at a moment’s notice.

If anyone’s interested in buying this idea for mass production and sale, please email me. Serious inquiries only.

A Sense of Urgency

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I’ve watched my other two kids grow and mature, and their needs seem to be slightly less urgent and immediate than are Wanda’s. Where Wanda needs what she needs 10 minutes ago, Magoo at age 4 only needs things right this second and Laylee at 6 can be persuaded to wait for sometimes as long as an hour with relative patience. [Read More at Parenting.com]

The Tank

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This past weekend, we watched General Conference, a big fat conference our church has twice a year where the Prophet and other leaders of our church broadcast speeches and messages all over the world by internet and satellite.

We watch church on TV for 2 days at home in our pajamas. This year my mom made the kids a big tent to watch from and to be honest I slept through most of it in my sleep-deprived haze. I’m glad the talks are available online for later review because I could not keep my eyes open most of the time.

One talk I will NOT forget involved one church leader giving his solemn testimony of the Book of Mormon while holding the original copy that was read by the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at the time of their martyrdom in the early 1800s. Not only was it an extremely powerful talk, but as a former librarian, I will always remember it as the talk that gave historians across the world a coronary. I wonder exactly how many seconds after he finished speaking that a team of archivists swept in with special dusting cloths and archival quality Ziplocs.

Getting ready for the conference, Magoo and I were looking at a picture of our Prophet and I asked him if he knew his name.

“Yeah…ummmm…no.”

“It’s President Monson.”

“Nope. That’s not it. It’s something with a train in it.”

“A train?”

“Yeah. The prophet’s REAL name has a train in it.”

I was dumbfounded. I tried to prove him wrong.

“There’s no train in his name. His name is Thomas S. Monson.”

“YEAH! Oh YEAH! He has a THOMAS in his name.”

So I wonder if President Monson’s other friends ever refer to him by his REAL FULL NAME, Thomas “The Tank Engine” S. Monson.

I Shouldn’t Compare

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I’ve only had 2 daughters for a couple of weeks but I’m already comparing them to each other. I need to remember to look at them as individual young ladies with their own gifts and talents but it’s so hard not to compare.

The main problem I’m having is that Wanda is pathetically incapable of belching. We have to work so hard to get her to do even the smallest burp. Laylee on the other hand could belch all day long if she wanted to and sometimes does.

In the past I’ve pleaded with her to stop this but now that we’re trying to keep Wanda’s tummy troubles under control, belching has become a primo skill to be coveted and respected. Maybe Laylee could take some time and do a little tutorial for her when she gets home from school.

Baby of Rage

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I’ve written a new song for Wanda entitled “Baby of Rage.” The words are different every time I sing it but they basically consist of me singing to her in my sweetest voice about how she’s a Baby of Rage and I don’t know why.

Most of the time she’s a Baby of Sweetness but every so often, every day or two, she has a rough period of rage and physical turmoil that I assume is caused by digestational distress incomprehensible to someone whose intestines are as highly developed as mine.

We’re at the stage in her life where I feel directly responsible for any sickness she feels in her tummy. “It must have been those Swedish fish I ate yesterday. I’m so thoughtless! Tomorrow I will stick to a strict diet of steamed carrots and mashed potatoes.”

But then the next day I will eat the steamed carrots and mashed potatoes and sneak a bite of Magoo’s hot dog. At 1pm, Baby of Rage will surface and I will think, “What a feckless MORON am I?! I did this to her. Darn that meat product!”

In reality I have no idea what causes Baby of Rage to rear her pathetic head, squawking and grunting her way to burden-free bowels.

The composition and subsequent performance of the song reminded me of how much we enjoyed doing freestyle family rap battles back in the day, the rhyming, the flow, the hoodies and do-rags. When Wanda’s older, I hope she’ll be all up in hee-ya wid-it. Holla!

Alas. We need to work on getting her to freestyle her fecal matter before we proceed to anything more creative.

Open Letter to Wanda

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I am the soft home whose walls you snuggled up against and occasionally tried to claw through, with the loud laugh and the voice that went on and on almost without ceasing. I am everything that’s surrounded you for the majority of your life. I am your world as you’ve come to know it.

And now the world’s changed. [Read More at Parenting.com]

Birth, Billy and Beyond

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The delivery was awesome. Many of you followed on Twitter as I took my geekishness to new heights by tweeting one of my family’s most personal and dramatic moments. It was such a great way to keep our family updated all at the same time. I’m glad we did it but I’ll be deleting the tweets and moving them here so as not to leave a permanent record of Baby Wanda’s birth date up on the interwebs. (yes I know it will still be up there somewhere but I’d rather not have it on my active Twitter page.)

So, from some “mystery” date a while back, here are my birth tweets:

– 11:12 PM: No baby yet but my mom’s here to play. Get to start calling and begging the hospital for induction tomorrow. This should be fun.
– 6:20 AM: No room at the inn yet. Call back in an hour.
– 7:14 AM: AAAAHHHH!!!!! Headed to the hospital.
– 8:33 AM Just signed the forms that say “I may die here but I don’t mind.”
My friends love me.– 8:36 AM: Wearing the bracelet my friends made me with beads and good wishes given at my shower.
– 9:57 AM: Came in dilated to a 2 and 75% effaced. Waiting for petocin. Suddenly busy here so we’re napping till it’s our turn.
– 10:22 AM: Petocin started. It’s go time.
– 11:19 AM: Listening to old CarTalk podcasts and watching Wanda’s roundhouse kicks. No major contractions yet.
Zune is Awesome.– 12:22 PM: Moved on to This American Life. Contractions picking up.
– 12:24 PM: Nurse must read same parenting books as us. I asked if I could have pudding. “Sure,” she said, “As soon as you have the baby.”
– 1:23 PM: Nurse just came in to check ma vitals. Said “Oh dear” at one point for apparently no reason. Back to CarTalk. Aye! Contraction!
– 2:25 PM: Oww. Mom. Very slow progress for the ouchiness. At least the nurses are cool.
– 2:49 PM: West Wing Season 1 is like a warm blanket to my heart. The epidural coming in 45 mins will be like a warm blanket to my uteris.
– 4:12 PM: I should have gotten that epidural two months ago.
– 4:25 PM: Water hath been broken which is normally painful but it’s okay because it feels like my lower body has taken a bath in Anbesol.
– 5:20 PM: Gonna push soon! Will update when baby is here!
Smurfy– 7:04 PM: Thick dark hair, 8lbs 10oz, 20″, 15 mins pushing, so gorgeous!
– 8:27 AM: Here she is un-blue. So sweet. Slept all night (unlike the rest of us) and is eating well. Still no real name

The delivery went really smoothly. After the epidural and the water breaking, I went from a 4 to complete in less than an hour and it only took 15 minutes of pushing before she was born. She came out fist first, our little Ninja, causing us to briefly add “Norris” to our list of names in honor of his venerable Chuckness.

Now with less Smurf!The doctor said, “I’ve delivered an arm,” and I said, “Oh good. Her head is out?” And he said, “No, just her arm.” But her head came out next and then the rest of her and that sweet squawky little cry and she went from being a bulge in my abdomen to a living breathing person whom I get to love, take care of and repress most cruelly for her own good for many years to come.

We did pick a name before we headed home from the hospital, put it on the birth certificate and everything. Here’s a list of the names we were mulling over on our giant spreadsheet in the hospital. You were all so good to share your ideas with me. This list includes all the names we seriously considered at some point during the pregnancy. One of them is the name we chose. So if you’re looking for baby girl names, have at it.

Anne, Jane, Ivy, Josephine (Finn), Eve, Lucy, Adele, Violet, Eden, Ruth, Gail, Estelle (Stella), Lynn, Daisy, Jean, Nina, Kathryn, Robin, Susan, Ruby, Amelia, Nora, Sally, Jill, Leah.

She is gorgeous and sweet and we love her, an amazing sleeper and a champion nurser.

There have been a few little things to work out, as there are with any baby. First, I’m working to find my emotional happy place, working with my people to get me to where I need to be mentally. It’s not the most fun but not nearly as hard as it was with Magoo when I didn’t know what was going on.

The emotional transition to third-time motherhood was complicated by the fact that 2 days after birth she developed some moderately bad jaundice and we were set up with a light box in our house that we needed to keep her strapped into whenever she wasn’t eating. A nurse has been out here every day since to take her blood and check her vitals.

It’s amazing how something seemingly small like that can send everything out of whack. Just watching her lay there on the florescent lights and not being allowed to pick her up or comfort her when she cried unless it was time for a feeding was much harder on me than I would have guessed. I guess I got the smallest taste of what it’s like for mothers whose babies end up in the NICU and they don’t get to bond with them in the typical way.
blue baby box light
Holding and cuddling Magoo was one of the only ways I could soothe and calm my anxieties during his early life and sitting next to her light box, smoothing her hair while she screamed had just the opposite effect.

They also asked me to wake and feed her every two to three hours, take her temperature each time and record how many minutes I fed on each breast, what her diaper looked like and how many minutes I had her off the lights. They also wanted me to pump after each feeding and then give her a supplementary bottle for dessert, which meant I then had to wash and sterilize all the pump and bottle parts before going to bed before the next feeding, so sleep was rough.

My mom and Dan are here and doing everything they can to help but I want them to be at least somewhat fresh to make things seem normal for Laylee and Magoo during the day as I lay around and heal, nurse, and question my every thought, feeling and emotion to determine whether or not I’m “O.K.”

But today Wanda’s blood had improved a ton and the nurse called this afternoon to tell us we could take her off the lights and hold her as much as we wanted. This was good news, sort of tears-of-joy ecstatic news. This gives me hope for more restful nights and emotional calm in the coming days. I still plan on waking her up every three hours to feed just to make sure she’s pumped full of enough to get all the bilirubin out of her system.

So that’s where we stand. Newness, weirdness, sweetness and family. Everything feels very fragile and every minute very important. Her squirks and squeaks fascinate me and her gassy smiles melt my heart the same as if they were real smiles. I can’t get over how soft she is or how much her siblings adore her. I can’t get over how vulnerable she seems or how scared I am that I’ll never be able to keep this little person safe through adulthood. Suddenly the other two seem so fragile as well. There’s nothing like bringing a new baby into the world to make you wish your world was just a tiny, well-padded, time-proof bubble.

Rain is pouring down on our new roof but we’re safe and dry. The big kids are asleep. The baby is passed out on my mom’s chest and Dan is puttering on the computer. Ours is a good little bubble. Here’s to hoping you’re all staying dry and warm in yours.

Machines That Rule the World

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Laylee continually finds new ways to boss Magoo around. Today they were playing in the ship they made and she told him to steer to the left. “No. I’m going this way,” he said, which was funny because he doesn’t know right from left. He just resented being told what to do. They picked at each other for a minute when Laylee finally said, “You have to go left because I said so and I’m the GPS.”

She’s smart enough to know who wears the pants around here, who has absolute and total power and control over our lives. It’s Diane, our GPS. She says, “Go right,” and we darn well go right. She says “Continue 3.5 miles,” and we continue. Sometimes she has to recalculate because we, in our incompetency, make a wrong move, but she always sets us straight with new directions.

“Okay,” Laylee continued to the acquiescent Magoo, “Turn left. Now keep right for 2 point miles. Now turn right and arrive at destination on left.”

Magoo continued to follow her directions.

“You know what a destination is? It’s the place you want to go.”

The place who wants to go? Huh, Laylee? If a GPS can boss Mom and Dad around, then the sky’s the limit really.

“I’m the GPS. Go get me a drink and polish my shoes peasant boy.”