So tired.  Too tired for full sentences.  Will update in bullet form.

Avery

• Loves to sleep.  During the day.  At night?  Not even close to being interested.  I remember this from Eirinn.  This part is no fun.
• Loves to eat.  ALL THE TIME.  Is a pig.  But I guess she has the whole “growing infant” thing to use as an excuse for the weight gain.  Feeding her all the time has left me with an insatiable craving for Fudgsicles.  I do not have the “growing infant” thing as an excuse for weight gain anymore.  Luckily Fudgsicles are low in fat and calories.  High on awesome.
• HATES to be naked.  Even diapie changes are reason for complete mental breakdowns.  Oh, and the breakdowns cause her to poop.  So get this vicious cycle.  She poops, so we have to change her, so she screams about it, so she poops, and so on until eternity.  Leaving for the grocery store this morning took an hour and a half and 7 diapers.  I could hear the “cha-ching” with every shriek.
• Is ridiculously cute.  Even when she’s not sleeping, pigging out on my very sore udders, and squeeling for someone to save her from the torture of a clean, dry bum.

Eirinn

• Is coping surprisingly well.  She’s trying to be helpful, although the concept of “gentle” is a little foreign to our little Princess Tomboy.  She’ll catch on.
• Has been spoiled rotten, which probably contributes to the coping.  She has been treated to many Big Sister presents, trips to the trailer, pool parties, popcicles just cause she wants them.  I’m sure if she knew Big Sister-dom came with so many perks, she would have signed up for this gig a long time ago.
• Now seems GIGANTIC.  Last week, she still seemed like our baby girl.  Size 2 clothing was still tiny.  Now she is this enormous, Godzeera of a person who just speaks with a funny accent and still wears diapers to bed at night.

Bosco

• Is feeling terribly neglected and unloved, even though literally nothing has changed for him.  He still has the run of the house, gets a treat every night, and sleeps in our bed.  Not even Avery is allowed to sleep in our bed, so that’s got to mean something, right?

Me

• Incredibly tired from the no sleeping, constantly eating newborn.  But that’s the same story heard from every mother of a newborn, so I’m not looking for any sympathy.
• Except maybe from Anonymous Husband.  It’s very easy to feel bitter at three in the morning, feeding the child, having only been asleep for a grand total of 20 minutes, when the husband is snoring away three feet to my left.  Especially when the snoring is what woke the baby up.
• Feeling, otherwise, great.

* Edited to note: Anonymous Husband has been incredibly helpful this week.  I only feel the resent at night because feeding her is something he can not do to help.  If he could, I’m sure he would.  But he can’t, so I sit on my side of the bed at all hours of the night, baby filling her little tummy, glaring at him through my tired, crusty eyes, wishing he had the boobs in the family.

On Monday morning, at 3:40 am, my water broke.  It was the weirdest feeling, if you’ve never experienced it.  There was literally a *pop* sensation and a gush.  A very large, seemingly neverending gush.  Those who confuse wetting themselves with their water breaking probably just wet themselves. 

AH called Labour & Delivery while I sat on the pot as water kept coming.  I wasn’t having any contractions or pain and the water was clear, so they told us to wait until morning to come in.  So that’s what we planned on doing, all the while trying to dry the mattress with towels and hair dryers and re-making the bed with new, un-soiled sheets.

Contractions started at about 5ish, so we called AH’s mom to come to the house so Eirinn could keep sleeping (I don’t know how she could sleep at a time like this…).  My parents had already been called because they needed 2 hours driving time heads up.  By the time his mom arrived, the contractions were getting pretty strong, so on the way to the hospital, we used the speed limit as a suggestion, only.  Oh, and we stopped at the bank first.  Might as well get some business done while we’re out.  We don’t get out without Eirinn much, so we took advantage and it was a little early in the morning for a movie.

We got to the hospital at 6:30 and I was 3-4 cms dilated, 75% effaced.  The nurse ran down the list of pain management options, and as the contractions were getting a little intense, I opted for a shot of Gravol (I was also feeling like I was going to make sick) and a shot of Morphine to take the edge off.

The nurse checked me again at 10:00 and I was 7 cms dilated and excruciatingly uncomfortable.  She called my doctor, who told her to call him again when I was 8 and he’d come in time for delivery. 

The contractions were getting unmanageable and one on top of the other, so after a long inner debate, I told AH that I thought I needed an epidural.  He didn’t know, because I didn’t tell him, but that was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make.  I was mentally set on going just as natural as I had with Eirinn (despite the induction, I only had one shot of Morphine with her).  I was extremely disappointed with myself that I couldn’t tough this one out like I had before.

AH went to the nurses station and told them I wanted an epidural.  Apparently, this is code word for “By God, she’s having the baby NOW!” so my doctor was called right away and the nurse got someone to start the fluids.  I say “someone” because I’m pretty sure a nurse could start fluids without, and I quote, “blowing the vein”, resulting in a puddle of blood on the floor that AH got to stand in during pushing.  Anyway, that was neither here nor there, because as I was bleeding to death (not really, just a little bitter sarcasm) I whispered to AH that I was pretty sure I should be pushing.  The nurse (the real one, not the vein butcher) checked me again (this was about 10 minutes after being checked at 7cms) and she said the head was right there.

The on-call doctor was paged and I started pushing.  He had some kid with him, like some 15 year old Doogie Howser, M.D. or something.  Maybe it was Bring Your Kid To Work Day, I don’t know.  Anyway, this kid did a lot of the stuff down there, but I wasn’t in a position to care.  I pushed through 4 or 5 contractions and on my last push, my doctor came flying through the door, shoved his hands in some gloves, got right on the bed, perpendicular to me, and out she came at 10:36 am.

For the record, that was 4 hours of active labour, no epidural, 10 minutes of pushing (5 in total), only one stitch internally, which was done by the on-call doctor (what was his name, anyway?) and my doctor said it wasn’t necessary afterall.  8 lbs 15 oz, 22 inches (which is exactly 2 full pounds heavier than Eirinn and almost 3 inches longer), and I’m done.  Like done for good.  It was fast and furious, but Good Lord, the whole “getting the baby outta there” business hurts like the Dickens.

I went home after 24 hours because staying at the hospital sucks.  The food is gross and usually cold (unless it’s supposed to be cold; in that case it’s warm), the bed is so uncomfortable I might as well have been sleeping on the lanolium floor, and the random nurses prodding at my baby and touching my boobs, makes the hospital a not-nice place.

HOWEVER, Avery slept like an angel at the hospital.  Last night?  Not so much. 

But, when I look at that face, I can’t stay mad for long.

Thanks for the good luck wishes, but only some of them stuck. 

Eirinn slept well; better than expected.  Getting her to sleep was a chore (a violently loud and tantrum-y chore), but she slept clean through the night with nary a shift in position.  We took turns sleeping with her, so the bed wasn’t a cramped sardine can.

She also didn’t fall over the side of the boat when she went fishing with her Disney Princess fishing pole.  Shelurved riding in the boat.  She has been waiting for weeks to go for a ride and it didn’t disappoint.  She also loved fishing, but that mainly involved her passing the pole to Babba or Papa and letting Mommy take unbearably embarrassing pictures of them fishing with a two foot pink and purple Princess pole.

The baby didn’t fall out.  I’m not even joking when I say that at my doctor’s appointment on Friday afternoon I made him do a physical examination to assure me that baby falling out was an unlikely scenario.  Not that the trailer is in the middle of nowhere, there’s a hospital no more than 15 minutes away, but who wants to have their baby fall out in a boat in the middle of the lake?

The mosquitoes and black flies were certainly hungry, but the buffet was closed, my evil, winged, blood-thirsty nemesis.  We all armed ourselves with a bug patch (I’m not sure if this is the exact brand, but you get the idea), which, in all honesty, is God’s Gift to Northern/Central Ontarians, where we have two seasons - Winter and Bugs (as opposed to the seasons in the GTA, which are Winter and Construction).  There were so many bugs that if we opened our mouths to speak, we would have had to floss them out of our teeth, but none of us got a single bite.  Not one.

BUT.  The rain.  Come on, you guys.  You could have done a little better on the good weather wishes.  Oh, and the cold.  The rain and the cold sucked.  Good thing my parents’ trailer has a plasma tv with satellite or I would have been totally and uncontrollably enraged.

By the way, just a tip to whom it may concern: four dogs is too many at a trailer.  Four is too many for the two hour ride up in a cramped van, filled to capacity with luggage.  Four is too many stuck in a trailer in a rain storm.  Four is too many at night when all of them are used to sleeping in beds.  And four is WAY too many to take on a boat ride with four adults, a toddler, a cooler full of toddler snacks, exactly 26 fishing poles, my suitcase-sized camera bag, and a port-a-potty, even if the boat is an 18 foot pontoon.  Four dogs is too many.  

But at least mine wasn’t the one who still goes pee and poo on puppy pads inside the fully loaded trailer, which are always mysteriously and inconveniently located in the middle of the living room where we can all watch her squat and squeeze (Sophie…). 

And at least mine isn’t the one who snores like a drunk asthmatic trucker (Gizmo…). 

And at least mine isn’t the biggest and toughest and the only one afraid of fire works and shakes and cries and cowers for hours after a single, distant pop (Murphy…). 

However, I will admit without hesitation that mine was the loudest and undoubtedly the most annoying with his high-pitched barking and yipping and squawking.