We've been parents for ten years. It is such a clear before/after line in my life.
On a vaguely related note, Michael texted me to remind me that I took him to see Primus open for 24-7 Spyz on 7/26/1989, his 10th BD, and then abandoned him at the Newport to go to the mosh pit.
I just bought 4 tickets to see Flogging Molly in August, and what do you know! It's an all-ages show....
The Dispatch, via it's This Week subsidiary has decided to experiment with these new-fangled 'blogs' by allowing anonymous authors to post all kinds of weird things that they would never allow in print.
Here's the latest from This Week's 'Family Connection' Blog:
Some parents go so far as to decide that having a blissful utopian birth is only possible in their own home. This idea doesn't boggle my mind. It infuriates me.
Move your lips and read along with me: birthing a child at home is a Bad Idea. There is a reason why medical interventions were invented, and it's that the natural way Doesn't Always Work. And when it doesn't work, it doesn't work in a big way.
Wow, I don't even know where to begin, but I know a few people who do....
Never thought anyone would combine the two, did you? Wired's Bodyhack blog passes on the story that European soccer stars are saving their kid's umbilical cords to bank against a future career-saving treatment based on the stem cells.
I simply can't improve on the headline at BoingBoing: Blinged-out baby umbilical cord gift atrocity.
In other news Jane made the bold move of moving frozen placenta from the upstairs freezer to the downstairs freezer. Our placenta inventory in the chest freezer is now 3.
Bad moderately hippy parents!
ecto says I'm listening to The Moon Inside from the album "Respect" by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Finoula (Fin) Elizabeth O'Shaughnessy was born at 2:35AM EDT. She is 21" long and weighs 11lbs, 4oz.
It is almost 9AM, and I'm operating on two hours of sleep. Everyone is fine but exhausted, after 13+ hours of labor and a rough birth.
More pictures and some story when I can see straight.
Pictures after the fold.
I can't think up any more subjects to quickly describe how we are sitting around on our butts waiting for this baby. I'm phoning in work today so that Jane can relax a bit. We went to the midwives last night and Jane is progressing nicely. She even got a little, tiny bit of bloody show.
Joey, who wants to "look in the hole" at the baby got to ask the "if girls don't have penises, how do they pee?" question, which kept he and I occupied for the last half of the meeting. Nice to have such a discussion in a room full of women on good terms with those subjects, and in a room with lots of cutaway drawings of female anatomy. Other Joey questions from the meeting: "Why does the baby come out of the butt?" (this was the beginning of the process that got us to the no penis discussion) "Why does it look like a tree?" (looking at the milk ducts in the breast cutaway)
So, again: Home today. Still no baby. So let's see what happens.
ecto says I'm listening to Don't Let's Start from the album "They Might Be Giants" by They Might Be Giants (For those in the know, this is the song that Joey calls "The Cat Food Song."
So my dad pages my mom in some important meeting today and she has to squash the pager in her hand because she couldn't leave the meeting.
She finally gets a chance to call Dad and he says, "10lbs, 11oz."
"Wow!" Says mom, "Is it a boy or a girl?"
"What are you taking about?" Says Dad.
ecto says I'm listening to I Saw Nick Drake from the album "A Star for Bram" by Robyn Hitchcock
....because there's nothing going on. Believe me.
Soccer teams won though, and we didn't get hailed on.
Still nothing. We are on with the backup midwives. Ellie is now birth champion (labor started on her due date), Bobby retains second (4 days late) and Fin is gunning for Joey (10 days late).
People at work are wondering why I'm still showing up instead of just starting my vacation.
Okay, off to 279 for pizza.
ecto says I'm listening toEnjoy from the album "Post" by Björk
Don't ask and you won't get your head bitten off.
Quick trip to see the midwives tonight and despite Jane's confidence about going early, relatively little progress was evident. Jane is starting to worry, as the midwives start leaving town for their convention on Saturday. It is still a few days off, and we do have other options, but the prospect of giving birth in the hospital is looming quite large in her view.
Snowball pointed out with her questions in the last post that all of the wonderful blog posts about this pregnancy and all of the related ones were mostly thought up while I was mowing the lawn or wrestling the kids to sleep and never became electrons. So, here's the abbreviated version:
Jane is due with kid #4 (Code name: "Baby Finn") on Friday, October 8. Due date is based on good numbers and some ultrasound data, so it should be pretty accurate. We weren't planning on telling anyone until after my Mom's birthday in March, but....
Molly and Suzanna took the opportunity of my Mom's birthday party to email Mom a birthday card of their ultrasounds. They announced Suz's due date of October 7, and Jane and I both had a pretty amazing jaw drop moment across the room. Our surprise was quickly out of the bag.
We immediately emailed and IM'ed my sister Bridie in Ireland and got her to confirm that she wasn't also pregnant.
She was lying. She's a really good liar.
Bridie and Gordon have a baby due sometime in November.
Add in Maggie and Keith's daughter Katherine, and my parents will have gone from three to seven grandchildren in less than a year.
Names have been decided, which puts Finn leaps and bounds ahead of the previous three. I have it on good authority that negotiations have taken place at the highest levels. When asked "Are you having a boy or a girl?" Jane has taken to answering "Yes."
Okay, I've been here too long. I'm sure that some part of the house is burning down or has heartburn.
I'll leave you with this one to ponder: Joey has publicly announced that it is fully permissible to address him as "Turbo Dude."
ecto says I'm listening to"B" Movie Box Car Blues from the album "Briefcase Full of Blues" by The Blues Brothers
You'd have thought that I'd forgotten about this place.
Truth is, between preparing the house for the birth, midwife appointments, Jane reaching 39 weeks, Jane's Birthday, two soccer teams, end of fiscal at work, and three kids who are doing their best to deal with the stress, we've barely been keeping our heads above water. As much as I'd like to brag about the soccer teams, tell stories about the kids and their exploits or just rant about local and national politics, I need to get whatever sleep I can get, and be there to herd kids and fetch Tums and water for Jane. I'l be back in force, once the baby comes, as I'll be taking two weeks off from work to run the place while Jane recovers.
Kos has the speech. One part really stands out:
As I've traveled the country, I've met many workers and small business owners who have told me they are worried they cannot afford health care. More than half of the uninsured are small business employees and their families. In a new term, we must allow small firms to join together to purchase insurance at the discounts available to big companies. We will offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts, and provide direct help for low-income Americans to purchase them. These accounts give workers the security of insurance against major illness, the opportunity to save tax-free for routine health expenses, and the freedom of knowing you can take your account with you whenever you change jobs. And we will provide low-income Americans with better access to health care: In a new term, I will ensure every poor county in America has a community or rural health center.
Are you kidding? Medical savings accounts will insure against major illness? Tell me how. Americans have nearly no ability to save, and the concept of a "tax-free" medical savings account is well beyond the understanding and, even more importantly, the means of the people who need healthcare the most. Even if one were to save in such a plan, you'd have to save for years to react to something as simple as a heart attack or a car accident. And even then, you'd would be billed book rates by the hospital, rather than the discounted rates the insurance companies negotiate. As an example our midwives just had a doula accompany a woman to a hospital for a birth. The nurses used two cans of Dermoplast. The bill for just the two cans of Dermoplast: Over $500USD!!! The second can was still almost half full! They gave it to her to take home. Now her insurance company will pay much less than that, perhaps a price approaching the sub-$10 cost of a can, but what do you think that someone with a medical savings account would have to pay?
Secondly, small companies can already join in co-ops to purchase health insurance, and the costs are still crippling them, if they even choose to offer insurance.
Ahargggggg!!!!!!!!! This is not a solution, nor even an honest accounting of the problem.
In other news BoingBoing is aggregating nyc.indymedia.org reports that the NYPD are going to use a ear-splitting non-lethal sound canon tonight.
May you live in interesting times.
ecto says I'm listening to I'll Fly Away from the album O Brother, Where Art Thou? by Alison Krauss/Gillian Welch
Well, it's been a while.
The weblog has been pretty much at the bottom of my priority list lately, which should be pretty obvious from the lack of posting. Jane is into her last six-week class in her MBA program and this one ends with a ~200 page paper due. Add to that the two nights a week of her accounting class and we're pretty busy. Throw the baby, due in early October on top of that and you have one very unhappy and busy Jane.
So rather than complain about the crap going on, here's a quick update of whatever random stuff I can think of:
Every once in a while (probably every day) there is some news item that causes Jane to start yelling at me across the dining room (where my computer, and her desk/dining room table are located). Today, it was this item from CNN concerning the case of a woman whose hospital and doctors tried to force her to have unnecessary surgery and then tried to sue for custody of her unborn child when she refused!!!
It seems that despite the fact that she had successfully delivered six(!) nearly twelve pound babies without some doctor slicing her open, the hospital insisted that she needed a Caesarean section. To her credit, she up and left at this point to find a doctor and hospital with a lick of sense (which she did) to help her deliver her baby.
Further, in Massachusetts, people are protesting a hospital system's new policy of again forcing mothers into unnecessary surgery by refusing to allow women to give birth vaginally after having a Caesarean section (VBACS)
As if the Caesarean rate in this country wasn't horrific enough, the last thing we need is hospitals, doctors and medical insurance companies forcing women to have Caesarans. I won't even go into the disturbing trend of women having Caesarean sections in order to make their births more convenient.
Okay, off my soapbox. Gotta go mow the lawn.
ecto says I'm listening to The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys from the album The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic (RAAWWWK!)
Lots of ground to cover:
The spoiled little hoodlum that used to live behind us and down a few houses is going to grown-up jail for 18 years. Now, the real question will be if anyone will investigate his rumored history of sweetheart deals for juvenile offenses.....
Ellie is feeling much better, thank you. Barfing is not fun for little adventure princesses.
Joey's last day of UU SYC pre-school was today. He is quite proud of his "membry" book. Let the summer of playdates begin.
Soccer is over until fall. I'll be coaching again for Whetstone Rec. league, as Bobby's school season is really short. I might be coaching for Bobby's school too. We had a nice party at our house after our last game on Saturday (our first rain game, BTW) with maybe 37 kids all over the place. We also got the kids trophies with their names on them, much to the shock of some of our parents. The ones with kids that will go on to Pee-Wee division with Bobby and Adam mounted a concerted effort to get me to coach again, and are now working with Jane to keep as much of the team together as possible.
Baby Finn is keeping up her/his efforts to completely exhaust Jane. Finn is also apparently quite sensitive to being spoken about, as he/she nearly jumped out of Jane (think Aliens) after one of our midwives got a 130bpm pulse and commented that the baby must be asleep. Ellie also showed some interest during tonight's visit, standing next to Jane during the exam and patting her gently.
Ellie may have been trying to make up for breaking Jane's iBook. Thank god for AppleCare. We'll take a trip to the Apple Store tomorrow night.
Okay, enough for now. Gotta get some sleep before the kids start waking up at 2am....
ecto says I'm listening to Just Like U Said It Would B from the album The Lion And The Cobra by Sinead O'Connor
Last night at our first appointment with the midwives Joey, who is old enough this go-round to pay attention, started to notice the fetal development pictures on the wall.
This was after he was rather surprised to learn that Jane was pregnant again. He started to look around, confused as Tanya found the baby's heartbeat with the doppler and about three people said to him "Joey, listen! That's the baby!" Jane looked up at me and said "Hey, we forgot to tell Joey that I was pregnant."
He and I ended up on the couch going through one of their many books of pictures of fetuses in the womb, talking about how big the baby was going to be by Bobby's birthday, summer break etc. About halfway through this, he looked up to me, worried and whispered "I think I have a baby in my tummy!"
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