a hippie with a minivan

It goes so fast…

Wilhelmina will be 4 weeks old, a month old, this week and every day she is seeming more aware of her surroundings. Though she is still small and new, she is starting to look more like a baby than a newborn, her cheeks are filling out, she is awake for longer periods, she smiles more and reacts to who is holding her, she seems to look forward to laying in bed at night and then when morning comes she seems to not be content until we head upstairs.

Though some days she has a bout of crying in the evening, we get though it by holding her, putting her on the potty often since she needs to go often in the evening, nursing her and just juggling her ever-changing needs. I have found that most often, needing to pee is what makes her upset and in the morning and in the late evening she seems to need to pee every few minutes and if I keep up she stays content and then nurses a final time before falling asleep for the night. Sometimes though, we don’t figure out what she needs or wants and we just hold her and talk to her and sing to her and comfort her until she settles… it hasn’t happened often, but it does happen…

Nights are going so well. Once the night cycle starts (at around 9pm) she sleeps about 4-6 hours (she even did a bout of 7 hours a few nights ago from 11pm to 6am) and when she wakes she stirs just enough to wake me up… not crying, not really waking up much herself…

I reach over for the potty on the nightstand, lean the potty against me, put her over the potty and she pees then I nurse her and she lets go and then falls back asleep. The whole thing takes about 3-4 minutes and we are both off into sleepland… the next time she wakes up it is morning, we do the same routine and depending on the time and who is up, we either fall back asleep a bit or we head upstairs to start the day…

It is amazing to realize how fast they grow, how fast the newborn phase passes by…

I feel so lucky that Simon is home on Parental leave… having home takes so much guesswork out of preparing meals or taking care of the older kids needs when the little one needs all of the attention at that moment. The boys love having their dad home too of course, being able to play with him and spend time with him, and each boy gets a bit of special time doing what they really love to do. Play on the computer or on the Wii, watch a movie, play a board game, read a book etc… with four kids, having two parents at home makes a lot of sense…

Pogos (otherwise known as Corn dogs)

OK… OK… not the healthiest food but they are definitely a fun food, especially for the boys, and making them myself means that I know what is in them and of course the taste is SO much better than the fast food places or what you can buy frozen…

1 cup cornmeal
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
milk (any type)
about 18 hot dogs (veggie, soy, beef or whatever you want)
flour
(optional) wooden sticks

Combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, egg and sugar and then add milk until batter has a pancake type consistency…

I didn’t use skewers and instead cut the hot dogs in half and then coated them with flour, but If you are using skewers, put them in each hot dog and then coat hot dogs with flour. Heat 2″ deep oil to 370 degrees F. (I use my electric wok for most of my frying needs)

Dip hot dogs into batter mix and coat evenly and them put in the oil and fry until golden brown (about 2 1/2-3 min)

The boys dove into these like there was no tomorrow and there were none left at the end, but they could easily be made and frozen and then heated up in the oven for a quick lunch… I will definitely be making these again…

Week two…

Last week was busy… friends over to visit, visit from the midwife and papers being signed to register Wilhelmina’s birth, shopping trips, bags of clothes given and sorted and put away and the more boyish clothes/extra clothes or unpractical baby clothes all sorted out and ready to be given away. It is crazy how much clothes we had accumulated and though I had sorted through it many, many times, there was still always too much.

But now… It is amazing how having a little girl now has changed my emotional attachment to the clothes that the boys wore. Though I did end up keeping two small outfits that have special memories, the rest was easily put into the bag. I am also being very careful to keep only what I like, need and is practical for EC and for everyday use. (No diaper shirts, or PJ’s with tons of snaps etc) and I am also making sure that we don’t have too much of certain clothes in the same size so that we are actually using the clothes that we have and like the most.

Decluttering is something that feels so liberating.

Thursday was the biggest day for Wilhelmina and I… she had her first Chiro appointment which went very well and then we got on the road and headed to Costco which is about a 45 min drive away. While I was on the road I decided to see if my friend Martine was home so I could go visit while I was in the area… not only was she there, but another friend was there, so I headed over and got to spend a few hours talking and having tea and cookies with two of my dearest friends. After that I headed to Costco and then a few other places I needed to got to. Wilhelmina doesn’t like the car very much but once we are moving she falls asleep so the car trip was actually quite pleasant. It was also the first time we had been gone from the house for so long and I was ECing out of the house. During the car ride she stayed dry and I was able to pee her at the Chiro and then once we got to Martine’s house. During the visit she went through one of her periods of peeing often and we went through a few diapers and a few trips on the potty and over the sink and then while we were out and she was in the wrap she didn’t pee at all and instead waited until we got into the car and then I put her over the potty. Since she was so warm in the wrap she didn’t mind at all being put over the potty in below freezing temps. I just had a blanket around her, pulled her pants down and took the diaper off half way, she went quickly and then I just pulled her pants back up, nursed a bit and then she went into the car seat.

Though I spend a lot of my time sitting and nursing and holding her, I have been able to do some more cooking done and doing things around the house. Meal plans have been easy things that don’t take up too much time or are easy, so that if I need to be with Willa, I can finish quickly, nurse her while doing it or Simon can finish up.

Having Simon around is so great. There is always another set of hands, someone to make breakfast for the boys and even for me… I am able to run out to the store quickly with just Wilhelmina or go out with everyone and have a bit of help. Though I could of course manage if we didn’t have the choice it makes things so much easier and it also is fun for the kids to have daddy around… I can’t wait for spring so that we can get out more and go places, go for walks and hang out together as a family on weekdays…

So that has been our week, just living life with a new member of the family and getting to know her. She just fits so perfectly.

EC with a newborn…

EC or elimination communication is such a great thing and so much easier than people think it is…

I started with Colin when he was about 4 weeks old, and started with Khéna when he was born…

(Khéna 7 weeks)

With both we did it with diaper backup and didn’t do it at night because honestly I am a lazy parent at night and even I thought that it would be more work, but with Wilhelmina I wanted to do it completely and I am so happy that we are. It is so much easer than even I thought it was going to be!

(Wilhelmina 2 days old)

Wilhelmina is 2 weeks old today and things are going so well. Though I am not ready to go protection free just yet, I also don’t diaper completely. I found the happy medium between both by using a prefold diaper with a belt so that it is easy to take off and potty her, but if we have a miss I feel it right away and I am able to change her quickly. For large portions of the day and night she stays in the same prefold giving clear signs such as a cry or whimper or arching her back to let us know that she has to go. Then she has other periods that she pees every 5 min and though we always get a pee when we offer the potty, she has already has had one in the cloth also… but the great thing is that though she has short periods like that, she has never stayed wet for longer than a few minutes. I do wonder though that if we just went diaper-free completely during those moments (or at all times) if I would catch more of the pees that we seem to miss…

(Wilhelmina, today… 2 weeks old)

Poos are a different story… The first few days it was harder to catch her poos since she wasn’t signalling as much for them but once she caught on that they too were to go in the potty, she now signals very clearly and in more than a week and a half we have only had to clean up one small poo and even then, Simon brought her over the sink and she let go of the rest, clearly waiting for us to catch on to what she was trying to communicate. Even if it were just for poos, EC would be worth it.

What has surprised me the most though is doing it at nighttime.

In the past, we would have them in a diaper and if they woke up wet, Simon would bring them to the bathroom and offer the potty/sink and they would go but there were other times that we just changed the diaper and that was it. Somehow I thought that consistently ECing at night was more work than that, but it is so much less. We have a great routine going at the moment. Our nights start out with me laying in bed with her, she nurses and pees a bit more often in the late evening, so she nurses and pees and burps in a cycle for about an hour and then finally falls asleep. She then wakes up about 3 to 3 1/2 hours later and I just hear her move or do a little whimper and without getting up I just get the potty off my side table, lean it against me, take her pre-fold off and put her on it. She pees without really waking up, I put the pre-fold back on her because it is still dry, nurse her and fall asleep again… then the cycle begins again until the morning.

A funny thing that we found is that besides using the potty at night, she rather be over the sink, so that though I put her over the potty in the day she will sometimes hold it in and will clearly communicate that he needs to go but won’t let go until I bring her into the washroom over the sink. She really knows what she wants!

So besides the small period she has in the evening that she seems to pee every 5 minutes, she has a very predictable pattern of needing to go when she wakes up and when she is tired and wants to go to sleep. People that visit are surprised and in awe of how I am able to read her signals but after having done EC with two babies, I can’t imagine ignoring the signals anymore.

What I love about EC is not just the elimination part it is the communication part, like when she is hungry or tired, elimination is just another need that she has that she is able to communicate and I am able to respond to. It adds to our relationship, to our connection together. Even if there are misses, it isn’t a problem, it sometimes centres me to be more attentive if I am distracted at the moment, or we just move on…

The Birth of Wilhelmina Anne

I was just hitting 41 weeks and very tired of the pregnancy; I was sore all over and hadn’t slept a good night sleep in weeks.

At one point on Monday, January 25^th I went to the bathroom and when I wiped I realized that I had lost my mucous plug. It was the first time that I had noticed it with all my pregnancies, so it was surprising to me, but I knew it didn’t mean much.

I went to bed that night feeling like I was going to be pregnant forever, but then I woke at 3:30am Tuesday morning by a feeling of wetness that made me go to the bathroom and check what was happening.

I got up and felt a small gush, I wiped and had bloody show, I went back to my bed and lay down and I was leaking again, not much but enough that it was noticeable, but it stopped when I got up so I was sure that it was a slow leak. I woke Simon and told him. Excited and my mind racing, I tried to sleep but I couldn’t, and instead I watched a bit of a movie on my Zune while everyone slept, noticing contractions once in a while every 20-30 minutes.

When Simon’s alarm rang I told him that I would rather him stay home as I knew that I wasn’t in a good position to be a good parent that day and I was scared that things would start quickly when he was at work and he wouldn’t be able to get home quickly. One of my fears was that I would be labouring alone with the boys around and I didn’t want that to happen. I called my friend Martine at 7:30am to put her on standby for the day in case I needed her, and then decided to go to the grocery store as soon as it opened at 8am and we needed a few things. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Sushi stand in the grocery store was open and I ordered a platter of my favourites to keep my energy up throughout the day, hoping that I might labour quickly and that I would have a snack for after.

I got home and tried to relax. I puttered around, hung out in bed with the laptop and watched a movie, sat on the exercise ball, switched positions, listened to music, read stories to Khéna, looked on the internet and just waited for labour to kick in. The contractions would get stronger and closer together but then they would taper out again.

By early evening my contractions had picked up a bit again and I decided that the pool might be a nice place to relax. With Khéna, the pool is what made the contractions harder and stronger so I was hoping also that it might do the same again this time. So at about 7pm we started filling the pool and I got in. The water felt amazing, the buoyancy felt amazing and I was able to move around freely but my contractions stopped completely. I welcomed the break and the warm water, and tried to relax and found myself feeling very sleepy and tired. By 8:45 I decided that I would just go to bed and try to sleep. I called my friend Martine and told her my plans and that it would most likely not be that night; I would just try to sleep and regain some energy and hope for tomorrow. I went to bed and closed my eyes and then it hit me; a contraction and pain in my back that took my breath away. I tried to fall asleep again and then another one hit and it continued like that until I couldn’t stay in bed anymore. At 10:30pm, just as Simon was heading downstairs to bed, I was heading upstairs deciding to go back in the pool. In the back of my mind I was hoping that the water would stop the contractions again so that I could go to sleep; I felt so tired.

I stayed in the water for nearly an hour and a half while Simon boiled water to make it warmer. The contractions continued at about every 10-15 minutes, the pain radiated in my back, and I couldn’t get into a position that was comfortable. As I lay in the water I kept on hearing the sound of water running and finally realized that the pool was leaking into the air chamber. I don’t know how I found the leak so quickly but I was able to block the hole with a bit of poster gum. However, the chamber had about an inch of water at the bottom and because the water there was cold, the pool water was cooling down a lot faster than in should have. By 1am, I was exhausted and needed to try to lie down again and try to sleep so we headed downstairs to bed. I was shivering and shaking all over and feeling cold and I felt I just couldn’t continue. Khéna woke up just around that time so he lay on the bed next to me and held my hand and fell back asleep. I lay down and got into the position that had helped Colin turn when I was in labour with him. It was comfortable except for when a contraction hit every 10-15 minutes and I asked Simon to press on my lower back which helped a lot. Though I was vocalizing quite a bit, Khéna slept soundly next to me and wasn’t disturbed at all.

At 1:40am I fell asleep and slept between two contractions but they were getting more intense and again, I couldn’t be in bed anymore. I had to get up. I had to move.

I was still shivering, my legs were shaky, I felt exhausted and I couldn’t stay standing up. It was about 2:30 when I went on the birthing ball. As the contractions intensified, I felt a bit of relief by leaning back on Simon and putting my pelvis forward so that my lower back was on the birthing ball. I was feeling weepy and I started to say to Simon that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had another very intense contraction and at 3am I decided to call my friend Martine. Unlike my other births where I needed to be left alone, this time I felt that I needed support, I needed someone who has been in the same position before, someone that understood what I was going through someone that could say “I know” and mean it. I called their cell phone and there was no answer, my heart sank a bit. 15 minutes later, she called back and I asked her to come. I knew she had an hours’ drive but it felt good to know she was on the way.

I decided to head back to the pool upstairs while I waited. Simon boiled more water, I patched up the pool again with more poster gum and with each contraction that hit I asked Simon to press on my lower back. The contractions were strong and painful but between contractions I was able to talk normally. They were still about every 10 minutes, so though I had time between contractions, each one was wearing me down.

At 4:15 the front door opened quietly and Martine had arrived. The contractions continued as they were before, with both her and Simon taking turns putting pressure on my back with each one.

After about half an hour the contractions started intensifying again and starting getting closer and closer together. I stopped talking between contractions and needed to concentrate and reflect. Soon after, there was another jump in the contractions intensity and they were feeling like they were coming one after the other.

I kept changing positions, on my knees, lying down in the water, hanging over the side of the pool but the position that brought the most relief was when someone was pressing on my back and I was leaning on the side of the pool, cupping my hands under my belly and pulling my abdomen up and in.

Then it happened.

I felt the need to push and I went with it and my water broke. The contractions were one on top of the other and I said out loud “its coming!”. My body continued to push and the head crowned and then finally came out. I felt someone was pulling at her, and asked for nobody to touch, but no one was.

I was feeling her body turn and move inside me, pushing against my pelvis from the inside, it is a feeling that I will never forget. The head was out and I waited for the next contraction but I couldn’t stay still, I needed to move again. I went to a squatting position, then a sitting position and even asked Simon to take pictures. Then I went back onto my knees and finally the next contraction came, my body took over and her body slid out.

I then realized that no one was getting her and that she was at the bottom of the pool so I quickly turned around and scooped her up. Her cord was wrapped around her shoulder and torso, so I untangled her noticing at the same time that she had a true knot in her cord. It took a few moments for her to take her first breath but her body was pink and the cord was still attached so I was not worried, I just rubbed her back and put her tummy on my forearm with her head looking down and she started to cry. I asked for a towel, told Simon to go wake up the boys and then remembered that I could now see if we had a girl or a boy.

A Girl!!! We have a daughter!

Xavier was already awake listening to us from downstairs so he was the first one up. Simon woke Colin up and brought him upstairs and when he caught on that the reason we woke him was because he had a new sister he was awake completely. Simon was not able to wake Khéna up; he was sleeping too soundly so he came up about 30 min later. I got out of the pool and went to the couch and as I sat down the placenta came out right under me, so we got a bowl and transferred it to that. I decided at that point that I wanted to be in my bed. Simon got some scissors and the length of braided embroidery thread that I had prepared a few days earlier and we tied off the cord and cut it. Colin had tears in his eyes thinking that we were hurting her but a few words assured him that everything was OK.

I headed down stairs and we cuddled and she nursed and I made a few phone calls while Simon took the water out of the birthing pool, cleaned up a bit, took care of the boys, did some laundry and Martine prepared a beautiful plate of fresh fruit, dates, carob squares and banana bread for me to snack on and made breakfast for the boys. I took a few doses of Shepherds purse tincture as I was bleeding a bit more than I would have liked but I was still feeling good so though I was still bleeding, I wasn’t too worried. I decided to massage my uterus a bit though to help things along and finally with the tincture,and the nursing things calmed down a bit.

A little later in the day we weighed her in at 8 lbs, 8 oz and decided to call her Wilhelmina Anne, a name that both Simon and I loved and had in common on our lists. A few days later we measured her at 20 inches.

Though this labour and birth was longer and harder than my first Unassisted Birth, it was so much more rewarding, peaceful and less stressful than my first two births. Though they progressed the same way, they were managed so differently, and though it was hard, I am so proud that I went through the experience as it showed me first hand what I believe in. That leaving things alone is the best way to “manage” a birth.