*kendraspondence*

Hey, September, how yoo dooin’?

September, here’s what: I’m happy you’re here. You always bring with you the smell of U-Hauls and giddy college students, the sounds of wonky high school trombone players, “Haa-yaaang on, Sloopeh, Slooopeh, Hang Onnnn!”, freshly cut football fields. Your days start to slope, the sun waning, 7:30, 7:15, on on on down to 6:30 p.m. and by the time your turn is almost up, there is a coziness to the night and an acquaintedness with new school textbooks, while still a hopefulness that there are big things still to accomplish this year.

But let me tell you about this past summer, September, the one you’re sweeping up for me in your wake. I’ll be frank. I thought this summer 2010 was going to suck. I thought I was going to be all soaking bedsheets with milk and wandering zombie-like around my creeky home at 3 a.m. But this past summer was awesome in its unremarkableness. It was just lovely, and smooth. We didn’t go anywhere spectacular (Newport? Cleveland, anyone?). I don’t even think we went out to brunch somewhere splendid. We just ate a thousand popsicles on our cruddy patio, watched the airplanes overhead, and wasted a lot of sprinkler water on ourselves, which, if you ask me, wasn’t a waste at all.

Sure, it was no party when Loverpants got pneumonia. And the hematoma thing I could have done without. But I’ll always remember Fourth of July, sitting with Brother Greg watching the “Boston Pops” on our couch and talking about how his blanket and law textbook were waiting for him on the Common, but instead he was sitting watching the performance with us on TV.

I’ll remember chicken parm night with my old man and Julie, defining bummerooski with my mom and Goobs, and just being so grateful and shmoopy to come home from OH and come back to my life with my hubby.

I’ll remember getting to know the girl that Baby Girl is now at an articulate 2.5 years-old, how she used “I’m sulking” totally appropriately, how her sapphire eyes, framed by her pixie cut, look out at a world and see not a complicated planet but only the ripe cherry tomatoes in the box garden, the sequined pink slippers on sale at Target, the travesty that is the removal of the “Shrek 3″ billboard on Gallivan Blvd.

Most obviously, though, I’ll remember the ease and wonder I felt for 104 days of meeting this new Little Man in my life. I don’t know what angel interceded in Heaven so that I could have this little boy with a halo all summer long, but I am grateful. He is so marvelously adaptable that holding him – which I try to do as many seconds of the day as I can – is a tranquilizer, it’s possibly the best drug a hospital lets you leave with, no prescription necessary. Just hold Little Man for a minute, ohhhh those soft little cheeks and fluttery eyelashes! And you will know.

So all that is to say that life until now has been wonderful, and welcome to you, September 2010. 30 more days in this month of turning 30. Yahoo.

***
Some snaps that our new friend, the talented Dr. Paul Yoo took at Boston Temple in the Fenway.

I got on the scale this afternoon and I saw a number that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

I thought about what that number represented, and how it had less to do with pounds and ounces and more with the gravity that is pulling me toward earth.

***

In May, I had a baby. Whenever I say that out loud, it sounds like such a clumsy little summary. Like, I woke up and had a donut. And then I had a baby. The verb “to have” doesn’t quite capture it…

I woke up and had…maybe cereal?

I left before my Baby Girl had awoken. I made my mother promise not to say good-bye. Good-byes make me nervous.

Loverpants and I brought Scrabble to the hospital. Like we were going to have all this time to finagle Triple Word Scores while transitioning from 7 to 10 cm.

It was sunny. I liked my birthing room. I wore pigtails. I arrived 4cm dilated, already contracting. They gave me pitocin.

They gave me too much pitocin.

***

My contractions and the pitocin were like the sound and the fury. The baby’s heart rate kept dropping. They put me on my side. His heart rate dropped even more. Suddenly, there was a whole team of nurses putting me in child’s pose on the bed. They shot me with something to make the contractions slow. I got an oxygen mask.

The midwife suggested I get an epidural so that I could relax which might make the baby’s heart rate relax.

The anesthesiologists arrived but as they started prepping, I started sweating so hard, they couldn’t keep the area clean. I started screaming. I couldn’t stay on the bed. The baby was coming.

THE BABY WAS COMING.

Needle in.

On my side.

Lift leg, push push push push push push push.

Baby’s heart keeps dropping, I’m sorry, the opening is small, we can’t use the vacuum, the baby’s heart rate keeps dropping…

***
I wasn’t scared this time, not like my first c-section. I had the same anesthesiologist, and she is amazing.

The surgeon said she is glad I didn’t try to go for a vaginal birth. Something about my bladder being in the way, something might have burst?

She leaned over the curtain and said, Don’t you EVER labor on this uterus again.

“John, can you see what it is?”

“Boy. Hahah, Kenny, you were right. Boy!”

I cannot believe I am 2 for 2. 2 healthy, perfect babies. Thank you. Thank you.

***

The hematocrit level expresses the proportion of red blood cells in the blood. Adult females hover around 38-46. After surgery, I was at 26.

I had lost some blood.

But then I dropped to 24. And then to 18. I was at the hospital alone now. I was pushing to feed my baby, but I couldn’t make a phone call. I was so weak. I saw myself in the mirror when I went to use the bathroom. I could barely see my freckles.

So I got a blood transfusion. Some plasma, too.

And then I dropped on down to 16. I just kept losing blood. Where was it going?

After an MRI, we saw that the blood had pooled into a hematoma around my liver.

More blood transfusion. The next day, my levels stabilized.

***

For the next 6 weeks, I was in the most pain I have ever, ever experienced in my life. Getting up was a struggle, sitting down was a struggle. You can’t take pain killers for irritants like blood. You can, but it won’t do any good. There’s no swollen tissue, no torn muscle. It’s just ounces and ounces of blood irritating your insides while your body does what it’s supposed to as it reabsorbs the blood you lost during surgery.

Meanwhile, Baby Girl was going through the violent throes of sibling adjustment. Meanwhile, I had a newborn. Meanwhile, my in-laws visited. Meanwhile, my husband was working himself into the tizzy that socked him with peumonia a month later.

***
This morning I ran with my strollercize class that I’ve been attending for the last 2 months. I ran and sprinted, and I didn’t die. I sweated and smiled, I did leg lifts with my exer-band while holding a pacifier in place for a robust 3 month-old baby. I handed snack bags through stroller portals to spunky toddlers.

I thought about the miracle of life that has unfolded a thousand times this past summer. I praised God for His amazing handiwork in all of creation, in this short, stumpy, strong body of mine that is privileged to care for this family, to enjoy the perfection that was this late August weather, to live this sweet sweet life.

***

…But those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. – Isaiah 40: 31

Peace, man

Linda over at All and Sundry wrote recently that having a two year-old is basically like experiencing the most awesome and the most wretched extremes of a person, with very little of the happy medium.

I have to agree.

I’m super sensitive to the way my own two year-old treats me at times, and how I treat her in return. And it’s not all reactive. Sometimes it’s preemptive. Just trying not to trigger a tantrum, just trying to think one step ahead.

But I didn’t think she’d actually be tempted to use the spray sunscreen and squirt it in her mouth today. Ya know, just to see. Otherwise, I would have put the stuff on a high shelf.

I find myself playing a lot of Bubble Breaker these days. Correlation?

I also find myself pondering these two little chubbacheeks. Yes I did pluck them from the Cabbage Patch.

TJL @ 2 mos

MJL @ 2 mos

Summer is a very creative time for me.

I mean, both of my children were conceived during summer months. BAH-HAHH!

Yeah, summer is a fruitful time for me.  I read a lot, I clean a lot, I organize and plan.  It is a good time for me to start projects and I may even stay up late a couple nights in a row to finish them!  (Or I may leave the pile of newly ironed clothes on the banister that I am *eventually* planning to sell on e-bay, though it would appear in this instance that I am waiting for the clothes to rise like “Thriller” zombies and take pictures of themselves and post to the interwebz with paypal directives.)

I wish I could feel the way I do the rest of the year, but I’ve tried to mind-over-matter the whole lack of inertia thing in the frosty thick of January, and, frankly?  If there’s a puddle on the floor and no one is going to slip on it?  I’ll just wait to mop it up in June.

I’m sort of antsypantsed right now because I’d really like to take a knitting class or go to a chocolate tasting and learn about organic cacao or paint an awesome design on a picnic bench, but I’m indentured to Little Man’s feeding schedule, which is fine, it’s what my boobs signed up for and it’s going well, praises be.  I also feel like I’m in a fog that is slooooowly lifting, and anyone who dares tempt me to Think Ahead about Something in the Long Term Future of Next Week must seriously have it out for me because I am operating on an hour-by-hour survival these days.

Anyway.  Very glad to have summer and creativity and kids and Loverpants and the imperative to be barefoot and popsicle drippy-stained for at least a couple more months.

Speaking of creative, guess who got her first professional haircut?

This is my trophy son wrapped in a frog towel.

This is my trophy daughter who once upon a time was swaddled in that same towel.

This is my trophy son demonstrating male pattern balding.

This is my trophy daughter with her movie star hair and superstar shades.

This is my trophy son taking a nap and looking like he could be rotisseried.

This is my trophy daughter interrupting that nap.

This is my trophy daughter so tuckered out that she fell into naptime half seated on a comfy chair.

This is me proudly holding one of my babies as if he were a trophy, and the truth is that he is hardly such a totem.  A trophy is sought after and earned, flaunted, and then stacked high on a shelf or shielded in a case to be admired and perhaps forgotten.  My babies are on lease to me, I didn’t earn them, they are not mine to flaunt or showcase.  But you can be sure I will never ever place them on a high shelf.  At least not one that can’t be reached with a stepstool.