Happy Spring!

I didn't even know it was the first day of spring today until I turned on the Today Show. And I wouldn't have turned on the Today Show unless Miss Maddie decided she needed to eat again just an hour and a half after her first breakfast. It's completely appropriate that it is spring now, since the weather here has been GORGEOUS! Plus it explains the manic cleaning I've been doing for the past three days: spring cleaning. That makes more sense than what I thought it was: post-baby nesting. I tell you, when Mama puts on her yellow rubber gloves, watch out! I cleaned the downstairs bathroom top to bottom, even the baseboards and the toilet brush holder. Then it was on to the kitchen, prompted by the fact that Quinn had shaken loose a bunch of my canisters that then fell back behind the lazy susan pantry thing. That took emptying the shelves, Quinn holding a flashlight, and me using a pair of long tongs to reach everything. I couldn't believe how many boxes of scalloped potatoes we had that expired in 2008. Whoops! Clearly we did not do much spring cleaning last year. I still have a long way to go, but I should be able to finish the kitchen today and move on to the upstairs bathrooms. That all depends on the cooperation of my children, of course. So far, Maddie has been extremely needy this morning, which wasn't much fun after a night of less sleep than usual. I guess I should be happy that we made it a full four weeks since Maddie was born without Jalal having to stay overnight at the hotel. Well, technically it was just two weeks since he went back to work. If it weren't for the income and the daily phone calls, I might start to feel like a single parent!! (Just kidding, not downplaying how tough it is for true single parents.)

So that brings me to the fact that Madigan is now four weeks old (give or take a few hours). Her doctor's appointment yesterday went well. She is 8 lbs, 9 oz. (30th percentile) and 21.5 inches long (61st percentile). Everything else was great. It was one day shy of when she could get her second Hep B shot, so we'll have to hold off on that. Quinn got a lollipop for behaving well, which he tried to share with Maddie. I told him Maddie couldn't have candy yet, and he asked, "why not?" I told him it was because she didn't have teeth yet and that we would just have to give him all the lollipops until then. He said, "Good idea, Mama! Good idea!" I thought he would like that. ; )

Here are a few pictures taken of Quinn and Miss Maddie lately. Hope this makes some of you happy (namely Trish and Mom!). Love, Us.



Quinn's special St. Patrick's Day breakfast: green milk, green eggs, and shamrock-shaped toast.

Pictures

Maddie will be three weeks old tomorrow. She is generally a good baby, requiring very little soothing other than to be held. She is starting to get a bit more demanding though, especially late in the evenings. Tonight, for instance, she is practically inconsolable unless I am holding her, which means I am practically inconsolable without a large bag of M&Ms. I am looking forward to early next week, when we are planning to introduce a bottle, so I can maybe get a stretch of sleep of more than three hours at a time. Quinn is a great big brother, but I need to start getting him out more because he is driving me crazy jumping around and running through the house and literally bouncing off the furniture. Every so often, he just forgets where Maddie is and lands a little too close to her head after a flip or something. I have to admit, though, that I am sick of answering his two favorite questions: Mama, what are we doing next? and What is baby Maddie doing? Usually he asks the former six times in a row; the latter is usually met with the answer, "Not much of anything, honey." My wonderful friends from church are providing a few meals, so I think we'll have enough chicken casseroles to last a while, which is actually a good thing, since I can cook maybe one chicken dish to every five beef dishes. I was worried about getting burnt out on my own ground beef meals, but not this week! Well, I know that isn't much of an update, but there really isn't that much going on. I think I'm going to have to feed this squalling baby and then put us both to bed. Good night! Love, Us.

Better Late Than Never

I know I should have done this 2 weeks and 4 days ago, but give me a break! I had a baby! Here are the details: Madigan Ruth Halaby was born at 1:44 p.m. on Saturday, February 20, 2010. She weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 21 inches long. She was born with dark blue eyes and long dark hair (well, long in back anyway; it was sort of a mullet) with blond streaks. She prompted all sorts of comments about her size. The doctor pulled her out and held her up by her feet, saying, "I should charge by the pound!" The nurse measuring her tried desperately to fit Maddie's footprints onto the baby book page--barely. Trish and Jalal were there to help me bring her into the world, thank God for them. The laboring didn't go exactly as planned or hoped, but the end result was perfect. [Warning: Detailed labor story will follow. If you are not interested in this information, skip to the next paragraph.] We started the Pitocin at 7 a.m. that morning. After having fantastic nurses the day before and overnight, the nurse with us during labor was, well, lacking. She seemed like she could care less about my pain, and just kept knocking the dosage on the Pitocin higher and higher. Jalal and Trish helped me fight for getting out of bed and at least sitting on a birthing ball or changing position. I started the day at 3 cm dilated. After hours of laboring, I was hurting pretty bad. I could not catch my breath between contractions, and the monitor wasn't picking them up, so I didn't know when they were going to hit. Jalal and I had worked out a safe word for pain medication, so he didn't give in too easily. I really wanted to go without an epidural, and considering we did it with Quinn, I thought it was possible again. At around noon or so, I finally decided I had had enough, which was actually our safe word. He suggested we find out how far dilated I was at that point, thinking that I would be disappointed if I requested an epidural at 7 or 8 cm (he was right). So we asked Nurse Could Care Less to check me again. She did, and said I was at 4 cm. After 5 hours, about 3 of which were spent in a lot of severe discomfort, and I had only progressed one centimeter! At that point, I was ready to be out of pain and able to rest. So I ordered an epidural. Unfortunately, while my legs got nice and heavy, I still had pretty significant pain from my contractions. After another dose of the epidural medicine, the "hot spot" got a little smaller, but I still had painful contractions in the center of my abdomen. I kept thinking, Come on! If I'm going to give in and get an epidural, I at least want to feel no pain, right? I felt like such a baby because I was still complaining about the pain, and I could swear that the contractions were as bad at four centimeters as when I was in transition with Quinn. The nurse decided to check me again, and she said, "Oh, well, that explains the pain. You're at 10 cm." This was about an hour after I was at 4 cm. Yeah, I'd say that explains the pain. I had to hold on a while longer until they could get the doctor in there, and then I had to push twice. Within 20 minutes, Maddie was born!

So while it didn't go as planned, and it hurt a whole lot to get from 3 to 4 cm, going from 4 to 10 was pretty fast, and I didn't have the "burning ring of fire" that I had pushing Quinn out. I wasn't quite as delirious this time around, so it was a very different experience immediately after the birth. I will post more soon about the last couple of weeks, but I wanted to get the basics out before I got too many complaints. Love, Us (all four of us!!).