Apparently my friends think of me as some kind of Baby Expert, because now Sara has a question for me (and you) about how to help out when a friend has a second baby. Although since the closest Sara comes to babies is when she scowls at them in the street I guess I AM an expert by comparison. Ha ha, just kidding. Sara only scowls at babies in restaurants and elevators like all normal people.

Here’s the question:
So my cousin’s wife (We’ll call her M to make this easier) is having a baby next Tuesday. My cousin is the one who does my taxes, so I owe him, like, an enormous fruit basket or a kidney or something. They have an almost-four-year-old daughter. What can I offer to do to help? Make food? Take the older kid to the museum for a few hours? If you or your hordes of minions have suggestions for how to help out the second-time parents, I’d appreciate it.

Here’s my advice:
Take the older kid. Taker her far far far away. Take her to a museum and to lunch and to a big space where she can run around and burn off energy. An almost-four-year-old should be a fun date for half a day or so and M will definitely appreciate being able to rest – a newborn is CAKE compared to a toddler. Food is good too, but I would suggest a pizza gift card or a delivery of something like brownies or, well, a fruit basket instead of a frozen meal. Big casserole trays take up a lot of space and if M has done any pre-baby cooking herself her fridge and freezer might be full. You could, of course, call ahead and say “Don’t make dinner Tuesday, I’m bringing something over” and deliver a fresh made meal (or maybe have a nice local Chinese restaurant deliver a fresh made meal) because that saves on both the trouble of making dinner AND the sink full of making-dinner dishes – for some reason, dishes are the absolute hardest thing for me to stay on top of as a mother of 2. Even worse than laundry.

Here’s the important part: when you DO go over to deliver food/pick up their child/offer a kidney, DON’T STAY. Keep it to 2 minutes tops. Don’t sit on their couch, don’t use their bathroom, don’t stay for a meal, don’t so anything that would require M to feel the need to apologize for her unwashed dishes and dirty floors and sweatpants. As much as I loved having people stop by to visit I died a little inside every time the doorbell rang because of the state of my kitchen counters. They were SHAMEFUL. I was even more ashamed of my dirty kitchen than I was of wearing pajamas at 3 pm and no makeup and greasy hair – because what was I doing with my time if it wasn’t making myself presentable OR loading the dishwasher? I AM A LAZY FAILURE.

So. In short: help with the older kid. Drop off fruit basket. When you see M, say “You look so great! Your baby is adorable! Your toddler was SO well behaved at the museum! She clearly has awesome parents!”

Personally, I would find that even better than a kidney. And that’s coming from someone who could actually use one.

How about you, friends? What was the MOST HELPFUL thing someone did for you after having a baby?

My BFF Erin came to visit over the weekend. She’s a fantastic photographer (she took most of the pictures at my nursery rhyme baby shower too) and started doing it as a part-time job last year when she founded Open Shutter Photography. She was kind enough to bring her whole photo set-up with her and we spent a lot of time playing dress up (or dress down) with my new doll baby.

Just ignore the messy bedroom in the background.

Erin thinks I am doing her a huge favor by “letting” her use Caroline as a model, while I think she’s doing ME a huge favor by taking beautiful pictures for free and “letting” me post them here.

Here are 5 8 10 some of the shots from Erin’s photo shoot. The rest are over on her portfolio site here. I thought it was unfair to anyone with baby fever to post them ALL at once.  I would especially avoid the shots where she’s smiling and laughing unless you’re ready for (more) bebehs. But for the record, Suzanne is a lovely name for any girl children born approximately 9 months from today.

(Yeah, I know it’s annoying to talk about how cute my kid is all the time but I can’t help it. Blame all the hormones that make me feel attached so I don’t leave her to be raised by wolves or gorillas or fairies. IT’S SCIENCE.)

Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket!? - Courtesy of the brilliant MKP

I love this face: OMG WHAT IS THAT THING? WHAT'S A HAND??

We call this one "The Angry Elf"

Squished bebeh!! I don't care that she's totally colapsing in this picture - I have NO shots of myself with Little Evan until he was at least 6 months old so I'm just happy to have ONE I really like with Caroline.

I think I'll frame this one.

For the record, this will be one of about a ZILLION posts called “Sweet Caroline”. You don’t name your daughter Caroline without a) liking the song  b) hearing it in your head practically every time you say her name and c) knowing it makes a good title for a blog post.  You have it stuck in your head now too, don’t you?

You’re welcome.

To help fill in posts while I recover and adjust to life with a newborn AND a toddler I have some friends who have agreed to share their birth stories. Laura of the adorable And Two Became One kindly volunteered to be included in my week and I’m thrilled she did. Although I should tell you, if my new bebeh is already giving you baby fever, DO NOT click over to her blog and check out pictures of Shelby. Fair warning: it’s a birth story so it’s rated PG-13. And don’t get all shocked if someone says “vagina”.

Shelby’s Birth Story
by Laura Payette originally published on And Two Became Three

I really resisted getting Pitocin, mostly because I had heard so many horror stories about how it made your contractions really strong and hard to endure without an epidual. Also, that it had the potential to lead to a C-section, which I did not want. But my water had been broken for about 20 hours and I wasn’t making much progress. The fear was infection setting in, which really could have led to a C-section, so I caved and was okay with it.

I was relegated to my labor and delivery suite but not to the bed. In fact, I didn’t even get in bed. We realized pretty quickly that every time I even leaned over the bed or sat down on the birth ball my contractions would space out, so I mostly stayed on my feet swaying back and forth. I passed several hours like that, occasionally hopping online to pass the time. My contractions were really tolerable and I was beginning to think that a natural birth might just have been possible!

Then all of a sudden while Chris and I were playing a game of gin I felt something pop and drop, and the result was a huge burst of pain. Turns out it was the rest of my amniotic sac rupturing. I guess originally only the outer layer had been punctured. Now the whole sac was completely broken and Shelby had dropped a little bit. The contractions that followed were out of this world. I didn’t hold out long before I asked for the epidural. There was NO WAY I could’ve birthed her naturally based on the pain I experienced. Hats off to moms who go all the way. You are amazing.

Fortunately, the anesthesiologist came quickly and got the epidural in without any trouble. It was hard to hold still, in the perfect rounded position, but I did it. The relief was almost immediate, although it took a good 15-20 minutes for it to take full effect. When it did, my legs felt drunk. Seriously! You know that warm sense of well being you get when you drink? That’s exactly how I felt from the waist down.

They finally did a cervical check on me after the epidual was in. They had wanted to minimize those since my water was broken. I was at 5cm, so I had made some progress on my own prior to the epidural, but I still had a long way to go. It was about 10pm by this point and I was tired, but I knew there was likely little rest to be had.

I was now confined to bed, lying basically on my back, although I managed to lay on my sides some, but it was really hard to move even a tiny bit on my own because I was so numb. My doula was wonderful and helped me all through the night as I needed to change position and drink fluids. Chris was great, too, although he passed out for a while. At least one of us got some sleep! I can’t say I really got any, but I at least rested.

Suddenly, around 3:30 or 4am I had to vomit. It came out of nowhere, and my doula found me a bucket just in time. I hate throwing up and, believe it or not, this was the first time I had to my entire pregnancy. After that I started feeling some pressure in the lower right part of my back that persisted. It turns out I was fully dilated! The nurse on call had me do a practice push just to make sure I was really ready and then she went to call my midwife, who I was told would be there by 5:30am. This gave me a chance to rest some more; I actually fell into a light sleep for a while, which was fabulous.

My midwife was supposed to arrive by 5:30am, but she didn’t actually get there until a little after 6:30am. I had gotten a nice doze in, which I needed. When I came to and realized how much time had passed, I knew we needed to get things going. When the nurse came in, we told her we were ready. I had Simone, our doula, wake Chris up; he had been out like a light. He was totally startled and then, when he realized it was time, he jumped up and sprang into action, albeit a little dazed.

Pushing at first wasn’t that bad. I was pretty groggy, so for the first 20 minutes or so it was more like a warm-up. My contractions, which had been about 2 minutes apart, started to space out a bit, so I got some good rest in between. I was even making jokes and laughing. But as time went on, the pushing got serious. My contractions got longer, and my push cycles also got longer and more intense. Simone would hold one of my legs while Chris held the other. My midwife and the nurse would coach me. Oddly enough, it didn’t even phase me that all these eyeballs were staring at my vagina.

I tried a few different positions, but what worked best for me was to lay on my back and put my feet together, kind of like butterfly position when you’re sitting on the floor. Then, with help from my team, I would curl my neck up, pull my feet in, and push like hell. I would get one short cycle in of about five counts, take a breath, do a second cycle of 10 counts, take two breaths, do a third 10-count cycle and a fourth 10-count cycle after another desperate breath. Sometimes I even did another 5-count cycle or two. It was exhausting.

I lost track of how much time passed. I became immersed in the cycle of pushing and the relief of relaxing in between. I had no idea I had been pushing for hours until I realized how tired I was. I had five people (the charge nurse had joined the team) staring at my vagina and yelling, “Push harder! Come on, you can do it! Push! You’re so close! PUSH!”

Let me tell you, I WAS pushing! I was giving it all I had, but I was running out of steam. At least a half hour went by where my team was telling me how close I was. I wanted to swear at them and kick them in the face. I know they meant well, but I could NOT take it anymore! As long as I kept having to push, I was clearly NOT close as far as I was concerned, no matter what they thought. I needed to rest. They finally did let me skip a couple of contractions to get my strength back.

One of the reasons pushing ended up taking 3-3/4 hours is because I developed an infection as a result of my water having been broken for so long. The infection essentially made my uterus less effective and contributed to my exhaustion because I had started running a fever, which I didn’t even know. After being told I was so close for so long, I finally got Shelby’s head around my pubic bone and in mere seconds she slid right out! They put her on my chest right away and I didn’t even know what to think. It was so surreal! She was all slimy and goopy and yet amazingly sticky. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see her very well because she was right under my nose.

Right away my midwife and Suzanne, the nurse who actually had been a very effective coach as much as I had wanted to hurt her, went to work on getting me to deliver the placenta. It was not a pleasant experience. They started massaging my uterus from the outside, and I don’t mean that in a nice, relaxing way. I mean they went to town on it as if they were kneading bread dough. Hello, this was my body and it HURT LIKE HELL! I yelled out loud in agony as they did it over and over again.

It was only at this point that I was told they needed to get the placenta out so they could work on getting my bleeding to stop because it was at a somewhat dangerous level. So I focused on Shelby, but even that was hard. I ended up giving her to Chris after the cord stopped pulsing and he cut it. I had wanted to have lots of skin-to-skin contact with her, but I couldn’t tolerate it with the action going on to my body below.

Even after I delivered my placenta the rough massaging continued as Suzanne tried to staunch the blood flow. I had torn a little, so Cyndi worked on stitching me up. Fortunately, I didn’t feel the tear happen or the stitching that followed. I did, however, want to absolutely throw Suzanne against a wall and pummel her. I was in excruciating pain from the uterus massage. I understood it was necessary, but that didn’t mean I liked it. Chris said he could barely watch it happening to me because my reaction was so extreme. I thought I had passed through the worst, that being the pushing, but the worst was by far the post-Shelby activity.

They finally got me to a point where they were fairly certain I would recover okay, but there was talk of me possibly ending up in the OR depending on how well and how quickly they could get my uterus to contract. It wasn’t doing it on its own they way it should have because of the infection, so they had to put me on meds to get things going. I’m just glad I had Shelby as a distraction, although I still couldn’t focus on her very well.

It took quite a bit of time for me to get cleaned up. Chris packed up our things and transferred them to the post-partum room while I was tended to. I finally got the green light to move to a wheelchair, which was quite difficult to do. I could still barely feel my legs, so it was like standing on jello. Plus, I was wearing the equivalent of a diaper; it was super awkward. I got wheeled to our post-partum room to begin life as a new mom.

Random details I forgot to include:

I lost about 650 (mL? not sure the unit of measurement) of blood during and after labor. Apparently the average woman loses 200-300 during a vaginal birth. That’s why the nurses were so worried about me. They actually mentioned that if they couldn’t get the bleeding under control there was a chance I’d end up in the OR for a hysterectomy. When they said that, a few thoughts raced through my head:

• I just had my first kid; that means I wouldn’t be able to have more!
• Holy crap – that’s serious surgery!
• I have to endure the external uterine massage no matter how painful it is

Once labor was over and I had been cleaned up, I thought I was in a different hospital room. For some reason the room I was in didn’t look like the one I had originally been admitted to. Maybe it was the lighting; I don’t know, but I felt fairly disoriented, which is unusual for me.

During labor, once I got my epidural, I went through a spell of serious shakes. It started as spaghetti legs (like when your legs are exhausted after a long run or a good workout) and progressed to the point that my whole body was shaking out of control. It was as if I was freezing cold, only I wasn’t. But my body shook so hard that my teeth chattered. Even trying to breathe deeply didn’t work, but finally after some time they passed.

I was starving by the time I started pushing. I hadn’t eaten in hours and had thrown up anything that had been in my stomach to give me strength. I was craving hash browns and scrambled eggs. I finally got them, several hours after I had been admitted to the post-partum room. By the time, though, I wasn’t really hungry for them anymore, but I’m really grateful to Chris for going out to get them!

If you’ve ever read my blog before, you might have noticed I sort of like planning and organizing small intimate casual parties for my kid or my friends.

So I decided to follow in the footsteps of my friend Audrey and throw a Baby Celebration Party for Baby Girl. Not a shower, because throwing yourself a party where you basically say “OH HAI, BRING ME PRESENTS” is unnecessary and kind of rude for a second baby (in my opinion), but I still wanted my daughter to know her pending arrival was just as exciting and celebration-worthy as her brother’s.

Of course, being 35 weeks pregnant AND the mother of a toddler is fairly exhausting. And the morning of the shower I woke up feeling like death warmed over. Really, seriously, painfully awful (in pregnancy related ways, not in contagious diseases sort of ways) and after rolling sugar cookie dough for only a few minutes I was almost in tears thinking about how much I still had to do before my guests showed up.

THANK GOD my in-laws and two of my very best friends Erin (from the wedding) and Erin (who wrote a guest post for me here and let me post pictures of her kid here) were staying with us for the party, because they – along with my amazing husband – did ALL the work for me. Even the night before the shower when I was still planning to do it myself they helped out stringing pennants and gluing craft paper. And of course Wedding Erin spent a ZILLION HOURS on an amazing – and incredibly delicious – custom themed cake. I, on the other hand, mostly sat in a chair and pointed at things.

(As a side note, I now know E is not only capable of following recipe instructions without my standing over his shoulder, but he can BAKE LIKE A MOFO. The thumb print cookies he made were ridiculously tasty – not a single one left over. He may live to regret letting that slip.)

It was especially nice of my in-laws and The Erins to help after I didn’t have blankets, pillows, food for breakfast or time to clean my rather disgusting bathroom before they got here. I’m not sure there was ever a time I was LESS prepared to have house(or any kind of)guests in my life. I used to be the hostess who not only had guest towels that coordinated with each room’s decor, but little baskets of toiletries, soaps, toothbrushes and tea waiting for them just in case they forgot or needed them. This time I barely got up off the couch to say “Hey thanks for coming!” I didn’t even manage to sort of clean up the new master bedroom before my party guests came over even though I KNEW I would end up giving a tour. So all my friends saw my literal dirty laundry.

As as far as having the new nursery done before the shower? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So in the end everything was awesomely awesome and I am really glad I decided to shower myself, even if it was a little overwhelming.

Of course, 50% of the reason I even HAD the party was so I could show pictures of my cute theme and decorations here on the blog. I promise to have those up soon. It will be TOTALLY WORTH coming back to check them out. That is, if you like that sort of thing. I apologize in advance for about a gazillion pictures if you don’t.

Today E is competing in a iron man hockey tournament, which means he’s basically getting the crap beat out of him for fun. Men. It also means I won’t be taking any long leisurely naps to make up for the hours I spent tossing and turning (and much, much worse) as punishment for eating WAY TOO MUCH delicious food at girl’s night last night because I’m going to be child-minding and/or bandaging bleeding head wounds. I know you’re so jealous.

So between begging the toddler to stop kicking me in the face and begging the baby to stop kicking me in the liver, I could use some happy today. Here are some things that fit the bill:

I have NO PROBLEM admitting my taste in music leans heavily on whatever the Top 40 station tells me to like (also known as: songs likely to be covers by the cast of Glee). And I think Sara Bareilles fits easily into that category. ASK ME IF I CARE. This song is awesome wrapped in fantastic coated in chocolate. I dare you to not find yourself singing it in the car.

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E really likes t-shirts that say stuff on them, which can be both hilarious and horrible. For example, “The first rule of computer club is that you don’t talk about computer club” is funny. “Hey Princess, Bring Me a Beer” is not (<—— ACTUAL SHIRT HE OWNS). Neither are the various candy slogans-turned-innuendo – “How many licks does it take?” OH HAHAHAHA I GET WHAT YOU DID THERE.  So I encourage the hilarious by buying him the shirts myself.

When we were cleaning out the closets, he found these two in the bottom:

(Warner: Movie spoilers below. Although if you STILL don’t know that Bruce Willis is a ghost, I have no sympathy for you.) (p.s. At the end of Titanic, the boat sinks.)

"The mission wasn't impossible" makes me LOL every time

Best part of the shirts: can you name all the movies?

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As I may have mentioned previously, I read a LOT of blogs. And a big portion of those blogs are other moms who mostly just write stuff. They aren’t fancy or sponsored or professional photographers, but I enjoy every single one of their posts. They’re the kind of writers where I WANT to comment on what they say, rather than feeling like I have to and they post because they WANT to, not because they have to. But just like ANY blogger, I’m sure they’d love more readers.* So check these ladies out**:

1.Planet Hausfrau – Audrey is now the mom of 2, a boy and a girl, both just a few months ahead of my own. There are a zillion reasons I like her, but I think a lot of it boils down to her honesty and frankness when she’s writing about anything from growing vegetables to VBACs.

2. And Then There Were Four – I honestly can’t even remember how I stumbled across Natalie, but I’ve been reading every post (and most of her archives) since I was pregnant. She just…writes. I love it.

3. Now Showing! – Again, I’ve been reading for so long I don’t remember how I started, but I’m pretty sure Brigid falls in the same category as Holly (A Baby Grows in Brooklyn) and Amy (BabyBabyLemon) which is “people I know from a previous life where I spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME arguing about reality tv shows and feminism on a popular women’s blog”. Brigid is irreverent, honest and funny, and I often find myself trying to write more like her.

4. Tin Roof, Rusted – I KNOW I know Leah from my time on the above mentioned website and she is the first blog in my old “Mom blogs” bookmark folder. Her son is a genius named after a hockey trophy and I’m pleased as punch she is expecting her second baby right now. Every post is LOL funny.

5. Life V. 2.0 – TMae is a lovely blog friend who has supported me here on bebehblog since the beginning and now has her own little corner of the internet. She is smart and funny and a good combination of cute baby pics and deep thoughts.

*I am under no delusions that my link here will cause a sudden spike in anyone’s traffic. I am not big-time by any means. I’m barely even small time. I just wanted to show some love.

**I almost never do lists like this because I always feel like I’m hurting someone’s feelings if I leave them off, but please know I still love you and your blog too. These are just people I’ve read in the past few days who made me think “More people should read this!”

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And now I’m off to watch some hockey and check Goodwill for a lamp I can use in the new nursery. Not necessarily in that order. Happy Saturday!!