7QT: Sleeplessness

Whew. I wish I could say "the baby is a month old, ain't no excuse to not hop back on the ol' blog train," but I cannot (CAN. NOT.) say that. I'm going to link up with Kelly for 7 extra-quick takes about why that is a thing which I cannot say.

1. Did you guys know that babies sleep like garbage?! I mean, this isn't my first rodeo of baby-having but I am OLDER and TIREDER than last time. (Also less worried about everything, and thus ripe for a good, old-fashioned overnight coma.) I have been experimenting nonstop with sleep conditions to coax a longer sleep out of Declan, and tonight I hit on a surely-not-to-be-successfully-repeated combination that netted me four straight hours: nurse baby until he is passed the heck out, in very specific low-light-but-not-no-light and low-sound-but-not-no-sound environment (I find that a brightly lit iPad screen and a podcast playing out of my phone is about the correct amount of light and noise); VERY GENTLY AS IF HE IS A BOMB, put said baby in the Rock'n'Play (with vibration, natch); turn on the sound machine to rain (no timer, rookie, because why would you want it to turn off? HE MIGHT AWAKEN EARLY!); and dive for the bed, burrow beneath the covers and pray for silence. And I just realized that my boast of four consecutive hours is a big fat lie (what the heck my phone said it was 2:30am but it was only 12:30am waaaaaaaah). I'd say "back to the drawing board" but I'm all drawn out. I have tried everydarnthing.

2. Meanwhile, after Declan's baptism last Sunday and a wonderful visit from all his Pennsylvania cousins -- someday I might have pictures! -- we're all feeling under the weather again. I'm mostly okay, but Declan is a little congested. Big sister seems mostly fine but her sleep has been interrupted like nobody's business so something must be bugging her. But my husband...

3. MANFLU. The less said about that, the better.

4. So since I've been so tired and useless I've been mostly just nursing continuously and watching Netflix. I just watched season one of Reign, which I honestly expected to hate but do not as long as I pretend to know nothing about Mary, Queen of Scots. And then I picked up where I had left off when I somehow forgot I was in the middle of watching Peaky Blinders. I've been dreaming in a Manchester accent.

5. What else, what else... Oh! Last night was one of those nights where I was feeling cocky and overconfident about my ability to get this kid to sleep without being snuggled up against me (see #6). Michael was in the guest room to sleep because the plague that is MANFLU was making his snoring so bad it was even waking him up out of a dead sleep, and I was feeding Declan when I heard a familiar explosive diaper sound (breastfed babies, amirite?). Three seconds later I realized: it's about three inches from the bottom of his hairline. Which means that his clothes, his blanket, the diaper-changing pad and the Boppy cover are all now covered in poop. And it's 2am. And my phone was dead from listening to podcasts so I couldn't even text for reinforcements. Somehow -- I think maybe it's because of all the screaming from a baby who did. not. like. having his whole back scrubbed down with baby wipes? -- Michael happened to come check on me (with a giant 2-year-old in his arms, while she guzzled her fortieth cup of warm milk for the night), so he was able to put all the poopy, goopy items in the washer and/or soaking tub of OxyClean water for me. It was delightful.

6. So all these sleeping woes are maybe my fault, in part. I mean, we're all genuinely not feeling well which is not my fault, but I have to admit that I have discovered the solution for sleeping: this child will sleep almost indefinitely if we just co-sleep. Part of me wants to give in to the inevitability of that -- and come 5am I will, fear not -- and another part of me wants to find something he likes as much so that I can sleep without being completely stationary all night long.

And finally:

7. Almost an hour of nursing and diaper changing later, he's showing signs of being ready to be chucked lovingly placed back in his Rock'n'Play so I can snatch another four minutes or so of sleep. Au revoir, mes amis! Please wish me ALL THE LUCK and comment below with your magical tips for baby sleep.

#whywemarch

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the legal travesty that is the decision in Roe v. Wade. That means that today was the March for Life in Washington, D.C., which is a mere metro ride away.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend because I have a three-and-a-half-week-old baby who nurses every half hour or so and who obviously couldn't be out in the January cold (although it was a relatively mild day today, it's still January in the mid-Atlantic region). This year marks, I believe, the second March for Life that I've missed since something like 1996. (I missed one year in college when I was attending winter session and had an exam that day.)

So instead I stayed in, nursed continuously, did some preparation for Declan's baptism this Sunday (dear Jesus, please take it easy with the snowstorm that's predicted for this weekend so that his godparents can actually get here!), and found some stuff on the Internet to share with y'all.

Here's a news story on the March that's actually complimentary!

Here's a moving testimonial from one of my favorite journalists about his own adoption, three months before the Roe decision, which also touches on the failure of Congress to follow through on their promise to pass a 20-week abortion ban because they are USELESS and SPINELESS.

Another perspective on the USELESS and SPINELESS.

An explanation of the ways in which artificial birth control is REALLY not good for your body.

Finally, I spent a while today thinking about planned and unplanned pregnancies. Both of my pregnancies were planned to heaven and back, and longed-for, given my struggles with infertility and need for Clomid assistance to achieve said pregnancies.

I was my parents' first planned pregnancy after two surprises. My sister just found out today about her second surprise pregnancy, several months before she intended to start trying for another baby. (Hooray!)

As a person who has struggled with infertility, I take abortion to be a personal insult. There are so many people out there dying for a baby. Adoption waiting lists are long and can feel insurmountable. We hadn't yet reached the point of seriously considering adoption when we achieved our own pregnancy, but I was dreading it because it's so expensive and potentially heartbreaking. And yet, so many women just throw away the precious gift of a baby.

On the other hand: I've prayed for friends who were dealing with pregnancy scares, I've had family members go through teen pregnancies, I've endured my own nightmare pregnancy moments -- hyperemesis gravidarum is no picnic, y'all. On some level, I can actually understand women who abort. This is awkward for an unequivocally pro-life person to admit, but if I'm being honest I must: if I had been as sick as I was with a baby I didn't want, I can understand the impulse to make it go away.

But if I had been dealing with a crisis pregnancy and had an abortion, I would have missed out on so much. A two-year-old and an infant are quite a bit of work (I can hear the laughter from y'all parents of seven or eight), but I wouldn't give them back for the world. I wouldn't even lend them out to someone else for a weekend because I would miss them too much (much to the displeasure of my mother-in-law, I must admit).

Babies are awesome. That is #whywemarch. And I intend to be back marching again next year.

Welcome to the outside world, little man!

Declan Michael was born on December 27, 2014 at 8:32 PM. He weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

He. Is. Perfect.

I have a lot more to say about this -- his birth story, for instance, and some reflections on the differences between first- and second-time motherhood. I'll get to it eventually. Right now I'm still soaking up the sweetness.

I never, ever learn.

I got sucked into a debate on Facebook, against my better judgment, about the issue of "holiday" cards.

Why, why, WHY do I never learn?

It started because someone with whom I am barely more than acquainted -- we knew each other somewhat in high school -- commented that she doesn't understand why people send out holiday cards without personalized messages, and likening doing so to sending out a Hallmark card and writing nothing inside.

And here's the grand hint that I should just have stayed out of it: She prefaced this judgment of people's cards by stating that she doesn't send cards and so "who am I to judge?"

HOLY ILLOGIC, BATMAN.

I resisted the urge to comment all day, while literally dozens of comments piled up underneath the original status. Most of them were in agreement with the original sentiment, full of sarcasm and cynicism, or else self-congratulatory that they were not guilty of such a holiday card faux pas.

The original poster also added at some point that she should -- "hahahaha" -- send a "Happy Hanukkah" card to everyone who sent her a "Merry Christmas" card this year.

I reached the point in my evening where my biorhythms are apparently at a low ebb because I commented. My comment was thus:

I've been back and forth on jumping in here all day... My two cents is this: I think long and hard about which card I choose, so that it already contains the message I want to send. Then I personalize what can be personalized (which, on our card this year, was one measly line, not counting the part where I put our names). I could have added backside printing, but it's actually ridiculously expensive to do so. Also, even with my saving some time by printing address labels and printing return address labels, addressing, stamping and closing the envelopes took me the best part of a whole afternoon to do. Adding hand-written notes would have put it out of the realm of possibility as time commitments go. The project cost me probably $200 (maybe more, as I had leftover holiday stamps from last year which kept the cost down artificially) and, as I said, a whole afternoon. Trust me, anyone who got a Christmas card from us got a whole lot of my time and attention, even if they didn't get any sort of individually personalized note. Our card is unapologetically Christmas -- even religious-Christmas -- themed because that's what's important to me, and I would not mind one bit getting a Happy Hanukkah card from any of my Jewish friends.

So basically: I do think of everyone to whom I'm mailing a card, it's cost-and-time prohibitive but I think it's worth it even without a hand-written personal note, and go ahead and send me a Hanukkah card if you're Jewish and celebrating Hanukkah. I had no intention of flaming anyone, and I sincerely think I hit the right note. At least I don't think I hit any wrong, jarring note. 

Oh, ho ho. That's adorable. Colleen, you're an idiot.

Her response came back thus:

That's fine and you and everyone else is entitled to do what they want. But I disagree with just about everything you've said. Should you care about my opinion? Absolutely not. I would find it perhaps a little sad to get a Christmas card, especially a religious one, from a close friend. It's important to you, but the message would be that you don't care about what's important to me. We can agree to disagree because this opens up a much bigger discussion. The point is we all make choices about the holidays. Some people put a lot of thought into their cards, and it sounds like you do. Others do it for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, and it's disingenuous. I don't send cards, but you can be sure that I show my friends and family my affection in other ways. And why anything I've said here was taken personally, especially by people who never even sent me any cards is beyond me.

I have to admit: it makes me sad that someone would be made sad by receiving my religious Christmas card. I know that everyone is not religious; my sending you a card that includes Isaiah's prophecy is not an attempt to shame you and it is certainly not because I'm trying to show you that I think what I care about is more important than what you care about. But the point is that I'm not going to take the Christ out of Christmas for anyone -- especially since I'm ordering custom photo cards in bulk, and thus can obviously only choose one design.

Besides, if someone is your good friend and they send you a religious card, shouldn't you know them well enough to know that they're not trying to subtly jab you?

But really what left me feeling like I was trying to reason with a crazy person was the last line. "I've made a blanket, judgmental statement in a semi-public forum that applies to a lot of people who might be reading this. But you didn't even have the good manners to send me a card, person I barely know, so why should you think this has anything to do with you?"

You know what, it doesn't. I was trying to stand up for some of the people who had commented on the thread who weren't doing an eloquent job of doing it for themselves. And the tone of her response is so out of line that I think I probably did hit a chord with her. And maybe she'll think twice next time before she blurts potential ugliness all over Facebook.

But I'm never going to know because I followed my own Facebook rule (which is: if your posts make me anxious and/or cause me to question your intelligence and/or cause me to question your sanity, there's a three-strike rule before I stop reading what you write) and unfollowed her immediately! Isn't it wonderful that you can do such a thing and no one ever has to know?

Infertility, and some further information

I just wanted to share this article on chastity.com, which is a great overview on the infertility struggles that many couples face, and which Catholic couples in particular face in view of the Church's total prohibition on assisted-reproductive technologies (ART).

Two things the article fails to mention, from my perspective as a Catholic who struggled with infertility and finally achieved pregnancy (and then a second!):

1. The Creighton Method (NaPRO Technology) was a godsend. My husband and I took private lessons with a pro-life doctor who specializes in reproductive issues, and it took weeks to learn how to properly chart using this method, but it was worth it. The article specifies the Creighton Method as useful for Catholic couples, but what the article never mentions is that this type of charting can reveal issues such as the wife being anovulatory, meaning she doesn't ovulate (or, in my case, didn't ovulate regularly). In this case, it is entirely permissible for a faithful Catholic to use drugs which induce ovulation, such as Clomid. 
2. The other thing is that the article discusses the necessity of masturbation as the only means of obtaining sperm for technologies such as intrauterine insemination or in vitro fertilization. This isn't strictly true (which still does not make these procedures permissible). Catholic ethicists have okayed the use of non-lubricated, non-spermicided, punctured condoms for use in diagnosing male fertility issues. Such a condom can assist in the collection of a sample for testing purposes by collecting a high-quality sample during an act of marital love without acting as a barrier to conception due to the puncture and lack of spermicide. 

If you're struggling with infertility, know that millions of women feel your pain. Our daughter's nightly prayers include a line just for you (and everyone knows that baby prayers count triple!), and I hope you find peace. 

God bless.

Baby update

So after one doctor last week acting as if I could have this baby any second, today's doctor seemed unsure whether the baby would come early at all. Now, to me that seems like an under-reaction because I'm 37 weeks 1 day, and already 4 cm dilated and 80% effaced. There ain't no darn way I have almost three weeks left in me. But I'm going to take it a little less easy. Maybe have a glass of wine later this week.

Meanwhile, I told the doctor I was worried I wouldn't be sure I was in labor because I was induced with my first, but when I got to the hospital and they hooked me up to monitors they told me I was contracting regularly on my own. I hadn't noticed and they really didn't get truly painful until hours after they started pitocin and they broke my water. Having suffered endometriosis since I was 12, early labor wasn't painful enough to even register on my pain meter.

And this is why I love my doctor: He told me to ask the Blessed Virgin for help, and pointed to the Miraculous Medal around my neck and said, "That's not jewelry you're wearing."

What an amazing reminder!

What a blessing.

Now, kid: I would like you to come out with your hands up, sooner rather than later. Preferably on Saturday so you can have an awesome trick birthday like your sister.