we're not in the same boat

Saturday's evening rainbow

Last week I wrote this really long stupid post complaining about people who complain about things that I don't complain about, left it up for a few hours, thought better of it and deleted it. If you read blogs via an RSS feed then you'll be able to see it but if not, tough luck!

My Instagram friend Rebecca shared this graphic a few weeks ago that I should be thinking about more often:

I read another post today that really resonated with me—the poster said something to the effect of, we are all weathering the same storm right now but we're not in the same boat. I feel extremely blessed that I don't feel insecure in a lot of areas right now. I feel a sort of panicked claustrophobia grab me every now and then, but I don't know what it's like to live with persistent anxiety or depression, or to have a job that you can't do remotely, or to live in a country where the president seems proud of the fact that he has no idea what he's doing. One thing that I'm having a hard time coming to terms with right now is that I cannot control how others react in a crisis. It's so bad and it's a long-time problem that was around long before the pandemic was. So, I'm going to spend my energy for the next while working on my attitude and how I can be kind and serve people who are being affected differently than I am right now. (Even if they are complaining about lockdown and have an enormous house and/or backyard. ;) I am trying to spend more time writing about my feelings than stewing about other people's feelings so this is totally self-serving, but it helps me work through my emotions and I find the writing process really helpful in giving me some perspective. 

Today I had such a fun day with my kids. I expended a little too much of my fun mom energy and snapped like a rubber band at bath time (also when I walked in the living room and saw Ralph had colored all over the wall and couch) but my kids were still smiling when I tucked them in so I'm calling it a win. I used to have a really bad yelling problem and lockdown has been a good chance for me to work on that, which is surprising. I think it helps to be around my kids all day and know exactly what it is that is making them feel off, which helps me be more compassionate when they're losing it. I wish that I had that luxury with everyone! So I'm going to try and think about things from that perspective while I try to be more empathetic with people who are not my kids.

I don't really have anywhere that I'm going with this post but I'll leave you with everyone's favorite Rilke quote that has helped me so much over the last few years and is back helping me now: "Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." When I've relied on that quote it has been under entirely different circumstances, but it's true—those old feelings are gone and have been replaced by new ones. I've just got to keep going to find out what other feelings, good and bad, are waiting in my future.

my corona

Well, that escalated quickly.

the family that masks together...

Maybe the thing that will get me back to updating my blog will be 24/7 mandatory confinement. But, as we've all learned, we don't not do things because we don't have the time—we apparently don't do them because, well, we don't want to! Okay, that's not true. Even though I am spending lots more time at home, I'm still prioritizing other stuff over sitting at my desk and trying to figure out WHERE  DO I EVEN START.

I have to thank my mom for telling me on the phone the other day that I should be documenting that corona life because my memories will fail me and someone will want to know what life was like during this strange period. There is no shortage of articles, think pieces and memes about our first (well, for most of us anyway) experience with a pandemic, but here's what's been happening chez Hamill.

this view is a 2 minute walk from our apartment #blessed

The first I thought about our lives being possibly impacted by COVID-19/coronavirus/SARS-CoV-2/could we have please come up with a more uniform moniker? was mid-February, just after we'd come home from a trip to London. Winter break in France usually means that a lot of French families go skiing on the French border or to Italy, and the outbreak in Italy meant that the spread in France was pretty much inevitable. I had a small surgery scheduled for February 27th (I had a polyp in my uterus that needed to be evicted), and when we showed up at the hospital we were questioned about our whereabouts over the past two weeks—which is crazy because I had just been there three days before without any questioning. The 27th is also when my family text chains started getting a little more panicked and I started hearing about toilet paper shortages in the US... and the French were still very much going about their daily lives. Our upstairs neighbor is a doctor and was dismissive of the panic which seems so comical now.

Things did NOT start feeling serious in Paris until the week before our confinement started, which officially happened on March 17th. Up until that point the only difference I noticed was that Ralph's crèche teachers were fastidious about hand-washing (very unusual for France where personal hygiene habits are, uh, different than they are in the US) and they had signs posted in the building about travel restrictions and self-quarantine. President Macron announced that schools would be closing indefinitely after Friday March 13th, and then an estimated 30% of the city left—since most people who live in Paris aren't actually Parisian, there are plenty of spacious family homes to go to all over France, and most French families have two working parents so there needed to be grandparents available for childcare. That Sunday, we had the MOST beautiful weather that we'd had all year and Parisians were out in full force, not respecting social distancing warnings at all. Restaurants were ordered closed after that. I'm sure everyone knew that confinement was inevitable, but it was pretty crazy seeing everyone just flout the recommendations so openly.

Monday the 16th was the day that Macron made the lockdown announcement, and I started to feel a mounting sense of dread. Our friends had offered to let us stay at their (empty) house in southern France, which felt like a godsend and we were serious about taking them up on it. But the lockdown went into effect much more quickly than we thought it would, and there would not be time to pack up our lives and make the ~9 hour drive before the noon deadline on the 17th. I feel for all the people getting flak for fleeing NYC because we were in the position of having to make that decision too, but I'm pretty sure I felt dread because deep down I knew it was a bad idea to leave our familiar surroundings, even if it meant that we'd be stuck most of the time in a tiny 60 sq meter apartment (about 650 sq feet). Here we've got better access to hospitals, grocery stores, and other essentials that would have been difficult to manage in a small town.

After day 1 we fell into a routine pretty quickly, and I've stopped counting the days because I'm not going to torture myself, and I'm not winning any awards for staying inside. Under the current rules we are allowed to go outside with an attestation stating why we are outside. You're allowed to walk freely for exercise for one hour per day within a 1 km radius of your home, alone or with people you're quarantining with. (I'm not sure yet how they enforce the 1 hour rule other than on your honor, but now they have a computer generated attestation with a QR code that police will scan if they stop you, so maybe they track that?) Other acceptable reasons for going outside are to go to work, to go to the doctor, to shop at essential shops (grocery stores and pharmacies are open, as well as an assortment of "essential" establishments including tabacs and wine shops), or to help family/friends that fall in the "vulnerable" category. They just passed a ban on daytime running between 10 am and 7 pm, presumably because heavy breathing increases virus transmission, so 7 pm every day looks like a marathon is happening because suddenly everyone's a runner.

So, here we are! Not much has changed in the last month or so, except that tonight we just learned that the confinement is supposed to end on May 11th and kids are going to slowly start going back to school and crèche (fingers crossed!). I go through various stages of grief, but overall I am overwhelmed with how blessed we are, and I do not mean that in any trite way. I am advantaged in a lot of ways, the main one being that I was already a stay at home mom and am used to spending a lot of time 1) at home and 2) with my kids. It can be drudgery for me in my chosen situation on a regular day, so I really feel for the people who were thrown into that scenario and still have to work from home. My kids are doing so well and playing great together, though we have our bad days (also true in non-corona times). Rhoda's schooling has been tricky since I don't speak great French and she's supposed to be studying for a French proficiency diploma, but she's a good sport and only complains sometimes. Thankfully we're on week 2 of spring break so I don't have to think about school again for a few more days. Her teacher is really sweet and made it a point to let everyone know NOT to stress about school, but she's still really prepared and sends a lesson outline with activities every day that makes it easier for me to organize mine and Rhoda's time. Robbie's working from home, which means that I have NO SPACE TO MYSELF. (I'm telling you, our apartment is tiny.) Everyone is eating all the time! ALL THE TIME. Rhoda used to get a huge lunch every day at the school cantine and I really took that for granted!

I'm getting overwhelmed by the amount of text here so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Ralph's out of diapers! My number one quarantine goal checked off the list.

Everyone's still holding themselves to a very high dress standard when going grocery shopping

Boo is the happiest to have everyone at home all the time. He's never lacking a warm body to snuggle.

One of Rhoda's school assignments. School is fun when you're six!

Ralph during a rare moment when I gave him a specific activity. I just can't trust him alone with any craft materials so I just don't do it! Sorry kid.

Robbie's so happy to have a puzzle companion

Made some masks for grocery store runs and walks outside (tbh I'm not sure if we really need them on walks??)

Lots of scooting during our (almost) daily walks

Another school assignment

Look, I'm a fun mom

Mixed feelings about missing Paris in bloom. My allergies are thanking me for staying indoors.

Ducks at our boulangerie practicing social distancing

Boo loving being Robbie's coworker

A typical scene: crap everywhere and ALWAYS LAUNDRY

Got the kids a huge Duplo set for Easter and I have not had to intervene for the past 48 hours

Easter chez Hamill

Belated Easter egg hunt in our courtyard on Monday afternoon, which was sort of improvised because there are no plastic Easter eggs here! I printed and cut out a bunch of tiny bunny boxes just to see them thrown away after hours of work. Definitely planning ahead for next year and finding some Easter eggs before April...

It feels a bit silly to share regular updates when there isn't anything to update! I'm feeling a little nervous for the next month because I've been using little milestones to look forward to, and I've kind of run out of them now that Easter has passed. But Ralph's birthday is coming up on May 10th and we have a possible end of confinement after that, so fingers crossed that we all stay healthy and happy till then!

bienvenue, again

Hi again! Remember how I said I was going to be back into blogging this year? I'm just barely making my deadline, because now I'm really back! (Really.) And moving to Paris is as good a reason as any to jump-start my favorite pastime, as it was my main mode of venting the last time we did this. I still love the ease of posting my favorite pictures to Instagram, especially since I don't take nearly as many photos as I did when it was just the two of us and I don't have a lot of photos to sort through (isn't that supposed to be reversed when you have kids?) but I'm getting a little tired of writing really long captions on my phone that are better suited for blog posts. I also need a place to put pictures of things that aren't immortalized on Instagram for my scrapbooks, like this, um, unique lamp found in one of the apartments we toured in Paris:

Oddly enough that was not the weirdest thing in that particular apartment.

I am also positive I will forget someday that a transatlantic move with two kids and a cat is not very fun (reading through my old Paris posts reminded me that I was really not excited to be there most days, which I had forgotten) so I need to write it down to remember why it was crappy and why I can laugh about it now. "It" being things like Ralph getting hand foot and mouth the week before we moved:

That was great. In the weeks before that incident our hard drive crashed and I had to spend the amount of a new computer to recover all of the data that I hadn't backed up (yes I have 100 backup services running now thanks for checking), I spent about a million dollars getting overcharged by our friendly neighborhood vet for services getting Boo ready to move overseas, and Robbie pulled a week of all-nighters finishing up his last work project in Seattle, where he was working for 6 weeks before our move date. Whee!! My parents are amazing and came to Redwood City two times in a month to help us pack up, watch kids while we ran errands, and generally be a source of support during a time that I should have been crying more. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop because I haven't had a meltdown... yet. My kids have though!

Okay but SERIOUSLY. Things are cool! Really. My kids have had a normal amount of melting down for being uprooted at the beginning of the school year from the home that they've known the longest. Kids are very resilient and I'm so grateful for Ralph and Rhoda who are not only resilient but also love all kinds of food and saying "bonjour madame" whenever possible, which are two things that French people love so they're fitting in already. TBH I'm slightly worried about Rhoda, who has developed a fair number of nervous tics in the last week since she started school (French public school deserves its own post) but she is enthusiastic, curious, and generally excited to be doing something new so I think these growing pains are going to be fleeting until they come up in therapy when she's an adult.

Enough typing. How about some pictures? I think these will accurately sum up our first three weeks here.

Amazing view from our hotel in Republique, where we stayed for a week before we moved into our current apartment (which is in the 5th arrondissement... post about our neighborhood and apartment forthcoming!)

I think we logged an average of 12,000-15,000 steps per day during our first week and I'm still napping for recovery

Some murals seen on one of my aforementioned walks, this one in the 13th

Okay, this might only be funny to me but I snuck a picture of our internet technician who came over to check the installation of our fiber setup because he looked old enough that I should be teaching him how to use the internet. Guess those early retirement benefits in France aren't as cushy as they used to be! He also reeked of cigarettes and was missing most of his front teeth. Don't judge a book by its cover because it might have to teach you how to use the internet.

The Jardin des Plantes, which is an enormous garden/museum/zoo situation just a few minutes from our house

Our apartment's parquet floors deserved a shoutout

Many people have asked how Boo has handled the move. We should have moved AGES AGO. He is so much less anxious than when we lived in California! I don't know if the trauma of the move jumpstarted his system but he's way less skittish than he used to be (he's always been super cozy and cuddly with me, but frantically ran out of the room whenever Robbie entered) and spends his days staring at pigeons outside our bedroom window. He is so, so happy.

I took this picture at the end of a day when Ralph was being a real pill and I needed to remind myself that he's still just a squishy baby

A squishy baby who can't resist the urge to climb on everything

Seine walk before dinner (this path is also just a couple minutes from our apartment)

Scooting to church, since it's only a 15 minute walk for us now! We apparently live close to a lot of things.

Last weekend we found out that there is a six year old girl named Sarah living in the apartment above us with her mom, and they also just moved here! She and Rhoda have been exchanging very cute notes and finally met in person this week.

Okay, that's it for now. Hoping that future updates aren't as much an information dump but I knew I needed to get it out there before I forgot more details than I already have!

tell me something good

I spent a lot of time writing a post about Black History Month and my goals after thinking about this month, but in the end I just deleted all of it. Really the gist of what I want to say is that I can't be a good advocate for or ally to the black community if I'm not informed or listening. So I've spent the bulk of February informing myself and listening, and it's been transformative. I'm still getting back into the idea of my blog as a platform to talk about WHATEVER I WANT, WHENEVER I WANT and I have so many thoughts about the state of race and racism in America and it really is on my mind all day. But I don't know how to talk about it coherently yet, so we'll start here.

I have never purposefully excluded black authors or stories about black people in my reading but I've never actively sought it out, so my goal for 2019 was to read one book per month by an author of color. February's not even over yet, I've read five books already (I think I read five books in all of 2018, yikes), and I'm excited to keep the momentum going.

I wanted to share some of what I've been reading/listening to/consuming—maybe you'll find something in here that will help change your perspective too.

READ (ed. note: these are the books I've read so far this year so it's not at all an exhaustive list; for more POC titles I've read/want to read you can see my Goodreads list here):

• Becoming by Michelle Obama (I didn't think this one would be as impactful for me as it was but it really set a good tone for my goal)
• The Origins of Others by Toni Morrison
• Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton (this is a folktale illustrated for kids but oh man I cried when I was reading it to Rhoda)

LISTEN:

• these episodes from The Nod: The Fugitive; Nobody Looks Like Me; Kunta Thinks You're Funny (LaVar Burton!!!); The Hairstons; and for fun, because this episode made me laugh out loud multiple times, YouTube Conspiracy Theories (Mom, you probably won't think it's funny :)
• these episodes from On Being: Let's Talk About Whiteness with Eula Biss; Civic Spiritual Evolution with Cory Booker; The Spirituals with Joe Carter (this one was... So Good)
• this episode from TED Radio Hour: Comfort Zone (especially the segments with Luvvie Ajayi and Ann Morgan, the latter is what inspired me to set an actual goal to read books by non-white authors)

FOLLOW:

• Black Coffee with White Friends on Instagram for well-curated tidbits, musings and insights about black culture. Can't recommend this one enough—if you don't read/listen to anything else on this list at least follow this account!

Tell me what you're reading/listening to/consuming, and let's talk about it.

are you there, blog? it's me, hannah

At some point in 2018 I realized that I really missed blogging. I love Instagram, but it's become a 100% blog substitute and I've been missing spilling my guts on my blog. I also miss being FUNNY, which I had forgotten that I was (I WAS) and Instagram just isn't that funny most of the time. I also miss reading long form blog posts from my real life friends and not just the ones from my pretend friend. At some point in college/grad school I remember feeling a little bit sad and vulnerable once my original blog readership began to extend well beyond Eliza (my sister), Kate (my childhood friend), and Nicole Winkleman (RU STILL OUT THERE NICOLE??) but I think that it's safe to say that my readership has dwindled back to early 2000s levels after a healthy dose of neglect. Thank you to Eliza and Kate who are still reading (AND POSTING!) after all these years, and who have both stuck with the original URLs that were inspired by their high school nicknames.

SPEAKING OF ALL THESE YEARS: my very first blog post was published almost exactly 17 years ago on January 16th, 2002. It is the longest I've ever held onto a habit! Please excuse me for the 18 month hiatus I took after Ralph was born. Those were dark days! Robbie started traveling Monday through Thursday when Ralph was still an infant, and that plus having an extra kid around just changed a lot of my habits, perspective, desires... everything really. I don't mind the travel like I used to—I have some coping mechanisms, which I'll likely delve into in future posts—but being alone most nights has made it very easy for me to get stuck in bed scrolling my phone rather than being a contributor. I've become a lurker! The very thing I used to scorn!

Most importantly, I would like to retain the moral superiority of someone who joined Blogger pre-Google acquisition and used to have to manually embed comment windows in my blog HTML, so I guess I need to continue to maintain my presence here rather than reminisce about the good old days of blogging in my parents' family room.

Anyway, while I think about what I'm going to write about I'll just leave you with a 5:40 minute summary of 2018, which has been conveniently captured by the 1 Second Everyday app. Which, incidentally, was first introduced to me by Kate and Eliza. Moral of the story: STICK WITH KATE AND ELIZA.

a baby story

I'm emerging from the dark days of Ralph's newborn phase and I'm finally ready to write down Ralph's birth story. Man! The first two months hit me like a ton of bricks this time around. With Rhoda, my hardest months were months 2-4, and with Ralph it was months 0-2. When you have an older kid at home to pay attention to (and for your help to pay attention to), you just don't get as much rest as you do when people come to help and can just hold the baby while you sleep. That, or I just don't remember how hard it actually was with Rhoda. And, of course, both scenarios could be true.

Something else different this time around was that Robbie wrote up my birth story last time when Rhoda was about a week old. The thought of either of us having enough time to do that this time around cracks me up.

So! Let's start from the beginning. Actually, let's start with me saying that I really wanted to let things progress as naturally as possible with this birth like I did with Rhoda's, except without it lasting 20 hours in the hospital. Thankfully I had an amazing and experienced doula, a small community-ish hospital (it used to be a community hospital and still feels that way so it still counts), and a nice OB who let me do my thing even if he secretly thought I was crazy. I should also mention that my OB has baby-related comics on the ceiling above the exam table in his office and wears a lapel pin of a cartoon uterus on his white coat. Let me know if you want his number.

The beginning.
At my 40 week appointment (a Monday), my OB started stressing me out by telling me that I needed to schedule an induction. He was pushing for 41 weeks but I pushed back and told him that Rhoda was born at 41 weeks and I just think that my babies need a little more time to be ready to come out. So I scheduled an induction for May 23rd, which felt like a million years away at the time and I just knew that I wasn't going to go to 42 weeks. I also didn't feel like I was going to have the baby on my due date (Narrator: "She did.") and I was just going to enjoy my last week of insomnia and being large and in charge. Then my OB offered to sweep my membranes to get things going, which I was hesitant about and probably should have listened to my gut on that one? Long story short for those who aren't as familiar with birth, sweeping your membranes is just one way to maybe or maybe not kickstart labor, and the membranes in question are the membranes of your amniotic sac and I didn't want my water to break since I was Group B Strep positive (again) and that would mean that I'd be closely monitored to avoid infection if my water broke.

But, I didn't listen to my gut, and I let my doctor sweep my membranes, and the rest of the day was just kind of uncomfortable and I was regretting doing it and stressing about it. Since I was under the care of midwives in a hospital with Rhoda, I really didn't deal with them stressing about going overdue and so I wrote my doula a long-winded email about how I was stressed and didn't know how to deal with it and she was like "I'm sorry this is new and confusing for you, call me in the morning and we can talk about it."

And then. In the morning I had that familiar pregnant feeling of "did I pee my pants or did my water break?" Except I had no idea because my water didn't break at the beginning of labor with Rhoda. I spent the entire day asking myself and calling my doula and possibly walking through Target with a giant wet spot on the back of my pants because I really needed some last minute things at Target if my water really HAD broken. I also didn't want to call my doctor because if my water HAD broken they'd make me come in right away, but I hadn't gone into labor yet. So I kinda played dumb when I FINALLY called the hospital at 6 pm that night after my doula told me that I shouldn't wait until morning and was like "I need you to check and see if my water broke or I'm just incontinent." Fortunately my OB was the doctor on call and he gave me the reassuring over-the-phone assessment of "based on what you're describing, it doesn't sound like your water broke!" (Narrator: "It had.")

The hospital.
So, my amazing doula Eva came over and drove me to the hospital, which is a five minute drive up the street, and Robbie stayed home to put Rhoda to bed. Once the nurses confirmed that my water had broken, they told me I had to stay (boo) and see if labor would get started on its own. (Narrator: "It didn't.") They gave me the option of starting Pitocin (which would kickstart contractions) or Cytotec (which would thin out my cervix) that night or waiting till the morning, and I opted to go with Cytotec, in the hopes that would kickstart contractions naturally, and to wait till the morning so I could get some sleep. Neither of those scenarios was ideal, since both Cytotec and Pitocin have potential side effects that can complicate delivery, and I was pretty anxious about it. After consulting with Eva and Robbie I decided that considering the circumstances that we'd made the right decision and I came to terms with it. Eva left once Robbie showed up around 10 pm, and also at this point I'd like to give a shoutout to my dear friend Christa who came over and spent the night and then took Rhoda to her house the next day. Figuring out babysitting for your kid is the worst part about planning your second birth.

Another note, the two things I told my doula that I wanted to avoid this time around were laboring in the hospital for a long time and being hooked up to fetal monitors for the whole time. Ha! I got that and then some this time around. In fact, I was in the hospital for longer than I was with Rhoda (24 hours from admitting to birth), but at least I wasn't in labor for that entire time.

I actually started thinking about writing up this story yesterday when my "calming" labor playlist came up on Spotify and I was transported to the hospital bed where I was hooked up to beeping fetal monitors and trying to fall asleep. Listen to Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach and tell me that won't put you right to sleep. (Narrator: "It didn't.") All it got me was "I LOVE YOU MORE THAN TONGUE CAN TELL. YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE! MY SUN, MOON, AND STARS. YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING. WITHOUT YOU, I HAVE NO REASON FOR BEING" stuck in my head (go to the 3:30 mark of the song).

So after neither of us slept all that well (and after a nurse came in at 1 am and said "Good morning! Are you ready for your Cytotec?") I got started on penicillin (for the Group B Strep) and Cytotec at 6 am. Robbie and I got familiar with the tiny maternity floor since we weren't allowed to walk anywhere else. Fortunately there is one window on the floor where you can look out on the valley and it's really pretty...? Yeah, we were both pretty bored. I honestly don't know what we did from 6 am to 12 pm, when Eva came. I re-watched some Doctor Who (the episode was "The Impossible Astronaut," which maybe like two people in my readership could appreciate, nothing like The Silence to get you into labor), ate some gross hospital food, chatted with one of my nurses who was really nice and hung out with me for an hour, and totally pretended like I wasn't in the hospital when people texted me.

The labor.

Side note, Robbie took this picture somewhere in the middle of labor and I'm so glad he did. This is what having a baby feels like. What I'm not glad about is the video he took of me saying "DOOOOOWN... OOOUUUUUT..." in a low, guttural voice (and doing so caused me to lose my voice a bit the next day). My laboring self sounds like The Hulk. I will never be able to listen to me sounding like that if I'm not in labor. 

As I mentioned, Eva came to relieve us from our boredom around noon. I'll say it again, Eva Roodman is my favorite person ever. I know she was getting paid to do what I asked her to but I wonder if doulas secretly hate being called by their clients to come and hang out with them when the hospital gets boring. In reality I was starting to show signs of active labor and feeling a little more uncomfortable, so it was probably a good time for her to come anyway. Around 1 pm I started having to concentrate on my contractions and the next seven hours until delivery are kind of a blur. Actually, that's not true. Even though I was in the zone during my contractions, I was completely aware of what was going on the rest of the time, which was a totally different experience from Rhoda's birth! I was just so exhausted with her birth that my time between contractions was spent taking tiny naps.

This time, Robbie and my doula were totally in sync with how to help me cope with contractions. It was amazing! Both of my babies have been posterior (facing up), so back labor was an issue again. Robbie and Eva got a major workout squeezing my hips and passing me tiny snacks. I asked them not to tell me how far dilated I was so that I wouldn't get discouraged, and that was a great choice. I could tell that I was stalling at 4 cm (AGAIN), but I learned from my first labor that I needed to get up and change whatever I was doing instead of laying prostrate on the hospital bed and hoping it would pass eventually. I sat on the labor ball, I labored on my hands and knees on a yoga mat that Eva brought (genius!), I sat backwards on the toilet (I HATE LABORING ON THE TOILET), I stood in the shower (THE BLESSED SHOWER, I loved the shower), and laid in a terribly uncomfortable position called a "Texas roll" to try and get the baby to flip face down. (Narrator: "It didn't.")

The last couple of hours of labor are a little foggy for me but I do vividly remember pretending like I was Rocky Balboa and Eva was Mick while she would put my water bottle straw in the side of my mouth and make me take sips in between contractions. I also remember telling Eva that I really did NOT want to lay down anymore and that I NEEDED to get in the shower. This proved to be an excellent mind-body connection moment for me, as I ended up standing in the shower for like an hour and a half and I progressed from a 4 to an 8 or 9. Woof! That was definitely the craziest part for me, but I FELT the baby flip from face up to face down while I was in the shower. Contractions got infinitely more manageable after that. Also, I had a bruise on my forehead from banging my head on the shower wall during contractions. I do not remember thinking this would be a terrible idea while I was actually doing it.

Once I was that far dilated, they wouldn't let me stand in the shower any more, so they said they'd call my OB and get me set up on the bed. At this point I was refusing to lay back down because I didn't want the baby to turn again. So I basically ignored the nurse and just stayed on my hands and knees. Also, she was telling me not to push and I almost punched her in the face. I think Dr. Hoff showed up around 7:30, and waiting for him to show up felt like an eternity. He also informed us while he was stitching me up that he had been at home finishing up La La Land.

After four contractions, I had a baby! And again I was nosy and looked to see if it was a boy or girl before Robbie had a chance to announce it!

Giant newborn hands = the best

 This is me, the only one awake at 11 pm, since Robbie told me that he was "so exhausted" after my labor and passed out once all the people left our room

Ralph David Hamill was born at 7:59 pm on his due date, May 10th, weighing 8 lbs 8 oz (!!!) and measuring 20.5 inches long. From the beginning he's proven to be a very particular sleeper and a ravenous nurser. I am not one to fall in love with my babies the second they come out, but at almost three months postpartum I'm pretty smitten with little Ralphie's chubby cheeks and generous smiles.

Birth is the coolest and weirdest thing. It was a lot easier than my first baby in many ways, and harder in others. So, SO many things were different this time. Even though the induction method was more subtle than, say, Pitocin, it definitely brought on heavy contractions seemingly out of nowhere, where Rhoda's birth was much more drawn out. From start to finish (minus my water breaking, I don't count that since I wasn't having contractions that I could really feel) this time took 7 hours, and Rhoda's birth was 30 hours. 30 hours! I don't know how I did it. Even though it was much shorter, I remember feeling like I could do it again after Rhoda was born, but after Ralph was born I was like "eh, I could be done now." Hahaha.

But really, I think I could do it again. At this rate, maybe my next blog post will be my next birth story so I guess we'll find out eventually!

dear internet, i had a baby in may