Here Comes the Sun

 And I say 

it's all right...

This post was meant to be written in the summer, when the title would still be appropriate two different ways, but this is how blog writing always goes with me.

Anyway...we have a new(ish) baby!! Her name is Inara Mae, and she is named after the Firefly/Serenity character Inara Sera.

I still remember the night that Mike and I agreed on that name for a girl baby; it was the week after we got engaged. We were out at a bar with some of his Tastings coworkers, and we were talking about baby names. We couldn't decide on a boy quite yet (Joshua got brought up at one point, he liked Zach) but we both heartily agreed that our girl would be named Inara. Now that we have her, I know just how many people never watched Firefly, because a lot of people have never heard of the name. But most people love it, and it did come from a real name. Inara is Arabic for "ray of light", and Inara was also an ancient Hittite goddess of the wild. Our Inara was born on a 90 degree day in July, and she has lots of beautiful red highlights in her hair. (Her eyebrows are orange, but that's just from the cradle cap.) So I think her name is not only beautiful, but fitting.

So...I left off at the end of my first trimester. At the beginning of my second trimester we had a "Gender Reveal Party" for family only. Somehow 90% of people "knew" it was gonna be a girl, and when we had Simon cut the cake, it WAS! I was very surprised and shocked. Simon was ecstatic. He had wanted a little sister.

My other trimesters were fairly uneventful besides constant heartburn, although my feet swelled up like balloons in my last trimester, and I couldn't sleep much at all in the last couple weeks before she was born. In all, it was a much more difficult pregnancy than my first with Simon.

Labor is always interesting in unexpected ways, so I'll give you the highlights of that adventure:

--I ate 2 ice cream cones after dinner on the 18th of July and my water promptly broke while I was laying on the couch at 9pm.
--Simon was asleep, and we couldn't wake him to say goodbye. We also couldn't wait for my mom (and dad!) to arrive, so our lovely neighbors Tom and Sue came to hang out until my parents got here.
--I started having contractions in the car, but by the time I was admitted and in a room, they still hadn't gotten much worse, so they gave me Pitocin to speed things along.
--I got to have my epidural early (at like 2 centimeters) because I loved it so much last time, but it wore off when I was 8 cm along, and boy that was PAINFUL. But only on my left side, because my right side was completely numb. I got a "booster" after that and felt almost no pain at all for the rest of labor!
 --Sometime before my booster I fell asleep for about an hour and a half. It's weird to fall asleep during labor.
 --Sometime after my booster I listened to This American Life with Mike. I enjoyed that.
--I started feeling very nauseated around 6am. I told the nurse, and she surprised me by saying that it could be a sign I need to start pushing. The doctor came in and confirmed it, and so I started pushing!
--Best pushing ever. It barely hurt at all, and everyone was in a great mood. I pushed for about 45 minutes, and she arrived at 7am on the 19th! (Her due date was the 21st, I had wanted her to be born on the 20th so her and Simon would share a half-birthday, but hey, close enough.)
--They immediately put her on my chest, which I didn't get with Simon, and Mike got to cut the cord, which HE didn't get with Simon! Note: Umbilical cords are weird alien looking things. And THICK.

Her Arrival

I could tell right away she was a calm baby. Barely cried at all. I kept trying to feed her right away because I was worried about jaundice like Simon, but they told me she didn't need food yet. So I just held her for about an hour until they needed to weigh and measure her. She was 8lbs (!) and 20.25 inches long.  I kept looking at her face, trying to see if I could tell what she would look like, but she mostly looked like an angry old man. She did come out with a crazy mullet, with hair almost to the bottom of her neck, but sticking up on the top of her head, and that's how it's remained up to now.

Her little hands were always moving, and still are. She grabbed my finger right after she was born, and every time she nursed she would try to help herself to food with her little hands. When she got home we couldn't even fully swaddle her, because she would just struggle to free her hands all night. Luckily she was born in July, so we just swaddled her bottom half and left it at that.

I wasn't as tired as I was when I had Simon, but I also had her go to the nursery on her first night so I could get a little sleep. I'm not sure why both of my children put me through labor in the middle of the night, but I'm glad to be done with that aspect of it. She hadn't pooped since I was in labor, so I was worried about that for the first day and a half, but then she finally pooped, and all was well. (Although she's had some weird bowel things since then, I'm hoping she didn't get my IBS already.) 

My pain was much more manageable than last time, thank the gods. I broke my tailbone in labor with Simon and I was SO worried about it happening again, but oddly the bigger baby was the easier birth. The most pain I had was when I got home and my uterine-shrinking cramps coincided with some IBS cramps, and left me immobile for 20 minutes. This only happened once a day for 3 days, and then that was over with too.  

Mike must've been exhausted too, but he faithfully drove Simon, my mom, and my dad back and forth to the hospital every day that I was there. My mom switched with him, sleeping in my room on the second night I was there. My dad brought flowers, and Simon immediately LOVED her, which was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. He still loves her to death, and sings lovey made-up songs to her every night.  We took him out of day care a month before Kindergarten started, so it was rough finding things for him to do while taking care of a newborn. He acted out a bit, we got short with him, but everything has a learning curve and I think things are mostly better now. We have a little less patience with his craziness than we did before, plus his life changed dramatically too. But he's still a great kid.

Since Inara's been home, she's been happy and healthy. The doctor was amazed at her growth on her one month visit (almost 3 inches in one month!), and joked that I should sell my milk. I have tons of it, which is great, and I lost most of my pregnancy weight in the first 2 months. Inara goes with the flow more than Simon, and it hasn't been too challenging to fit her into our routines. We'll see what happens when she's a bit older and possibly needs sleep training, though. She really only gets upset in the car, and I think it's mostly because she's bored and can't see us. She LOVES looking at our faces, and tries so hard to talk to us. She even tried to talk to Simon in the hospital.

My mood is better than it has been in awhile. I was getting into a depressive state before I got pregnant, and now that she's here and doing fine, I feel a huge sense of relief. Living my life for the last 5 years either attempting to get pregnant, or attempting to not be anxious about bad things happening during pregnancy took a toll on my mental state. I'm pretty sure Mike's mental state was affected too, and it made things a bit tense at home. Now we get to move on with our lives as a family of 4, and we can finally relax!