Within the last week, he has discovered his feet (which he finds especially interesting when they're inside his new stripey socks!). He is also paying more attention to toys and is starting to follow them with his eyes. It's so cool to see him grow and learn new things!

I forgot to mention in my last post that when my mom came to visit, she brought a sweet kitty doll that she'd made for Arlo. What makes it even cooler is that she sewed me a kitty using the same pattern when I was a baby.

This week, Arlo had his first visit from relatives on Patrick's side of the family--his Grandpa Rick, Sunie, and Great Aunt Lorraine. Arlo got lots of cuddles, and we got some relief from crying baby duty :) It's wonderful how excited everyone is to meet Arlo!

Susan was nice enough to share some of her marionberry haul with us last week, so I made jam with it! I used the recipe from the Ball Blue Book, and it turned out well. Many of the jams I've made haven't been very firm (I think I'm too wimpy and don't let them boil hard enough), but this one firmed up nicely--no added pectin needed. We enjoyed the extra jam that didn't make it into jars on some leftover shortcakes. Very nice!

Arlo has become alert for longer stretches of time in the last few weeks, which is so fun! There's still plenty of crying, but at least it's balanced out by longer periods of extreme adorableness.

Also, it may have been a fluke, but a couple nights this week, he went 6-7 hours between meals, instead of the standard 4 hours. I want more of that! Sleep is so wonderful.

Last weekend, while Patrick hung out with Arlo, I successfully made and canned the strawberry jam I mentioned in my last post. I used the Favorite Strawberry Jam recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. Inspired by Alicia, I made some bread to go with the jam. I used the white batter bread recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but I wasn't that happy with it. It was too salty, as people mentioned in the comments, and it just wasn't all that interesting. At least it was easy to make!

I was excited to find pie cherries at the farmers' market twice in the last few weeks. I pitted and froze half of them and made the others into cobbler (recipe from Rustic Fruit Desserts, like last year). I also made the strawberry shortcake recipe from the same cookbook, and it turned out really nicely, even without whipped cream.

And rounding out our recent summer fruit adventures, I made a batch of blueberry frozen yogurt and turned half of it into popsicles (inspired by Orangette). Tasty!

All of this productivity was thanks to the magic of the sling! I take Arlo out of it when I'm working at the stove, of course, but otherwise I just wear him around the kitchen. I'm still not able to get him to sleep on his own during the day, but luckily I can get a pretty good amount accomplished while he's napping in the sling. As long as I'm moving, he's happy. I'm pretty tired at the end of each day from wearing him so much, but I'm sure it's nothing compared to how I'll feel when he's a toddler and I have to carry him and chase him around! I definitely appreciate Arlo's lack of mobility at this stage :)

In addition to baking with me, Arlo has accompanied us all over town lately. He took his first two bus trips (both on the 4-Division bus downtown) and slept through the whole thing. People on the bus and around town really like tiny babies! It's sweet :)

My trip downtown with Arlo on Monday was especially enjoyable--we went to the farmers' market in Pioneer Courthouse Square (pie cherries don't sell out as quickly there as they do at the Saturday market) and had lunch at the food carts at SW 10th and Alder. I started with yummy dumplings from the Dump Truck, followed by a grilled pear, gorgonzola, and brie sandwich from Valhalla (which, incidentally, is in the trailer that was once the Little Blue Waffle Wagon--I'm happy to be able to visit it in its new incarnation).

Speaking of good food downtown, we've been to the newly-opened Violetta twice in the course of other errands. I had a delicious hand-dipped corndog there, as well as yummy sweet potato fries and (on a separate occasion) beignets. I'll definitely be stopping by again when I'm downtown.

Arlo had a special visitor earlier this week--Nana! This was my mom's first Arlo visit (with many more to come!). We spent most of the time at home and walking around the neighborhood, but we did manage a dinner at Screen Door (always delicious!). I'm glad Arlo finally got to meet his Nana. We tried to take a nice cross-generational picture before she left, but Arlo wasn't having it. Maybe next time...

Finally, I was reminded this past week of the existence of this picture. It's the original Arthur Vinograd (Patrick's grandpa) astride a large pig. I like it :)

Longer post to come when I have a spare moment. Right now, it's past my bedtime!

We took a couple family portraits this time, since it has been a month since the last ones. By the way, the dress I'm wearing is a nursing sundress from Milk. It's super comfy and functional. I like it!

We're not sure if we've gotten a real smile from Arlo yet, but in addition to the neck strength, he is making progress on being able to suck his thumb. He got it once a few days ago, but he hasn't been able to figure out how to do it again, much to his consternation. He's making a valiant effort, but he usually ends up cramming his fist in his mouth and then flailing his arms around and losing it pretty quickly. I'm sure he'll get it soon enough.

We went to the big farmers' market at PSU this weekend--our first time with Arlo. We were hoping to get some sour pie cherries, but they ran out before we got there. We did pick up some strawberries to make into jam though. Canning stuff is trickier now that we've got a baby who insists on being held all the time, but with Patrick's help, I'll get this jam into jars!

However, we're definitely cautious about letting her be around him when we're in bed. Mostly she just likes to sniff his feet, but once we caught her poking him with her paw, like she was considering trying to sit on his lap, which is obviously not okay, since she weighs about the same as he does. I'll feel better letting them hang out together once he's bigger. Still, it's good to see that she's accepted him as a part of the family and is looking out for his well being, as best a kitty can do.

I like our family :)

I guess I last mentioned breastfeeding about two weeks ago. We've made a lot of good progress since then. After the lactation consultation on June 21, something just clicked, and Arlo started nursing pretty reliably (with the nipple shield). I started out with only a few attempts per day and then ramped up to nursing during all daytime feedings when Patrick went back to work (much easier than trying to pump while Arlo napped!). And then a few days ago, we added in some night nursing as well. At this point, we're down to only one bottle feeding per day, which we do in the middle of the night. I think we'll keep it for now, since it gives Patrick a chance to feed Arlo, and it's faster than breastfeeding, so we get a little more time to sleep.

We had a few tough feedings at first, where Arlo alternated between crying and sleeping for hours, and I eventually gave up and fed him with the bottle instead. But things are going smoothly now. The thing I'd like to work on next is making the feedings a little more efficient. I still haven't quite figured out when he's actually hungry versus just sticking his hands in his mouth for comfort, so sometimes I end up feeding him when he's not hungry. He'll nurse for a little while, but he falls asleep pretty quickly without having had a full meal. And then we end up sitting in the glider for two hours while he snoozes and wakes up every so often for a snack. I don't mind (more time to catch up on This American Life podcasts!), but it's not really a feasible approach for when I go back to work. But we still have a while before that happens, and I bet things will go more smoothly as we get more practice.

We didn't end up doing craniosacral therapy, since Arlo caught on nicely all on his own. I appreciate everybody's input about it though. Interestingly, when I asked our pediatrician for her opinion, she encouraged us to give it a try, though she warned us that there was no guarantee that it would work. She said she had worked closely with a lactation consultant in the past, and she had seen good results when people used CST. I wasn't expecting that!

I am so grateful that Arlo has gotten the hang of breastfeeding. It's so sweet to spend this quiet, relaxed time with him. I love seeing his sleepy milk face and mussed hair when I pick him up to burp him, and feeling his little warm hand wrapped around my finger while he's lying on my lap. It's so special to me.

One of the things I'd like to work on in the next few weeks is getting Arlo to nap on his own, so I can get more done around the house. Right now, he does the majority of his daytime sleeping either in my lap after nursing, or in bed with me while I nap too (such a luxury!). I certainly don't object to either of those approaches, but it would probably be good to teach him to sleep on his own, so I can get more done in the future. So far, our sling has proven helpful in getting him to sleep while freeing up my hands. It's pretty impressive how quickly he conks out once he's in it. Last Wednesday, using the power of the sling, I was able to walk to the grocery store, buy a few things, and make brownies to celebrate his one-month birthday, all while he slept soundly. The only problem is that my back starts hurting pretty quickly when I carry him in the sling. I'm hoping that this will be less of a problem as my abdominal muscles continue to heal from the C-section (only one more week of official C-section recovery left! I'm feeling really good, which is so wonderful after those rocky early weeks).

We've gotten to spend some time with friends this week, which is so nice. We went out for ice cream with Susan and Pearl on Saturday, and then last night, we went to St. Johns to visit Star and Grant at their new place. Everybody got some quality baby time, and then we walked to the St. Johns Bridge to see some fireworks. Arlo wasn't bothered by the sound; he slept through the whole thing. Thank you, Sleepy Wrap!

Based on the baby books, we're due for our first real baby smile sometime this month. We're looking forward to that :)

Arlo went on his first picnic tonight, but we had to cut it short, because a big dog was wandering around the park without any owner, and it was very interested in us because I had a take-out container full of spareribs (as it turns out, they weren't very good; I should have shared them with the dog). He seemed like a nice dog, but having him hanging around our baby made me nervous, so we packed up and went home. Oh well! There will be time for a picnic another day.

Here are a couple pictures of Arlo in a Baby Surprise Jacket and booties that Tree made for him. I love the yarn color (it's Malabrigo), and the buttons make it extra special, because I had a hand-knit sweater with Peter Rabbit buttons on it when I was little. What a sweet present!

Patrick's first two days at work went well. He's working from home for now, but I've only had to ask for his help a couple times so far. Even thought it's pretty tiring taking care of Arlo on my own during the day, it's also satisfying. Patrick was doing a lot of the diapering and feeding the first few weeks while I recovered from my C-section, so it's nice to know that I'm capable of taking care of Arlo too. It makes me feel like a real mom!

This doesn't mean all our breastfeeding problems are solved. Right now, he's only able to nurse with a nipple shield, which is a hassle, and he tends to fall asleep before he's gotten enough milk (and then wakes up half an hour later, hungry again). But it's definitely a step in the right direction. The hope is that if we can get him to consistently breastfeed with the shield, we can eventually wean him off of it.

Although Arlo seems to be slowly picking up on breastfeeding on his own, Adrienne also strongly recommended that we take him for a few sessions of craniosacral therapy. In addition to Arlo's residual tongue-tie issues (high palate and needing to learn how to use his tongue properly), she noted that he has somewhat asymmetrical facial features (one of his ears sticks out more than the other, one of his eyes opens bigger, and his jaw is asymmetrical), because his head was in a funny position during labor and was jammed repeatedly against my cervix (sorry, baby!). Sometimes I can see what she's talking about, but other times, I think his features looks pretty symmetrical (and super cute!). She thinks that craniosacral therapy would help correct all of this and make it easier for him to latch on and nurse longer without getting tired. She also thinks that it might help with his gas/digestion problems (something involving the Vagus nerve--I wasn't clear on this). The other lactation consultant we saw was also a big proponent of craniosacral therapy, and our doula has had clients who have had good results with it. We've also heard success stories from a couple of Portland moms. It sounds good, but we're still not sold.

We have been hesitant to try craniosacral therapy, because it doesn't sound like legitimate medicine. We're not worried about it hurting Arlo, since it's very gentle; we just don't want to spend money on something that won't have any effect. Even though it smacks of flim-flammery, I'm inclined to try it, in case it could actually do some good. Patrick is more reluctant, which is understandable. I think we're going to call our pediatrician and see what she thinks.

At yesterday's lactation appointment, we found out that Arlo weighs 10lb, 4oz, which means that he gained 22oz over the past 10 days. Typically, a baby would only be expected to gain 10oz over that time period! It's possible that his weight gain was overestimated because of differences between the scales, but I think we can be pretty confident that he's not wasting away :) On the other hand, we don't want to be giving him milk when he's not hungry, so we're going to try to be more mindful of when we give him a bottle versus a finger to suck on. There's no shortage of things to worry about when it comes to babies, huh?

Patrick goes back to work on Thursday. I am so glad he was able to use vacation time to take a full month off. Trying to take care of Arlo by myself while I was dealing with my C-section pain would have been awful. Luckily, I'm feeling almost back to normal now (we've been taking daily walks, and I'm up to half a mile!), so I should be able to handle taking care of him on my own during the day. Feeding him will be kind of time-consuming, since I'll need to give him a bottle and then pump while he naps, but hopefully we'll keep making breastfeeding progress, so eventually we can cut out the pumping. And any extra work to feed him is totally worth it. We love this little guy. We're so glad he's a part of our family!

Here's a bonus picture of Arlo and Patrick, in observation of Father's Day. Arlo's lucky to have such a good dad!

Not to jinx myself, but I think I'm finally getting over my C-section recovery pains. The referred pain and breathing stuff resolved last weekend, and my incision pain is finally going away. It's about time--sitting in bed all day was getting really old (thankfully, we had a few visits from friends to break up the monotony). The nice thing about it was that it only hurt when I was standing up (especially going up stairs and leaning over), but it was pretty inconvenient to be stuck in bed for a week. I'm so grateful for Patrick--he has been working super hard to cover for me this past week.

As it turns out, it wasn't even my incision that was hurting--it was the area to the right and slightly above my incision (it was hard to tell for sure, since I couldn't actually see the incision for a while, thanks to my postpartum belly). I spent much of last week worrying that the pain meant that I'd torn open some internal sutures or something, and the triage nurse at my doctor's office wasn't able to provide much assurance--she just told me to take it easy and not lift heavy things and call back if I had a fever or swelling at the incision site. Luckily, I had my two-week check up with my doctor on Thursday, and she assured me that this kind of pain is normal. She said they don't know what causes it, but she thinks it's the knot they use to tie off the sutures in the fascia. She had me increase my ibuprofen dose back to what I was on in the hospital, and the pain is pretty much gone at this point. Phew! I can still only be on my feet for about 15 minutes before I get tired out, but that's a lot better than where I was at a week ago. I should be back to baking cookies and walking around the neighborhood in no time. I can't wait!

The pictures below are pretty representative of how we spent the past week--me propped up in bed, and Patrick in the Poang feeding Arlo (and running around changing diapers, doing laundry, washing dishes, and getting food for me when Arlo wasn't eating). Patches is still wary of Arlo and doesn't seem to know what to make of him, but she seems to be getting used to him. She has been hanging out in our bedroom more in the last few days, which is nice. We missed our kitty!

Here's a cute picture of Arlo that Patrick took the other day. That kid makes all sorts of great faces, especially when he's asleep.

Unfortunately, we've been seeing a lot of Arlo's crying face lately.

Within the past week or so, he has started crying and fussing a lot. It seems to be related to gas and general digestive discomfort. Poor guy :( Our pediatrician assured us that this is normal, and it will go away eventually. Since it's possible it could also be related to food sensitivity, I've been trying to avoid dairy for the past few days, to see if it makes a difference. No luck so far. On the bright side, if it's not a dairy sensitivity, that means I can go back to having regular milk on my cereal and enjoying the occasional Burgerville milkshake! But we'll give it a few more days to be sure.

In addition to the orange chair photo, we took a family portrait in the backyard, which was kind of tough, since our camera seems to only have a 2-second timer option. Patrick had to rush over to get in the picture in time (or not, as in the second picture, which we also kind of like). We've ordered a remote control for the camera, so this problem should be rectified shortly.

And here are two bonus pictures of Arlo sleeping. He's very good at it :)

Arlo went to the pediatrician again yesterday to get his jaundice and weight rechecked, and he's doing great on both counts--he's within an ounce of his birth weight. Good job, little man! Our next appointment isn't until his 2-month birthday. We're allowed to raise this baby for the next 6 weeks without any doctor supervision? Huh...

Arlo is napping all curled up next to me right now. What a sweet baby he is :)

It did have a positive outcome though, since it made me realize that I have been stressing out too much about making breastfeeding work. Sure, it would be nice if everything clicked and we could do away with the pumping and finger-feeding, but I need to spend more time enjoying our baby while he's still brand new and less time worrying about how exactly he gets fed.

So we're going to cut back on the number of breastfeeding attempts to only one or two each day instead of doing them with every feeding. We already cut out the nighttime attempts last week, which gained us an extra hour and a half of sleep (yay!). We'll continue with the pumping and a combination of finger-feeding and bottle-feeding (with a special bottle designed to get him to use the proper mouth shape for nursing). It takes a lot of time, but it's working for us right now.

One nice recent development is that Arlo has started waking up for feedings on his own. This is helpful, since it's much easier to feed an alert baby than to wake up a sleeping baby and try to keep him awake through the whole feeding. This is also a sign that his jaundice is going away. Woohoo!

My referred pain is almost entirely gone, which is great. The only lingering effect is that I can't breathe too deeply or else my diaphragm hurts. That means that laughing hurts, but I laugh anyway. I can't help it--Patrick is funny. I also have this weird involuntary breathing thing where every so often I'll inhale sharply. I guess I'm breathing more shallowly than usual, so my body needs to add in some gasps to get enough oxygen.

It has been raining pretty relentlessly here, but it was nice a few days ago, and we took Arlo to the park for the first time (this was also his first non-medical outing). Patrick carried him in the sling, and we sat under an oak tree and watched the big kids play on the playground. I'm looking forward to Arlo being big enough to play there too :)

Have I mentioned lately that Patrick is awesome? He is doing such a great job of taking care of us. I'm so lucky to be raising this baby with him.

And here are a couple bonus pictures from today. I love those little argyle socks and chubby thighs :)

Inspired by Susan, I'm hoping to take his picture every week in our orange chair--kind of a continuation of the belly pictures. Here's the week one picture, as well as an outtake that makes me laugh :)

All three members of our family bathed today, which is a first since Arlo was born. So far, Patrick has been giving Arlo little washcloth sponge baths next to the kitchen sink, but at some point Arlo will be graduating to a baby tub. Arlo does not enjoy the majority of the bath, but he does seem to like having his hair shampooed and rinsed off under the faucet (contrary to what the picture below might suggest).

And two more pictures, just because I can't get enough of this little guy :)

Anyway, Arlo had the frenotomy, which involved a few quick clips of the frenulum under his tongue with a sharp pair of scissors. He cried very briefly, and there was a tiny bit of blood, but he was back to normal almost instantly. I took this picture with our phone while the ENT was examining his mouth; it makes it look scarier than it actually was.

Arlo's tongue definitely has more mobility now, which is great. By doing this now, we may have prevented future speech impediments and other unpleasantness (like not being able to lick an ice cream cone--how sad!). Melissa visited us again yesterday after the frenotomy, and it seemed like Arlo's interest in nursing might have improved a little, but most of our feedings since then haven't been as good. Arlo either falls asleep right away or acts like we're torturing him every time a breast gets near his mouth. I hope I'm not teaching him to hate boobs for the rest of his life!

So, we've got some little mouth exercises to do with him to try and teach him how to use his tongue correctly, and we also just need to be patient and give it time. It's pretty discouraging to have your baby reject the breast pretty much every 2 hours, round the clock. Oh well, at least he's healthy and getting plenty of breast milk from pumping + finger-feeding. It would just be nice if we could cut out the middle man!

Oh, so it turns out the shoulder and diaphragm pain I've been experiencing is referred pain from the C-section. No fun! But it seems to be getting a little better. It's worst when I get up in the morning, but once I've moved around a little bit, it gets less noticeable.

I know, I'm not making it sound very fun to have a baby, huh? But there's also all the awesome stuff, like sitting in bed admiring our son for hours on end. He's so great :) I know, I know--I need to post more baby pictures! Maybe tomorrow...

The meeting with the lactation consultant (Melissa from Luna Lactation) was really helpful, especially since she was able to come to our house and spend a generous 2.5 hours with us. Her assessment is that Arlo is moderately tongue-tied, which explains both his trouble latching on and the speed with which he gets tired and gives up on nursing. A simple in-office procedure should fix this and will hopefully solve our problems. We have our first visit with our pediatrician tomorrow, so we're going to discuss this with her and see what she thinks. We don't want to be too cavalier in having a procedure done on our brand new baby, but if this could fix the problem and help Arlo breastfeed easily, it's best to do it as soon as possible. In the meantime, Melissa showed me some tricks to use while nursing to get Arlo to stay on longer, and they're working so far. It sure would be nice to get the breastfeeding going smoothly so we could do away with the pumping and finger-feeding. It would give us a little more time to sleep, which would be oh so nice!

Although my C-section incision is healing well and hardly hurts at this point, I was hit with crazy muscle fatigue and soreness in my shoulders and diaphragm yesterday and today. Our theory is that it's from all the breathing and bearing down I did during labor, and it just took a little while for my body to register it, since I was on painkillers for the first few days in the hospital, combined with the new baby adrenaline. The soreness has limited my ability to accomplish much other than sitting on the couch, but this is probably a good thing, as I should be taking it easy right now.

Being at home is good, though we're still figuring out what we're doing and trying to get enough sleep. But boy, do we adore our little baby. We just can't get enough of him. I guess that's how these things work :) Here are some new pictures (there are more on Patrick's Flickr stream if you click through).

So, my labor story! When we last left off, I was closing in on 48 hours of up and down at-home labor after my water broke, and I had gotten some acupuncture to see if that would help get things going. It actually did work, temporarily. Starting around 8pm Friday, my contractions got stronger and closer together, and this lasted until about 5am the next morning (Gracie came over again to sit with me during the night so Patrick could sleep--so, so glad that we hired her! She was such an amazing resource and source of support during this whole experience). Unfortunately, things slowed down again once we'd gotten up for the morning on Saturday, so it was off to the hospital for a little help.

Before going to the hospital, Patrick and I spent some time tidying up the house (cleaning up the blankets and pillows strewn around from all the different baby-turning exercises I'd been doing) and buying some last-minute groceries at New Seasons (more coconut water!--I went through a bunch of that stuff during early and advanced labor). It was nice to get out into the real world for a little bit after being in my own little labor bubble for a couple days.

We checked in at the hospital around 1:30pm on Saturday, and Gracie met us there soon after. I had thought there might be some discussion with a doctor about what to do next, but it turns out the only option as far as they were concerned was Pitocin, and so they hooked me up to an IV around 2pm, beginning with a pretty mild dose. My hope was that since I'd already had some pretty intense contractions in the past few days, I'd be able to handle Pitocin pretty well and wouldn't need an epidural. At first, things were fine, and the contractions were much gentler than some of mine had been at home. We raided the maternity ward kitchen and ate orange popsicles and chocolate pudding and played Bananagrams with Gracie, stopping so I could breathe through surges. Hey, labor's not so bad after all!

Time passed, and they slowly increased my Pitocin dose. Contractions got increasingly intense and frequent and not at all fun.

I don't remember things all that clearly, but I spent the whole night laboring, with tons of support from Patrick, Gracie, and the night nurse, Stefanie, and later on from Anna, the nurse/midwife from my doctor's practice (my doctor wasn't on call that night, but I think Anna was a perfect fit for our situation). I feel so lucky that they were there with me. Patrick was my rock--he was there by my side almost the entire time, reminding me to breathe and doing everything he could to make things better for me. When the contractions had gotten too intense, I gave up on what we'd learned in hypnobirthing and just did whatever Gracie told me to--lots of breathing and deep guttural vocalizations (instead of the whimpering and crying that came naturally). It was really intense and awful, but I also felt really powerful. I'm actually glad that I got to experience it, even though I certainly wouldn't want to do it again.

Since my water was broken, they only checked my dilation a couple times, and I asked that they not tell me how far along I was. I now know that I stayed 8 cm dilated from about 10pm onward, with no forward progress. Later on, the midwife and nurse thought that my cervix had finished dilating, based on physical signs and the urge to bear down, so they had me bearing down for a while toward the end--mostly in a squatting position, supported by Patrick. As far as I remember, I spent very little time laboring in the hospital bed, since the contractions were much worse when I was lying down. With each contraction, I really thought I would be done, and I kept feeling for the baby's head, but it was never there. Around 5:30am, the doctor checked my dilation again and found out that I was still only 8 cm dilated. We now know that the baby was positioned crookedly, preventing him from coming straight down onto the cervix, and so it couldn't finish dilating (and, bonus, he was sunny side up despite all our efforts in the preceding days to turn him, which accounted for the extra painful contractions).

So, after realizing that I still wasn't fully dilated after 8 hours, Anna had me lie down, and everybody gathered around me, and she told me that I wasn't fully dilated and we needed to try something else. Her suggestion was to do an epidural so that she could manually turn the baby so that his head could drop down. If this worked, I would hopefully finish dilating quickly, and then we could finish delivering the baby, still vaginally. If it didn't work, a C-section would be our only choice.

I remember feeling so relieved to hear her suggest an epidural and/or C-section, and I gladly agreed to whatever she wanted to do. I had so strongly wanted to have the birth I'd been envisioning, but I was so exhausted and in pain and totally ready not to be in labor anymore that anything sounded good at that point. I'd spent over 80 hours in labor--I think I gave the natural birth thing a decent shot, you know? :)

So around 6am, I got my epidural, and they turned off the hated Pitocin drip, and after a few more contractions, I was blissfully numb and free of pain. Oh my gosh, I was so happy and relieved at that point. After the epidural kicked in, Anna did her best to reposition the baby, and then we waited for about 30 minutes to see if my cervix had finished dilating. Unfortunately (or fortunately--whatever), it stayed at 8 cm, and it was C-section time! Everybody looked kind of sad and apologetic, but I tried to make it clear that they shouldn't feel bad--I was so ready to be done. And, as it turns out, the baby's head was 14 and 3/4 inches around, which my doctor told me this morning would never have fit through my pelvis. So it's a good thing we had the option of doing a C-section; otherwise Arlo and I wouldn't be in such good shape right now (it's actually pretty amazing that he hung in there with strong vitals through all the labor craziness. What a champ!).

C-section prep went quickly, and soon I was wheeled into a bright operating room, and they brought Patrick in wearing scrubs, and Arlo came out into the world at 7:08am, caterwauling and red. I was so exhausted at that point that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, but I managed to stay awake and see my new baby before they carried him over to the warming table. Patrick went with him and got in some father-son bonding time, they put me back together, and we headed back to our room for recovery.

Totally not the quiet natural birth followed by skin-to-skin bonding that I'd envisioned, but we still got our awesome baby out of it, and I don't think he'll become a serial killer because he didn't get to do the breast crawl first thing out of the womb :) (and there was about a half hour of quality boob time after we got back to our room)

So that's the story! We've spent the last few days at the hospital, recovering, and we're heading home tomorrow morning. I had some nausea following the C-section, but I was able to start drinking juice Sunday night, and I graduated to an awesome vanilla Tillamook milkshake Monday morning. I'm back on solid foods at this point, and I'm feeling pretty good, though I'm still hobbling everywhere--not surprising since I'm recovering from abdominal surgery. I've been so impressed by the kindness of everybody here, especially the nurses--such sweet, nurturing people. And Patrick has proven to be a totally awesome dad, taking care of diaper changes and swaddling and whatever else has been needed. I knew he'd do a great job :)

We've had some stress yesterday and today because Arlo has been having some breastfeeding issues (mostly just falling asleep after a couple sucks instead of keeping at it) and has been losing weight. We've had a few people mention that we didn't want him hitting the 10% weight loss threshold, though nobody said what would happen if he did. We had an awesome lactation consultant come visit us this afternoon, and she laid out exactly what would happen and what we should do to fix it, which is good, because she did a little off-the-records weighing, and it turns out Arlo had just hit the 10% weight loss mark. Anyway, the solution is to supplement breastfeeding with finger-fed formula for about the next 24 hours until my milk comes in, and then we should be back on track. I feel so much better now that we have a plan for getting his weight back up. What a relief. I'm all for taking the natural approach to birth and childrearing when possible, but this whole experience has definitely taught me that science and medicine can come in handy too. It sure is good to have them available when you need them.

We're heading home tomorrow morning, so I'm expecting things to be quiet around here for a little while as we get used to being at home (and not having food available whenever we want it). Also there's that impending crazy hormone time coming up any day now, so it would probably be good for me to stay offline as much as possible during that time. I'll be back when things return to some semblance of normalcy :)

Baby Arlo was born Sunday, May 30 at 7:08 am, weighing in at 8 pounds, 15 ounces, and measuring 22.5 inches long. Everybody is doing great; I ended up having a C-section (more on that later), so we're at the hospital for a few more days while I recuperate. I'll come back and tell you more once we've had some time to get to know this little guy!

Here's a little more about his name, since I always like reading about how people chose their baby's name. (I wrote this about a week ago, so I could just copy and paste it when it was time for the big announcement!)

We ended up giving the baby a double-grandpa name--Arthur is from Patrick's grandpa, and Stanley is from mine. I love that we ended up using family names, but we didn't choose the names just because of that (although it would have been much easier if we'd just limited ourselves to different combinations of grandpa names from the start!). Arthur was the only name that was on both of our lists, and Patrick came up with Stanley on his own before remembering that it was my grandpa's name. When we were out at dinner a few months ago, Patrick suggested Stanley as a middle name for Arthur, and I really liked the combination.

As a bonus, naming the baby Arthur also lets me use Arlo (one of the other top names from my list) as a nickname. It's not a traditional nickname for Arthur, but I think it's close enough that it's not too much of a stretch. Hopefully once we get to know the baby better, it will become obvious whether he's an Arlo or an Arthur or something else entirely!

As far as the last name goes, we went the standard route and gave the baby Patrick's last name (I kept my name when we got married). Pre-baby, I'd suggested combining our last names to come up with a new family name, but that idea never really took off, which is fine with me. I think people are used to moms and kids having different last names at this point.

Not to scare any pregnant ladies out there reading this, but the last two days have been pretty exhausting. Neither of us has gotten a ton of sleep. Whenever I lie down, I'm woken up every half hour by a contraction, which isn't much fun (but hey, at least I'm getting a little sleep!). Patrick has been so great and supportive, and Gracie has done an awesome job of suggesting things we can try and coming over when Patrick needs a break. She took care of me from 1-5am last night so Patrick could get some much-needed sleep. I'm so glad we ended up getting a doula!

We spent most of yesterday trying all sorts of things in order to get labor going, and we were pretty tired and disappointed by the end of the day. Today has been better. We took an early morning walk around the block with Patches (she likes following us when we go on walks), and we've just generally been less focused on how frequent my contractions are and more focused on enjoying each other's company. It has been nice :)

We ended up going to the hospital at noon today so they could check the baby's vital signs, since my water has been broken for almost 48 hours now. There are varying opinions regarding how long a baby should stay in the uterus once the water has broken, and we were kind of worried that the hospital wouldn't let us go once they admitted us. The doctor on call definitely would have preferred to keep us there, but we ended up with an awesome nurse who respected our wishes and let us leave after the tests showed that the baby was doing fine. However, because the risk of infection (to me or the baby) increases the longer we wait, we're planning on going back to the hospital tomorrow if labor hasn't progressed. If that happens, I'll probably end up being given Pitocin to get contractions going, which I'd rather not do, but I've made my peace with the fact that this labor might not go just as I'd imagined. Hey, at least we tried! As long as the baby and I both come out of it healthy, I'll be happy.

After our quickie hospital visit today, Patrick and I went to an acupuncturist that Gracie recommended (Seastar Community Acupuncture), to see if that might do the trick in moving labor along. This was our first time getting acupuncture, and I was really happy with the experience. The practitioner at Seastar is also a midwife, so she's very familiar with treating pregnant women, and she even stayed open late so that I could be treated today. Patrick got a little acupuncture done too, while he was there. After she inserted the needles, we got to nap in recliners for an hour an a half while the needles worked their magic. Yay for napping! My contractions haven't increased in frequency yet, but the practitioner said that it normally doesn't happen right away. And either way, I'm glad we tried it.

So yeah, we're hoping that things will get underway on their own tonight, and if not, we're planning on heading to the hospital tomorrow to let modern medicine help things along. Either way, we should be meeting our baby sometime this weekend. We can't wait :)