Sweet Surrender

I originally intended to write a blog post about the kidlets and how they are changing. After a few minutes of staring blankly at the screen and thinking "I'm really tired", I realized that post has to wait for a more mentally alert time.

Sleep is in short supply for me these days, as my kids are taking turns changing their habits. Hence, the lack of blogging.I thought I had this "two kids" thing all figured out and then, sure enough, they went and changed on me. It helps to remember that this is only a short term exhaustion. And I'm learning how to surrender to the inevitable...even when it doesn't quite fit my plans.

Addie has dropped her nap, much to my dismay. No, really, MUCH to my dismay. She is still taking a nap once every three or four days, but most of the time, we've got nothing in the rest department. I battled this for quite some time and then realized that I needed to go with the flow and let her change. I was just frustrating both of us by insisting that she lie in bed. Frankly, we've got enough battles to fight with Miss Addie right now (ah, two year olds!) and we need to just let it be and let her be.

I kept finding her sleeping in weird positions, obviously having collapsed in exhaustion mid tantrum.













So now the plan is to just let her stay in her room and have quiet time for two hours. I put her in her room, put up her baby gate and go tend to Graydon. After he's asleep, I come in and read to her for about half an hour. Then I leave. If she falls asleep, great. If not, that's ok. I usually walk into her room after her two hour "rest" time to find sheer chaos. But again, it's about the surrender here. Because really, it's not a big deal to clean up. She helps me put away all her messes and we both feel relaxed for having had a break.

Addie's room, post "nap". Note the stool on her bed (?!?)













I eventually had to take the crayons away for her "craft table" because everything in the room was getting "decorated", including the walls. Thank God for Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.















And as I'm writing this, the G man is currently howling in his crib as he "cries it out". I really really hate this process, but I know it's necessary for everyone's mental health. We waited until six months to do this with Addie, and I think it would have been a shorter process had we started it sooner.

My parenting philosophy after two kids is pretty much "whatever you want in the first three months, you can have!". You want me to hold you all night while you nurse every hour or so?(Graydon) Sure thing. You want a vacuum cleaner howling? (Graydon) You got it. You like your swing? Sleep in there all day, my child. (Addie) You want to sleep in your car seat every night (Addie). Absolutely.

After three months? Then it's time to learn how to cope without Mama being there 24/7. You see, Graydon too has to learn to surrender...in this case, to sleep and self soothing. It's an awful thing and it's not very restful for either of us. But he's ready. So now we just have to tough it out.

This helps. A lot. Love to see my kiddos cuddling together. Addie very thoughtfully "shared" her doll with Graydon.














And to finish a somewhat random "Good heavens I'm tired, is this even making sense" post, some random pictures from an afternoon walk a few weeks ago. Better luck posting next time, self!

The Art of Losing

One of my favorite poems is Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art". (Read it here).

It is about the nature of losses great and small, and how it isn't hard to master the art of losing things...except, of course, that is terribly difficult to lose something that is worth having.

It isn't a happy piece of poetry, but it's real and so beautiful, and my memory of hearing it for the first time is a good one. It was a beautiful spring day in Chapel Hill and I was a sophomore sitting at a much-scribbled upon desk in Greenlaw Hall. I still remember my throat closing up and suddenly viewing the room through a watery veil of unshed tears and thinking that life didn't get much better than being able to spend an hour talking about poetry and the universality of loss with a collection of bright minds. I could practically feel the fibers of my mind stretching and encompassing more knowledge and it was a marvelous thing.

(This isn't a sad post, by the way. There is no new and profound loss knocking at the Ewalds' door tonight.)

I find myself feeling wistful because I missed a call from my friend Mary Katherine, and I was suddenly struck to the soul with a longing for her crazy wild curls and emphatic gestures and spilled drinks. And that made me miss long nights draped over couches and sprawled on rugs and drinking in...and with... the APA/B girls...Lauren's contagious laugh and Statesville T shirts, Chloe's wit and beautiful smile, Cameron's enunciation and perceptiveness, Ashley's gentleness and ever-present bowl of vegetables, Kristin's light-up-the-room shiny spirit and constantly-in-motion earrings, and Leslie's whole-hearted,huge-eyed, single minded focus on whoever would be talking.

You see, an enormous part of what made college amazing was found in that collection of girls. I loved my classes and darn near everything else about my university, but the really wonderful part was having a new family of the heart to share the whole process with me.

We live all over the place now, in different states and countries, and we keep in touch the way that old friends do...sporadically, but deeply. And I love that I know the big things...Kristin buying a house (!), Chloe being smitten (!), Mary Katherine moving again (!) the incredible angelic beauty of Ashley's little boy, the antics of Leslie's houseful of gorgeous children, and so on for several different lives of "big things". I love those things. And they know all of my "big" things too.

But I sometimes miss sharing the small and daily with these women.

Like the many faces of my son and how easy it is to coax a beautifully be-dimpled smile from him these days.








































And the reckless abandon of our "how can she be this big already" daughter. Sister savors life. And runs pretty much constantly.














What Bishop doesn't tell us in her poem is that the real art of losing is learning to accept loss gracefully. Without loss, there is no room for a season of new growth in our lives. And while I yearn for the girls in the chairs, I also can't imagine raising my children without the community of women here in Rochester. And I know that soon enough I'll have to miss them too...but in the meantime, I just love being with them and raising our kids together. It's a time as profound and precious as those college years...even if the only poetry we discuss is more along the lines of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and it's strangely mesmerizing power over crying babies.















And each of the women I've mentioned has the happy gift of making friends easily. And I love those women for carrying on the good work of loving my girls. The Jenn Dukes and Karla Gonzalezes of the world make me smile. I could add many more names but it would take a really long time. And it'd be kind of like reading Numbers in the Bible...long lists of names are really mind numbing. So I won't do that.

But I will say that I've dealt with my momentary sadness in the best way possible...by turning instead to a celebration of the kind of love that lives with open hands. And while I may not be able to tumble into my bed after giving out seven big hugs to my friends, I can go and look at my sleeping babies and marvel at their long eyelashes and dimpled fists and sweet cheeks. It's small, it's ordinary, and it's totally and completely precious to me. And I know that my friends would feel the exact same way. Because that's why we're friends...our hearts match in all the important ways.

Someone should write a poem about that...

Brother and Sister

Everyone always says that the hardest transition when adding a child to your family is going from one child to two children. We've been testing the truth of that statement and throwing in a few twists to really keep it interesting. Because that's just how we roll around here.


Getting ready to meet her brother for the first time


In some ways, having two little ones is no big deal. I feel so much more capable than I did when I brought Addie home. I remember walking in the door with her in her car seat and being completely at a loss as to what to do next. I wasn't sure how to begin to live again. That didn't happen with Graydon. In fact, I couldn't wait to get home and start finding our new normal.

Props to my mom for putting Addie in the world's cutest big sister outfit



Addie felt differently. Of course she did. She went from being our one and only precious and beloved child to sharing our attention and our time and our hearts. We experienced the inevitable sleep disturbances and tantrums and there were times when her pain and confusion was so evident that I felt like the world's worst person. I questioned our decision to add another child to our family, the spacing between them, and our parenting skills. I felt guilty, truly. We were happy and then we just HAD to rock the boat.

She climbed right up onto the bed to check things out. I was so surprised that she was so brave!

During the rocky times I kept clinging to the truth in the face of my doubts. The truth is, we chose to have Graydon partly for Addie. Of course I wanted to experience another pregnancy and another infancy. Of course we wanted to see what another iteration of our genes would produce. But another facet of the truth is that Addie needs Graydon.

You can see that she is curious here and a little hesitant about her Dad loving this little bundle.



This is the moment she became a big sister. She reaches out and accepts him.

A lifelong bond begins

My parents were fantastic gift givers. From the coveted material stuff (She-Ra's castle! the pony! the silver Audi!) to the life shaping tastes and habits (Tar Heel fandom! A love for reading! Bruce! Cooking soup while listening to classical music and burning a pleasant smelling candle!) to the merely pleasing (the perfect shade of sweater! the toastiest, coziest slippers!), they seemed to always know the right thing to fill in the gaps in my needs and wants.


But the best thing they ever gave me (and themselves, most likely) were my two sisters and my brother. Even if I did cry when they told me they were having Dillon. Hey, I was 13. I could see the writing on the wall and it said BABYSITTING in bright red. And even if I did ignore Desi's existence entirely and very pointedly for quite some time. I was five, ok? And even if I did look the other way when Des tried to smother Jordan. I was only 7 and I didn't understand the whole "aiding and abetting" portion of criminal actions. The point is that I know how confusing and unsettling it is to add a new member to our family.



And I also know that it's ultimately a priceless and matchless bond. Our sisters and brothers are truly are our only "womb to tomb" companions, give or take the few years determined by your birth order. They witness the whole darn thing and live it with you. They are among the very few that will both hold you as a baby and hold your own children in their arms. They will help you get dressed for your wedding and cry when you walk down the aisle. They'll help you lay flowers on your loved ones' coffins. They'll know all your stories and inside jokes and repeat them with you countless times and still find them funny.



For every moment of angst in this adjustment period, I just remember that one day she will thank me for the gift of this precious little guy. And believe me, there are moments of angst!

Two faces to love!

The wild and the innocent

Where We Are

Someone is getting chubby. Love those cheeks, Gradycakes!

We are slowly returning to normal around here. Of course, it's not "normal" in the same way that it was before we had Graydon. It's a new state of normalcy, and I'm sure it's subject to change. But one thing I've found in my relatively short time as a mother is that as soon as you've got the routine down pat, it's bound to change, whether you have one child, two children, or ten. Children are a great reminder that change is really our only constant.

Previously on All Things New (cue montage of previous clips and voiceover which sets today's scene) ...

our family was in some distress. It was not pretty around here. You would think after a huge hospitalization and life threatening illness, we would just be brimful of delight to be home. And we were. But it wasn't like everything was miraculously great and easy.

For one thing, ten days of pumping had left me with notevennearlyenoughmilk for a baby that was trying to regain lost poundage. So that was tough. Moreover, Graydon didn't sleep unless he was held. At all. And he cried and screamed and fretted about the state of his world. A lot. Poor little man had been alternately hopped up on steroids, sedated into sleep, and tortured in between. It was a lot for him to take in and he struggled with it.And Addie...holy smokes. She was literally the kid in the aisles at Target writhing and screaming...and for no tangible reason. Not to mention, Tim and I were so tired. Sleeping just doesn't happen in a hospital.

BUT...

We survived. And now we're moving from surviving into thriving. And that is an amazing feeling. A few things have really helped a lot.

For starters, and most important of all, I've discovered that the G man will sleep on his own IF I do the following things simultaneously...
1) Swaddle him tightly
2) Place him in the swing on the highest setting
3) And turn on my vacuum cleaner.

Kid you not. It is strange, but it works. And my floor is really well vacuumed.

And as you can possibly tell from Graydon's picture above, he is eating really well and starting to get all chubby and delicious. I love it.

And Addie is ...well, she's still challenging. But in a more normal two year old fashion, as opposed to a completely freaked out and overloaded and traumatized toddler way.

This has, without a doubt, been the hardest eight weeks of my life. It has been life changing. I'm working on a post about that currently, but for now, this is just a brief update to say that we are coming out of the wilderness. Like most survivors, we're all a little worse for the wear...you know, we could use a few square meals and a good wash and a shave...but we are ready to savor life all the more for having been off the beaten track for a while.

Doesn't this just say it all? Check the dimples...how much do I adore this baby of mine?

Catch Up Photo Dump

Not a very elegant title, I'm afraid, but it is very apt.

I have a lot to say about Graydon's hospitalization and the aftermath of all that jazz. That won't happen in this post, however, because frankly, I'm exhausted. The repercussions of two weeks in the hospital keep on coming. Our mellow little guy who was a champion nurser has been replaced by a fretful and fearful little man that we are trying to love back into shape. But for now, he is not a good nurser, not a good sleeper, and is not good at being on his own. Add a VERY angry and confused two year old to the mix and things have been difficult.

Fortunately, Ads is back to herself...thank you, Lord...and I'm starting to figure out Graydon's needs and thus my days are starting to take a bit of shape. We will get there.

For now though, a bit of catching up.

Addie and Tim's Birthday (nearly a full two months ago, ouch!)


Our friend Diana brought Addie balloons. She was a little uncertain at first.

But she quickly got over that, and refused to let them go for the rest of the night. One of them is still alive, in fact, and still figures in our daily conversations.





So much fun



And Christmas morning

First breakfast (followed by a hearty second breakfast later on)


MmmmOpening presents


Girl loves eggs. Don't ask me why, but that is always the highlight of baking. So we got her some eggs and believe me, she was over the moon to have her very own eggs.
We got her a kitchen for her "big" present, and she loves it. Our parents got her some food to go in the fridge. She was very excited about the cookies...


though maybe a little disappointed when she discovered they were wood!


Visiting with her beloved "Aunt JoJo".

Graydon's hospitalization

So I had a darkly humorous post about our first few weeks as a family of four. We had a rough go of it...mom with an episiotomy (aka "the devil's laceration") which literally hobbled me for a week, a sick toddler, a sick dad, and a brand new baby with a broken clavicle and a circumcision. That was tough but still kind of funny...it was the kind of stress where you can laugh or cry and we mostly chose to laugh.

Now of course things are serious. And we are not laughing very much. I'm sitting here in the pediatric ICU watching my son 's chest heave with each breath he takes. He is working hard just to keep up his oxygen levels. And it is heartbreaking.

The good news is that Graydon's life is not in danger. I want to say that first of all. Yes, he is very sick. But this is not a life threatening thing, at least for Graydon. It is just a life crappening thing. And yes I just invented that phrase.

G started to show symptoms on Saturday. Tim was in New Orleans at a course and I called my friend Jen (a PICU nurse) to come check little Gradycakes out. She and her husband (Tim's fellow ortho resident) checked him out and thought he was ill but not in dire shape. Terri, my stepmother-in-law and a family practice doc, very kindly drove down from the Cities to spend the night and help me assess Graydon. She agreed that he had some congestion but felt he was basically OK. G seemed tired but fairly normal on Sunday until that evening.

Tim had flown home that day and we decided together that I would take Graydon into the E.R. I took him in at 11 pm and they admitted him almost immediately. Truly, I was shocked...I thought we would get a nebulizer treatment and they'd send us home. Not so much.

Graydon has bronchiolitis, probably caused by RSV. This requires him to have help breathing properly, which is why he is in the Peds ICU. The upper right lobe of his right lung collapsed and he is also spiking some high fevers. Right now, Graydon is on high flow oxygen and he is occasionally on CPAP treatment...which is basically a medieval torturel looking device that jhelps keep his airways open. G is also on a nasal feeding tube. He is basically a mass of wires and tubes. It is really sad to see.

The good news is that Graydon is doing well, all things considered. This illness usually peaks around day 5 or 6, and that is where we are right now . His doctors are pleased with his progress though they continue to prepare us for some rough days before the little guy really turns the corner. We will likely be here for another week.

I will try to continue updating, though some of that depends on how tired I am and how things progress. Thanks so much for all the kind words of support and all the offers of help and especially thanks for the prayers and positive thoughts so many people are sending our way. We are all hanging in there.

Graydon's Birth Story

Graydon James was born at 3:46 AM on Friday, Dec. 30th. He weighed in at 8 lbs 15 oz and 20.75 inches long. We named him for a number of people, but mainly our fathers, who have the middle names Graydon (Tim's dad) and James (my dad). Tim's middle name is also James, and he had a grandfather named James. Tim also had a grandfather named Graydon, so there is lots of family history there, on both sides. He has a ton of spiky black hair, wicked little dimples in both cheeks when he smiles, and the longest fingers and toes you'll ever see on a newborn.
He was born wonderful and has remained wonderful for the whole first week of his life (this is the exact same sentence that I typed for Addie's story, and I thought it bore repeating!)

Someday I would really love to sit down and write a birth story that goes something like this: "Everything happened really quickly and smoothly. I was able to visualize my vagina as a sea cave with waves rushing in and out and I felt like a goddess of the deep as a I labored powerfully but quietly. When it was time to push, I connected with my inner tigress and let out a primal roar as Baby Ewald triumphantly entered the world with arms held in a V for victory!"

This is not that day. And frankly, I have these big, dramatic babies ...so it may never happen that way for me! This is already a long post, so I suppose I should say what actually DID happen.

If you recall Addie's birth story, you remember that it was a crazy labor. Lots of pushing (3.5 hours), attempted forceps delivery (fail), and finally a C section with some imperfect anesthesia and my best impression of Mel Gibson in Braveheart as he is being disembowled at the end of the movie. It's not the best birth story I've ever heard (by the way, Addie's birth story is found here).

I felt like a lot of the problems with Addie's labor started because of the epidural I received. So I spent a lot of time preparing for this labor because I was determined to do this free of drugs. I did a lot of practice visualizing and listening to a hypnobirthing CD and I spent a good portion of nap time every day practicing my breathing. This all really paid off...to a point.

If you've read my previous posts than you know that I was having the world's longest bout of prodromal labor. Tim and I scheduled an induction for Dec. 30th at 8 AM and as the 29th dawned, I was so relieved that it was my last day of being pregnant. Truly, I think I had the "baby blues" before the baby or the blue arrived.

I spent the day with my Mom, tidying up, and savoring some QT with Ads. My sister in law babysat Addie for the afternoon and Mom and I went to the movies. We came home, watched the Heels bball game, and started getting ready for bed. I didn't eat dinner that night, but I'd filled up at the movies, so I didn't think much of it. I had been contracting regularly, but I thought nothing of it, because you know, I'd been contracting regularly for days. I took a shower around 9 PM and then I started to think "hmm..." because my contractions were increasing in frequency and strength.

By 10:30, I was sure this was "it". My contractions were five minutes apart and lasting a minute apiece. Tim, by the way, had downloaded an app on his Ipad for timing contractions, which was he was enjoying far too much. "Your average duration is 1:01 and they're coming about 4.75 minutes apart" ...that kind of thing. We just had to laugh at this point because OF COURSE this little whippersnapper wouldn't let us get a good night's sleep and stroll in for an induction. He always had his own plan. Though truthfully, I was thrilled to go into labor naturally, as I truly loathe Pitocin or "the Devil's brew" as I prefer to call it.

We woke my Mom up, told her we were going in, and hurried off the hospital. We checked into triage at midnight and that was the only bad part of early labor. I hate lying in that bed hooked to machines while they decide whether or not you're really in labor. Fortunately, I was already 6 to 7 cm dilated and they took me straight back to a tub suite.

I really can't say enough nice things about the birthing tub. It was blissful. The staff turned the lights down low, put on my hypnobirthing CD, and left me to soak in the warm tub. Tim helped me to count through my breathing and was generally perfect...very present and supportive but not pushy. He knows that I like to be left alone when I'm sick or in pain, and he didn't try to talk to me or touch me until the contractions were done. All I needed was a glass of wine but I didn't want to push my luck ;-)




I don't want to imply that this part of labor was pain free, but it wasn't "pain" in the bad sense of the word. The contractions were definitely intense... I couldn't talk or even really move during them...but they were bearable. I kept listening very intently to Tim's counting and reminding myself that "he never has to count to 8 very many times" and I was able to really concentrate on the way that the contractions built, peaked, and then faded as a natural and good thing rather than an "ohmygod, this is awful" feeling.

Anyway, at 2:20 I asked to be checked because I was feeling the urge to push. I had a small lip of cervix left on one side and the midwife suggested that I lean over the edge of the tub and kneel instead of lying back. Two or three contractions later and I could feel the baby start to move down. Sure enough, I was "complete" and they helped me out of the tub and into the bed to deliver. This was hugely different from my labor with Addie, as I had to remain in bed with the epidural and try to push past the lip of cervix that remained...which took almost an hour by itself. I felt really validated in our approach, at this point. Both Tim and I felt really peaceful and encouraged by how well things were going and we were so excited to meet our baby.

I pushed a few times and it actually felt really good to push rather than just endure the contractions. Then the midwife asked if she could break my water, and I said "sure" because I knew that would speed things up. Boy, was I right about that!

My water broke and then the contractions became very very intense. They were probably a minute apart, MAX, and often less than that. The nurses and midwives would try to go do other things between contractions and have to rush back almost immediately. It was brutal. The contractions were very powerful. And truly, it was scary for me, because I had NO coping mechanism for this part of birth. I had spent a lot of time and effort preparing for the laboring down portion of things and absolutely zero thinking about how I'd handle the actual pushing. One of the midwives had remarked to me that I'd have to "push like a prime" to deliver because I never actually pushed Addie all that far down the birth canal. I'd heard that comment, but thought very little about it.

At this point, I could tell that the baby wasn't actually going anywhere when I was pushing and I started getting really upset. I was crying at this point, and I (of course) was like "GIVE ME DRUGS!!!" which I think is a pretty common reaction for women who are doing things naturally. You get to the pushing and think "I am insane". Or maybe I'm just telling myself that. And let's be real, there is no way to move a baby down your birth canal without it hurting. A lot.

And at this point, Graydon's heart rate started to drop. So in comes OB and they are all feeling my stomach and trying to guess where the baby is located and how big the baby is, and I'm just thinking "oh my word, here we go again". I got wheeled back to the OR and frankly, I'm freaking out because everyone kept saying "This isn't a big baby, you can do this!" and I wanted to tell them all that they were dead wrong, but I couldn't spare the breath. The OB consultant was trying to explain my options to me but they all boiled down to "You have to push this baby out now and we don't have time to get anesthesia in here because that will take at least 20 minutes that the baby doesn't have."

And then I discovered why they don't allow pregnant women to tote weapons because the OB resident, God love her, shoved her fingers inside me and started stretching everything out. I was shouting at her to stop and she was shouting at me to push them out if I didn't like it. I was less than pleased with this whole operation, but you know what? It worked. I started really pushing effectively and her "tough love" approach was exactly what I needed. I stopped being scared and started really working hard to get our baby out. I had some really good progress in a short period of time, and they decided to attach a vacuum to the baby's head and "assist me" in getting him/her out.

Let me just say, you haven't lived until you've had an almost but not quite 9 pound kid Hoovered out of your V without any painkillers, folks. From the moment they attached that thing to Graydon's head and started pulling, I was like "Oh dear. This is going to leave a mark." I stopped crying and begging for help because I was literally speechless and breathless. I can now sympathize with lobsters when they get cracked open. Three more contractions and ...he was here!





I wish I could say that I felt euphoria, but what I felt was more pain and a sort of a dazed relief that I was done pushing. They whisked Graydon away to check him out (he actually broke a clavicle in this crazy process but Tim is the one who discovered this later, not the hospital staff) and I was left with crazy muscle spasms and the team shoving various things inside me as they sewed up the wicked episiotomy they'd done to assist me in delivering G as quickly as possible. Sooooooooo not euphoric.

The bliss came when I got to see Graydon and hold him and marvel at the fact that for once my intuition was RIGHT and we had a baby boy! He was pretty beat up from the delivery...his face had a lot of swelling and red marks where he got hung up on my pelvic bone for that first part of pushing...but he was so ridiculously cute with all of his hair and his sweet little face! We marveled at how big he was, and how much we instantly loved him. That's a feeling that never gets old.




I had that same feeling of instant recognition that I had with Addie. I thought "oh here you are" and he just felt instantly like...my son. It still gives me a thrill to type those words. We have a son!

There is still a ton of stuff to say, but I'll end the birth story here. Graydon is strong and healthy and we love him more than we can possibly express though we intend to spend the rest of our lives trying to do just that!





PS: Some of these pictures look really dark on one of our screens, but perfectly normal on the other. I apologize if some of them are too dim to be seen perfectly.