Second time around

I'm happy to report that much of what I've heard about the second baby is true: the worry about diet, baby movements, and other concerns during pregnancy are generally minimal; ability to distinguish a legitimate contraction from Braxton Hicks; a faster delivery; a better sense of obstetrispeak, and the buzz words that should/shouldn’t incite panic; and the knowledge that, when you finally come home with your newborn, you're going to cry at least a little, depending on your tolerance for pain and whether or not your husband learned from that first pregnancy to avoid asking sympathetic questions, especially "How are YOU doing?" when he walks through the door after work.

Apart from that, God, the body, and the doctors apparently like to mix things up, surprise you a bit. I was once again subject to a problematic epidural, but unlike the first time this wasn't a matter of partial effectiveness; rather, the anesthesiologist sort of misfired--"went a millimeter too far" as the attending put it, causing spinal fluid to leak through the puncture site. In theory, this doesn't sound so bad, but for the 1 in 100 cases where this occurs, something called a spinal headache generally follows. Lucky for me, I'm that 1 in 100!

Fortunately the headache (caused by a decrease in fluid between the brain and the skull) is relieved almost entirely by lying down—fully horizontal, something not so easily done in the first days after delivery and with a two-year-old looking for some attention. So, at home after 3 days in this state a visiting nurse came to see me. Her simple suggestion to raise my dosage did the trick…for the most part. For the next few days I still got the “aura” of the headache just before I was due for my next dose, but today I think I can safely say the worst is behind us, and thank God for that!

So now we—meaning my mom, mother-in-law, husband, and toddler—are doing our best to provide a safe and relatively peaceful home for our new 8-pound, 10-ounce addition. Quarters are cozy but without the help I don’t know how I (we) would’ve survived it (looking at the pics from that time are hard enough!).

Oh, and reality sets in pretty quickly—though it hasn’t displaced the overwhelming sense of love and protection I have for my newborn—as with the first kid we’re reminded that we have only a vague sense of what we’re doing as parents, and that much we’ve learned from our parents and friends, who also had at best this “vague sense.” Best, I think, to focus on what we CAN control: confirming our spot at daycare, happily occupying our two-year-old to minimize boredom which of course leads to excessive kissing and head-rubbing of his little brother, and finding a house for our growing family. All this testosterone can only be contained in a thousand square feet for so long.