Rolling right along, take three

Just kidding!

I'm no longer "rolling along" as the perpetually pregnant blogger, but now debuting as the mother of four gorgeous girls and one beautiful new baby boy.

Thank you for all of your messages and prayers. The Suite family is very, very happy and more than a little awestruck.

waiting

That grass? Over there?

Um. It looks pretty much like the grass over here.

Truthfully I've never understood the prevalence of the old adage "the grass is always greener on the other side." It might be an overdeveloped sense of empathy, but for as long as I can remember I've been pretty sure that other peoples' proverbial grass is as full of weeds as mine. Moss. Dandelions. The occasional prickly invasive thistle.

(I think moss is pretty. Dandelions leaves are full of Vitamin C and their flowers look cute in a tiny vase when plucked by a preschooler. And even thistles attract birds and butterflies.)

By the same token I've never been overdue with a baby before. I do think the baby is better by far than the pregnancy, even if you are one of those blessed mothers whose pregnancies are blooming and full of health and energy (so not me). And so I'd like very much to see the baby. Thanks for reading. For sticking in there with me while I stuck my head in the blog sand for a week or so.

And without further ado:

If the littlest Suite doesn't make his or her appearance this weekend I am going to let the doctor induce us. Did you know that it's considered by the Obstetrics and Gynecology Board or some such authority to be dangerous to be overdue as a mom of "advanced maternal age"? More to the point, it is making me more than a little crazy. I have started to obsess (started?) about unintentional home birth since we live more than an hour from the hospital. (I have some anemia issues that will not allow us to have an intentional home birth.)

I have figured my dates down to the millisecond. This is gross oversharing, I know, in light of my grandmother's generational belief that pregnancy and all discussion of such subject should be focused much closer to the result than the conception. I have also spent time agonizing over the proximity of several local EMTs and nurses, mostly men, who have reassured our family that they are "all trained up" in this delivery business. Yikes. I have to be perfectly truthful that I've felt sorry for myself that my midwife friend and former neighbor Jayme took this very inconvenient year to spend an extended vacation with her family in Hawaii. (How could she?)

I have been embarrassed in the local general store by a line of loggers, one would have to assume hardened woodsmen, astounded at my girth enough to move out of line with their post-four-p.m. six-packs. I have overheard at the girls' spring concert that I might "drop the baby in the bleachers." I have been on the church's prayer chain and oh-so-mortifyingly discovered this tidbit of news yesterday while on a walk past the Rebecca Lodge's Thursday senior citizen luncheon. I have listened to Jayme's phone advice about herbs and supplements and patience and such nonsense. I have heard from my redder-necked friends about trampolines and pickup truck rides. I have walked until the walking is a meditation but certainly not a labor induction.

I have also conveniently remembered from my first post-bacc job as a reporter at a small daily where I rotated through the vitals page duties with the other newbies: More than four times as many babies are born on the full moon as on any other day of the month. Saturday's the full moon, friends.

Keep me in your thoughts. I promise to return to the blessedly patchy grass of random rural ramblings and the all-too-often mommy blogness as soon as I'm a mom of five and not the only farm girl in Western Oregon to ever be 11 months pregnant.

Makes me happy

The pretty little cherry tree and its valiant first-year fruiting effort makes me so happy each time I wander through our tiny orchard.



And you know what else makes me happy? The way the girls "decorated" the inside of the rabbit habitat. It sits between the chicken yard and the orchard, so the bunnies have a nice view no matter which way they look.

If you are reading this now, it does not necessarily mean I have not yet had the baby. Nor does it mean I have. And it CERTAINLY doesn't mean I've gained the patience I need for the long haul.

Why is it that I keep hearing stories of women who were pregnant three and four weeks after their due date? Clearly I'm hanging out with the most patient crowd of induction-averse, trust-your-body weirdos. And you know what they say about the company one keeps.

I trust my body alright. I just don't want to think about it anymore. So I'll keep meandering around my yard, contemplating the rabbit hutch and the cherry trees and pretending I'm uberpatient and Earth-mother-like.

And if you know me in real life, try not to let on what a whiner I am in between bouts of heroic peace and calm. K?

Rolling right along, take two

If you can't say something nice about still being pregnant, just post a picture.

Rolling right along

Saw the doctor yesterday.

Seeing the doctor again Monday.

And while it goes completely against my nature, I'm trying not to be anxious. I'm trying not to anticipate, deliberate, exasperate.

I'm trying not to analyze every twinge. I'm trying not to drive my husband crazy with phone calls during the working day. I'm trying not to take my midwife friend's advice about "helper" herbs to "encourage" a faster outcome.

Patience, clearly, does not come easily to me.

It's summer (okay, almost) and the barns are in bloom

Despite the fact that it's pretty difficult for me to fit behind the steering wheel at this point in the pregnancy... my barn lust calls me to roam the back roads in search of beautiful new-old specimens.
This barn is just a couple of miles from me. When I'm not pregnant I could jog there. (Or, you know, drive more easily anyway.)

It's new on the honor roll because it has that smashing new red roof. You gotta love the owner for loving on her barn that way.

Yep. Still pregnant.

I have to say that I am completely and utterly spoiled by my past delivery experiences. Among my four children, none has been a late arrival. In fact they've all been early by at least two weeks, but none so early as to cause anyone worry.

So this bordering-on-fourth-trimester stuff is just torture.

This holiday weekend we have the usual round of barbecues and family and church outings to attend. Next week we look forward to a couple of parties and a concert for the girls' band. When I wrote these things on the calendar, people, I fully expected to be taking a cute newborn to the various events.

Now it's doubtful I'll be able to fit through the doors.

But hey! Maybe I can make at least one of these parties really memorable by going into labor in a dramatic fashion.

(Always trying to look at the bright side for you.)

To milk a moment

So I've been over the shopping trauma for days now. But it did feel nice to bask in the righteous indignation shared by some of my friends.

I used to have a pastor who was famous (to me alone?) for his saying: "A pity party of one is really fun... for about a minute."

But this week I am determined to remain positive. Even though we're pretty sure bambino(a) #5 has cracked or somehow dislocated my lowest right rib. Anyone? I am just so not going to the doctor over this. I have an appointment on Monday anyway, and I may or may not bring it up. Depends. It's been four days and I will shriek if a hen's feather or stronger breeze lands in that general vicinity. And don't get me wrong: it's amply cushioned. There's no way it was injured from the outside.

Imagine the guilt I can heap on this baby.

This brings me to a random but almost related story.

Besides breaking my hip (two years ago?) in a spectacularly noneventful way, I have broken other bones. In my years -- more than a decade -- as a dancer (Graceful? Me? Shaddup if you know me in real life.) I am sure I crumbled more than one abused toe. OF MY OWN, people.

En pointe as it were.

But five or so years ago I broke my, um, tailbone in a snapped stirrup leather accident during a (or directly ending) a trail ride. That was fun. Did you know off-road ambulances are five times as expensive as their two-wheel-drive counterparts? And did you know you have to pay full price for both if you are transferred once you leave the wilderness? Seems there ought to be a discount.

ALSO ... if your backwoods ER doctor is an ex-rodeo man with his own story of breaking his coccyx at the tragic seven second mark and then driving 17 hours straight home in his beat-up pickup and forthwith applying to medical school as a cheaper and easier career alternative ... you might not get as much sympathy (or pain medication) as you would have from city doctor. I'm just sayin'.

Anywhat.

I wasn't even recovered from that injury, not even walking without a geriatric tennis-ball-footed assistance device, before my dear friend KL's eldest son, blog name of Headlong, (maybe 11 at the time) ventured this question:

"How do you break a bone when you have all that... padding?"

I'm not really sure, Headlong. Not really sure. And for some reason a Willy Nelson moment is coming over me.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowgirls.

More shopping trauma and gardening therapy

Whew.



What a weekend.



In just 48 hours we managed to pack in at least a week's worth of work and play. Between gardening -- the tomatoes, tomatillos, eggplant and summer squash are in! -- and picnics and family drives and the never-ending Rabbit Hutch Project the two days of together time flew by.


But what really sticks with me from this weekend are some (nearly) unmentionable items.

Look away now if you are not of the hardy female persuasion. (Or, you know, if underwear talk embarrasses you.)

I had to shop again ... it's like aversion therapy or something ... and it was worse than swimsuit shopping because it was undergarment shopping AND it involved measuring tape AND getting felt up by a 20-something know-it-all clerk in the maternity store. She declared my questions/requests/clearly and politely stated undergarment requirements to be mere superfluous babble getting in the way of her sales pitch. I was offended. She told me I'd have to special order what I wanted from the chi-chi-est lingerie store in our city. Or possibly online. Or possibly knit them myself. Her tone was (and I'm discounting for pregnancy-related sensitivity) "women who are as nit-picky as you do not belong in my maternity store, getting in the way of me telling you what you want and need."

I might have left there in tears.

And then to add insult to injury I found what I was looking for (100% cotton, no underwire; what's so very difficult to understand about THAT?) in a bargain store. But I couldn't even begin to feel superior for a minute because...

...then my feet became swollen beyond all recognition. Each individual toe is to this moment without visible knuckle creases. It's a Hobbit thing. Only without the hairy part. I guess. As best as I can see past my baby bump.

At least the tomatoes are in so I can put my feet up.

Nesting and listing

This weekend we:



Climbed a lot of trees.

Contracted poison oak. (Again.)

Found a tidy little pile of snake eggs in the compost and took pictures of the natural wonder. (What can I say? My kids have taken the farm girl spirit to the extreme.)

Moved the bunny hutch to a nice shady spot between the chicken yard and the garden. Perfect for composting. (Not so perfect if the rabbits escape. Think Farmer MacGregor and Peter Rabbit, only not so friendly am I as he to lettuce-munching pets.)

Watched the asparagus grow more than four inches. Except for the one crown that the chickens scratched back to its roots. Those hens are headed for the crockpot for sure, I tell you! (Reference earlier grandstanding statement about my mean nature.)

Finally got the lawn tractor working in conjunction with just enough sunshine just in time to save the property from grass tall enough to obscure a toddler.


I like this Royal We business an awful lot. Because while "we" did all of that strenuous outdoor work and play, "I" took some naps, a lot of photos, a couple of long baths, time for baking bread and time for a trip to town with Madeleine, who needed new jeans. AGAIN. (And some books. AGAIN.)

To tell the truth, my weekend was pretty restful but I am such a homebody these days that the trip to town just about undid me. Three stores and their requisite dressing rooms, not even for me, mind you, and I'm down for the count. As I said to my wonderful, truly hard-working husband upon our return from town, "There. I've had a date day with each of the big girls and so now I'm free to have this baby and stay home."

I'm sure I've entered some sort of nesting phase beyond even my normal hermitlike homesteading state because last week the girls and I rearranged furniture and purged cabinets and in general acted like company was coming. My sewing machine is perpetually out and the cushion covers for the den couch are 90% done. I chose a rust chenille corduroy for the main fabric and I am in love with it. I'm already envisioning a nap on the couch, waking up with telltale lines on my face. I keep getting distracted by new, smaller projects though -- like this easy pattern for a customized baby seat/shopping cart cover. We have new beds to assemble for Laura and Grace and a new ensemble of red and white gingham and floral bedding for their room.

I joke around that pregnancy doesn't make me "nest" but makes me "list." As in, I keep adding to my lists of preparations and projects. But then? Only a few weeks to go until all I'll be doing is watching the new one's eyelashes grow. Delicious.

It must be the mud

(Photos by the girls' friend Katie. Thanks, Katie, for the evidence.)

The horses come in from the paddocks each evening.

They rub their crusty, muddy selves all over the barn.

.

They further shed mud on the girls.

.

The girls help the process along with curry combs and, on warm afternoons, with water hoses and sometimes with my kitchen towels. (Hah. They thought I didn't notice?

.

Then my daughters bring the mud in to my laundry room. It's not an intentional transfer of property, but it seems to me that they're moving an awful lot of soil. Possibly they could find a way to put that directly on the garden on their way back to the house?

.

The next morning the horses go back out and roll themselves in mud like it's a spa treatment. They graze in the sun, moving along with it all day until the mud bath is cracked and caked like a facial.

.

As the sun gets low in the sky and the maple trees cast long shadows, the girls call the horses in.

.

They cluck over their charges and mildly chastise Dolly and Two Spot for their errant mud-seeking ways. As spring blooms, my girls inhale the essence, the best parts of my childhood: warm horses, hay-seed-dusted barn floor, saddle soap. It's odd how comforting those scents are to me today, even in the face of the laundry pile. Maybe especially in the face of the laundry pile.

.

So the girls transfer the dirt from their horses and I transfer my girlhood joys to my daughters.

.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

.

Last night I was visiting with a mom from our community. She and her husband are raising three boys and a tiny daughter. Her days, she said, are full of footballs and wrestling gear. Calls to insurance agencies over sports injuries. Carpools for three sons in three sports apiece. (Her daughter, still a preschooler, has yet to assert any extracurricular interests.)

.

I wonder whether our fifth child is a boy or a girl. I wonder whether this baby will love horses. Or books. Or ATVs or firefighting or something equally foreign to me. I wonder how this child will change our family in ways I can't imagine now. And I wonder what little parts of my childhood, and my husband's, we'll relive with this new life.

.

(Before you decide I've lost myself with the pregnancy-mush-brain-sentimentality: I know it probably all involves mud. And laundry.)

Just add gluten

Did anyone else notice the linguistic commonalities between "gluten" and that particular anatomical area that yeasty bready treats, um, enhance?

Before the big (and I do mean big) pregnancy I was limiting gluten and its kissing cousins simple carbohydrates. That minor struggle led to a 23-pound weight loss (and indirectly to the blessed cause of my regain?). Weight loss-schmeight loss. Not so much anymore.

However. An apricot muffin with homemade marmalade sure is delicious. And I really can't see myself from the back view anyway.

Did I mention it's a roller coaster?

That, my bloggy friends, is an actual unretouched (not that I ever "retouch" any of my pictures; I simply don't know how) photo of a January sunset in our little corner of Oregon.

As I recall, I was driving like a maniac (my favorite way to drive, evidently) to get home in time from the grocery store when I rounded the country corner to the see this. I would love to say it re-centered me and caused me to stop and marvel at the glory of God's creation, but the truth is, I debated whether to pull over to take the picture at all.

Then, later, when I saw it on the screen I was amazed at the way an everyday beauty such as that could become so everyday.

Just yesterday I was at my ob's office, crying over the sale of my horse and committing to find a way to go to the exercise class I gave up last summer due to babysitting difficulties. Can you imagine how, um, interesting it must be to be my obstetrician? One minute I'm waxing rhapsodic about the joys of expecting this baby and the next I've jumped into the subject of feeling not just rural and remote but a little stir-crazy and practically housebound hermitic. (Is that a word?)

This morning Laura had approximately seventeen potty training accidents, two of which involved her sitting on top of the closed potty and "going" while fully clothed. I received about eleven thousand phone calls and for some reason didn't turn off the phone. I cried on a friend's (telephone) shoulder about feeling isolated. I spoke with a former client about his real estate goals and told him I'm expecting my fifth baby and not such a good decision maker at this point, on his behalf or anyone's. Great. On call number three thousand and twelve I spoke with a mom of twins who invited us for a walk and I just about melted down over the thought of scheduling such an event. Then in a separate call I learned about a local family's tragedy that shamed me from feeling sorry for myself. And then my mother offered to watch the girls so I can rejoin the yoga class.

It's a roller coaster. But just for a minute, at the top end, we should try to reflect on a beautiful sunset or other everyday miraculous event. Right?

Put a ruffle on it

When I was pregnant with Madeleine, 12 years ago, I was so ecstatic to be expecting, so happy to have the pregnancy progress well, that I barely thought of how it affected my mood. To tell the truth I didn't pay that much attention to myself, so busy was I counting kicks and sewing and painting in her sweet Dick and Jane nursery.

I worked at my dream job as an editor in the big city, floated through the days with a good deal less concentration than is flattering in retrospect, and gave serious concern time to the harmful effects of waiting at the Metro station and breathing in bus fumes. When I went into labor, it took my best friend who'd been through it before to tell me we needed to stop shopping in order to call my husband to take me to the hospital. I didn't even notice that I was in labor because I was so overjoyed to be having a baby. Silly but true.




When I was pregnant with Sarah, 10 years ago, I was of course 10 years younger than I am today. Basic and not very profound, but true. That pregnancy was so very different because I was chasing the precocious Madeleine, whose first and favorite word was "danger." We also were moving and for some part of the pregnancy I was working part time doing mind-boggling editing for a medical research outfit that was frankly WAY over my pregnancy brain capabilities. Sarah was a swimmer, almost never kicking or elbowing me with force but pretty consistently doing her baby water ballet. Of course it must be noted that at 26 weeks I was put on bed rest and we were simultaneously moving from city to city, renting a cute but ill-placed apartment amongst rowdy graduate students. I can remember one late spring night of every neighbor partying outside our bedroom window when I padded to the back door and shouted that they certainly didn't want to see the "wrath of the pregnant girl" so they ought to quiet down.

My husband thought that was really funny.

When I was pregnant with Grace I was selling a lot of real estate. I used to joke that she was such a quiet baby because she looked around, said "Mommy's busy. I'd better be good." My beloved grandmother was leaving her independence behind for assisted living. We were moving our family into my dream house on half an acre in a cute little town, in part to be closer to Grandma. I don't think I ever counted kicks because I was so busy running. Grace was a happy baby, born just in time to meet my grandma before she left the assisted living for heaven. I remember in the early days of Grace's life some rare moments sitting with her on the south-facing window seat in my dining room just wishing things would slow down.



When I was pregnant with Laura, we had moved to the country and begun to live a rural dream life. I experienced more peace surrounding her pregnancy than with any other. It seemed I knew how to do this, finally. I spent a lot of time on hobby farm chores, gardening and stretching fence wire in my maternity overalls. We left the public school system and figured out how amazing it is to be able to learn together. We ate organic food, a lot of it grown ourselves or by our neighbors, and took a lot of slow walks. Conversely Laura was apparently born running.


This time around, despite being more than a decade older than with my first pregnancies, I feel a lot like I did then. I live with a sense of the miraculous. And I experience a primal sort of protection urge surrounding everything that might happen to our little family. (That strikes me doubly funny: The fact that I feel even a tiny bit responsible for ensuring safety in this crazy world coupled with the fact that I think of our family as "little," which I really do.) I recognize that I've been snappish, even though there are no neighbors with late-night parties to take this out on. I realize that I'll drink a glass of juice and lie down to count kicks for no particular reason.

I'm sewing and baking and painting and nesting and I just find it all so exciting. Last night my husband and I went out on a date -- thank you, Mom! -- and I felt happy to be going out and thrilled to be heading home again. Wrapped up in a miracle.

A person can forget

Yesterday I forgot for hours at a time that I am pregnant. When I mentioned this to my husband at bedtime, he said in minor horror, "What did you do?" As though he imagined me kicking back shots or changing cat litter or some other such unthinkable thing, pregnant or not.

I didn't actually do anything harmful or neglectful. I just forgot. Until my lunch fell on the growing shelf that is my tummy, that is.

Hey. I'm a busy mom. The girls had a big history project followed by a lot of Elmer's glue going on, and Laura was supposedly stacking cans in the pantry but was actually making cocoa angels on the floor. This led, predictably, to some extra laundry. We lost our rooster (may he rest in peace) and one of the new Araucana pullets to a cursed (I really mean that) neighbor dog. I had approximately ten thousand different activity slips to enter in order for my husband's invoicing to get out on time. Data entry is my favorite, let me assure you. My father-in-law stopped by and I overcooked the pasta. The phone rang about seventeen different times. I considered unplugging it but once it was a reminder from the electricity company so I thought better of ignoring incoming messages. Thank goodness for reminders. A person can forget, did I mention?

Then the baby would kick in that second-trimester "I've got the whole world to turn somersaults in" way and I'd say, WOW, there's going to be a seventh Suite sooner than later. Wow.



When Dixie found this scrap of sheepskin she claimed it as hers. Sometimes it's a playmate, sometimes it's her cuddle partner and sometimes it's her doomed prey. She essentially treats us the same way. She doesn't forget. She just chooses her moments. A little like I do.