Happy Easter!

Easter Plan 2011, by Luca.

1) Touch your baby brother's forehead  for good luck.

2) Get fired up!

3) Grab an Easter kiss from Mom.

4) Then search...

4) And destroy.

5) Wait an hour and then have a full force sugar-related meltdown (not pictured).

The Brothers R

Yesterday marked 3 weeks of brotherhood for our little barbarians, and thus far they get along incredibly well despite being into slightly different things:

Luca is into rock and roll hairdos (yes, we've since done a haircut)

And burning up the Racciatti Race Track on his "bike"

And singing Guided by Voices to himself, "When you motor away / Down the icy streets / You can't lie to yourself / It's the chance of a lifetime"
(at least that what I think he's doing)

And he's also beginning to figure out how to operate the camera (to his mother's delight) 

Meanwhile, Julian is really really into sleeping

And crying/making hilarious faces

And sleeping...

And having really small feet

And...in rare moments...neither sleeping nor crying!

LT or JR??

Two weeks in, we think the boys look quite a bit different from each other, but that they are trickier to tell apart in these photos taken in the earliest days.  Can you tell who's who?  (Scroll down for key.)

Julian Ray

Julian Ray is here!

Just two weeks ago, I was in active denial that the baby who had been roosting for 38+ weeks was going to finally come out, sooner than later.  All signs pointed toward impending delivery - dilations & effacings & getting huge in the mid-section - yet I still couldn't envision becoming a family of four.

Playing in the last of the winter snow

But that's exactly what happened one week ago today when Julian Ray arrived just five days short of his due date.  Here's the story:

Thursday, April 7th:

In a re-creation of the eve of Luca's birth, we took what our family now calls "an ice cream walk."  The night before Luca was born, T & I walked to Liberty Frozen Custard for ice cream and within 24 hours we had ourselves a baby.  This time, the three of us drove to Sebastian Joe's and walked back home along the lake.  We only half thought that the result would be another start to labor.

Chocolate ice cream fu manchu

Friday, April 8th:  

When I awoke to fairly regular contractions at 2:30 a.m. that morning, I thought that the coincidence was too ridiculous to be true.  Could it be that the ice cream walk is our personal secret to jump-starting labor?  Apparently so, because after downloading a contraction timer app onto my phone and spending a couple of hours finishing our hospital bags and tidying the house, the time had clearly come to call the doctor & wake T up.

5:00 a.m.

After a lightning-fast shower, T called Auntie Sara who came over to stay with Luca.  We gave Luca goodbye kisses as he slept, loaded the car with our numerous bags & cameras, and drove to the hospital around 5:45.

6:00 a.m.

My contractions were neither strong nor regular, but since I was already dilated to between 4 and 5 the doctor advised that we proceed with admitting.  After getting settled we tried a walk around the maternity ward to get things going.  Despite several explorations of the loops & dead-ends of the 6th floor, we only managed to get a solid 5 reading at the end of our work.

7:30 a.m.

Shift change time...we traded out Julia and Dr. McKeand for Erin and Dr. BJ Harris.  At this point, the contractions were becoming more irregular and spaced out, like our little bundle had changed his mind about the due date.  We entertained the idea that a second delivery could be just that much more painless than the first, but in our hearts we knew this was too good to be true.  The doctor started talking about getting things moving by breaking my water or giving me pitocin, which I hoped to avoid.  

9:30 a.m.  

We decided to try the warm tub instead, since that had been the tool that sped us through the tough part of Luca's delivery.  After 40 minutes in the tub and no noticeable change, we returned to our room for some rest.

T & me, happily waiting out the baby

11:45 a.m.

After reading and dozing in the delivery room for an hour or so, T decided to go get some lunch while he had the opportunity.  While he was away at the Global Market, Dr. Harris came in to break my water. 

Apparently the baby got the message, because after this the contractions became far more intense and painful.  They continued to escalate until 12:30, when the time came to push.  The only trouble was that Dr. Harris had left the hospital to get some lunch.  The nurses paged her and got backup staff in place, including one nurse who would turn out to be my saving grace through some terrible contractions.  Dr. Harris showed up in time and I pushed through one long, multi-crested contraction.  At 12:47 p.m. we had another baby!  

Dr. Harris held the baby up for a suspenseful moment in order for T to identify the gender.  39 1/4 weeks of wondering were at an end...baby boy, Julian Ray, had arrived.  He's a peanut - 7 lbs 10 oz and 20 1/4 inches. 

 

From the first moment they met, Luca has been a sweet big brother to Julian.  He has impressed us with how gentle and loving he is to the baby, and how instantly he accepted having a new member of the family. We'll see how he likes it when Julian is big enough to steal his toys, but for now he thinks we have a very cute baby in the house.  And we do.

Tick Tock...

The red lines below show A's progress to-date.  I'm suddenly very aware of the fact that there's a baby coming our way.  The second chart indicates that there's a ~70% chance we'll be a family of four in the next 9 days. (!)

              Pregnancy, Birth, and Family Planning, Alan Frank Guttmacher, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1986