the kids are all right. (the kids are amazing.)

Oh, livejournal. We used to be so close, and now we’ve reached a point where I didn’t even tell you I was pregnant with our second kid. Whom I’ve now had. And am finally telling you about.

This seems like the sort of thing I’ll want to have a record of, in a “going back and reading old livejournal entries” sort of way, so you can have the whole story, right from the beginning, for the sake of posterity.

Way, way back at the beginning of 2013, Al and I started talking about having a second kid, because we knew we wanted a second kid and we wanted them to not be too far apart in age. We determined we’d start trying at the end of the summer into early fall. This was going to be a novelty for us, as with Flynn, she’d just sort of…happened, like surprise! You’re pregnant! Bet you weren’t expecting that! And we weren’t. But this one, we talked about, and in April, we decided I’d go off birth control in preparation for the trying to take place at the end of the summer.

So it’s April, I go off birth control, everything is normal, having a second kid is not an active thing, etc. Then it’s May 16 and it’s the day of The Office season finale and I’d spent that day, and sort of that week, being like, hey, I should probably have had a period by now. So that day after work, I pick Flynn up from preschool and we stop at Target and I buy a pack of those digital tests. The ones that say PREGNANT instead of easily misinterpreted lines and smiley faces and things.

And I’ve got Flynn by my side and I’m like, yeah, no, I’m taking this test now. So we go into the family restroom, which is a place that used to be a place Al and I had sex. Not the one at Target, but it was still sort of a weird juxtaposition of life moment — from young and childless and having sex in public restrooms to taking a pregnancy test with a toddler by my side in public restrooms. Like, how is time passing, how is this my life.

And so I pee on the stick and Flynn’s careening around the restroom doing her best to, like, get a staph infection or Hep C or something, touching every goddamn unsanitary thing in the world, and I put the test on the toilet paper dispenser and try and disinfect Flynn and then keep her from restroom diseases or whatever and I’m timing the test on my watch and then suddenly it’s time to look at it.

I walk back across the restroom, which is probably like a six foot walk, but felt like an ultra-marathon through wet cement and I look at the test, and there it is: PREGNANT. It was something I was almost sure was happening by that point, like, I knew when my period should’ve been, sort of, I knew it hadn’t come, I knew I wasn’t on birth control, but still, seeing it confirmed, it was just as crazy as the first time, when I found out I was pregnant with Flynn, but in a totally different way. I don’t know how to explain the difference. I turn to Flynn and literally said, to this tiny person we’d already made, to this kid who wasn’t even 2 yet, and I said, “I’m pregnant, you’re going to have a little brother or sister.” And Flynn, predictably, did not react at all. It’s possible I didn’t even say it out loud, and it’s equally possible I shouted it at the top of my lungs. Everything felt like I was living in television static. But also like I was happy.

I wrapped up the test in paper towels, and shoved it, along with the rest of the tests in the bottom of my purse and we drove home. Al was already there and I hadn’t — like with Flynn I hadn’t really had to tell him. He was there when I took the very first test for her and we both agreed it read pregnant, and then when I took a subsequent test at work, I just basically called him to confirm it. But this one was out of the blue. And for some reason, I didn’t tell him right away. I think I felt like I had to figure out how to tell him.

We presumably ate dinner, though I have no memory of it, and then we put Flynn to bed, and I took another pregnancy test quietly and secretly in the upstairs bathroom. It said the same thing: PREGNANT, and then we sat down to watch The Office finale. I have a lot of feelings tied up in The Office. It was there for a lot of stuff in my life, I have memories of watching it in so many different places, stuff like when I moved back home after Jack and I broke up and I moved out of our apartment, and I’m back sitting on the couch in my parents’ house, watching the Thursday night NBC comedies, just weird, omnipresent flash memories of The Office. And that night I’m watching it all end, and I know I’m pregnant and I keep looking at Al on the couch and it was just, I don’t know, I felt really…heavy during that whole episode. Just my entire body, my sense of self, felt heavy, but not in a bad way.

The next day, we got up and we went to work and it was a Friday, and I couldn’t figure out, all day, what I was going to say. It wasn’t that I was worried he was going to be mad, not exactly, but it was just so much earlier than we had planned. Somewhere in there I took a third pregnancy test — still pregnant — and then suddenly we’re back at home and Flynn’s in bed again and it’s Friday night and I still have no plan, I have no idea how I’m going to do it, but I’m terrible at keeping surprises and secrets and stuff. I always want to tell people about their Christmas gifts as soon as I’ve bought them, stuff like that.

So I march upstairs, to where all the positive tests are, and I grab them and I come back down, and Al’s on the couch watching TV. I think I turned the TV off, but I may have just muted it, and I stammered and I stuttered and I finally just deposited a handful of sticks I had literally peed on into his lap. He looked at them and I think at that point I had actually said it out loud, said “I’m pregnant.” He stood up and gave me a hug and again, it was the same shock as when we were pregnant with Flynn, but also completely different.

The OBGYN, because this was my second pregnancy and I had so many positive at-home tests, was like, yeah, you’re pregnant, we don’t need to see you until you’re 8 weeks along, which based on complete guesses about the date of my last period, was more than a month away. It was May 16 and the appointment wasn’t until June 21. They figured I was about three to four weeks along.

I can’t remember if we told my parents that Sunday or Monday, I think it was Monday. I actually don’t remember even how we told them. I think we’d figured out that the due date was likely to be around my mom’s birthday (January 3), again by total guesses, but we basically said something like, you might have to share your birthday, we’re pregnant. And my mom cried and got really happy and my dad was surprisingly also happy and didn’t seem very judgmental. This was an actual concern I had — that my dad wasn’t going to be pleased, because kids are expensive and had we thought this through, etc. But he didn’t do that, or if he did, he didn’t do it in front of us.

We told my brothers at some point, I think it was a week or two later. We took a picture of us, me holding a sign that said BABY#2 with an arrow to my stomach, and Al and I pointing at it, and we put it on the fridge and waited for them to notice when they came over for our family dinner. They noticed.

We decided we weren’t going to tell anyone else though (outside of Al’s immediate family, who we also told. Or Al told. They live across the country and it happened on the phone). There was a thing where like, I was supposed to be getting promoted at work, but the timetable wasn’t very certain, just sometime in the relative near future. And I didn’t want it getting out that I was pregnant and them deciding they could wait until I came back from maternity leave to promote me. This promotion had been a long time coming, it had taken for-fucking-ever and, while they legally couldn’t not promote me because I was pregnant, they could just not promote and blame it on something else, because how would I prove that, you know?

So some time passed, I think a couple of weeks, no more than three, and I was craving mashed potatoes. I went to Popeye’s, which is literally a place I had never been before, on my lunch break, and I got their mashed potatoes, and they were good, I figured I’d want them again, and I went to text Al that I liked them and would want them again and that the closest one was on a certain street, and he should get psyched to be driving there. Only Al and Allison (gallifreyburning!Allison) start with the same letters, and I’d already been texting with both Al and Allison that day, and, as the lead up to this paragraph would hint at, I sent it to Allison instead. So Allison found out. Allison actually found out well before, like, most of our extended family, any of our friends, coworkers, etc. But because Allison is awesome, it actually proved to be really amazing. I had someone I could talk to about it who wasn’t Al or my mom and who had also had kids. Special A+ high five grateful shout out to Allison!

We’d been circling closer to finally just going ahead and getting married, Al had proposed while I was pregnant with Flynn, but neither of us had any interest in planning a wedding, having a big wedding, etc. But now it was like, if we don’t do this now, it’s going to be another year before we can do it, because pregnancy and then a newborn and stuff. I’d already bought my dress, just a simple white dress from J.Crew and, like a fucking bonehead, I’d ordered a 4 petite. The way J.Crew sizes things, a 4 petite is a regular 2, so I had this wedding dress that was a goddamn SIZE TWO and I was already pregnant. I don’t know if it’s normal to start gaining a little bit of weight early, but I did it with both kids, and so I was up at least five pounds, if not more, and it was like, fuck it, let’s do this. We settled on Father’s Day — June 16 — because that was the soonest date the courthouse had available and that was that. There’s a detailed account of the wedding stuff in this entry, but here’s something I didn’t mention in it because no one knew I was pregnant yet:

Because of that weight, that wedding dress was almost — ALMOST — impossible to get into. So we’re trying to get out the door to get to the courthouse and I’ve got my hair done and everything and my parents are over at the house because they were going to follow us over there and also because moms and wedding days, you know how it goes. But I get Flynn ready and Al gets ready and I finally go to get myself ready and I can’t get the fucking dress zipped. It’s a side zip and it’s nearly ready to go up, I can get it half way up, but it’s just this dainty little zipper and the more I tug, the more concerned I am that I’m going to just snap the zipper entirely and not be able to do anything, like an hour before we’re due at the courthouse. My mom tries to help, she can’t get it up, it’s a mess. And I have this idea — I just need to be able to flatten down my skin, because it’s catching on the flesh over my ribs, there’s like, pliability there, not really fat that would need somewhere to go, just like…flesh. And so I figure if I can strap it down, make it smooth, I can get it zipped.

So I literally get Saran Wrap, like plastic cling wrap to keep leftovers fresh, and my mom and I cling wrap my ribcage, just enough to smooth it out, and with some finagling, we get the zipper up. It’s a little tight around the ribs, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll rip, and it’s not entirely constricting my breathing, only a little bit. And so we dig the cling wrap out, and it’s shredding, just pieces of cling wrap coming off in our hands as we go at it from the top and bottom of my dress. It was hilarious and amazing and my mom is never going to have memories of a big fancy wedding from her only daughter, but I can’t imagine she’ll ever forget standing in our master bathroom, pulling cling wrap out of my dress.

We make it to the courthouse and had the ceremony, just like I talked about in the other entry, and then we come home, we didn’t even bother to get a hotel, but my parents watched Flynn, so it’s our wedding night, and obviously we’re going to have sex, like, that’s a given, but this dress, man, this fucking dress. And Al and I aren’t going to have fancy wedding memories either, but we do have the memory of standing in the kitchen, both of us working on the zipper of my dress trying to get it off, pulling and tugging and contemplating using tools and laughing laughing laughing because I’m pregnant and I’ve gained weight from that and just, I don’t know, it was a really cool thing, in a way. I’m never going to forget that. (We got it off, and then we got off, RIMSHOT!)

Back to the actual pregnancy, we eventually got to that first doctor’s appointment five days after the wedding and they told me I was, in fact, about eight weeks along and they gave us a likely conception date and a due date. We backtracked on the conception date, just to see if we could figure out if we remembered it, and turns out it was the day of this food festival and so we were able to put together that I was literally tied to a headboard for it. This has become a running joke, just like, what did we do to this kid already that she started her life while her mom was tied up?

Sometime after that, but before we told everyone, we found out we were having a girl. I wanted a boy and Al wanted a girl, but obviously, like everyone says, we just wanted a healthy baby. Turns out though, I like, really wanted a boy. I got over it pretty quickly, but following that appointment, and for a few days afterward, I was pretty upset. This seems like a horrible thing to mention, but it was a very real part of my pregnancy, this confusing feeling where I had mentally prepared for one thing and was presented with the reality of another. I subsequently reversed my decision entirely and had no interest in having a boy, something I still feel today, even though we’re not having any more kids.

I just — like, boys have penises, boys have little boy penises and they get little erections and I remember when we were young, my brother and I, I remember my little brother telling my mom that his penis grew too big, and I just — I do not want to deal with that. I don’t have a penis, I don’t know about penises except in a sexual way, and it sounds weird to say, but I was and am genuinely worried that that would be confusing/damaging for me — trying to parse the relationship I have with penises now to the relationship you’d have if you had a son. I understand this sounds completely fucking ridiculous, I get it, but there it is.

We had the name Potter picked out for a girl (it was Harvey for a boy) and so Potter she became.

We went on after that, still without telling anyone because my work was still dicking around on the promotion, and (surprisingly) slowly but surely I started to show. Around 15 weeks (I can’t actually remember exactly when, and I can’t remember if it was before or after we found out the gender) I finally told my bosses, just to be like, hey listen, you guys need to know this, but we’re not telling anyone and I certainly don’t want it to affect the promotion case-building we’re doing. They assured me it wouldn’t and we kept on. There’d been a few close calls throughout — mostly centered around how I wasn’t drinking at work events. Like people at work know I love scotch and am least good for drinking a beer or two and they kept saying it jokingly — you’re not pregnant, are you? Haha. — but it was true and I have to imagine it looked more and more suspicious the more times I didn’t drink. It got to the point where I just stopped going out with coworkers because that was easier than excuses about why I wasn’t drinking.

Shortly after that it was entirely too much to keep secret because I was definitely showing in a pregnant way, not in a just gaining weight way. We told everyone at 19 weeks.

Pregnancy went on, I didn’t have any morning sickness (I didn’t with Flynn either), but I did get the same pregnancy migraines. And then I got a kidney stone and that sucked. And then weeks later, on a trip to Montreal for work, I got a UTI and that turned into a kidney infection, and I was in the hospital for three days and that sucked even more. After that they put me on a course of antibiotics for the rest of my pregnancy and nothing else like that happened.

Finally — F I N A L L Y — I was in my third trimester and things started moving along more quickly. Because we didn’t actually know the date of my last period and everything was just based on guessing and how the baby was measuring, it was hard to predict exactly when I was due. It was supposed to be late January and then Jan. 20 and then Jan. 18. They’d told me I was measuring slightly big, at something like 34 or 35 weeks, and I was carrying big in the stomach (weirdly with this pregnancy, I carried much more in my stomach than anywhere else. With Flynn I sort of, like, bloated all over, but this one was really contained to my stomach for the most part). They did an ultrasound to check on the size based on that stuff and they told me she was already 6 lbs.-ish. Flynn was only 6 lbs., 6 oz. when she was born, so I had visions of having a giant baby, like a How I Met Your Mother Ericksen baby type situation.

Shortly after that, at my 36 week appointment, I was dilated 3 cm. I’d delivered 17 days early with Flynn and my doctor was convinced I was going to go early with this one, too, so it seemed like maybe we were coming up on something. At that appointment — on Dec. 26 — my doctor had said she see me next week/in the new year, if I made that long.

The very next day — December 27 — Al and I were both on Christmas vacation from work and we’d gone to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We’d done some vacation…stuff (sex!) before the movie because Flynn was off at preschool, we’d actually been doing a lot of that, because, uh, we usually do a lot of that and I enjoy it? But it was setting off contractions every time. I’d been able to shake them each prior time, but this time, they’d been going on for several hours and they seemed pretty regular to me. I insisted we stay until the end of the movie, because I wanted to see how it ended, but by the time we were leaving the theatre, I figured we ought to go to the hospital. We got home, picked up the bag and stuff, and set out for the hospital. I made Al turn around because I decided I wanted to take a shower, so we did and I did, and then we headed back out again. My mom picked up Flynn from preschool and brought her to their house and my dad stayed home with her while my mom met us at the hospital.

They hooked me up to a monitor and eventually decided I was only in early labor. They gave me a bag of fluids and ultimately sent me home. I should’ve realized these weren’t the big fuck you contractions of labor, but they seemed painful enough at the time, and I couldn’t exactly remember how bad contractions were.

My parents volunteered to keep Flynn for the night and my contractions kept up. I wasn’t prepared to do this for three more weeks, they were distracting and painful and I was pretty sure I was having this kid soon anyway, so we ate some spicy chicken, had some more sex, and went to the pinball arcade to play/walk around.

The contractions kept up, but didn’t seem to be getting any worse, and we finally went to bed. They kept waking me up and then finally around 4 a.m., they were definitely worse and they were definitely too much to sleep through. I woke Al up and told him they were getting worse and I probably wanted to go back to the hospital.

Then things escalated super quickly. Suddenly I was in blinding pain, like, true fucking contractions and how — H O W — could I have forgotten what those felt like? True contractions are no joke at all and it was 4:30 in the morning and I’d completely forgotten all about, like, how you’re supposed to breathe during those things, and instead I’m just writhing around on our bed screaming the word ‘fuck’ at the top of my lungs. Fuck, fuck you (not at Al, but at the situation), fuck this, all at full volume. I’m sure the neighbors thought Al and I were having some sort of nuclear meltdown fight.

We set off for the hospital and I’ve got a dishtowel I’m clenching every time I have a contraction (this is actually a thing I did with Flynn, too, only it was a hand towel from the bathroom at my parents house — this is a thing I’d recommend, something to squeeze) and the contractions are coming like crazy and crazy painful and we park the car and Al tries to drop me off at the ER doors, but I, like an idiot, insist I can walk, so we’re walking through the parking lot and I just…puked. I just felt like I had to puke and suddenly I was puking. Twice. Right on the asphalt.

We get into the ER again, we checked in at 5:52 a.m. and they immediately get me up to labor and delivery, and then I’m in the triage section and they’re like, yeah, you’re definitely having this baby. I was dilated 6 centimeters at this point and they moved me to a room and there’s all this stuff that has to be done, monitors and bloodwork and stuff, before they’ll give an epidural and I’m just in blinding pain, asking repeatedly for the fucking epidural and they’re like, ….it might not take entirely, since you’re progressing so fast, and I was like, I DO NOT CARE, YOU GIVE IT TO ME ANYWAY

With Flynn, they didn’t have a room available right away, and I was in triage a lot longer. You can only have one person with you in triage, so my mom and Al kept switching off. My mom caught the brunt of the worst of my contractions, and they administered the epidural in triage, so by the time Al saw me again with Flynn, I wasn’t feeling the terrible ones.

This time, Al saw all of it and he was aaaaaaamazing. I kept swearing and then apologizing to the nursing stuff and I kept squeezing Al’s pocket, like I tried with his hand, and I did squeeze his hand several times, along with my dishtowel, but those things hurt, like an unbelievable amount of pain, and I figured out that I liked to be touching Al, but not hurting him, and so I hooked my hand into the front of his jeans and kept squeezing around that during contractions. That seems like a weird thing to mention, but I have very specific memories of it and it helped.

They propped me up against him to administer the epidural, like they had him stood between my legs while I sat on the bed, and I leaned into his chest while they put the needles in my back and it was actually sort of really nice in a way? I mean, I was in an unbelievable amount of pain, but Al’s there and he smells like Al and he’s this solid, comforting presence in front of me, he was like a fucking rock, and I don’t know, I just really love him, I was really grateful for him at that exact moment. They did this with my mom and a nurse when Flynn was born, since she happened to be the one in triage when the doctor came for the epidural and I’m grateful for that, too — that I had this experience with my mom and with Al.

Anyway, the epidural took hold and I almost immediately felt better (obviously) and then we just hung out a little bit, waiting for a doctor from my OB’s practice to get there and tell me to start pushing.

I kept sucking down ice chips, because that’s all they let you have, but all I wanted was juice, I kept talking about it, how much I wanted some cranberry juice. It was like an all-consuming feeling, this cranberry juice. A little bit after that, the doctor showed up and was like, OK, let’s give pushing a shot, and then suddenly they were like, yeah, this is good, we’re going to keep doing this and that was it, I was literally having the baby then.

I pushed for only about 20 minutes, not quite that even, and part of the epidural wore off in my lady bits, so I was able to feel slightly more there than I was with Flynn. It’s a really weird feeling, genuinely like you’re going to the bathroom, but with the feeling of pressure magnified, and I’m feeling all this, and the doctor’s trying to massage things and help things along and she’s trying and trying, but it was clear they were going to have to cut me again, and so I had another episiotomy. Hooray. Apparently tearing naturally is out of the question for my body, even on the second kid.

So they get that done and I’m pushing again and then the doctor’s like, “I see blonde hair!” which — that is exactly what happened with Flynn, the announcement of the blonde hair. And I started laughing because of course she’s blonde, too, of course she is and then I can feel her head in my vagina and there were a few more contractions/pushes and she was out. With the epidural worn off down there, I could feel like this squirming, moving, alive release of pressure and it was amazing and ridiculous. HAVING BABIES IS AMAZING AND RIDICULOUS.

I had just enough time to ask why she wasn’t crying when she started crying and they plopped her on my chest and oh my god, what that’s like, what it’s like when they put this baby you’ve been carrying around inside of you on you, on your chest, and she’s there and she’s alive and her face and her hair, it’s literally like sunshine, like the whole world is bright and warm and focused. God, that’s amazing, what an amazing feeling.

Al cut the cord and then he and my mom followed the nurse over to the other end of the room to get Potter cleaned up while I delivered the afterbirth and had stitches put in. The doctor tried to do it without numbing me back up and my mom said it looked like I nearly about jumped to the ceiling, so they re-numbed the area. Thankfully. Whoo boy.

Potter was born at 9:22 a.m. on December 28 (exactly three and a half hours after check-in, way to go on the short labor, little Potter). She was 7 lbs., 6 oz., and 20 inches long. She was also — predictably — perfect. She is perfect.

My parents brought Flynn up that afternoon and Flynn seemed sort of wary and, most notably, absolutely terrified to touch Potter at all.

We only stayed in the hospital until the next day and then we headed to my parents’ house to pick up Flynn. Flynn was much more into Potter this time around, insisting on holding her and stuff, which was like, I don’t even know, my heart soars with the eagle’s nest.

Potter’s three weeks old today (/yesterday, depending on when I get this posted) and she’s been an amazing baby, great eater, great sleeper, super happy, super cuddly.

I’m breastfeeding almost exclusively. We had to supplement a little bit, per doctor’s orders, just to get her weight back up, but it’s only ended up to be about one formula bottle every few days and it’s so much woooork, I forgot how much work breastfeeding a newborn is. I mean, I’m happy to do it, but god, this is a lot of work. It makes me tired and hungry and it’s time-consuming.

I ended up gaining 35 pounds (with Flynn I gained 42), and I’m down about 15 of those at three weeks postpartum.

Al’s been on vacation/paternity leave for the past three weeks, he goes back to work on Monday and I am not looking forward to it at all. I think I’ve changed maybe 15 diapers this entire time, he’s been so on top of it.

I feel like there’s more I want to mention, more I’ll want to remember, but it’s all jumbled together right now and this entry is probably reaching live journal character count limits anyway.

Instead, as was my way on livejournal, here's a bunch of photos!