Part the Second

I posted part one and suddenly had the most vivid mental image of Thursday afternoon: standing up in the office, chatting with the friend who runs the show up there, sending faxes for Iyyar, while Barak in his red cabled sweater sat there reading White Fang and eating a ruggel from the plate that was sitting there for some visiting rabbis.

Anyway. Where was I?

Right. The plane ticket.

I really should have written this earlier because the details are already getting fuzzy, but I remember walking out the door and up the stairs and thinking oh, right, real contractions hurt a lot more than those contractions I've been having, and also thinking about something a friend told me, which is that when you're in labor the gates of shamayim are open like they are on Yom Kippur so daven as hard as you can. Walked up the rest of the stairs and out the door and the cab was there and my husband caught up with me; got in the cab and headed off to Ein Kerem. I can't remember if we fielded any plane-ticket calls on the way there--maybe Alisha does.

The entrance to the hospital that most people use is through a small mall, which seems like a strange thing to have attached to a hospital but is actually a really good thing when the hospital is as far away from everything as this one is. I wanted to go in that way because it's the only way I know how to get to L & D, but the cab driver turned around and took us to the emergency entrance: I asked him to go back and he grumbled something about only trying to make it easier for us. Went through the security and the guy mannng the entrance made some comment about Mr. Bigfoot's two bags--"Is this all you have?" Uh, it's not so much, considering, but obviously you've never seen a woman come here to have a baby. Buddy.

Went through all the passageways and into L & D and put my envelope full of stuff down on the nurse's desk. Walked up and down the hall, looked at the uncomfortably realistic posters depicting the phases of labor on the wall, walked back in, and was brought by a nice Israeli midwife into an examining room to get checked.

A side note: you know how some people's foreign language speaking skills suddenly get a lot better after a glass or two of wine? I've seen this happen myself--people who can't ordinarily speak Hebrew jumping an ulpan level or two at a Purim seuda, or some of my classmates in Hungary magically speaking improved English at a pub. I think it has to do with your brain's filters; when the filters are off, and you just kind of go with it, sometimes things actually improve.

I've never tried to speak a second language while under the influence (SSLUI?) but apparently the effect is not limited to inebriation. It can also happen while you're in labor. I have NEVER spoken such good Hebrew as I did that night. Ever. There was past, present, and future, all conjugated more or less correctly; idioms I didn't even know I knew; vocabulary that must have dropped into my subconscious without my knowing and sat there in the muck for months before flying up into service as if my magic.

After five minutes, midwife was speaking Hebrew to me, and English to Mr. Bigfoot. Seriously. That would be... a first.

Anyway, she put me on monitors and the baby sounded fine (hoofbeats!) and she checked me and told me I was four centimeters dilated.

Four. Centimeters.

Remember with Marika? I was between four and five for what, three weeks?!

So. Yeah. A little bit disappointed there. I'd sort of hoped to walk in and give birth again, but not to be.

Anyway...

The L & D room looked pretty much like L & D rooms anywhere, down to the fake wood flooring and the warming bed that looks impossibly irrelevant until there is actually a baby in it.

And then the phone rang. A few more times. About the plane ticket. The price had gone up--what was it, Alisha? 500 dollars? I said JUST TELL HIM IT IS TWELVE HUNDRED I WILL PAY THE DIFFERENCE I DO NOT CARE BUT DON'T LET HIM OFF THE PHONE WITHOUT A TICKET. More phone calls. At one point I remember grabbing the phone from my husband, dealing with something (my billing address I think) with Alisha and then handing it back to him when the next contraction hit.

Seriously insane. But he did get the ticket in the end.

Midwife came in, and oh glory she was AMERICAN and very nice. The contractions got more serious and I went in and out of the bathroom thinking, oh yeah, this is what this is like... I'd forgotten how not enjoyable all of this is... and I think that was when I told my husband he could go hang out in the hall. There was a labor ball there which I've never used before and I sat on it and bounced and it was just what I wanted, for a little while anyway.

My friend Bruria walked in and her husband was there, with a Meuhedet bag containing a bottle of soda water and pretzels. I remember his oh-so-guy "Want a pretzel?" to Mr. Bigfoot and then the nurse shooing them elsewhere and one of them saying, "You're really supposed to make your after bracha where you eat" and me saying "JUST GO!"

Bruria was rubbing my back and the contractions got hard and fast and I stood up and leaned on the bed but wasn't ready to start pushing. Bruria thought I was and I said no I'm not and then I guess I screamed--okay, I screamed--and they told me to get up on the bed so they could see what was going on.

And the rest of it, well... what is there to say? It hurt. A lot. I screamed. A lot. Natural labor, especially when it is back labor, is not fun. And I had really hoped for another magic easy labor and it was not happening. I had felt that the baby was so low and the ultrasound I'd had earlier had shown him really low but by the actual labor he had turned the wrong way. At one point I dimly realized that there was more than one doctor and more than two midwives and an ultrasound machine had materialized and someone said, "we need to turn him" and people were saying move this way, get on your side, get on all fours, DON'T PUSH DON'T PUSH which, truly, is almost impossible when you're at that point because pushing against the contractions is the only thing you can do, and a woman said "היא לא יכולה" then PUSH NOW and I kept thinking it was almost over but it took such a long time... there was one doctor who kept yelling at me through every contraction, "חזק חזק חזק עוד עוד עוד" (strong! strong! strong! more! more! more!) in this urgent way that made me keep thinking that this was the last push and the baby was almost out and yet he wasn't even close and I drank some water through a straw and screamed some more and pushed and eventually Bruria screamed "there he is! I love this part" and I thought "WHAT?!" and it was over and I had a baby boy. And I may as well be honest that as every other time, except maybe with Marika, I was even gladder that the labor was over than I was to have a baby on my chest.

But I'm pretty happy about him now.

[Coming next: Part the Third, In which I Discover that I Have Sent My Husband Home Prematurely.]

Before I forget: Part 1

I'm wrestling with myself right now, because I feel like I really should be taking a nap while the baby is sleeping, or doing one of the three (three!) speeches I promised I'd do before I went on leave and ergo still need to finish even though I'm now on leave, and I'm not so much in the mood to blog, but I really want to write this down before I forget. You think you won't forget any of it, but when I look back at the posts I wrote about having Iyyar and Avtalyon and Marika, there are always things that make me think, "Oh right, that did happen." So, here we are. There's a lot to tell, so I'll do it in parts.

I was due on Thursday the 23rd, and the Thursday before that I went from "not even close" to "any day/hour/minute now." It wasn't so much the contractions that made me feel that way, although I was having a few every hour and they hurt; it was more a feeling of intense downward pressure that made me wonder if the baby was going to fall out any second. I checked out of work that Thursday night thinking I'd have the baby within the next day or two; the emails kept flying thick and fast from people who had apparently not registered until that week that I was going to, you know, have a baby, and ergo go on maternity leave. Monday night a particularly nasty one arrived, complaining that I had gone to have baby without doing speech X, and I called my boss in tears for the first time since I started this job in 2004. She was very sympathetic and told me not to worry about it. Then I called Alisha and went to the bus station and met her there and ate a hamburger. Which helped. Note: getting portabello mushrooms on burger is expensive, but oh so good.

Tuesday, Wednesday were the same. Wednesday night at about 9 I realized we were out of almost everything in the fridge, and decided to go to the makolet but didn't feel like carrying that much stuff back myself. Peeked into Barak's room and saw that he was wide awake and reading a comic book. "Barak, do you want to come to the makolet with me?" Barak, naturally, catapulted out of bed, got himself dressed, found an empty backpack and presented himself for duty in the living room in about a heartbeat and a half, with that super-helpful, super-polite, extra-delightful demeanor he gets when he's getting away with something in the middle of the night. We went to the makolet--I can't remember now what we talked about--and bought two bags of milk, cottage cheese, bread, cucumbers, peppers, and whatever else. Oh, and two pints of Ben and Jerry's, which was on sale. And seven bars of chocolate. That was not in the plan. I wanted to buy one, as nose-blowing rewards for Iyyar (part of whose OT homework was thorough noseblowing) and bought two because Barak asked for some also; then it was on sale seven bars for NIS 20 or whatever so... yeah. Chocolate and ice cream. And ravioli, for me.

Got home, plopped on the couch and watched Barak put it all away. Then he went to bed and I looked for the ravioli and it had completely disappeared, because he had put it into the cupboard, not the fridge or the freezer where I'd been looking (silly me). Ate ravioli. Went to bed.

Woke up the next morning to a mildly upset stomach and a miniscule amount of bleeding, which has heralded imminent labor in the past. It didn't feel that imminent though, so I went about my day, in the company of Barak, who was taking an Authorized Personal Day (TM). We took Marika to gan, doing "one-two-three whoo!" most of the way. Taught Barak how to open the combination lock to get into the next campus. Taught him to use my Kindle and got him started reading White Fang. Cleaned up kitchen, talked to gan psychologist about Iyyar (she said she would try, and has since succeeded, to postpone his vaadat hasama--we aren't sure yet what he will need for next year school-wise and don't want to make decisions yet). Mid-conversation, saw Barak at door of my office brandishing his top right front tooth, which had fallen out while I'd been on the phone. A little while later, found Barak on the office couch crying because the puppy had left his Imma and left his person and he was all alone. Reassured him that the ending would be OK.

IM'd Alisha to say I thought it would be today. She pointed out that I'd been saying that for a while. I said I really thought it would be today and then a little later asked her if she could come over that night. She said yes. Mr. Bigfoot brought boys home from gan, then went to mincha and afternoon seder. I considered and then decided to actually make dinner: sauteed some vegetables, added some black beans, made rice in the rice cooker. Called Mr. Bigfoot at about five and told him that I was going to need him home within the next half hour or so. He came home, Alisha came over, I worked on getting everyone in bed before I left and the contractions were real and regular at this point. At around 7:30 or 8 I had everything together and my bags by the door and went to email Grandma E to say I was leaving for L & D, when I saw that I had a voicemail from my father-in-law.

The quick back story: my in-laws generally do not travel. My MIL has not been to Israel since the 80s, despite the fact that her daughter has lived here since 2003. My FIL was last here in 2008 and has not seen any of our kids since then. They were planning on coming this week for their grandson's bar mitzvah and decided a couple of weeks ago not to come after all (this is pretty common with them--they'll plan a trip for a long time and then cancel right before) and my SIL was really upset. So here I was with 11-minute-apart contractions that were getting too strong to sit through, and a voice mail from my FIL saying, "Well I've decided I'd like to come after all but my computer seems to have a virus and you've been really helpful in the past so I was wondering if you'd help me book a ticket."

Now I knew at this point that either I was going to have to book the ticket then and there or he wouldn't come; I was planning on going to the beit hachlama after the baby was born, which meant not getting home till the following Wednesday at the earliest, and he'd have to be on a plane the day after that to make the bar mitzva. I looked at the clock. I picked up the phone. "Hi, it's me. I just got your voice mail. I'd love to buy your ticket but we have to do it right now and actually buy it right now, not just talk about it, because I'm on my way to the hospital to have the baby."

An hour and a half later, I had found an acceptable itinerary and he wanted to check with Bubbe before buying it. I'll call you back in a few minutes. I said, OK, but I might not be here. Hung up the phone, thought about it for about half a minute and handed Alisha my credit card. "Can you please book it when he calls back?" She gave me a look that was part sympathy, part you-are-crazy, and said sure. Grabbed my bags, walked out the door, called the cab, and Mr. Bigfoot and I headed up through the main building and to the front door and to Hadassah Ein Kerem.

Boy!

Almost 4 kg even, born 12:55 am on Friday. He's fine, I'm fine, details to come. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.

39 weeks 4 days (with translations for Sam)

What was it I said right before Marika was born? It's been 20 years and I'm starting to lose confidence?

I know I have to have a baby eventually. But I've been timing contractions since LAST THURSDAY when I would have been willing to bet (a little) money that I would have a baby in the next 24 hours.

I would, clearly, have lost that bet. Because it is now Monday night and I am Still Here.

This means I'm going to have the World's Easiest Labor (TM), redux, right? Right???

Moving right along.

Had followup meeting with Iyyar's new OTs yesterday. It was good. It was informative. It inspired confidence, and I left feeling better about things, although I also left in a full-blown panic about the piece of information that the OTs had just shared with me: to wit, that the 2012 deadline for the vaadat hasama (educational placement board) meetings is MARCH FIRST. As in, NEXT WEEK.

Aaiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Because Iyyar's ganenet (kindergarten teacher) has been all wait, wait, wait about that. She did not know about the deadline and I have been relying on her to know these things. I submitted the request last month but apparently she also has to submit something and she hasn't done it yet. I spent the entire morning today trying to get through to someone, anyone, at Misrad haChinuch (the ministry of education) with about as much success as I usually experience dealing with Hitpatchut HaYeled (the child development center where they specialize in making sure nobody ever, ever, ever gets help). I have no idea what's going on with that. I need someone to tell me if all his paperwork is in or if he needs anything else. He definitely doesn't have a date (Avtalyon does--more on that in a moment). And... ow. Contraction. Ow.

Avtalyon had his speech therapy eval today. In Hebrew. He did really well. The speech therapist thought he was really cute and very bright. This is both good and bad. It's good because, great! He speaks and understands Hebrew as well as a native Israeli kid a year older than he is! But... why does he not talk at gan in more than single words? Why does he have no clue what's going on, to the extent of not even knowing which is his cubby even though it is now February? And how do we get him into a gan safa (nursery school for kids with language issues), where he will get the attention and OT he needs, without a crappy speech eval?

It seems pretty likely that if Iyyar's issues are sensory, Avtalyon's are too. Avtalyon now is very like Iyyar at the same age, and he is starting to show signs of heading in the same path Iyyar did. He is less mellow. He is less happy-go-lucky. He is acting more frustrated, less cooperative, more whiny, less eager to get out the door in the morning. I can only guess that gan is overwhelming for him on a sensory level, in the same way it is for Iyyar.

One of the things that Iyyar's first OT (who we're not going back to, because she a) works in Ramot and b) is INSANELY expensive and c) I don't like her style) suggested was that we get him to blow his nose at least four times a day. I said, uh, okay, and promptly discovered that not only could Iyyar not blow his nose, but he really didn't want to do it. A dozen chocolate chips later, he had emptied his nose of about a bathtub's worth of slime. And he's had two really good days since (at home, although unfortunately not at gan). Coincidence? I dunno. Can't have hurt though. And I want it in my Artscroll biography that I sacrified my lone last bag of Trader Joe's chocolate chips on the altar of my kid's Eustachian tubes.

The OTs we're going with want to start Iyyar on a sensory diet, and our plan is to do whatever we do with Iyyar with Avtalyon as well. OTs think this is OK as long as we see that he is OK with it and it does not overstimulate him. First appointment with them is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, after Avtalyon's speech eval part the second, and well-child visits for both Marika and Avtalyon in the morning.

Unless, of course, I have a baby. Laughable though that idea might currently seem.

39 weeks 2 days

Thursday night, I wrote a speech. By the time I was done I was timing contractions 8 minutes apart. I sent the speech at 3 am saying, "I think I'm going to go have a baby now" and went to bed fully expecting to wake up a few hours later, head to the hospital, and, you know, have a baby.

Instead, I woke up at 9 am to no contractions at all.

Now it's Saturday night and they're picking up a bit but still not doing anything definitive.

Dum dee dum.

In the meantime, we had OT eval number 2 with Iyyar on Thursday and it was good. I mean, it was good in that it was thorough, the OTs (there were two of them) inspired confidence, and they seemed to "get" Iyyar. They asked a lot of the kinds of questions where you get the feeling that they know more than you do--you know the kind, the questions that seem completely random to you but you answer "uh, actually, now that I think about it... yes."

Anyway, they confirmed that Iyyar has a lot of sensory issues, and they think that this is a big part of what's going on with him. Yes, they said, they could have been there but not causing much trouble until a few months into last year, for a few reasons. And they think that starting OT and a sensory diet will help. They also think he needs play therapy because OT alone is not going to deal with the anxiety. All of this is going to be out of pocket, but if it helps, it will be worth it. We (me and Mr. Bigfoot) have a full meeting scheduled with the OTs tomorrow night, and a first appointment for therapy on Tuesday at 2. The logistics of this are going to be really, really daunting, but these are the first people I've met whom I trust and that's the only time they have available so that's what we're going to do. Somehow.

In other news, I got a phone call from Barak's teacher today. Barak has not done homework in two weeks. I knew this, because I officially stopped taking responsibility for his homework two weeks ago. I told him I was sick of fighting with him over it and it was now his problem. He can do it himself now, and if he can't he always has the option of going up to the beit midrash and asking Abba or one of the bochrim for help. He doesn't; he'd rather play. This is understandable. He is a 7 year old boy. However, he's a 7 yo boy in a Torani school that goes till 3:45 and expects an hour of homework nightly. Whether or not this is reasonable, it's what he's stuck with till June. His teacher wanted to know what the story was before she cracked down on him; I said, feel free to crack down. So tomorrow, he's going to get a talking-to at school; when he comes home, he's going to get a snack and get dispatched to the beis medrash. If he shows up at school without any homework, he's going to get punished, although I have zero idea what that actually entails. No recess? Trip to principal? I hope we don't find out.

38 weeks 5 days

A crystal ball would be nice sometimes.

Just got off the phone with the head of education at the yishuv where we're planning on moving next year. The educational system there is generally considered excellent and I've definitely had better luck talking to human beings in charge, as opposed to people who take your form and never call you back.

However. It appears that there are two options for Iyyar next year: a full-on special ed environment, and a class of 30-35 kids with almost no support.

His ganenet wants him to have a shadow and a resource teacher. In Yishuv X at least there is no such thing; shadows are only for kids with physical problems. So far as a resource teacher, max one or two hours a week. The only other option is the "small class" which is for kids with attention/learning/emotional issues. Which yes, he does have. But he is functioning in gan and his ganenet, whom I trust, feels very strongly that he will have a harder time in a class with kids with emotional/behavioral problems than in a class with "regular" kids. Peer group is important, she says. Role modeling is important. If you put him in a kita katana with eight kids and two of them are hitting and two of them are bouncing off the walls, that's what he'll see as acceptable behavior. Which is probably true. Although he may just see it as acceptable behavior for that environment--he's pretty good at picking up what's OK to do where.

I don't know. I say that a lot lately, don't I?

38 weeks 2 days

The strike is over! Yay! We have buses. We have gan. We have hospitals that are not on Shabbat schedule.

This is good.

We had a nice Shabbos. The weather was lovely and I took all the boys outside to drive their little red car around in the closed-for-Shabbos parking lot while Mr. Bigfoot and Marika napped. We have a schedule of nappage on Shabbos that is not exactly standard but works for us: see, shul in Israel ends WAY earlier than it does in the US. No kiddush, no speech, and an earlier start time, so Mr. Bigfoot is usually home at around 10:30. I can't deal with cholent at 10:30 AM and nobody is ready for lunch then anyway, so when he gets home, I go back to sleep while he makes kiddush and has a snack. Then he gets me up at around 12:30 and we eat Shabbos lunch like the buncha Americans we are. After lunch is naptime for Marika (getting shorter and shorter each week though alas) and Mr. Bigfoot.

Iyyar did get his star yesterday (for no handwaving/talking to himself) but needed many many many reminders to stop. This morning he was hard at it and almost lost his star before breakfast was over. I said, Iyyar, the star isn't for stopping when I tell you to stop and then starting again a minute later. It's for not doing it.

"It's hard, Imma."

"I know it's hard. That's why you have a star chart with only seven spaces and a big big prize. If it were easy, I wouldn't make a star chart. Or I'd make lots of boxes and only a little prize."

"It's really hard not to."

"Why is it hard?"

"Because I want to do it. I feel like I want to."

I got him one of those squishy stress balls to play with when he gets the handwaving/face-squinching urge. He used it so much it broke within a day. I have no idea where to get good-quality sensory balls here and don't have anyone coming from/going to the US anytime soon that I could ask; tried to find a place with international shipping and that way wouldn't get them here till almost Pesach.

This morning I slept late (worked really late last night) and left Mr. Bigfoot to get the gan boys moving on his own, with the result that I woke up a little after 9 and they were both still playing in their underwear, not having had breakfast, etc. (School starts at 8:45 and it's a 15-minute walk). I was not pleased and went in there like a drill sergeant; Iyyar instantly went into full Boneless Toddler mode, whining, lying in bed, not looking at me or paying attention. Imma is mad--> I can't deal--> hello this is the worst coping mechanism imaginable. I got him to look at me and we had a short but firm talk about it. He got dressed and didn't do a full Iyyar flipout, but the weird behavior took a noticeable upturn.

How do I make him stop? How how how? What else can I give him to do? Distracting him seems to work the best, but that can't be the nonstop solution. I need to figure out ways to help him a) recognize when he's doing it and b) distract himself. Tally card? I don't know. He's easier to talk to about the whole thing and does mostly want to stop, which helps, but... yeah.

Is it just me or is almost every post lately about Iyyar? Guess you can tell where my head is these days.