Oops, what happened to my life?

Okay, I'm being facetious. I know exactly where my life went. Here:


With my adorable, sweet, wonderful little girl. But it keeps shocking me, just how far gone I am in love with her. My house kinda smells, I should be packing (we found a new place and will be moving as early as the 4th or as late at the 7th of January), grandmas keep stopping by wanting to hold the baby...but I just kinda carry on. Loving her. With all my heart. And hoping and praying for the day she starts sleeping through the night. Although I got my first real dose of terror this morning when, for the first time since she was born she didn't wake up fussy at 4am. I woke up at 4:27 am convinced she must be dead and rolled over in a panic to see which of us had killed her to find that she was totally asleep -- or had been until I rolled over in a panic and woke her up. Sigh.

There's been very little knitting here at Chez Lucy, since knitting requires two hands, and she likes to be held quite a lot, thank you very much. I have one thing to share that I made as Christmas present for my little nephew at my father's family:

A snowman hat for Sam, out of Berocco's Love It. The yarn was the right color, the price was right, and I have enough left over for one hat for Lucy, if I stripe it right, or two hats for Lucy, if I buy another skein of coordinating yarn.

I already showed off the socks for Amy's little ones, Lily and Vinnie (Lily is only three months older than Lucy, and they are both destined to grow up at Poppy and Grandma's as "Lily-I mean Lucy-I mean STOP THAT!"), and I apparently did not take pictures of the hats I made for Molly (a bunny ear hat out of Berocco Chincilla) and Tessa (a plain hat with little crocheted rosettes on top out of some stash wool... Manos, I think).

This was actually a great stash busting holiday, as the only yarn I had to buy was for Sam's hat. Go me!

If you haven't gotten enough of Miss Lucy, check out my photosite, where it's practically-all-Lucy, nearly all of the time.

Much love.

P.S. -- Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 28 now. Go me!

Dear World:

Dear World:

I am pleased to announce the arrival of Miss Lucy Joy Diana. She has Robb's last name, which you either, ya know, know or don't. It's all good.

Miss Lucy was born Sunday morning at 9:04am. Labor kicked in around 12:30 am with some wussy contractions (as much as contractions really ever count as wussy). By 1am I was thinking "No way after just starting that I'm having contractions 7 minutes apart." By 2am it was "4 minutes? Seriously?" Of course, there was a huge snowstorm starting, so I woke up Robb, we called my doctor, and were off to the hospital.

Side note: vomiting during a contraction is the worst thing ever. Ever. It beats vomiting with diharrea, vomiting with strep throat, any of that. Worst Thing Ever.


The labor, taking off so fast, was very intense. I lucked out and got the "Tub Room" at the hospital, and got to spend several hours in very warm water. It was super good. I was 4cm when I walked through the door, something that impressed the heck out of the nursing staff.

After about two hours, though my pressures started to jump up, and they started having trouble finding my little girl's heartbeat. When they could find it, it was irregular, going too fast during some contractions, too slow during others. By 7am, I think there were ten non-family people in my room, all trying to make us better so we could continue with our natural birth plan. But it was not meant to be. By about 8:30, they'd broken my water to get better fetal monitoring, both of her heartbeat and of the contractions, which meant I was on my back and in total agony. I'd've needed an epidural to continue to labor, but they realized her heartbeat was dropping AFTER every contraction, not DURING or BEFORE, and we were getting prepped for a c-section.


The surgery went beautifully, and Robb got to be there, and hold the baby for me while they stitched me up. As soon as I was stable, the put her right on my chest and covered us up so we could have some time together.

I hemorraged twice after the surgery, almost needed a transfusion (but didn't, in the end, because even though my crit was low, I was asymptomatic, so they decided it wasn't worth the risk of blood products, but I had to swear to take vitamins with iron), and got to go home yesterday morning. Miss Lucy is unbelievably healthy, and I'm doing surprisingly well -- both my nurses, one of the residents, and the lactation consultant commented that there are mothers who give vaginal births that don't recover as well as I have done.



I think the best part of all of this is watching Robb fall utterly in love with his little girl. She adores him, turns toward him when he talks, and he loves her back. I could not be happier. I am not even upset about the loss of the natural birth -- I bitch a lot about how c-sections are unnecessary a lot of the time, how they can hurt mothers and so on and so forth...but mine saved lives. Probably not mine, but hers for sure. My doc was pretty sure that what happened was that the dancing back and forth with preeclampsia damaged the placenta; it held up fine throughout the pregnancy, but during the stress of labor, couldn't supply my baby with enough oxygen. By the time they got her out, she was covered with meconium, and they had to suction out her lungs and stomach. If my doctor had dilly-dallied, if I'd fought to keep laboring -- I might not have had this beautiful little girl here with me.

All the good pictures were taken by the grammas, or are on my phone. I'll work on getting them up on the photosite, and let you know when they're there. In the meantime, please say hello to my little Lucy!

Hello, blogland

I am still pregnant.

I get emails from various people asking on a regular basis. My mother is calling twice a day to find out if "anything's happening." It's all very gently entertaining. I'm trying not to be stressed.

My gut feeling is that it won't be too much longer, but I have no medical evidence to support this fact. We'll see what happens.

I've actually been knitting some! I have these to show you:

These are the Better Than Booties Baby Socks; the pattern is free on the Interweave Knits website, and mine are knit from the leftovers of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Seduction that Tammy sent me many moons ago. I loves them, I do. The bindoff went a little haywire due to the cats suddenly deciding to slaughter each other and running away with my knitting, but if you can't see it from a galloping horse...



These two are for the other two little babies in my life; my step-sister just had twins back in October, and they should be just about sized right for now -- it's kinda scary that her twins are hitting newborn size just about as mine is likely to be born. Oh my goodness! Both of these patterns are as-written out of Cat Bordhi's New Pathways; I still love the book. Some people have expressed frustration with the way you have to flip around to find the bind off here and the cast on there and the heel construction here, but it works out for me; I figure once I get the hang of it, I won't even notice. And it certainly allowed her to condense a lot more information into the book, so I'll live with it.

The top pair are out of Frog Tree Alpaca; the bottom pair of Cashsoft DK, with Be Sweet boucle baby mohair for the "laces".

Other projects I need to finish by Christmas: three hats out of the Itty Bitty Hats book (yes, Karin, I know I protested that I'd never use that darned book again, and I still have some reservations, but the Bunny Ear hat is so adorable! And the Snowman hat! Oh my goodness!) And the cool thing is that I shouldn't have to buy any yarn for Christmas presents, other than for the snowman hat, because the other two hats I'm going to make -- well, one is almost done, and was knit from some stashed Chincilla, and the other will be knit from an as-yet-undisclosed stash yarn. Undisclosed because I haven't made up my mind yet. :)

Not giving to any of the grown-ups this year...still need to think of a couple of books to buy for my cousins...I'm officially *that person* in my family, and it would be easy, except that these three siblings have passed down all the books I've given them, so not only do I have to remember what I gave Emily and Erin last year, I also have to remember what I gave Connor when he was eight...five years ago...so I always try and get whatever just came out in paperback. I'm usually safe that way. :)

Finished my ridiculously expensive and impossible-to-wash Berocco baby blanket, the one that will (I hope) be heartlessly destroyed and loved within an inch of its life...I also received a gorgeous blanket that I haven't managed to take a good picture of (it needs sunlight, and the sun hides every time I take out my camera). But, I'll get a good picture when I can, and let me publicly say -- "B!! I love it! Did you knit it yourself? It's wonderful!"

I'm sorry to be so boring lately...life is just very...well. Calm, with an undertone of "Um. Now? Please? Anytime now would be fine." We're trying to find a new place to live, so we know whether or not we need to start packing, and everything else is kind of up in the air subjected to that. Frustrating, but there we are. And, as I started this post out by saying, I am so full of baby that, according to Robb, I even smell like baby.

Oh well. I suppose it could be worse. :)

Much love.

Baby Shower Part II, Electric Boogaloo

So, yesterday was the laugh I needed. I've hit the part of my grief process where all I want to do is sleep, and Saturday, sleep I did. I think I napped two out of every four hours, and still went to sleep for another 6 at night. Crazy crazy crazy talk.

Sunday was the baby shower thrown by my step-mother and step-sisters-in-law. Mary Jane (my stepmom) had offered to postpone, but I asked her not to; I really needed the day out. It was great; lots of lovely gifts (aka phat l00tz) followed by laughing like crazy as the ladies ran through all the champagne in my father's house in the form of mimosas, and then, when the champagne ran out, they switched to screwdrivers. It was hysterical, and tremendously fun, and I feel a little more alive today.

There's snow on the ground and more falling from the sky. It's a beautiful day out. I'll take pictures when the sun comes up as much as it will in the middle of a snowfall like this. I'm glad Robb has the day off, so we can snuggle up against the cold and just enjoy the day. Or, ya know, play Guitar Hero 3, my early Christmas present. Whatever.

Not tons of knitting going on right now, partially because every time I sit down I fall asleep, and partially because I'm just getting impatient for the baby's arrival, and everything that makes me think of "It could still be a little while" just makes me irritable. I know, it makes no sense. But there we are.

I'll find a picture of something knit for tomorrow, I promise.

In the meantime, much love, and if there's snow where you are, enjoy it! Alison, it's too powdery right now for a snowball, but I promise I will as soon as I can.

Saying goodbye

Yesterday afternoon, about 5pm, I got the call that my Aunt Diane had passed away in the respite house, after her five year battle with different kinds of cancer. Started with breast cancer in 2002, when they removed some lymph nodes and did some radiation. She seemed to be in recovery for a lot of years, but two years ago, she developed a kind of leukemia that just isn't very pleasant. Really, her survival for this long is a miracle in and of itself, and as much as I can truly ask of my deity of choice; we didn't think she'd make it through last Christmas, much less this one.

She went peacefully, in the end, with her children and her sisters there with her. She said her only regret was not getting to meet my baby, and I told her in no uncertain terms that I expected her to be there for my delivery, watching over me, regardless of what sort of body she had in order to get there. She'll take care of me, I know, I have no fear of that.

And I hope that, in the next life, she can find more peace than she had in this one.