It's complicated!

Soren, 5 years, reading with Grandma.

Soren was asking family questions today, like who's the daddy of Daddy, and who is his daddy? So if so and so is Daddy's daddy, then who in the world is that other guy?

Lars and I have somewhat complicated family trees. Until recently, we each had our grandparents still living as well. When Petra was born, she had a full-set of great-grandparents.

Today's lesson was geneology and exploring the modern phenonom of blended families, it's complicated. We made a pictorial.

Petra, Soren and Annike working on the family tree.

The finished product.

Here's the new house. It's an actual house, not a condo. The front yard is a bit overgrown right now, but months ago it was beautiful. There's jasmine, or something like it, in the front yard that is so fragrant. The back yard has 2-avocado trees, a nectarine tree, an orange tree, maybe a grapefruit tree and some sort of berry bush. The house is about 1600 sq. ft. There is a proper master bedroom with its own bathroom! That's new for Lars and me, older Ann Arbor homes just didn't have amenities like that. There's a full bath in the hall as well. The bedrooms are quite small so we'll have to rig some sort of triple decker hammock system a la Hughie, Dewey and Louie for the kids. Baby Ultimo will, of course, co-sleep with us for as long as he/she is breastfeeding so no worries about where to put that one yet. There are two separate living spaces, one will be a family room and one will be the toy room. The house needs a lot of work, starting with the floors, bathrooms and kitchen, plus it needs to be tented for termites before we move in. And, just to keep me on my toes, there is a sprinkler system. I can't wait for what sort of adventures that will bring us!

In other news, Maggie has been very determined to get 4-servings of fresh fruits and vegetables everyday, therefore, she spends a lot of time out by the pool gathering loquats. Here she is with one hanging out of her mouth. She spits the pits out inside on the carpet.

Petra on her first day of skate camp. My mom is here right now, I will try and get some pics posted of her with the kids soon.

Well, well, well

Here's Annike eating breakfast on the counter with her nightie on backwards and her jammie pants on inside-out (Soren is currently visiting with L's side of the family in MN, hence no RoRo pics):
Well, we got a call from our realtor yesterday morning, I happened to be at the mall trying on maternity clothes and was in the middle of pulling a darn panel up over my belly. The bank accepted our offer on the foreclosure, we close July 23rd. Crazy, huh? But then do ya wanna know something even crazier? After the call from Kristen, the realtor, the girls were asking me all about snow in MI. Usually when we talk about Michigan, I say things like "back home", "we", "our", etc. For the first time EVER, yesterday I referred to Michiganders at "they." Which can only mean one thing, actually it could mean any number of things but for drama's sake we'll go for the singular meaning, it means that I think of our family as Californian now. Holy cow!

Yesterday was Petra's last day of school. Her report card came home. She got the highest grades available to a 1st grader. Her teachers said "This has been a year of incredible growth for Petra. She is an advanced and fluent reader who practices her reading diligently and enjoys reading to her classmates. She is an excellent writer who demonstrates complex writing skills. She takes pride in her work and consistently turns in creative and accurate work products. Petra's desire to succeed, eagerness to learn, willingness and initiative to extend her learning, as well as her ability to be a leader to her classmates, will help her meet the challenges of second grade. She has been an absolute delight to teach!" Pretty darn good, huh?

Petra's last days of school:

June 14, 2006 - last day of preschool at the JCC with friend Anna.

June 7, 2007 - last day of school (kindergarten) at the Best School Ever (see side bar) with good bud Beatrix:

June 20, 2008 - last day of 1st Grade with Ms. Woolwine and Maddie:

Lastly, I need to replace this earring with a new set similar to it, any suggestions?

Peace out,
K-Love

A couple things to update/follow-up on:


1) the sprinkler thing is resolved for now, after a bit of searching Lars found the water shut-off for the sprinkler system. The dolphins have gone home. Lars and I mostly made up.


2) I felt really drained for the 1st 30-hours after Rosa died, but right now I'm feeling better. I guess I have more positive feelings than negative feelings about the way everything went, as sad as it was it was a beautiful moment. I still like being a midwife and I'm going to stick with it (unless the lottery pans out, in which case I'll be a home-schooling, stay-at-home mom with a vegetarian food show on the Food Network on the side).


3) Gay marriage has been legalized in CA. It's very exciting. I hope it sticks, unlike the first time.


4) We have an offer on a house, it's the short-sale gone foreclosure. We'll know more next week.





And now for the rest:


Losing Rosa has really shaken my already pathetic confidence in my own pregnancy. Certainly my own personal pregnancy losses have affected that, but then there's also a curse of being in the field and "knowing too much." I get a bit agitated when people say congratulations, etc, because all I can think about is getting this baby out alive AND on-time. I've done it before (3-times!), I'm not sure why I'm so jittery this time around. A good friend of mine just told me she's pregnant, she's also a midwife, and she's going through all the same emotions. Makes me feel less crazy.





Anyway, Ultimo really started getting rambunctious yesterday and has been moving more often ever since. Thank you Ultimo! Plus, I'm feeling less nauseated and haven't had any bouts of emesis in a while. The following scene was a while ago when I was 9 or 10-weeks pregnant. I took a doppler home from work so the kids could hear our new baby.

Okay, well time for baths, teeth, and Oil of Olay.

Peace and love.

There's two parts to it.

I want to talk less about my work, my job, my patients, but it seems that is a tough order for me. I apologize.
I've been working a lot lately, but for about a week everything was going very well. Then last night one of my patients came in with complaints of contractions, which is what you expect in my field. Sadly, my patient (lets call her Maria) was only 22-weeks pregnant. When I assessed her I could see that her bag of waters was bulging into her birth canal, I couldn't see any cervix holding back the baby. The nurse and I immediately tilted her head back and point her feet up, a position called Trendelenberg, in hopes of relieving the pressure on the bag of waters. I just had so much hope that there was something to be done, but there wasn't. About an hour later she delivered a beautiful baby girl 17-1/2 weeks early. We'll call the baby Rosa. At first, Maria didn't want to see the baby because she knew Rosa would die, but I put the baby on her chest wrapped up in warm blankets. Immediately, Maria began to cry, the first emotion she'd shown the whole night. I encouraged Maria and Jose, the father, to carress their baby and tell her how much they love her. They did. Rosa fought for her life, gasped for air, moved her arms and legs. When her daddy slipped his finger into her perfect little hand, she seemed to find some peace. Rosa was very strong. I checked her heart beat every 3 or 4 minutes, after 25 minutes it had become slow and irregular in the 50's and 60's. She was cold, but occassionally still gasping. Her parents cooed to her, held her, kissed her, held each other and cried. At almost an hour, I checked Rosa's heart rate one last time, it was gone. I looked at her mother, but she seemed to already know. Dr C, one of my favorite back-ups, had come in to help me. Dr C., the nurse, and I all quietly cried with the parents. We bathed perfect little Rosa, dressed her, took her hand prints and foot prints and photographed her with Mommy and Daddy.
There are two parts to my job. In many ways, helping the babies die peacefully with their parents holding them is of greater significance than anything else I do. I suppose it's more meaningful to me, too, though I hope to never do it again. While I can't recall every birth I've done with clarity, I do remember every baby of "mine" who has died. Sometimes, the parents don't have the strength to do it, and as the provider I am the one who needs to hold the baby and be the person to love them and cherish them as they pass away. Whether I do it or the parents do it this is so, so hard. More than just the baby dies when the passing away occurs.
Maria and Jose are 19-years old. They are very poor. They can't afford a funeral. Last night the nurses called a funeral home, the funeral home has offered to handle the arrangements free of charge.

A Million Times

I hate the way this is going to sound, like I'm some incompetent hack who relies on my husband to do all household repairs, etc. The fact of the matter is that I can mow the lawn, I can use power tools (only due to a genetic predisposition), I can do your basic trouble shooting stuff. When I can't, I certainly know when to drag in the experts. We all have our strengths.

I happen to be married to someone who believes that there is no job too small and certainly no job too big. Generally it's been okay, a few boofles in the past certainly haven't convinced him that he should throw in the towel on the big, technical, complicated job thing.

Now for our story. When we moved to this awful house that we live in, our landlord promised us all sorts of repairs. For example, he promised to put flooring in since the house only has the cement slab foundation for flooring. He promised to fix the fridge, the dishwasher, the mold. Blah, blah, blah. We believed him, got nothing in writing. We presently have mold, a broken fridge, and darn cold feet on ugly cement slab. So when stuff goes wrong these days, we shrug and try to keep on the sunny -- you know, the side that has us buying our own house very soon, cross your fingers. Anyway, the house had a sprinkler system that predates my own birth. California is so messed up!!! We're reminded daily on the news and monthly in our water bills that there is a significant water shortage and please conserve. Nobody here does native plants, though, they all want big grassy lawns that catch on fire, require a ton of water, and need illegal aliens to up-keep them with big gas guzzling lawn-mowers. Everyone has sprinkler systems that go off everyday, rain or shine. Back at home in Michigan, a region with the most fresh water per capita than anywhere else in the world, normal (middle class) people certianly did not have sprinkler systems and we definitely didn't water our lawns everyday. We followed city rules, watered our lawns on our respective odd or even days (as determined by the last digit of our address) by placing one of those arcing sprinkler doo-hickeys out there for a 1/2-hour then moving it 10-feet to the other side of the lawn, some of us stood out there with a hose and did it manually. We only used our slip-and-slides on "our" days. Many of us had brown, crispy lawns but we were conserving water because it's the darn right thing to do! Have I digressed?
Anyway, our landlord's dinosaur of sprinkler system gets its operating system from those old Apple IIE computers that my family bought when I was 3-year old. Because we are not Californians, as evidenced by our committment to conserve water, Lars claims he turned off the sprinkler system. Never mind that daily, the stupid thing goes off, watering the street, the concrete patio, some grass, and the driveway. Never mind that one of the sprinkler heads is broken and erupts into Old Faithful grade waterworks every afternoon shooting muddy water into the pool and surrounding communities. Lars insists that its off. I tell him its not, he sees with his scientist eyes that its not, but his scientist fingers (incapable of unscientific error) turned off the sprinkler system. Well, the durn thing has been on since this morning, it is now 2:45 and it is still going. I called him, even though I'm a feminist and can troubleshoot, because after 6-months of being "off" the sprinkler is in fact still on and there is now a pod of dolphins swimming in our back yard. He didn't react the way a husband should react when his wife has asked him A MILLION TIMES to do something. I got so mad I told him that I was going to rip the darn sprinkler system computer thingy out of the wall and then he'd be sorry, but at least it would turn it off . . . right? Right? Cause I can troubleshoot . . . ummm, right? Well, I wanted to rip it out of the wall, I really did, and I have a bad temper and I just couldn't take it. I took a deep breath, tried to be calm, decided to unplug it instead of bashing on the cement slab floor. You with me? Seems as though all that extra force I had to use to wedge my pregnant belly, fat butt, watering-conserving, Michigan-self back by the sprinkler system may have actually led to the stupid, stupid, stupid thing being removed from the wall. I don't know how it happened. But, anyway, with the dumb thing in my hands, I ran to the back of the house only to see the sprinkler STILL going. I cried. I got down on my hands and knees, threw my head onto the wet patio with the frickin' dolphins and sobbed my eyes out. Lars said something snarky, he's says he's sorry.
And so here I am, blood on my hands, a regular Lady MacBeth -- "out damned spot."

Piece(s) of Cake

Front view of Annike's and Mommy's bellies. Side view of Mommy's belly. I'm not that thin, but I'm having a hard fitting the pictures in so I just gave up. Besides, it's not that often one gets to look so svelte.

I can't stop eating cake, like at this moment I can't stop and it's very good. Lars even likes the cake, let it be known he's a pie man. Maybe this has something to do with us being preggers.

On the right is Lars with his new super-rad skateboard that he just got for his 31st birthday. Unlike me, he works off the extra cake by skating.

I saw 27 patients today and not once did I have to give bad news. I love today! People seemed to start noticing my pregnancy now, too. All of their kids would ask me if I was pregnant, and by the looks of relief on my patients' faces I'm guessing they were all thinking that I had gotten a bit chubby and that their kiddo was about to humiliate me. Lucky for them! I looked more pregnant after lunch, but that was due in part to the fact that my belly had more food-baby in it than human-baby.

On the left is Petra (7)doing a back walkover. Lars is in the background making dinner (vegan stir-fry). Above is a picture of Soren (5) eating Daddy's stir-fry.

The Shi-Shi Fairy still hasn't made it to our place to collect Annike's 3-remaining binkies. I'm guessing she's busy, I'm hoping she's not assuming there is going to be some sort of parent initiative involved. Tomorrow is a "home day" for Annike and me, maybe we'll try and contact the Shi-Shi Fairy HQ's to get enrolled in some sort of 12-Step Program.

Okay, gotta fly, Annike (3) wants to build some Licoln Logs with me.

Peace to all y'all.

First Day on the Blog

It's my first day on the blog, but I've been so inspired by my step-mom, sister, and friend's blogs that I'd thought I'd give it a whirl.

We went to our 4th ultrasound for Ultimo today. The ultrasound went well, kidneys looked good and there was a brain (more on that later). The heart was beating. The baby had its hands down in front of its nethers so we couldn't see the sex. There'll be enough ultrasounds coming up, I'm sure we'll be able to see one of these times. My hunch is a girl.

The aforementioned brain thing: last week I had to tell a patient of mine that, during an ultrasound, it was discovered that the baby was missing a brain (called anencephaly). There was a brain stem there, allowing very primitive function such as some nervous response and normal cardiac activity. Sadly, without the rest of the brain, the baby cannot survive outside the womb. Many couples opt to terminate the pregnancy once they learn of their baby's condition, as there is no hope for a normal or abnormal life. However, some families choose to continue the pregnancy in hopes of carrying the baby to term and bringing it into the world alive. Although many babies with this condition are born sleeping, a few are born alive. The families protect their heads with bandages, feed them, hold them and give them comfort. Usually the babies pass away within a couple of days, but some go on to live for a few weeks. The organs of live-born babies can be donated once they have deceased.

Anyway, I have a patient facing this decision right now. Her baby is alive right now, moving around inside of her, it's heart is beating and she is very torn. I've been having dreams that I'm actually the one carrying her baby. It's awful.

You should know that for every sad outcome I have, I have probably 30 happy outcomes. I guess the tough ones just stay at the forefront of my mind.

A story to lighten the mood: Petra (7) asked me today "Mommy, how do the mommy's and daddy's puzzle pieces get together to put a baby in the mommy if all their clothes are on and their belly buttons aren't even touching?" As most of you know, I'm pretty frank with the kids about pregnancy, developing fetuses, the politics of reproduction, etc., but only insofar as is appropriate given their very young ages. I panicked with this question, Lars was still at work and no other adults were around. I thought about taking the easy way out by describing in vitro fertilization to her, but then Soren interjected with a question about cake and then everyone turned their attention to him. Whew!

Any takers?