Welcome Amos! An update and a birth story

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Amos Rainer D'Agostino

September 11, 2013 at 2:51 a.m. 

6 lbs 15 oz, 19 inches long

Amos's birth was absolutely beautiful.  Mercy Medical Center has a water birthing tub, which was part of the reason I chose that hospital.  So Baby Amos was born into the water, and my own hands were the first to touch him.  I went into labor at about 9:00 on Tuesday night, just after lying down for the night after moving into the new house.  I had been exhausted the whole day and practically no help to the movers.  As soon as I laid down, I felt my first painful contraction and in about two hours we were on our way to the hospital.  I knew my labor would go fast, so I wasn't going to wait.   

When I arrived at the hospital, the nurse put me on monitoring and Amos's heartbeat was too low for her liking.  I tried to tell her that he has always had a low heart rate (clocking in regularly at 122 throughout his appointments) but she didn't seem to care, so she kept me on the monitoring for an hour and a half.  I was getting very frustrated, having to endure contractions (every 2-3 minutes) while lying on my back in the hospital bed, which for me is the most painful way to have a contraction.  

Finally she allowed me off the monitor (around 1:00) and at about 1:15 I said I wanted to be in the birthing tub.  It was immediate relief.  At one point, I had to get out of the tub to use the restroom, and had a contraction and I could not believe the difference.  The buoyancy of the water makes contractions so much more bearable.  I labored in the tub for about an hour and the nurse told me I was 8 cm dilated.  I told her she needed to call the doctor.  She said, "He wants me to call him when you are fully dilated," to which I replied (okay, I'm a know-it-all), "Well then he's gonna miss it."  She did go ahead and call him then, and about 15 minutes later my water broke and that very second, in walked the doctor.  As soon as my water broke I was fully dilated, and the very next contraction, Amos was crowning.  He was born in three pushes-- head, shoulders, and the rest of 'im.  My doctor just let me be, watching closely but not interfering, and as soon as he was out he just said, "Joanna, pull your baby up to you!" so I did!  The doctor literally did not touch me until after the I got out of the birthing tub.  

I held Amos there in the tub for about 5-10 minutes before Maic cut his cord.  He didn't cry much.  He still hasn't.  He's a super-chill little guy, crying pretty much only when he's being changed.   

About 30 minutes old

As quick and as beautiful as it was, this birth was harder for me than Evelyn's was.  I was so exhausted going into it that it was hard for me to find the energy to make it through.  I kept thinking about how badly I wanted to go to sleep.  Maic was also extremely tired, so I felt like neither of us was as fully present as we were for Evelyn's birth.  I'll tell you this: I plan to never buy a house and have a baby in the same week again.  

We were released from the hospital after 24 hours.  Amos is doing really well.  He eats well and sleeps a lot.  He is slightly jaundiced, but not enough to worry.  We go back to the pediatrician on Monday to make sure his jaundice levels have gone down.  

Evelyn is having a hard time with the transitions, but definitely more with the house than with the baby.  This was her face for the first half hour of seeing Amos:

She likes him now, for the most part.  Though I have to say that in the process of writing this blog entry, she did throw her stuffed cat "New Kitty" at him while he was sleeping.  Her favorite thing to do is brush his hair. 

The harder part is the house.  She keeps saying she wants to "go home" which is pretty heartbreaking.  The worst part is that I kind of feel the same way.  This house doesn't feel like home yet.  It just feels like a lot of work.  I spent Evelyn's naptime cleaning the living room (see below) so that at least I wasn't tripping on boxes.  That has helped with some of the non-homey feelings, and I am feeling much better than I felt this morning.  The other rooms, however...and the rental house...well, we have a lot of work ahead of us.  

But we also have a lot of this ahead of us:

So life is good. 

Thanks for all of your love and support, congratulations and prayers.  We have been so blessed.  

An Accepted Offer; a Timeline

Hi Friends, 

Over a week ago we received an accepted offer on a house here in Ripon.  It's an adorable home-- barn red with a sweet, fairly private but not-yet-fenced-in backyard and a living room full of real wood paneling and a fireplace.  It looks like a little cabin.  There's work to be done, but it's the fun kind of work: painting and sanding and redecorating instead of the hard, super expensive kind of work like roofing and replacing major appliances.  Eventually it will need some of that, but we're hopeful that we can do a big project each year and bring the house up in adorableness and value. 

I dream about it all the time, but I do so with a small bit of caution.  Nothing is certain until the closing day, and the mortgage loan we're getting is a strict one-- one that requires proper working order for most if not all aspects of the house because as first time buyers with a small down payment we are at a high risk for default; they don't want anything expensive to pop up right after we buy it.  So we are waiting for the appraiser to come and tell us (and the seller) to fix some outlets and some drips and some paint and bring everything up to code.  Any 1936 house has flaws. 

I don't want to post many pictures of it until it's *ours,* but I promise that I will someday, especially after the shag carpeting has gracefully wandered out to the curb.  I confess, we will be getting rid of the Packers mailbox.  It's not that I don't like the Packers.  It's just, well... I like plain mailboxes.  

"So, Joanna, I noticed you were 34 weeks pregnant.  Does that have any effect on you purchasing and moving into a house in a month?"

Why, what an interesting question.  Actually, I've been amazed by the amount of people who have told me lately that they bought their first home/a home while pregnant.  Even our good friends Ann and Ben moved several states over in the last month of pregnancy.  I think we can do this.  And we have a TON of offers for help (all of them will be accepted!) from church members and community members and family members to the extent that they can from so many miles away.  

Here's the timeline:

Now: here I am, just waiting.  

The next few weeks: Packing, sorting, taking stuff to the thrift store, cleaning

August 20th: Evelyn turns two! 

August 27th: Our baby nephew is coming earth-side! (This has nothing to do with our move... but we can't wait!) 

September  4th: Closing date. 

As soon as we close: Ripping up carpet, sanding floors.  Hoping to find a couple helpers for this. 

September 14th: Baby is due

October 1st: Lease is up on our rental house, must be fully moved in to new house.  

There is this weird thing happening in my mind where I almost want the baby to come late (not so late that I need medical intervention, but just...not early).  I never thought I'd have that wish.  But he will come when he comes, and I am certain that everything will fall into place.  

Well Hello, There!

I can't concentrate for anything these days.

There's a new baby coming in approximately 56 days.
Evelyn turns two exactly a month from today.
I'm coming up on my one year anniversary at the church.
And now, in a surprising turn of events, we're strongly considering putting an offer on a house here in Ripon.

For a while I had considered shutting down my blog.  It was just one more thing on my list of things to do and I thought it would be wise to just let it go.  But lately I've been thinking about how nice it would be to write out some thoughts now and then, and right now especially, since I am having so much trouble concentrating on some important Saturday evening to-dos (those are pastor code-words for sermon writing), I thought I'd take some time to write out some thoughts.

Appleton Timber Rattlers game

The last time I wrote, we hadn't announced that we were having another baby yet.  We found out just shortly after the new year, and waited until I was 12 weeks along to announce it publicly, which was in late February.  In that time, we learned that my brother and sister in law are also expecting their second baby, just two weeks before us.  We are both having little boys!

Little boy newborn clothes.  Thank God Evelyn's two best friends are boys with late summer/early fall birthdays!

This pregnancy has been harder than the first time around.  I'm sure it's because of chasing Evelyn around and my job is a different kind of physically exhausting than seminary was.  But I also feel a different kind of attachment to him.  I had a very deep spiritual connection with Evelyn throughout my pregnancy, but I don't have that now.  I think perhaps it's because I know what loving a child means now in a different way than I did then, and I worry (I know it's an irrational worry) that I can never love another child.  The attachment is growing and changing, though, especially as Evelyn gets more and more excited for him to come and when I see the excitement in her eyes my heart expands in a new way.  She doesn't understand the full reality of having a baby brother but she does know that he has things in our house, that he is inside me now and will someday come out, and that he is very, very special.  She talks about him all the time, whether it's provoked or not.  She likes to draw pictures of him and look at all his stuff.  She kisses my belly and sings to him.  If I ask her what he's doing she used to say sleeping, but now she says he's playing.  When I ask her what she wants to do when he comes out of mommy she says, "Go home."

A picture Evelyn drew of her baby brother. 

Before he is born, Evelyn will turn two.  Her language is exploding, especially since she spent a week with her cousin Zoey a month ago.  She has her own little personality that blows my mind every day.  Some of it is stuff that we taught her, but what's really crazy is the way that she comes up with stuff totally on her own.  She even makes jokes.  They aren't funny jokes, but she will for example tell us that she sees an elephant in the tree, then start cracking up and say, "NOOOO that's silly!" She also pretends to be different animals, usually a cat, but also dogs, penguins, cows, spiders.

At the Timber Rattlers game

In a fort with Nos. 

Okay, and then finally I want to talk about this house thing.  So we had originally thought that buying a house wasn't within our financial ability at this point in our lives.  But after talking to a banker and doing a ton, ton, ton of numbers crunching and talking with friends and family, we learned that it is actually a very wise financial decision for us to buy a house now.  While we're aware that the unexpected expenses of owning a house can be many, we are also tired of renting a house in a town we plan to continue living in for the foreseeable future.  This isn't the right decision for everyone, but here in Ripon the market is in our favor and with the right house, it's a no-brainer.  

There is one that we are strongly considering, and we will have some definite answers on whether or not we will place an offer by early next week.  We are hoping that if we decide to do this, we can do it very quickly so that we can be in the house before the baby comes.  That is, of course, two months away.  So it will be a very stressful couple of months.  The banker has offered to do her best to speed the process up.  Once I know more, I will share!