It's a Girl!

It's taken me a while to post this, but most anyone who is reading already knows ... I had a baby! Shocking, isn't it? Well it was for me! I mean, as much time and energy and money and emotional whatever-itude you put into planning for a new addition for ten whole months (more if you were scheming for it even before), when that new addition actually gets deposited on your chest covered in a warm blanket (and goo you'd cross the street to avoid under normal circumstances), it's shocking.

Anyway, I'll go backward since you already know the punchline, as it were.

This is Katherine Hall Bosche.

She was born June 16, 2010, at 11:39 a.m. via scheduled induction ... and epidural ... and an epidural booster ... and forceps. The use of forceps was minimal this time, I'm told, and only because my pelvis is weirdly shaped and not conducive to birthin' babies. So I guess I did the best I could do. Steven was impressed, which was satisfying in some vaguely validating way that probably says bad things about my need for approval.

Arriving at the hospital at 6 a.m. for induction was a muffled sort of terrifying. Muffled because who can muster real terror that early? I do know that I spent the three-minute drive to the hospital in a state of silent panic.

Steven was wonderful and the nurses were young and sweet and nonthreatening and my doctor was calm and capable (if a very big fan of himself). The pain was worse than I remembered, but I did manage to labor to 8 centimeters before requesting the blessed needle in the back. In the meantime, having Alex and his grandmothers in the room was enough to keep me from making too big a deal about the pain (I didn't want to traumatize the boy).



Katherine was "tricky," they kept telling me. Her heart tones were perfect when nothing was happening, but when I pushed they'd go way down. Enough to worry my doctor and have them weighing the choice between forceps and a C-section. In the end they let me "labor down" for an hour to see if her head would come down to within forceps-grasping range. And I don't remember much about that hour except that it hurt and I worried. And when my doctor came back and the grandmothers left with Alex and pushing resumed, there followed the most intense experience of my life. Here I'll spare the details.

When she was out they immediately placed her on me, and on top of us both an almost-hot blanket, and I held her, chest to chest, and I couldn't see her face but Steven said she looked like me. And with the room still buzzing from the whirlwind of labor and delivery and me still trying to catch my breath and Steven still texting the moms to update them, the child at the center of all this activity and excitement fell asleep. It was all pretty incredible.



She is for all intents and purposes a dream baby, and we're still waiting for her to prove she's just been lulling us into a state of complacency so she can stage her coup, overthrow us, and rule the household with piercing wails and chronic dissatisfaction. (Oh, newborn Alex...)

But really. She amazes us.

She sleeps. Like, a lot. During the day we look forward to her two or three periods of alertness, when the three of us cluster around and admire her rarely glimpsed newborn-blue eyes as she blinks up at us in alien-esque slow motion.



She stretches. She scrunches her little body up, rear end stuck out and tiny feet crossed to mold herself into a little ball of irresistibility.

She makes funny faces. She has an entire repertoire of expressions already, most of which flutter over her features repeatedly while she sleeps, reminding us in rapid succession of Alex, of Steven, of me ... occasionally of someone we're not even knowingly related to.

She loves her big brother. His voice can stop her (granted, infrequent) bouts of crying in their tracks. She turns her head toward the sound of his voice and, when we let him hold her, she's happy as a clam and he is proud and adorable. I think her first two days home I did nothing but take pictures of the two of them together. He calls her "My best Katherine" and thanks me for having the best baby ever.



OK, so it's not all roses. Alex is adjusting in his own way, which entails little overreactions and uncharacteristic responses to things. Like when the turkey and cheese fell out of his sandwich and he exclaimed heartbrokenly, "Oh no, now it's just bread!!!" He's suffering more than his fair share of minor injuries, most of which are suspect, and he's not sleeping well. Worst for me is that he seems excessively eager to please, as if he's trying to ensure his good standing.

And he broke his damn Nintendo DS, a birthday gift that was doing double-duty as a you're-a-big-kid-now special rite-of-passage reward.

We're doing well. Settling into the new routine that won't really be a routine for another couple of years because with a baby predictability is hard to come by and with a toddler it's impossible. I'm trying to get out more than I did when Alex was tiny because I think we both suffered for my not doing so and I don't want to make that mistake again. Yesterday I braved Babies R Us and Old Navy, plus took her to a friend's house, and all were successful ventures that did not leave me in tears.

Her umbilical stump came off last night. She's growing up already.