Five Months

Dear Cole,

Today you turned five months. I can’t believe you are already this big. Almost half a year. Sometimes I look at you and still can’t believe that you are our baby. OUR baby. At the same time, I feel like you have been part of our life for a very long time. I can not imagine our family without you—well, I could not imagine our family without since the moment you were born.

You are, as far as I am concerned, the easiest baby on the face of the planet. When people ask me how you are, I always say “great” or “wonderful” or “growing fast.” Sometimes I say “he is such an easy baby,” and then I often regret saying it. One—because I am afraid to jinx it. And two—I don’t want people to hate me for being so lucky. I know I would if I were on the other side of it.

Let’s start with sleep. Here is how you go to sleep at night. After dinner, between 7:30 and 8, I nurse you. Then Daddy or I give you a bottle (since I don’t have enough milk for you, which is very frustrating for me, but after all, this space is not about me; it is about you, so I will stop complaining). Then we burp you and change your diaper. Then we take you to the bedroom. We give you kisses. And then comes the interesting part. Are you ready for it? Here it comes. We lay you down in the bassinet, leave the room and THEN YOU FALL ASLEEP. I kid you not. Asleep. On your own. No rocking, no singing, no shooshing, no bouncing, no crying it out. Nothing. Sometimes you talk for a minute, sometimes you laugh. But within a few minutes you fall asleep.

Another thing about sleep is equally amazing. You have been sleeping through the night since you were 8 weeks old. When I mention this to others, they say, “So he only wakes up to eat that then goes back to sleep at night?” And I respond, “No, he is actually sleeping the entire night, as in from 8:30 until 7:30, without waking up at all.” Funny thing is, we tried a few sleep tricks on you to help you sleep longer (such as dream feeds, which worked wonders for your brother)—before you started sleeping through the night. But none of them work. So we backed off, thinking you were not ready. And that’s when you decided to start sleeping all night long.

As a caveat, I should admit that your daytime sleep has not been as impressive. Once in a while, you take a two- or even three-hour nap, but most of the time your daytime naps don’t last more than an hour. But who cares? You are sleeping all night long!

You are a wonderfully smiley baby. Any time you make eye contact with someone, you smile your adorable toothless grin. And it is not just your mouth—your entire face smiles: your eyes twinkle, your fat cheeks get dimples, your eyebrows stretch out. It is such a heartwarming sight. You don’t seem to have any stranger anxiety yet as you smile as everyone.

You seem to enjoy developing your social skills more than your motor ones. You can sit up fairly well on your own, but you still can’t roll over or lay happily on your tummy for more than a couple of minutes. I am convinced that it’s not because you can’t but because you are not interested. Being able to sit up, coupled with your recent discovery of your feet, which you love to grab and chew on when you are on your back, provides you with enough interesting perspectives on the outside world that you don’t need to bother with rolling.

You are still a summer storm, as your daddy called you—when something displeases you, you let us know immediately and with intensity. You can not be distracted and won’t calm down until your displeasure is resolved—and then you are suddenly peaceful and happy as if nothing ever happened. However, there are only two things that upset you: 1) hunger (and we usually do a preemptive strike—aka feed you—before you get upset about that) and 2) your car seat (turning on static on the radio often solves this problem; and your overall dislike of the car seat seem to be steadily improving with time).

There is one thing that works like magic when you are upset: singing. You respond immediately when we sing to you. “ABCs,” Russian “Baju Bajushku Baju” and “You Are My Sunshine” are your favorites.

My heart is so absolutely filled with love for you, and I can not get enough of holding you and kissing you. You truly are my sunshine.




Love,
Mom

Birth Story: Mom's POV

Dear Cole,

You turned four months last week, and I am amazed by how fast the time has flown. On one hand, you have changed so much in a few short months. On the other hand, it seems like you have been part of our family for a very long time, much longer than just four months. Before any more time passes, I wanted to write down your birth story from my point of view—probably much more for my benefit than yours. My memory is so notoriously poor, and while I know I will never forget the day you were born, I may forget some details, and I really don’t want to. I want those memories to remain fresh since it was such an amazing day.

At some point during my third trimester, I asked one of the midwives about when I should head to the hospital when labor begins. She said to give them a call when contractions became regular. “You’ve been through this before,” she remarked, “so you remember what real contractions feel like.” I nodded because I thought I did.

On Friday, October 26, I had stomach cramps most of the day, nasty gas cramps. Constipation has been a major problem for me throughout this pregnancy, so having gas cramps was nothing new. I did note to myself that they were stronger and more uncomfortable than usual. But I went on doing things that I needed to do

These cramps woke me up around 1 a.m. I was starting to get a back ache, too. At 4:30, I woke up again. As I tossed and turned, trying to get back to sleep, I kept glancing at my clock radio and soon realized that these “gas cramps” had a certain pattern to them. It was then that it occurred to me that perhaps these were not gas cramps after all but real contractions. I tried timing the duration of them, but that was not easy to do with the digital clock. I finally got up and went downstairs, turning on my computer and feverishly trying to finish up some last-minute work. I tracked my contractions on my computer, too.
4:49 – 30 sec
4:55 – 60 sec.
5:02 – 60 sec.
5:09 – 45 sec.
5:15 – 60 sec.

At 5:30, I woke up your dad and called the hospital. The contractions were uncomfortable, but I could still talk through them. The doctor on call told me to take a shower and call back when the contractions got to be 5 minutes apart. Both daddy and I took showers and started getting ready. At that point, Babushka and Seriozha got up to find out why we were up so early on a Saturday. I have to tell you, having company when you are dealing with contractions is not a helpful thing. They kept talking, perhaps trying to take my mind off, but I could not maintain the conversation. Both Babushka and Seriozha would have the look of fear come across their faces every time I had to stop talking and breathe through the pain. The contractions started spacing out—my body was not liking all of this attention. So I went to the bedroom and lied down. The contractions were not getting much closer, but they were getting stronger and longer. I was ready.

At 7 a.m., we were on our way to the hospital. My back was killing me, and I remarked to daddy that I didn’t remember having this much pain with Jon. At 7:40, Margie, the midwife, checked me and happily announced, “You are at 7 cm!” No wonder the pain was so much stronger—I got epidural when I was 4 cm with Jon. “I need epidural now,” I said (screamed?). Another midwife, Patrice, piped in, “You are so close, you can do it without the drugs.” “I know I can,” I said (snapped back?), “but I don’t want to.” They were happy to oblige, but they warned me that if my water broke or if I dilated much further, it would be too late for the epidural. That sent me into a bit of a panic mode: having to give birth without drugs was one of my biggest fears about labor this time around. It felt like it took forever for the anesthesiologist to show up, and the pain was intense. Patrice showed daddy how to apply pressure to my back to help with back labor. L&D nurse, Kate, was amazing too—what a wonderful, calming influence. While we were waiting for the anesthesiologist, I got hooked up to antibiotics for group B strep, a very common infections that’s harmless to the mother but dangerous to the baby. Margie mentioned she was glad I was asking for epidural because they needed to stall my labor—I needed at least four hours (or ideally eight) of antibiotics before delivery.

Finally, around 9 a.m., anesthesiologist showed up, and epidural brought sweet relief.

At 11:20, Margie checked me. “We better set up for delivery now.” It was still not quite four hours for antibiotics, but it was close. She broke my bag of water. I thought about how odd it was that with Jon, having my water break was the first sign of labor, but with you, the water never broke, even though I was fully dilated and effaced.

I pushed once. “I can see his head,” your daddy said. “Whoa, hold on, stop pushing,” Margie said. “Dad, do you want to deliver your son?” Your daddy looked stunned and a little uncomfortable. “I won’t be offended if you don’t want to do it,” I said. But he hesitated only for a moment, and then rushed to the bathroom to wash his hands.

A minute later I pushed again. And the most amazing thing happened. My husband, the love of my life, with his own hands pulled out our son, the newest love of my life, from my body and placed him on my belly. It was 11:38 a.m.

I can not find words right now (doubt if I ever will) to describe what a miraculous moment it was. I don’t remember much after that. You are here. You are perfect. You are ours. You are my miracle.