We continued our typical routine of putting Noah to bed that night, when contractions really hit home around 11pm.  By 1am, I was kneeling on all fours, calling our midwife to hurry on over, and the birthing pool was just filling up.  By 2am, we were still debating if the water was warm enough, but the baby was already crowning, and by 2:25am, I delivered her in lukewarm water, which was brilliant, since we really hadn’t considered how messy it would have been any other way.

If I only realized how great it was to crawl back into my own bed that night, I would have done the same with Noah…but then again, there are always things you would have done differently had you only known right?  Like choose another major in college, or not dated that jerk back in high school.

So, Naomie Eden Joie Wang is her name.  It’s a mouthful, but Jon and I felt the only compromise was if we both got our way.  So, she gets the same initials as Noah (N.E.W.) and she has a variety of nicknames from Mimi to E.J. to anything in between and each name is most definitely feminine, not ambiguously gender unspecific like Alex or Morgan or Reese.

As for me, I’m struggling to adapt to her sleep schedule, which ranges from sleeping for a 30 minute stretch to three hours, with constant nursing in between.  Not sure when this will even out, but I really hope it’s soon.  I’m tired and it feels like my boobs are on fire.

Noah has also felt a shift in responsibility and its obvious sometimes his feelings are hurt.  He started to ask me to put baby aside and pay attention to him, so Jon has had to pacify baby with his pinkie fingers until she realizes she’s been had.  But Noah has his loving moments too, throwing kisses her way, no matter how many germs he probably has from school, but then again, the whole family is coming up with some bronchial infection and she’s been immune to us so far, but being sick and recovering from pushing out a 6lb 11oz baby is no fun.

Besides these transitional moments at home, we are all very thankful that Jon has moved his office to El Segundo, dropping his commute to 10 minutes, instead of the hour he used to spend driving each way to Santa Monica (not to mention the drastic reduction of homeless and recovering alcoholics that used to loiter outside his door).  Just makes life that much better, even though we will never leave Southbay at this rate.

Looking forward to getting through these first postpartum weeks until I feel up to leaving the house.  Until then, I’ll have to live vicariously through everyone else this Labor Day Weekend…

Looks like Naomie is going to stay inside just a little longer than expected.  Here we are on August 25th, no signs of labor and nothing left to do but wait.  I have to admit, I’m more than anxious to kick start this process, though I know life is only going to be turned upside down, with nights becoming days and days becoming nights, with loads and loads of laundry piling up from cloth diapers and cloth everything else.  Curses!  I asked for it.  I wanted to go the eco-mom route.

One late evening, as I lay in bed, I was compelled to get up and throw all of our plastic tupperware, melamine kid dishes and #7 bpa-leeching Nalgene bottles in the recycle box.  Determined to replace everything with glass or stainless steel, I suppose my nesting instincts are just a little more than extreme right now.  Just took down all the drapes to dry clean, after however many decades they’ve been up thus far, and have been replacing all disposables with cloth, including Noah’s pull up trainers, in hopes that they don’t leak through the night.

Speaking of Noah, he has been making tremendous strides this past month, letting us know when he needs to go potty, negotiating “one last time” and “one more minute” deals, hugging and kissing and praying for soon-to-be-baby-sis, striking basic yoga poses and (oh, I’m so proud), climbing the pole, almost all by himself…

Maybe the car accident a few weeks ago freaked Naomie out from coming out into the world…here’s me hooked up to a fetal monitor for our non-stress test.  Really, it wasn’t as bad as it looks.  I was just being overly dramatic.  But I did feel very guilty.  Like a bad parent…

Jon has been super supportive this week, taking a whole week off to work from home, helping me out with errands and taking care of Noah, which is exhausting in itself.  So grateful we have each other…

Anyway, my spirits are high that Naomie will make her appearance soon.  We finally settled on her full name last night, which is a huge relief, but I’m not sharing it until her arrival!  The Braxton-Hicks contractions are happening more often, and I am hopeful she arrives before Week 41 comes along.  Keep us in your thoughts! XOXO!

]]> http://cutieandugly.com/blog/2010/08/25/week-40-no-on-time-delivery/feed/ 0 http://cutieandugly.com/blog/2010/07/27/day-251-4-weeks-and-1-day-left-to-go/ http://cutieandugly.com/blog/2010/07/27/day-251-4-weeks-and-1-day-left-to-go/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:45:43 +0000 Jellopop http://cutieandugly.com/blog/?p=1206 Aloha, long time no speak. I guess I’ve been wallowing in my misery of hormonal disruption, carrying around baby numero deuce, the ostentatious, garish girlie girl, who appears to have tossed my world upside down for a good portion of the last year. Is it inappropriate to admit that things have not been so delightfully glowing as it was the first time around? That I had so much more enjoyment carrying around my angelic Noah, and could have continued doing so well past his due date should he have wanted to stay longer…Well, honesty burns a hole through my tongue, then. While I bask around, thinking about how a swim or yoga class would do me good, my motivation to actually do these things declines with each passing minute. The one day I decide it’s absolutely necessary to walk 45 minutes to get the family to dinner, I trip in a pothole, falling to my knees, leaving me a pregnant, dizzy, bloody mess in the middle of the street and wondering why I go through the trouble to maintain my sense of self, when self preservation doesn’t even exist once I wander three feet from home?

Alas, the final month is upon us, I sit through the last hours of work, embracing the very little time off I’ll have, planning a schedule of activities to catch up with from the past 8 and a half months, such as prepping, nesting, resting and if I’m lucky, a hazard-free excursion to the pool.

Feel free to send me some positive energy, I really could use some help turning this frown upside down.

[View with PicLens]

Aside from all that, Mommy and Daddy have been busy too.  We’re now ready to share with you that Noah will be expecting a sibling later this summer, end of August, to be more exact.  With all the baby drama we had last year, I had a lot of hesitation (some might call DENIAL) for many, many months, fighting off bad dreams and invisible fears, as well as worthless doctors that force fed insecurity and doubt into each appointment with their recommended (but optional), statistical (yet seemingly hypothetical), peace (with stress) of mind type of tests to test your will as a parent.  It didn’t take much to convince me after the war I felt I had to fight to have a natural birth with Noah that the hospital was nowhere near where I wanted to be this time around.  After asking for doctor’s support for a home birth, I received none.  And so my resolve to find a knowledgeable, understanding and experienced nurse-midwife began.  Though I still want to visit the doc to get an ultrasound (some mysteries I just can’t wait 9 months for), we are ready to have this baby at home if all goes well…

So, stay tuned for more jelly belly goodness, as we get further along.  Till then, here is some entertainment to keep you rolling!

There's a little dude you don't wanna mess with!

We survived 2009.

While the world felt strain from economical struggles and America looked on with constant wonder at the changes in Office, we’ve been blessed with so many firsts that it’s only right that we take some time to reflect on how grateful we are today.

The Wang family began in January with family reunions during Chinese New Year, Noah’s first trip to Disneyland on Janelle’s Birthday and Noah’s first steps! How long ago that now seems, now that he is running and rampaging down our halls, screaming with laughter and sometimes, tears. Shortly after January passed, we continued our fervent search of new living quarters, which landed us in a promising new neighborhood that we only could have dreamed of when we first started house-searching two years ago. Now, our first real house, our modest little mid-century is now keeping us toasty through the chilly winter.

In March, we attended the Chiempornsakul’s wedding in Hawaii, which was another first for Jonathan and Noah, but unfortunately this landed Noah in the emergency room with low-grade pneumonia, which was enough to scare us to pieces. He recovered, eventually, the tough kid he is, but we weren’t without our share of illnesses this year, as you will come to find out. Jello also survived a weekend trip to Vegas with 12 stunning lady friends, henceforth named the Glitter Factory, or Sparkle City…a definite trip worth remembering.

In April, Noah turned 18 months, and was beginning to babble up a storm. English, Chinese and Incomprehensible. We were very proud of our multilinguist.

The Summer of 2009 followed, with first camping trips for Noah on the beach, weekend getaway trips to Seattle (yay, little brother, Prestin, graduated and is off to college!), San Francisco and San Diego, while Noah often had sleepovers with his Grandparents, Janelle took surfing trips with her girls and was back to teaching at S Factor, and Jon went on rock climbing and fishing trips with the dads…No complaints, it truly was a great summer full of friends, family and reconnections.

As summer winded down, Janelle experienced her first miscarriage, which was a sad day, that eventually passed, making us realize that how Noah came into our lives was nothing short of miraculous and perfect. So much to be thankful for (and we remind ourselves of this often, as he deliberately spills his milk and throws his food and slaps us in the face and bites us on the nose). October continued to be busy, with more family reunions with overseas cousins, an all-girls Paddle Boarding surf lesson and the sorriest Halloween Vegas trip ever, as Jon spent his Birthday confined to the hotel room, suffering through Swine Flu!  Needless to say, Janelle was ill the day we came home, confined to the couch for a week, and we were so thankful that Noah was immune to the notorious virus and he was still able to don his Wild Things Max costume that mommy made.

November was full of celebration as Noah turned two (though we celebrated it in October so we could carve pumpkins before Halloween) and more family reunions with cousins for Thanksgiving, realizing that everyone’s family is growing each year with new additions to the family that can’t even be counted on one set of fingers, there are so many. So, we keep trying and pray that 2010 will be the year when Noah will welcome a sibling in. Someone to keep him company and to teach him how to share and care and love for one another (it is becoming wildly apparent what single child syndrome does to one, even at this early age).

So, here we are, sitting around our first real Christmas Tree, recovered and settled after returning from a week long cruise to Mexico last week, with a tinge of guilt that many of our friends perhaps were unaware of our going ons this year. So let’s make 2010 be the year for better connections, memorable stories, meaningful conversations and better yet, some long overdue face time!

Friends and Family, We love you!

Jonathan, Janelle and Noah