the heroic details

Many a morning I have sat down at my laptop with a cup of coffee attempting to write, but it wasn't long before I had to abandon it.  And many evenings I have sat down with a glass of wine and made more attempts, but those, too, were abandoned.  Here I am again: a new day, a new cup of coffee. I am now the mother of one child, one special needs child, one toddler, and one newborn. Isabelle's grand entrance into our lives has made me more aware of the unique challenges that each of my children presents, and I am spending much of my day sitting on the couch nursing the baby and wondering how I'm going to meet those challenges. At one point in my attempted writing I had decided I would talk about each of the phases that my children are in.  You know, what they're up to at these stages of their lives.  That'll be cute and fun, I thought.  Well, I'm sad to say that I ended up writing a whole list of complaints about each of them.  Goodness.  I had to stop a

Here's my obligatory "I had a baby and this is my birth story" post!  There's not much to tell because everything went so smoothly.  Although not my fastest labor, it was by far my easiest. I went to bed around 10:00pm on Wednesday night, but I felt weird as I crawled under the covers next to my husband.  Although I couldn't describe how I felt, I remember saying to him: "I could be totally wrong, but it might be soon.  I feel different." I fell asleep and dreamed of contractions.  I can't remember anything else about the dream except that I was having contractions and they were killing my back!  Suddenly, I woke up with a full bladder, cramps, and sharp back pain.  I thought maybe the cramping was because I had to pee, but even after I went to the bathroom I was hit with a pretty hard contraction.  And so I was also hit with a realization: I'm in labor!  I looked at the clock and it was just a few minutes after midnight.  Her due date. I w