UNION SQUARE ON A SUNDAY

The thing about having a pediatrician in Union Square (and one that's open on Sundays at that!) is that no matter how often you have to go for newborn weight checks or scheduled vaccinations or unanticipated flus, there's always an unbelievable farmer's market just outside when you're finished (well, not on Sundays anymore, but on most days).  No matter how long you have to wait in the crowded waiting room (and you always have to wait, regardless of whether you show up early, late, or right on time), the warm almond croissants from the bakery next door will surely keep you company.  And no matter how teary and traumatic the needle is, the space-age playground and the food trucks and the street musicians and the bookstore beckon afterwards.  And then my babies' anxiety is replaced by excitement, and our doctor visits become adventures of sorts.  We'll be stopping in to the doctor's a lot more with two kids, but I don't mind.  The energy of Union Square is our spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down, and I'll take it any day of the week. :)

APRIL ROOFTOP

 
 
 
 
 

Due to a last minute scheduling change at work, I was unexpectedly left with a {{gasp!}} free day on Sunday! With Sundays usually being a big work day for me, this was quite a fantastic surprise. There are so many weekend rituals that I usually miss out on: Sunday brunch in the city, the big Sunday Times that takes hours to read, Sunday supper with our little family.. Sometimes I daydream about the time when I'll be able to enjoy the weekend as most people do- I imagine having the paper delivered and making a big breakfast with fresh squeezed OJ and watching cartoons in my pajamas, then later putting a roast in the oven and playing music with my family in the living room (Yes, this city girl's daydreams can veer into domestic territory once in awhile!)  As it turns out, I didn't partake in any of those things on my rare Sunday off, but it was a lovely day nonetheless.

On this first day of April, Biet and I spent the day together at home, watching and listening to the drizzly wet weather from the windows.  It is finally April: a month of new growth and new beginning as the spring season really sets in, a month of flowers and children and eggs as Easter passes, and my birth month. I love April. I have been looking forward to April's arrival.  To celebrate this first day of this lovely month, Biet and I headed up to the roof for a little photoshoot! We spontaneously decided to try and beat the impending rain this afternoon and ran upstairs with our tripod. I realized the other day how few pictures there are of just the two of us together (since I'm usually the one behind the lens) and decided to make an effort to remedy that. I hardly have any pictures of my Mother and I together from my childhood, and have always longed for them.  I don't want Biet to look back one day and wonder why there aren't more photos of her Mama and her.  So we stood up high on the chilly April rooftop and snapped away.  We were only up there a couple of minutes when the gray skies turned even grayer and heavy raindrops began falling upon our heads and our camera.  We scrambled back inside just in time to miss the thunderous downpour, and spent the rest of the day warm and bundled inside the apartment.

The April showers are upon us, but oh the flowers that are sure to sprout afterwards..

**And for anyone wondering where Biet gets that glorious moon face from, please see below photo:

6 Months

My darling girl, you are six months old. Each day I witness your personality building & shining through more and more. I am in love. You are one strong baby, baby. Your voice is loud. I awake each morning, not to your wailing & cries, but to your lovely voice singing. You lay next to me and sing and sing, songs without words in a secret language I used to speak 27 years ago. What a beautiful voice you have. Your tiny hands have also grown strong over these months. You look at the world with a quiet contemplation, and then, when you're ready, you reach out fearlessly with curiosity and wonder. And when you grab ahold of something you like, well- oh my- is your grip tireless! And then there's the eyes: your Mama's eyes (& your Grandpa's & your Great Grandpa's before him, & so on & so on). Those bright crystal blue eyes capture the attention of every soul in the room. I know that when you are older, those shining eyes will demand the respect of everyone in the room, too. You are slowly discovering what you like, my love, and what you dislike as well. And you show us, with every cell in your body, which is which. And with all of your strength and stamina, you carry with you an equal fragility. Your facial expressions, so delicate and doll like, cannot be coaxed. You, with all of your six months, maintain a quite serious demeanor most of the time. And then, when I least expect it, you turn to me, look me in the eyes, and curl your lips into a cheeky cheshire smile. That is when my heart feels heavy. Not with sorrow, but heavy with life. I can feel our connection to one another, I can feel your innocence and your joy.  When your perfect little head (which you held up from the day you were born) rests against my shoulder, I feel complete. When that feeling comes over me, I carry you to the living room, put on an old song, and dance with you.  You are too small to ever remember these dances, but we have had many. Sometimes, in that moment when your smile turns to a grin, I can see, for a split second, the face of the little girl you will one day be. Sometimes, also, I can see the faces of both of your late Grandmothers there too, layered delicately within your beauty. Always, I can see the face of your Papa. You certainly got a lot of him in you.  I am so proud of you, my daughter. You have been alive for six months, my little warrior, my little doll. And I love you.
-Your Mama

My Little Loves

I'd just like to say Thank You to all of the readers who hopped over here from My Little Loves, & to Bekah for offering me the opportunity to do a guest post. It feels good to share my story with the world, & to read all of the lovely comments from other women. I am honored to be connected to such an amazing network of Mothers & Midwives & Doulas & Bloggers & Readers. So Thank You!

Life around here has been pure madness. I have a love/hate relationship with moving. I love starting anew, designing a new space, exploring new neighborhoods, and filtering through old possessions. I am not so thrilled about packing, removing the many many shelves and nails from our walls, and never being able to find anything while living out of suitcases. Our apartment is a sea of boxes and packing tape, but hopefully by this time next week we'll be settled into our new home. Biet doesn't seem to mind a bit. Nico, on the other hand, is not having a good time. She likes order. Really. She is a much happier pooch when the house is clean and orderly than when it is a mess. This moving business is stressing her out. I wish I could tell her that it's almost over, but all I can do is snuggle her in our bed (the bed is the only clutter-free place in our apartment right now), with her on one side and baby girl on the other. My two little ladies.

Here are the final 2 photos Gaby snapped of me for My Little Loves. Bekah posted them on her blog so I thought I'd share them here too!

Staircase Photos Part 2

Here's another set of our "Publicity Photos". These photos will always remind me of our last month in the apartment in which Biet was born. That's right: we move in 3 weeks!! We're in the throes of apartment hunting (is it so much to ask for an affordable, spacious, sun-lit home in a cute neighborhood, with hardwood floors??) and about to delve into the world of packing. I'm a bit anxious about having to pack up our life into a million boxes and move across the bridge. Living out of suitcases, even for just a little while, with Biet being so small, might be a little hard. Or maybe it will be fun, an adventure- like camping out in our own home. Maybe we'll make s'mores and sing songs and dance around in our new empty space. I'll let you know next month. First, we need to find a new space- wish us luck!

Staircase Photos Part 1

In anticipation of a coming post (featuring Petite Biet!) over at My Little Loves, a beautiful blog that we are thrilled to be a part of, we headed outside to take some "publicity photos".. Here are the outtakes:
(we were trying to go for a 1960's feel & used a setting to make them a little grainy like this- still not sure if I like it or not)







Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Our Time

Without an ounce of effort or planning, Biet now has a "bedtime." She determined it for herself. And the lucky number is: 9pm (sometimes 9:30 if she's feeling wild). Her little tiny body has its own little tiny rhythm and when we paid attention to it, a sleep cycle emerged. So now I really am starting to feel like a Mom. I've learned to try and have myself fed, the dog walked, & baby girl cleaned and swaddled by 9pm. Then the house is calm, and we get to have our time.

Our time: our end of the day meeting in the big bed. I gaze into my baby's eyes. She tells me how her day was. She demonstrates all of the new sounds she's learned (her tiny voice box is becoming very dynamic!) and faces she's working on. We listen to Papa's guitar playing drifting in from the next room. Biet shows off her drooly grin. We look out the window at the moon and the darkened trees and the bright city lights. She plays with my hair and I assure her that her's, too, will one day grow long & shiny, but maybe not the same color as Mama's. and then we nurse, nurse, nurse until baby girl falls asleep.

Sometimes (like tonight) I fall asleep too, and awaken to a darkened house with my husband & daughter sleeping next to me. Usually, though, Biet drifts off and then Gaby & I have a few hours of parent "freedom"- when we briefly go back to being just a couple. Then Nico might get an extra walk (to the deli as one of us goes on a late night Ben & Jerry's run) and we get to snuggle and watch movies. Until Biet's sleepy voice cries out for her Mama again. And then I return to her side to nurse her back into dreamland. I cherish this time with her, our time; our time as Mother & Daughter and nothing more and nothing less.

BIET'S BIRTH STORY

Our daughter, Biet Luna Savransky, was born Monday May 16th, at home. She weighed 7lb 11 oz and was 19 inches long. We are so in awe of our little baby. She was born in the water at 6:59 pm after a short, extremely intense labor.

I began having contractions on our due date, Sunday May 15th, in the afternoon. They were painless and extremely irregular, but we were thrilled. I had continued to wait tables until 39 weeks, and when I left for maternity leave my boss invited us to come have one last dinner as a childless twosome, on the house. Realizing that this might be our last chance to take her up on that offer (and in fact it was) we decided to dress up and go out for a four course meal. By the end of the night, my contractions were steadily 10 min apart and getting slightly uncomfortable. Our midwife, Karen, was going to come the next afternoon. We took the dog for a long walk and went to bed.

I knew that labor could take many hours or days, and was determined to sleep that night to make sure I had energy for when the "real labor" began. Gaby told me the next day that he watched me going through contractions all night in my sleep. The next morning we awoke, made a big breakfast and fresh juice, and super-cleaned the apartment. We moved all the furniture and set up the birthing tub in the kitchen, and covered the couch and chairs and bed in shower curtain-liners. Karen arrived at 2:45 to assess my labor. We had kept track of all the contractions on the iPad App and anxiously showed her the last hours of records. She looked but said she would rather just watch me go through a couple contractions and then do a cervical check. They were about 6 min apart, and uncomfortable enough to make me sit or lean, but I could still speak normally, and felt that these were pretty mild. As I was getting up to move to the bedroom for the cervical check, my water broke. I was pretty disappointed that because the bag of waters had ruptured I couldn't find out how dilated I was, if at all. So I assumed that I was most likely one or two centimeters, and convinced myself that the baby probably wasn't going to be born until the next day. After all, everyone had told me that first babies are very long labors.

Karen had a very hard time deciding whether to stay, or go home and check back in a couple hours. I told her to go, that I was fine, and could bear through the many hours of these contractions on my own. Gaby was not so comfortable with the idea. In the end she decided it was safe for her to drive back to Brooklyn. We called my friend Summer (acting as doula) to have another person with us, and called the dog-sitter to come pick up our pitbull. Karen instructed us to call her right away if: 1.The contractions quickly became longer and much closer together in a short period of time 2. I could no longer speak through them 3. I felt a shift in weight of the baby's head moving down in my pelvis. She left around 3:45. Literally, as soon as she walked out the door, the first two happened.

I fell into a contraction and began moaning, was unable to speak, & finally felt what I considered was real pain. It was unlike all of the other contractions I had felt. The next one came 3 min later. Gaby told me he was going to run out and stop Karen before she drove away but I ordered him not to. I was envisioning these type of contractions coming until the wee hours of the morning, and saw no reason to have Karen sitting there with us as I moaned through them. I felt more comfortable getting the brunt of the work done alone, as a couple. I tried to take a shower but found myself unable to stand, and fearful of sitting because Karen had said no bath with your water broken. Gaby helped me out and I didn't even bother to get dressed again. Looking back I see that this was the "loss of modesty" stage. The contractions moved to 2 minutes apart. Summer arrived and she and Gaby decided, against my wishes, to call Karen. She told them to fill up the pool, she was on her way back over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Through each and every contraction, Gaby walked me across the apartment, held me up when I couldn't walk, rubbed my back when I fell over a chair or couch or table. I kept trying to move to new pieces of furniture as the pain became seemingly unbearable. Karen arrived back just before 5pm with her wonderful assistant Chanti. She told me to get in the tub, that this baby was definitely coming soon. I thought to myself that "soon" must mean at least 7 or 8 more hours, since this WAS my first baby. The weightlessness in the tub helped immediately, as I felt I could finally relax the rest of my body now like we learned in our Bradley classes. However, soon the contractions seemed to coming on top of one other, with maybe 10 second breaks, and I found myself turning and twisting in the water, trying to find a position that hurt "less" to no avail. I had become, to my surprise, very vocal. I heard sound coming from my mouth that seemed more fitting for a farm animal, but I had truly surrendered to my body at that point. Every now and again my voice would become too high pitched, and Gaby would join in in his lowest voice. I don't remember doing it, but he said I would immediately go back to a low toned voice.

Just before 6pm, after nearly an hour in the tub, Karen said she wanted to do a cervical check. I agreed, and as soon as the next contraction ended she hurriedly checked before the next one began. I prepared myself mentally to hear "4 centimeters" or something close. She was just finishing when I started having the next contraction, and I heard her, through the intense pain, say "9 1/2 centimeters." I screamed out "really?" Two contractions later, my low-toned vocal expressions ended with grunting. Karen told me I had just pushed. Everything changed to bearing down and animalistic grunting. The contractions spaced out a bit, giving me breaks during which I would fall asleep for a few moments at a time. I was so exhausted that when Karen asked me to move into a squat, I couldn't. Gaby immediately got in the water and held me under my arms in a supported squat. I could feel her moving down, and when Karen held the mirror up I could see her dark hair. After an hour of pushing, she was born into the water. I didn't catch her. I was leaning on Gaby with my eyes closed when I heard him start speaking in spanish & crying, & I knew she was finally out. I opened my eyes and she was in front of me.

Our Bradley Method teacher, Mary Esther, said once that shorter labors sometimes need more time to really sink in. It is true. I had so well prepared myself for a long labor that when the whole thing was over in less than 4 hours, I was a bit in shock. I stayed in a business-like frame of mind for many hours afterwards, concerned with what I needed to do next. I didn't get to an emotional mindset until the next day. And now Gaby and I have been falling more in love with her each day. She is all we ever dreamt of, Biet Luna Savransky.