The Birth Story of Benjamin Thomas

I can't believe that I have yet to write out and share my birth story.  The last 6 months have gone so fast and I fear that if I don't share it now I won't even remember all of the details!  As a warning, this will be  REALLY long!

I was due April 15th, but no one seemed to believe I'd make it to my due date.  I was told at 34 weeks I looked ready to pop and it was strongly suggested to me by some family members that I should pack my hospital bag, but I was determined to at least make it to 37 weeks.  I was actually quite lucky to feel really good right up until 38 weeks hit, and then I was suddenly very over being pregnant.

Tom and I started lots of long walks down to the lake with the dogs right around 38 weeks.  My waddle would really set in walking a mile uphill on the way home, but I still felt quite capable and it did help to start a few erratic contractions.  At my 38 week check up my doctor gave us the good news that I was 2cm dilated, 90% effaced already.  We reviewed my very loose and flexible birth plan (the gist was no interventions unless I very explicitly asked for them - more on this in a minute - or one of us was in distress).  I was given my next appointment date, and a guestimated 50% chance of making it to that appointment.

I was scheduled to work right up until my due date, which was a Sunday, but my boss had the foresight to leave most of my schedule open during my last week, so that I could commit to same day appointments as I was able.  My doctor had been pushing for me to come out of work and rest/prepare for Benji's arrival since 36 weeks, but I couldn't afford the time off and I felt like I owed it to both my patients and employer to be at work if I was physically able.  Not to mention I would go absolutely stir crazy with extra time on my hands.  And I don't regret that at all, I was uncomfortable if I was sitting around without distraction, and I have always had a hard time with the instruction of "just relax" - multitasking is my friend.

Sunday morning, at 38 weeks 6 days, I awoke around 7am as usual because I had to pee.  I'd probably awoken 2 or 3 other times during the night for the same reason, so I had the half-awake shuffle to the bathroom thing down pretty well by this point.   I sat down, fully intending on crawling back into bed a few minutes later, and felt (and swear I heard) a distinct pop, followed by a gush I knew was not urine. I called out to Tom and woke him up telling him he should probably get up and get in the shower, while I marveled on the good fortune that: 1. My water broke sitting on a toilet; 2. It was a Sunday, I wasn't on my way to work; and 3. I was going into labor first thing in the morning after a "good" night of sleep.

Tom showered, took care of the dogs, loaded up the car, and called his parents to instruct them to head our way - it's a 9 hour drive.  I called my doctor to inform them my labor was starting and I'd be at the hospital sometime soon, called my boss to let her know I was not going to be making it into work the following day (and that she'd have a new patient hopefully by day's end), and got in the shower then got dressed myself.  Contractions started sometime during my shower and didn't seem too bad to start.

We were headed to the hospital by 9am and contractions became INTENSE very quickly.  I was timing them and they were between 2-4 minutes apart, typically lasting 1-2 minutes each.  The women in my family labor quickly, so while I wasn't worried about having the baby on the side of the road, I knew that I was going to dread the 30 minute drive to the hospital.  About half way there I asked Tom to speed up.  About two thirds of the way there I was shouting my "safety" word.  This was a word Tom chose that would be exceptionally embarrassing to say out loud in the L&D room in front of the nurses and docs.  This was the word I would be too embarrassed to say unless I really needed pain relief, and I meant it.  And this is a word I was loudly saying over and over again for the last portion of our drive.  (No, I will not be sharing this word with you.)  Tom was disappointed that no one else would get to hear it, I was disappointed I didn't have better pain tolerance, but happy I had already decided to be flexible about a birth plan.

It wasn't a full moon, but L&D was packed nonetheless.  There was literally one room left, and I had to wait about 10 minutes before they could even get me into triage.  By the time I was in triage they checked me about told me I was about 4cm, 90%, and our baby had hair.  I was (probably repeatedly) asking about an epidural as long as they could promise me they weren't coming near my with pitocin, and the staff was really great about expediting things for me.  I think know that as a member of the staff at the hospital I was given some preferential care, and it truly made our experience so much better.  Anesthesiology literally walked into my room within 3 minutes of arriving in it myself, and my IV was being placed while he was setting up.  I asked for a light epidural, but got a heavy one just due to the personal preference of the anesthesiologist I was assigned to, oh well.

Within minutes I could breathe again, I could straighten out my body, I could talk.  It was amazing.  I do not regret my decision for a minute.  My left leg went numb, which was bizarre but not bothersome.  I watched Pitch Perfect.  We called my parents, and joked easily with the nurses.  I continued to progress just fine without any further interventions, and by about 4:30pm I was told I was ready to push, and that the epidural was starting to run out and this should help my ability to feel during the pushing stage.

In all honesty, I think I should have waited to push until I felt the urge.  Benji was never in distress, and my body had progressed this far on its own, so I'm not sure why I complied so easily to "try pushing, just see how you do".  Turns out, for a first time mom I was deemed a good pusher, and so I was encouraged to keep pushing.  I was lucky to have a really excellent nurse as a coach too, and Tom picked up on how to direct me and support me very well.  Unfortunately, I was still guessing a bit as to when to push based on the weak sensations of contractions due to the epidural, so while I was good at pushing, my efforts probably weren't timed well for the first hour.  As the epidural continued to wear off however, I had more success, and the second hour would have likely produced a baby, had Benjamin's head not gotten "caught" under my pelvic bone.  It was clear I could still push him out, but it was going to take more time and more effort on my part.  The biggest obstacle was shift change at 7pm and our new nurse was silent - no feedback whatsoever.  Thankfully Tom took over as my only coach and he was really great about being a lot more involved than he had planned.

Almost 3 full hours of pushing later, at 7:52pm Benjamin Thomas Cosgrove was born weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces, and measuring 20.5 inches long.  He was beautiful, and scored 8 and 9 on his APGARs.  We spent just over an hour skin to skin before I conceded to let them clean him up and get all the official assessments done, while we invited Tom's parents up from the waiting room to meet their first grandson.  He did have a decent abrasion on the right side of his head where he repeatedly got rubbed by my pelvic bone during the pushing stage, but that was our biggest hiccup in the birthing process, and I really couldn't complain about that.  

It was love at first sight, and every day since.

Oatmeal Banana Breakfast Cookies

Nearly 6 months after having a baby and I'm finally motivated to get back to striving to be healthy, especially now that Ben is on a schedule and I have free time staying at home with him.  I intend to meal plan (and save a whole lot of money shopping) weekly, be mindful of what I'm eating every day (no more constant snacking), and have found a routine that allows me to run in the morning and walk in the afternoon every day.  It's early yet, I'm only two weeks in, but I feel so great already that I hope to keep up the momentum.

While I eat lunch during Ben's second nap of the day, breakfast takes place while we play in the morning after he gets up, so simple and quick is pretty important.  For awhile now I've been loving the Bel Vita breakfast biscuits and a glass of juice, but I'm starting to crave some alternate choices.  One morning last week I decided to try and create something simple in the form of "on the go oatmeal".  I loved them.

Oatmeal Banana Breakfast Cookies

Makes approximately 12 large cookies

2 large very ripe bananas

2 cups oats

2 tbsp peanut butter (I prefer to use powdered PB2)

1 large handful of mini chocolate chips (my first batch I made with raisins, but I prefer them with chocolate!)

Generous sprinkle of cinnamon 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a medium sized bowl, mash bananas

Add the remaining items and stir thoroughly to evenly incorporate ingredients

Chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes (optional, but this makes it easier to handle)

Form dough into 2 tbsp sized balls and evenly space on cookie sheet, pressing down to flatten a bit

Bake for approximately 18 minutes, until golden brown

Allow to cool for about 2 minutes before transferring to cooling rack

I suspect you could probably make these into breakfast bars instead of cookies if you so desired and bake it together in a pan, but these were thrown together on a whim and I just went with the cookie idea.  In reality you could play with this recipe a lot to make whatever suits your personal tastes, sub raisins for chocolate chips, add a splash of vanilla, try out different spices....

I did end up calculate the approximate calories for these guys and it comes to about 60 calories per cookie, I found 2 cookies was perfect to fill me up along with a large glass of water and small glass of juice.


Addendum: These cookies are quite soft and don't hold up too well in the cookie jar on the counter.  I found they last about 3 days at room temperature, a week in the fridge, and can probably last a few months in the freezer.  Since I ate two a day, mine lived in the fridge.

Adventures in Making My Own Baby Food

I've heard from a lot of my patient's parents that making your own baby food is simple and cheap.  After confirming this with Pinterest, I figured that if I'm comfortable enough in the kitchen to cook for Tom and I most nights, I shouldn't be afraid of cooking for Benjamin.  I'm not sure why I thought making my own baby food would be difficult.  Maybe because I didn't own any of the official "tools" like a Baby Bullet, food steamer, or storage system.

When we visited Ohio a few weeks ago we went apple picking, and brought home quite an impressive bounty.  Unlike the apple farms in New York that require we keep all the apples types (breeds?) separate, this orchard charged a flat fee per bag and so we came home a large assortment of apples, and honestly I couldn't pick one type from another, but they were all delicious.  I'd been eating them for a week or so before I realized that they were going to go bad before I finished them off.  Benji was just shy of 6 months old and had done pretty well with trying rice cereal a few times, so I decided to turn our apples into a puree from him.

I found and quickly fell in love with the Wholesome Homemade Baby Food website.  After looking over the basics, I decided I could easily make my own baby food using a combination of the stove, an immersion blender, ice cube trays, and freezer bags.  I decided that the process for making apples seemed extraordinarily easy, so it was a good starting point.

First Foods: Apples
Makes approximately 9 ounces (make as much as you want!)

2 large sweet apples (I have absolutely no idea what kind I used, I don't even think they were the same)
Tap water
That's it!

Peel and cut apples
Place into a small sauté pan, or pot, your choice
Add water, just enough to barely cover the apples
Simmer over medium low heat until apples are soft
Strain, retaining water for thinning purposes, and place in blending mechanism of your choice.  (I used the mini-blender that came as an attachment for my immersion blender)
Puree, then add water 1-2 Tbsp at a time until reaching your desired thickness
Pour into clean ice cube trays, cover with plastic wrap and place in freezer overnight
Thaw 1 cube as needed in the refrigerator before feeding.  Store remaining cubes in freezer bag, labeled with the contents and date.

I purposely choose to use tap water for my baby foods.  When Benji drinks water, or water flavored with a splash of juice, it is also tap water, not bottled.  Where we live, tap water contains fluoride along with other minute quantities of various minerals.  You can also thin purees with breast milk, formula, or juice if desired.

He LOVED the apples.  We stuck with feeding him 1 cube (about 1 ounce) daily for 3 days before introducing his next food, sweet potatoes.  Waiting 3-4 days after introducing any new food is important to confirm that the baby doesn't have an allergy, which may take a few days to show itself.  I can't believe our boy is old enough for solids, makes me so excited and so sad at the same time.  I'd love to freeze time!

Catching Up.... 2 Years Later

No excuses here.  My optimistic goal of blogging quickly disappeared once I entered a busy full time job as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the fall of 2011.  I absolutely loved my job, my coworkers, and my patients over the last few years, but life changes have come along, and for now I am thrilled with my (temporary) new role as a stay at home mom.  I hope to use this new found free time (during naps at least) to restart blogging about day to day life, cooking a new recipe here and there, and working on some fun DIY projects. But mostly, I expect this blog will evolve to keep family and friends updated on our son Benjamin.

To catch up any rogue readers out there (I know, I know, a whole 10 posts later and here I am thinking someone might actual read this stuff - ha!).  

1. Full time PNP since August 2011 until the end of July.  Worked with a phenomenal and unique group of people at a small private practice and I miss working terribly.  I love spending all day every day with Benji, but I am fortunate to love the career I have chosen and I look forward to starting work again, hopefully one day soon.
2. We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary with our annual "honeymoon" vacation, this time to Punta Cana.
3. Benjamin Thomas was born April 7th.  He stole our hearts instantly and thus far we have been blessed with a happy, healthy (after a few frustrating months fighting jaundice), and easy baby.
4. We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary at home.  This is the first year we haven't had the opportunity to take a trip, so we'll have to make up for it next year.
5. Tom accepted a new role that allows us geographic flexibility!  While Skaneateles is beautiful, we unfortunately never came to click with the community here.  There are very very few people our age and we simply don't identify with such a small town.  We have chosen to move to Chicago and we are anxiously awaiting the sale of our current house so that we can start the next chapter of our lives.  Because Tom needs to travel like crazy right now, I left my job to prepare for our move.  I simply was not able to juggle daycare drop off/pick up every day on top of taking care of the house (keeping it in flawless condition for showings), taking care of the dogs, and maintaining the day to day errands and chores.
6. Tom turned 30 years old!  This really just happened and we celebrated with a trip to Niagara Falls.  Figured if we don't see it now while we live so close, we may not have the opportunity to see it for a long time.  Tom had to work in Ohio on a Monday, and Michigan the next Tuesday, so we decided to drive out there together and make a road trip adventure out of it.  We were able to get to Niagara Falls late Tuesday night and explore the area Wednesday morning before finally returning home.

Benji is now nearly 6 months old.  Even reading that sentence back shocks me a little bit.  I can't believe he's getting so big so fast.  He's so amazing and every day does something new (and adorable). He's just days away from being confident about sitting on his own, and is starting to eat rice cereal a few nights a week for "dinner".  I'm just starting to introduce some basic baby sign language, so we'll see how that goes over the next few months.  

It's Fall in NY

We moved to Skaneateles last December, which means we started our life here in the worst of weather, and have now been able to enjoy a beautiful summer... but this past week marked the first day of fall and New York seems obligated to act the part. The trees are starting to show some color, which makes me both excited and nervous (snow is now in sight).

I'm determined to enjoy fall in New York though. We've never lived anywhere that promised such beautiful scenery, and I like the smell of wood fireplaces burning somewhere nearby. Note: we tried a "test fire" last week when it was down to about 50 degrees at night and seriously regretted it as our house heated up to about 80 degrees inside, so all future fires need to wait for consistently colder temperatures. We tried to partake in the maple syrup festivals of the spring, but got detoured viewing waterfalls in Ithaca, and we tried to go strawberry picking in the summer, but the local farm was picked out far too quickly. So I put my foot down about going apple picking in the fall. I scouted out the best apple farm, Beak & Skiff, which happened to have a distillery and cider mill too... so the promise of apple vodka and hard cider tasting + apple picking got Tom on board for the adventure.

The parking lot should have been our first clue, it was overrun with children hyped up on carmel apples. The lines themselves were longer than the "hay ride" behind a tractor to the rows of ripe Gala and Macintosh apples, but in the end it was worth it. Obviously it made sense to join in on the carmel apple eating while we waited for our tractor to arrive.

We couldn't find one of the coveted ladders to climb up to the best apples, so the first 30 minutes of our picking experience consisted of trying to come up with creative ways to get to the good apples, which included "toss an apple at another apple", "shake the tree and see what falls", and the good old basic "jump". None of which were at all successful by the way.

Have you read the recent news story about the moose in Sweden who got drunk off of fermenting apples and got caught up in a tree? We may not have been eating fermenting apples, but somehow after about an hour of apple picking we got a bit goofy and had enough fun laughing at ourselves that people nearby may have that we'd been sampling the hard cider. Tom left one hanging apple with a bite out of it, I tried to hide in the branches that started 4 feet above the ground, and trying to run around rows of apples without stepping on rotting ones results in a crazy dance like movement.

Eventually we did locate a ladder, and took home around 16 pounds of fruit. Ironically, Tom doesn't really like apples, but I've enjoyed at least one a day for breakfast, as well as finding new recipes to bake and cook them in. I'd love to hear about more recipes if anyone has some.... I think I've only got about a week left before I need to start worrying about them rotting!

Time Management

Hm... clearly my ambitions at maintaining a blog while beginning a new job may have been a bit high. But I'm not giving up yet, just vowing to improve my time management skills. I started my job with a 3 day work week (due to my employer's vacation), followed by a 4 day work week (due to the holiday), and this week completed my first 5 day week - phew. I'm still technically orienting so I don't yet share on call duties or newborn nursery duties at the hospital, so eventually there will be some weeks that are 7 day weeks, but for now I feel like I've gotten into a good routine. I won't lie though, after the first week I was a bit exhausted...

Molly was sympathetically tired too...

But I soon learned how to move a little faster in the morning, buying me a precious extra 15 minutes in the morning for sleep. Amazing what that few minutes can do to my morning attitude (I'm seriously not a morning person). Sadly I haven't yet figured out how to make time at the end of the day for projects around the house and my to-do list keeps growing in the meantime. Hopefully by the end of the month I figure out how to enjoy my evenings while still being productive and get back on track.

I did cook a nice homemade meal for Tom on his birthday last week. We celebrated with a few friends at a happy hour, then stayed in the next night for an at home date night. Tom loves veal, so I checked out the new Fennell Market just down the street specializing in gourmet meats, cheeses, fish, and some pre-made sides. I actually got really excited about some asian marinaded ahi on skewers to sear and eat like kabobs, but was able to stay on track and pick out a few veal chops for us. I've never cooked veal, but found an easy enough recipe for searing it on the stove then finishing in the oven, and paired it with a creamy garlic sauce, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, and mini-gnocchi with a butternut squash sauce (store bought, but would love to attempt making this from scratch). I probably overcooked the veal by one minute, but it was still delicious and we finished the meal with Tom's annual "birthday cake" of pumpkin pie.

Sorry for the quality of the photos, these were all snapped with my cell phone camera.

Working Woman

I started my new career as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner this week, and man does it feel good to be back at work and earning a paycheck after focusing on grad school for the past 3 years. Now it's going to be a challenge to stay committed to this little blog project I started, but I already knew that was coming. It was a great first 3-day week and my energy right now is focused on getting comfortable in my new role, so no big projects this week.

We did however make a great new enchilada recipe I'll share. I don't tend to be exact with my measurements when it comes to recipes like this, so go ahead and experiment too.

Chicken and Black Bean Enchiladas

Makes 4 enchiladas (4 servings)

2 teaspoons olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onion

2-3 cloves minced garlic

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch(ish) cubes

15 ounce can of black beans, rinsed and drained

4 ounce can of diced green chilies

1/3 cup salsa (choose your spice level, we chose habenero hot and loved it)

2 tablespoons fresh chopped cilantro (I probably used more, just grabbed a big handful)

4 flour tortillas (8 inch works best)

1 can enchilada sauce

1 & 1/3 cups shredded cheese (we combined cheddar and pepper jack)

Large dollop of sour cream

Sides (think spanish rice, guacamole, etc.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute 2 minutes.

Add chicken and saute 5-8 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

Stir in the black beans, green chilies, and salsa. Simmer about 5 minutes until the sauce reduces and thickens.

Remove from the heat and stir in the cilantro and a large dollop of sour cream.

Arrange the tortillas on a flat surface, topping each with 1/4 of the filling.

Roll into enchiladas and place in a non-stick (or sprayed) baking dish, seam side down.

Top with enchilada sauce (enough to cover the enchiladas lightly), and sprinkle with cheese.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Serve with whatever sides you choose.

Ok, I forgot to take pictures of this one (again). They were really good and we ate them two days in a row, although leftovers looked a bit messy. This was a very easy weeknight meal and we've tried multiple enchilada recipes before, but this is the first one we've thought worth saving. Totally hit the spot for that Mexican food I'm always craving but can never find so far from Southern California.