Edgar 6 weeks old

That Kind of Blows.

A little while ago, a friend who I highly value told me a true story. Apparently at her kid’s birthday party a while back, one of the guests chose not to come to the celebration because Vincent would be there. And she did not want her kid to socialize with anyone who is severely disabled [she meant Vince]. Her kid was at this time 16 months, so God only knows what kind of impact my kid would leave on hers. You know you do not get DS by playing in the same room or touching someone with DS. That is a proven fact actually.
Anyways. My friend is no longer friends with this person, and it warms my heart for her (or anyone) taking a stand for Vince.
Still it is frightening to see how some people think. Pissed me off though that this person has before and since then (before I knew this, have not seen her since) always been ultra nice to me and always comes to my shop for getting shoes.

I get that DS seems to be the ultimate measurement of tragedy to many. And I argue that it is 99.99% of the time due to misconception, stereo typing, or plain old out dated information. I am also utterly thankful for how Vince has opened my eyes to a whole new world of things. I am not just trying to iron over the bads, or get on the heaven-sent-angel-theory, etc, he did really change us for the better. Not exactly sure how, but somehow he did. seriously, he is one very cool kid who just makes you happy (when he is not vaselining his brother’s room or refusing to go to sleep or throws dill on the floor).

Now I got really side tracked, but going back to the initial point. She would not go to the birthday party because Vincent was there. And I know, totally her loss, but still, I was expecting more out of my generation in 2009.

Edgar’s Birth Story

Before I completely forget it, and as I promised a few, here is finally Edgar’s birth story.

I woke up on Friday October 9th around 4 am and had to go pee. I realized the mucus plug was gone, and about 20 minutes later I felt the first contractions. I let Bookie and Vince sleep, and relaxed a little. The contractions were about 10 minutes apart. When Vince and Bookie got up, we called Bs parents and told them to please pick Vince up from Kindergarten in the afternoon.
Around 11 am, the contractions were 8 minutes apart or so, and we called the hospital, and they told us to come in. So we got ready and went shortly before noon. Here is the last preggo shot of me:

Exactly 40 weeks pregnant

We got to the hospital and did a CTG and I was only 2 cm open. At least they admitted I had real contractions, but then they told us to walk around till the contractions were about 3 minutes apart or a lot stronger. We went and had some lunch, and where we ran into Vince speech therapist, the boss of the shopping mall, and a customer from the store who all wished us good luck. About 20 minutes into the meal, the contractions got a lot stronger and they came more often. We paid and headed back to the delivery room. Contractions every 3-4 min but still only 3cm open. The doctor asked if I wanted to walk around more or if I wanted some pain relief. I chose alternative two and we headed to the delivery room.
I think we got there at around 1.3o pm.

At around 4 pm I was having contractions about every minute, 3+cm open. Sigh. I was having deja vu’s from Vincent’s birth that also proceeded very slowly, but with lots of contractions coming very fast. I got the epidural and the mid wife told me that the pain will be gone soon. After 30 minutes I was still in a lot f pain and concentrated hard on trying to breathe the right way. The epidural doctor came back and they realized the epidural never went in the right place. Therefore the pain. So one more try and thank G it worked. I could finally relax.

I was not allowed to lay on my back at all, which I can not remember they told me with Vince, so I was laying in some uncomfortable way on the side. Now with all the pain gone. Lovely. Bookie and I talked and laughed and had a good time. We revisited a lot of thoughts from Vincent’s birth and it was very nice and relieving to talk about all that has happened the last few years. How all that seemed so bad and horrible actually was not scary at all. How we realized we lucked out 100% having Vincent. Bonus chromosome included.

I was opening at about 1 cm an hour. I was able to sleep a little and gather some strength. Then when I was 7cm open, nothing happened. I was stuck at 7 cm for a few hours and our theories of having this baby on the Friday disappeared. Then all of a sudden I was 9 cm, and then 10cm. They told me to push, but I was so tired. Then the mid wife told me she could see the head, and all of  a sudden I felt a rush of energy. After pushing three or four times our precious Edgar came out. At 1.16 am Saturday October 10,2009 Edgar Jonas Valentin was born. They immediately gave him to me and he was screaming his little head off. But he did quiet down pretty fast:). Vince umbilical cord was so short, so they were not able to put him on my stomach.

Bookie cut the cord, and helped them weigh and measure him. The mid wife told me she thought he was big, but i had a shock when they said 3990g! If I had known that before hand, I would have fainted. That is more than 1,2kg more than Vince was! Still no stitches needed.

This time the placenta came out so no surgery needed. But, apparently there was some type of internal bleeding. So ca 10 minutes after Edgar was born a team of Doctors came running in. One man said, ok this might hurt, and then pushed all his weight on my tummy and added a thick bag of ice. Then they gave me 2 bags of something that would make the uterus retract faster and help stop the bleeding.
It did not hurt, cause I still had the epidural, but it was not exactly pleasant either. we ended up staying two hours longer in the delivery room, just to make sure everything was OK.

At around 5 am in the morning I was rolled upstairs to the room where Edgar and I stayed for another 4 days.

It was a very nice experience. Everything went as it was supposed to go the first time. We had no surprises, all the blood test were good, no surprise diagnoses and an early release. We are still adjusting to being a family of four, and the true test will come in a week and a half when Bookie goes on a business trip to Korea for 2 weeks. But so far, so good!

And just so you know, in case anyone was wondering, I am still all for screwing the statistics:

Labor first kid: 5hrs 45 min
Labor second kid: 11 hrs 45 min

Pregnancy first kid: 38 +0 weeks
Pregnancy second kid: 40+1

Pain labor first kid: bad
Pain labor second kid: **** (bad word)

After labor contractions first kid: liveable
After labor contractions second kid: **** (really bad word)

Blog Award

Amy from the Flege Farm gave me an award. Thanks!

There are two rules to accepting the award:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 10 other blogs.Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

So here we go:

1) Lisa  from Finnian’s Journey 

2) Wendy from Zip-Perdue-Dee-Dah

3) Tricia from Unringing the Bell

4) Chrystal from One More, More Than One

5) Stephanie from ‘Til My Head Falls Off

6) Cate from I Don’t Know What to Say

7) Jen from Small Swift Birds

8 ) Megan from Audrey and Stella’s Playground

9) Anne from Archie’s Room

10) Karly from Our Normal Life

10) Maya from Everything Happens for a Reason

10) Beth from Not That You Asked

10) Liz from Team Cael

Yes, I count like I want to:)

Tack

I totally stole this idea from Söt och Snygg.

THANK YOU! Click to see who is to thank!

(wait till the count down is ready).

Sunday in Graz

The weather has been disgustingly nice. Hence a lot of walks in the sunshine. On Sunday we all ventured into the city for a Subway lunch and some roasted chestnuts (B and V, not me. I will never eat one of those again after biting into a worm last year. Still gags me jut thinking about it…).

I love his little chubby hands and pointed pinky finger.

B getting chest nuts

Me and Edgar (hiding in the stroller) by the Kunsthaus.

Amazing Family

There are some amazingly great people I have met throughout the last 3.5 years all due to this extra chromosome that at first seem to throw every thing off for a while. Like Michelle, who is writing over at The  Zoromski Chronicles. This is what her presentation says for you who don’t know her:

Our oldest child, Karly, is 15; she was 7 when Brian & I married & he adopted her shortly after. Karly recently finished treatment (chemo and radiation) for an extremely rare form of ovarian cancer. Braden is 6 and clever and our entertainer! He’s a little sweetheart and loves his sisters very much. He also loves Legos, Star Wars, Hot Wheels and to play board games! He’s in Kindergarten and beginning to read, which is very exciting for all of us! Ruby is our newest addition, she turned two in May. She’s the queen of the castle. She’s our twin, her identical sister, Lydia, was lost – but will always be a part of our family story. Both Ruby and Lydia were diagnosed at birth with Down Syndrome. We have no answers to why we lost Lydia – and we miss her every day.

Do you know what they are up to now? They are adopting Lily. A 5-year-old girl from Eastern Europe who also has DS. Pretty amazing family,I would say!

Grab This Button

I was going to put the One True Media clip on here, but I do not know how to get it on wordpress. But PLEASE take a short moment to click on this link. PLEASE! PLEASE! It is really worth it, and it shows more about what Reece’s Rainbow is.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=9b08ab7214bb71b4b33e33&skin_id=801&large&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=embed

 

 

 

Fall Fireman

Every morning starts pretty much the same at our house. Vince wakes up, comes running down the hall to our bedroom, opens the door and says BABY in a whiskey voice. He climbs on to the bed and proceeds to kiss Edgar. When that has been done, he sits done and signs Fireman, Police and Helicopter. Every day. Fireman is also the favorite thing to watch/play.

He LOVES this video:

and this one:

Here he is working on his fireman skills:

More Brotherly Love

One of the hard things of having two kids is to get them both to look in the camera at the same time. Or for one kid not to squeeze the other kid to hard or too much. Or for the other kid to have an almost posture in the picture. Five attempts before the big one had had enough of this photo-op:

Attempt 1

Attempt 2

Attempt 3

Attempt 4

Attempt 5

Party Tricks

New party tricks Vince practiced this weekend were:

1) spreading frozen cut up dill all over the living room floor. Do you know how hard that is to sweep or vacuum up? Tiny, frozen, easily de-frosted, now wet, gazillions of pieces all over? He had just had a bath when this happened.

2) Spreading a jar of vaseline all over Edgar’s wall, changing table, couch, floor and pretty much every where he could reach his little hands till discovered. If anyone is wondering, vaseline is hard to clean off walls.