Happy Birthday, Asher

Asher's very first bath (4 days old) and Asher's most recent bath (3 days ago)

When you bring a baby home from the hospital it's impossible to look forward and think that in two years you'll be crying as you realize that the time has passed in the blink of an eye...
Looking back is easy, though.


Every year on my kids Birthdays I think back over the last years to the day they were born. And that's when I start to tear up, sniffle, and eventually sob (which is what I'm doing now.)


I hate Birthdays...I really do. I know my kids have to grow up, and I love every new stage, everything they learn, and every new interaction I get to have with them because they're older. But Birthdays suck, because that's the day I realize that they're older.


Asher is 2 today! I keep wondering if this is the last second Birthday I'll ever celebrate...

Anyway, looking back...
(here's Asher's Birth Story! skip to the end of the blue text if you're not interested)
2 years ago I was supposed to go to work. We'd moved into our new house only 4 days before and had spent the entire weekend working like demons to make sure everything was put together. It was a Tuesday, and the day before I'd had a doctors appointment. Everything looked good, the doctor didn't have any guess on when the baby would come, though when I told him how miserable I was and how anxious I was to be finished he did say "well, there's always castor oil, things like that..."
I was still 3 weeks from my due date, but we'd been expecting this baby early all along (after the car accident/bed rest/etc.) and I felt so DONE.
Monday afternoon and evening I had lots of contractions, but they tapered off overnight. Tuesday morning I woke up feeling sick. There was a meeting after work that night and it was going to be a long day that I just didn't feel up to, so I called in sick.
It was rainy, and cool...very strange for August 1. I thought that was a good sign - more babies are born on rainy days...something to do with the barometric pressure...
I jumped all the way up and down the stairs a few times, hoping to spark something. My contractions returned, but were SO weak. So I went to babycenter and started reading the castor oil thread...
To start I made the castor oil milkshake with some mint chocolate chip ice cream we had in the freezer. I used about 1/4 of the amount of castor oil that the recipe called for, and still just managed to get about 3 gulps of milkshake down before I had to throw the rest out. YUCK! I waited about 30 minutes to see if the oil would have any effect on me, but since I'd probably ingested only about 1/2 tsp, there was no improvement in my weak contractions.

Next I tried scrambled eggs with castor oil. I did a bit better with this.

The castor oil made me sick - which I have to say I was glad of. I didn't want to be pooping on the table in the delivery room, and I figured this would prevent that!
At 11 my ctx started coming every 6 minutes regularly, but were still mostly painless. At 12:45 they sped up to every 4 minutes, and I could feel them. At 1:00 they got really painful. I called Matt and told him come home - I don't know if I can drive there on my own.
I was gathering things up to go...Tessa's jacket, etc, and the ctx start coming right on top of each other, and I'm thinking - no way am I going to have this baby at home! - so Tess and I got in the car to go. I called Matt to tell him to meet me at the hospital. He's been driving like a maniac and was almost there...he made a 40 minute drive in about 15 minutes - even though I TOLD him that it was no giant hurry.
Anyway, of course by the time I got there (at about 1:30) the contractions had slowed down. They hooked me up to a monitor for an hour and watched me. The ctx were every 2 minutes, but not making much progress. I was at a 3+ and 60% when I got there. After an hour they had me walk to see if anything would happen - they needed the bed if not! We walked the halls for about 20 minutes and the nurse said let's check you, because we need the room if you're not progressing. I was at a 4 and 70% effaced. So the nurse called my doctor to see what he wanted to do - fully expecting him to send me home. He said no - keep her - I'll come and break her water. At 4:30 the doctor broke my water. At about 6:00 I got my epidural. It was too strong - I swear I asked the nurse to turn it down, but Matt says I never did... Anyway, I couldn't feel my legs, couldn't move...and it freaked me out. On top of that I kept falling asleep, which kind of pissed me off! At about 8:45 I started to feel some pain, and I was a little more lucid. I told the nurse it hurt - she said "pain or pressure?" and I'm thinking "pain!" so she checked me, and I was at an 8. About 10 minutes later I said "it's getting worse!" so she checked again, and I was at a 9. 10 minutes after that I was at a 10. By 9:30 the baby's head was RIGHT there and I was feeling the urge to push. She let me push a little, then at about 9:50 told me to stop until the doctor got there. He showed up at 10:00 and I pushed just a few times. He had to give me an episiotomy, but I'm okay with that.
Asher was born at 10:19. The first thing I said when they laid him on my tummy was "He's so tiny!" We really expected him to be bigger!
When they tested him out he actually came up as 4 weeks early, not 3, and they said my due date must have been wrong. Whatever.



He's always been a little man, but at 2 he seems to be pretty average. He weighs about 26 pounds and is 34.5 inches tall!
His hair is still ridiculously light for this family - a dark blond color that certainly doesn't resemble Matt and Tessa's shiny dark brown - or even my red!
His eyes are more brown now, but still have a definite grey cast to them, especially in comparrison to the rest of us!
He is more fair skinned than Matt or Tessa, too, though I wouldn't really call him fair...he probably has more of my skin tone, I suppose.
He's quite adventurous, he loves to climb up on things and then jump off. A lot of that is Tessa's influence, of course. Before he jumps he counts - most often he says "three, three, three!!!" and jumps on that last three, lol.
He's independent - he always wants to walk and he hates holding hands! At the same time, though, he usually stays within about 20 feet of me, which is a big difference from his sister!
He loves his blanket, his binky and his bottle, and he knows exactly how to get whatever he wants from me. I know I'm terrible to let him keep his bottle so long, but I can't bring myself to take it from him. We tried to break him of the binky a few weeks ago, but quickly decided he wasn't ready for that.
As he gets older he gets more personable - saying "hi" to anyone we meet in the grocery store, etc. He's very friendly with other kids and plays really well, even sharing a lot of his toys. He still plays favorite with family members, though, loving either mommy or daddy, but rarely both of us.
He's often mean to Tessa - hitting her, yelling at her, etc. Despite that, she seems to be his favorite person and he constantly asks about her if she's away during the day. If he wakes up at night the first question he often asks is "Tessa?" and we have to tell his she's sleeping, too.
He's super smart, of course, and he speaks in 3 and 4 word sentences most of the time. It's hard for some people to understand him, though - as he often has his binky in his mouth!
He still naps once a day for me, as I mentioned in my "summer" post - he set his own schedule and refused to have it changed for him! He wakes very early (6-6:30) and naps for about an hour and a half around 9:30 or 10. He will also lay on the couch with a bottle and watch cartoons for 30-40 minutes in the afternoon if I set him up there. He goes to bed around 6pm.




For his Birthday Tessa gave him a Curious George tub toy - a motorized boat with George inside. He's very excited about it, and as soon as we told him it was a bath toy he began chanting "bath with Tessa!" Guess that's what we'll be doing tonight!
Mommy and Daddy got his a massive train table with track, buildings, people, etc. Matt had a meeting this morning, so we'll give it to him this afternoon/evening when he gets home.

His Birthday party is Sunday, I'll post pictures after that.

Happy Birthday, Baby!