William's delivery was hard. Steve and I laugh at that water tub picture. It is so deceiving. It looks like we just got into a hot tub and were handed a baby. The truth is that I pushed for almost two hours. I am amazed when I hear Steve tell people how peaceful it was. Did he not hear the howling woman?

Of course that moment when you are handed the baby is just incredible. I guess that compared to the hospital, it WAS peaceful. Nobody was yelling at me to push, and between contractions I was able to relax and even chat. And then when it's over, you just get to hold the baby.

We stayed in the tub for just a few minutes after he was born. The midwives braced to help me out of the tub and the moment that I stood up out of the water I started shaking violently. My sister-in-law was just telling me about this happening to her after one of her kids was born via c-section. She said that she was told that it was a normal reaction to hormonal changes after giving birth, but I hadn't experienced it with Aidan and thought that the c-section must have contributed to it. I suffered for my arrogance. One of the midwives gave me a homeopathic remedy that chased the shakes away instantly, though they revisited for short intervals throughout the night.

I had a tear that needed sutures and it was like a two hour Three Stooges routine. The midwives rarely need to suture, so they don't get a lot of practice. In my case, I tore along my scar from Aidan's birth, which probably was exacerbated by the OB having his hand inside of me during the delivery. While the Vagina Dialogues were going on with the stitches, I tried to block out what was going on by reading and Steve got to hold Will for two hours and talk to him and sing to him. It was great bonding time and Will is now very responsive to Steve's voice. Because of the stitches, I've had orders to not go down the stairs. Hopefully, today will be my last day of confinement, the midwife is coming this evening to check on us.

The first night, I bled, Aidan peed and Wes threw up. We were all expelling.

I was expecting the after-baby adrenaline rush that I had after Aidan was born and it never came. Maybe the adrenaline was a result of the excitement (not the good kind) of the hospital transfer and what I'm feeling now is a more natural reaction. It's hard to not analyze it.

The first couple of days, Aidan's energy was really frenetic and aggressive. He was trying to be affectionate with the baby, but every action that he took was alarming. Every sound he made was LOUD. Every touch was HARD. The first night the midwife came to visit, I could tell that his behavior was making her nervous and she ordered that I shouldn't be left alone with Aidan and Will. He had been away with friends the day of the birth and most of the next day, so he spent the following day with Steve and by the end of the day, Steve had the, "we love you no matter what" talk with him. I thought that Steve was projecting a bit with that - that the issue was more subtle, but then Aidan started to get better. He's back to his old self again now, but it was a strange couple of days. A side note to this is that our dog was like this when Aidan was born, it was like he had a hormonal reaction to my body's changes. People who came to visit Aidan commented on how big Wes looked - like he was puffed up with testosterone. We got none of this from Wes this time, maybe because he has since lost his testosterone making parts.

Steve has been working his butt off keeping house and taking care of us all. It's been immensely satisfying for me to hear him say things like, "I just vacuumed this!" or, "I want an industrial sized washer and dryer". Not because he's ever been unappreciative of my own housekeeping efforts, which are mediocre at best, but more because I can commiserate. As Lisa B-K says, it's the "constant negation of your efforts" that makes housework so hard.

The first day, I tried to cut Will's fingernails. He was, of course, scratching himself. I had said something to Aidan about cutting Will's nails and Aidan said, "will it hurt him?" This annoyed me because cutting Aidan's fingernails is a huge ordeal so I replied, "no, and it doesn't hurt you." Well I am braying like an ass now because Will started crying with the first cut on his pinky and I could see that what I thought was nail was actually skin. His pinky is mangled now and I am having irrational new baby worries that it will have to be amputated and I will never forgive myself because all he will want in the world will be to play the violin and he'll never be good enough without his pinky. Aidan doesn't know that this happened. Not that it matters, I'm never cutting anyone's nails but my own again.

I'm trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that he won't be circumcised, and that would be far more traumatic than a nail cutting accident. That is, unless amputation becomes necessary.

A more serious concern has been that on the first night's visit, my midwife thought that Will looked too jaundiced and suspected ABO incompatibility. She sent Steve right out to buy some full spectrum light bulbs and we've been on a hydroponic baby protocol ever since. We heated up the room and kept him naked under the lights as much as possible. Newborns don't like to be naked, and they certainly don't like to be left alone under bright lights naked, so I spent much of the next two days trying to comfort him and hold him under the light with very few sleep breaks. We even slept with the light on. Steve and I were constantly evaluating his color. Is he getting yellower? Does he look orange just because he is crying and turning red? All of the adjusting and moving around and catching or cleaning up naked baby fluids was hard on my underside and I started to feel worse down there instead of better.

Our efforts were rewarded in that he got no worse, and now we still are using the lights, but we have light clothing on him too and we are sleeping in the dark again. I think my milk kicked in yesterday too because now he will sleep for long stretches and is generally much more content. In the scope of medical dramas that you could have with a newborn, it ranks as almost unmentionably minor. It's been a strange atmosphere though, he and I confined to this hot bedroom with the primer white walls made whiter by the full spectrum lighting. A couple of times someone has knocked at the back door and I've had to ignore it. If I get the OK to descend the stairs tonight, we'll slowly start to emerge into the world.