Ok...I am bored out of my gourd! Stuck in the hospital with no more books. I finished Intuition by Allegra Goodman (ok), and before that I read Kaaterskill Falls (preferred that despite slow pace), though Cookbook Collector is still my favorite by AG. Can't think of anything else to read, and I'm not sure my wi-fi-only Kindle will work here to buy a new book. Fortunately, Crossed (next book in the YA sci-fi trilogy) comes out Nov. 1. I'm not usually into sci fi, but that series is a lot of fun. I am digging the hospital food. D visited for a while today and the snack lady came by. She offered us coffee, tea or cookies. I got oatmeal raisin and they were absolutely delicious. I don't know why but the pain is not that bad this time (um, "down there"). I don't know if it's because labor was shorter or the episiotomy was smaller (it was). Whatever the cause, it's like a mildly irritating soreness instead of the gigantic pain I remember from last time...
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So I gave birth this morning to little Z, or not so little...she is 8 lbs, 11 oz...at 5:01 am. Labor was really fast this time...I started having contractions around 3:30 am, then we started timing them, and the interval between contractions shrank from 10 minutes to 3 minutes very quickly. So we took a cab to the hospital after calling D's sister to stay with E. Once we got there, I was dismayed to find I was already 9 cm and it was too late for an epidural. But there was nothing to do but accept it. And I only pushed for 15 minutes. So, it was very painful...but FAST.
Waiting
Right now, I am waiting. I'm not as dilated as I was with E at this stage. So we'll see what happens. The doctor said, "The baby's head is so nice and low - she's on deck, like in baseball." The doctor is predicting that I will have 20 minutes to an hour of pushing, not the three hours of torment like before. We'll see. She also told me she is "on" Thursday and Friday but doesn't know who will be on this weekend. I finished Matched, a YA dystopian futuristic novel (with hints of Orwell) about a young girl resisting the laws of society. Kind of a mix of brain candy and science fiction. The sequel comes out in November. Apparently there will be a trilogy.
Went to the ob/gyn today...now I'm 3 centimeters. She's convinced labor will be easy for me this time. I am taking it all with a grain of salt. I would love for her to be right. But who knows? She says the pushing will probably take 20 minutes to an hour this time (instead of 3 hours). That would be nice. At the supermarket, the cashiers went beyond asking about twins (this is now to be expected) and started predicting the weight of the baby...I am not even kidding. They settled on 9 lbs, 7 oz. The doctor says 8 or 9 lbs. I guess the whole thing is teaching me patience. I have been dealing with these remarks since July. Right now I have nothing fantastic to read. I loved Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot . Better than Middlesex , if you ask me. Just so funny and real. I also liked Falling Together, Nightwoods and, although it was flawed, The Taste of Salt.
So I went to the doctor today. I had all these noble goals of not gaining as much weight in this pregnancy as I did with E, but I'm only 5 lbs behind my maximum weight with him. Oh well. The baby is moving around like a champ and I am 2 cm dilated, but the doctor said, "Your cervix is way the hell back" so she doesn't see me going into labor anytime soon. She said I could go slightly earlier than with E, because second babies are like that. My replacement Kindle arrived. It didn't cost much (it's not the fancy new Kindle Fire, I have no desire to watch TV on it anyway) and it's 30% lighter than the other one. I am grateful for my reading glasses, though, because electronics break down! A friend brought up the possibility that the need for reading glasses is related to my pregnancy. I forgot to ask the doctor. It will be interesting to see if I no longer need them after I give birth.
So today my Kindle bought the farm...it's an example of no good deed going unpunished. I was taking E to his playgroup via cab and he handed me the remains of his mushy apple bar. There was a little pocket in the door of the cab that would have been perfect for these remains, but it always irritates me when people leave food there, so I thought, no! I won't be barbaric. I'll put the apple bar in my pocketbook even though it will mess up the interior. When we got to the playgroup I found that my Kindle was a sticky mess. I dabbed some water on a paper towel and cleaned it. A couple of hours later, the top of the screen turned into stripes (kind of like that public broadcasting test they used to do on TV late at night) and was no longer readable. D had a laptop that met a similar fate, so I know that once those stripes appear, an electronic device is unfixable. So I ordered a new one, but realized I would go crazy without books in the meantime. I got a paper edition of the bo...