Baby Baby Potato Chip Cupcake Arrives!

Well, folks, Emily Turner Condill has done it again.  It is our great good fortune to welcome another huge, healthy baby into the world – 9-pound 1-ounce, 20½ -inch Phoebe Rose Turner Condill, born at 10:52 pm on Monday, April 25^th.  You may notice that this was over six weeks ago (or in terms of this blog 9 months ago give or take), which Kit (who, as Emily can attest, always has an excuse handy) chalks up to the fact that we now have a newly-minted first-grader, a three-and-a-half-year-old, and a newborn at home, and no one can be expected to write up a birth announcement under such circumstances.  In truth, young Phoebe (knock on wood) has been our easiest yet, and, as usual, Kit has no one to blame but himself.  But enough about me!  Back to Phoebe.   

     So far she is a wonderful baby.  In particular, apparently she is putting her in-utero experiences with her extremely loud and in-your-face siblings to good use now that she is ex utero.  That is, most of the time she sleeps through Kai & Norah stomping, jumping, running, dancing, wrassling, laughing, yelling and arguing in her immediate vicinity, not to mention their ill-timed but irrepressible kisses, hugs, pats on the cheek, etc.  She is also a great nurser (and pooper), and delights Daddy with her very expressive vocalizations of displeasure about getting dressed or getting her diaper changed.  Mama has also been loving these stage-quality monologues consisting solely of grunts and groans.

     Did I mention her uncanny sleeping abilities?  When she is not complaining about it, she can sleep through getting her diaper changed.  And sometimes through getting dressed/undressed.  And even through Daddy digging holes and transplanting wild cucumbers around the yard while carrying her in the crook of his arm.  It’s great!  Third children rock!  We recommend them to everyone!

     But we were not always so sanguine.  Kit found Phoebe’s contortions and acrobatics in the womb (wherein hands, feet, butt would very clearly thrash around inside Emily’s belly) to be more horrifying than those of Fauxlivia Dunham’s accelerated-pregnancy freaky baby on Fringe.  (Actually, it was while we were watching -- and re-watching, and re-re-watching, since Emily always fell asleep -- Fringe that she most often put on a show.)  For weeks she poked and prodded every possible escape route from Emily’s belly, finally (and mercilessly) settling on the traditional route, which she then attacked with gusto every night from 9:30 to 11:30.  Emily’s dread of this witching hour eventually gave way to resignation, indifference, and, finally, amusement.  Kit, looking over at his sleeping (!) wife’s undulating belly, secretly feared that karma had dealt us a hell child. 

     But, as has already been explained at length, it is not so, thank you Jesus.  In fact, it was only yesterday that Kit finally experienced a very familiar half-forgotten feeling for the first time with Phoebe:  the sinking feeling of walking around the house and yard with a fussy baby seeing dozens of things that are easy to do and need to be done but are impossible to do with your one free hand, such that your house and yard are turning into a shithole mess and you feel powerless to do anything about it.  On the other hand, Phoebe has started smiling!  On the other other hand, Kit cannot seem to drag his ass out of bed in the middle of the night to do his share of changing Phoebe or getting her situated after nursing, which he chalks up to being too old or drinking too much coffee or beer or to not going to bed early enough, but wherein Emily discerns more sinister motives, i.e. elective nocturnal narcolepsy.

     By the way, while Emily may strike you as a delicate-woodland-flower type, do not mess with this woman, for she has now delivered three children weighing a grand total of 27 pounds without so much as an aspirin to “ease” their passage.  (In fact she is so good at it now that before Emily even felt like she had really started pushing this time, Phoebe was out.)  It is a shame that she and I did not meet earlier[1] so that we could have had more kids, because she is a pro at it.  (“Pro” as in pro-fessional, not pro-stitute.)  Whereas Kai came too slowly (2½ hours of pushing) and upside-down, and Norah came too quickly, Phoebe, like Baby Bear’s porridge, was Just Right – Emily labored all day (partly in the room’s luxurious tubby bath), and just when the midwife floated the very discouraging idea of us going back home on the theory that nothing was really happening yet, Emily’s water broke and things started moving along in earnest. 

     What else can I say?  (This is, barring some act of a vengeful/mischievous God, the last time we will be writing one of these, so, begging your indulgence, we don’t want to leave anything out.)  Upon arrival Phoebe was very purple and took a little nap on Emily’s chest before rousing herself to open her eyes, lift her head, look around for a bit, and then commence to nursing.  Like her brother, who was also prone to in-womb acrobatics, Phoebe’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck (which, of course, can be a problem sometimes, but, thank God, was not for us in either case).  Whereas we took a while to name Kai and nearly two days to name Norah, the name “Phoebe Rose” has been on the tip of our tongue since before she was conceived, and Emily wasted no time in making it official.  (Kit thought she was a bit too purple and, at approximately two minutes old, a bit too fresh to saddle with a name already, but he deferred to his still-catching-her-breath-after-giving-birth wife, and has no regrets.)

     Now that Emily and Kit are older, wiser and tired-er, for the first time we took advantage of the night nurses’ willingness to take Phoebe for a while so that we could get some uninterrupted sleep.  Emily had the good fortune to give birth in Carle’s new fourth-floor luxury birth suites, where (since a previous successful vaginal delivery and doctor’s permission are a prerequisite) we were the only patients for the whole two days, so we think the nurses were bored.  One of them was named Peachy Beachy (or rather Peachy Something, but since she was a Mennonite from Arthur Kit heard “Beachy” when she said “Peachy,” hence the confusion).  Some of you who are from Arthur may know of whom I speak.  The other nurses called her the Baby Whisperer, and apparently Phoebe enjoyed her time with her very much.

     So Norah, like her dad, retains the title of largest Condill baby in her generation, but Emily feels that Phoebe would have surpassed Norah’s mark (9 lbs. 7 oz.) had she made it all the way to her due date like the other two.  On April 25^th, however, the wait until May 4^th seemed like an eternity, so we are glad Phoebe came when she did.  The day was one of those cold, foggy days we saw far too many of this spring.  In contrast, Kai was born on the most beautiful June day and Norah on a flat-out HOT day in October.  Whether this has any bearing on their future life paths is dubious at best.  Kit remembers his grandma always saying how freaking hot it was when Kit’s dad was born, and how the windowscreen in the hospital room was positively crawling with flies.  Nice image!  (Of course, Dad almost turned out to be an entomologist, so maybe there is something to it after all.) 

     Phoebe’s hair, in case anyone is interested, is of indeterminate color – brown, mostly, but kind of blonde and kind of red, too.  Auburn, maybe.  We shall see.  Her eyes are still blue, but so were her brown-eyed siblings’, so we can’t put much stock in that.  And finally, I should perhaps report the amazing fact that no matter how desperate to nurse Phoebe is, she must always make some eye contact with Mama before commencing.  Is she really that sweet, or is she just making sure she’s not being fobbed off on somebody else with newly-magnificent boobs?

     So we have now had a baby with each of the 3 senior Carle Hospital midwives & (not to provide free advertising or promote the corporate healthcare model) we have to say that in our experience, Carle rocks.  After finding out what kind of birth and post-birth we wanted, they have done their best to provide it and basically stayed out of our way.  Hallelujah!

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[1]  Although we both agree that we would have bugged the living crap out of each other had we known each other when we were younger.  Or, more accurately, we would have been unable to deal with the fact that we bug the living crap out of each other had we met when we were younger.