On Saturday we take Wes to BYU for Athletic Connection. He gets to hang out with other people with Down syndrome and BYU athletes. Well, this past Saturday the team cancelled and the group took us bowling instead.

I’ve taken Wes and Carissa bowling before, and Wes LOVES it. Last time Carissa was a little too young to appreciate it, but this time (at age 2 1/2) she was into it.

We shared the lane with two other siblings, Clark (who is a teenager with DS) and his little brother Josh. A handful of BYU students are always on hand to serve, and this girl helped my kids bowl. John and I mostly stood back and watched, making sure they didn’t run into the lane or try to grab a ball and start bowling when it wasn’t their turn.

Waiting to see where her ball ends up.

I have many blurry pictures of Wes and Carissa jumping up and down and shouting things like, “Alright!” and “Yay!” Carissa danced around a lot, while Wes did more shouting.

And the baby sister? Well, she watched and slept from her baby carrier strapped to my chest.

All in all, with bumper bowling the kids didn’t do too badly.

After we finished bowling John and I took the kids to the BYU bookstore. I got to browse and the kids read stories in the children’s reading area. The BYU bookstore is a magical, wonderful place to be.

A few years ago I gave up on giving Wes haircuts myself. It was a two-person job where one parent had to hold him and the other cut. And we both had to endure his weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth the whole time.

So then a friend told me about Cookie Cutters, which specializes in kids’ haircuts. It’s not nearby but totally worth the drive. The waiting area has a slide and touch-screen computer game. Wes sits buckled into a chair shaped like a car or airplane and he can watch TV. I’ve learned that Dora the Explorer is on at 11:30 am. Perfect.

He’s not always happy to sit in the chair, but at least I’m not the one who has to hold him down or cut the hair. This time he put up a fight about getting in the chair, but once he was there and Dora was on he calmed down and watched the show. Stephanie cuts his hair, and she does a great job with him.

Of course Carissa has no qualms about coming, too, because she gets a sucker and a balloon like Wesley does, and she doesn’t even have to get her hair cut. Not yet.

Afterward I take them for ice cream. Last time we did a frozen yogurt bar, where they can pick their flavor and toppings, but this time I opted for drive-through ice cream cones. We ended the trip with errands at Costco across the street, and the kids fell fast asleep on the way home.

This month:

1. Carissa got her first taste of cookie dough. Her first taste because she’s allergic to eggs so I’ve never given her a taste of any kind of batter or dough that has eggs in it. But she clearly wanted to taste whatever I was mixing, so I looked up a recipe for eggless chocolate chip cookies. Instead of eggs it calls for cream cheese. Other than that, it’s a pretty standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. Instead of butter I used coconut oil, which is a healthier fat option. And they turned out great! Soft and chewy. Carissa was a happy cookie-dough eater.

2. Carissa learned how to use scissors. And boy, is she good! It’s a milestone that makes me happy-sad. Happy because “scissor skills” (as the schools call it) is an important skill to have, especially as she enters school later. But sad because her older brother Wes has such a hard time with the scissors still, and he’s three years older. She picked up the skill so quickly, without me even realizing she was learning it. Wes likes to try to use scissors, so he’ll get it someday, but he needs a lot of help. This isn’t unexpected or anything, for a child with Down syndrome. It just blows me away sometimes how fast she can learn something when it takes Wes so much longer. He gets it in his own time, in his own way.

3. Carissa has started to ask questions. “Why, mom? But WHY?” It’s cute. So far. She also asks things like, “What is he doing?” It’s another notable milestone. Wes has never asked “Why?” but he does ask sometimes, “What is that sound?” He’s not big on questions.

4. There has been much kissing of the baby. Elizabeth is 2 months old. She’s smiling and getting bigger. She weighed in at 10 lbs at her 2-month checkup, with a healthy rate of growth. Wes likes to hold the baby’s hand like she’s waving at us and say, “Hi mommy!” He is very gentle with her and is good at replacing her binkie and saying sweet things like, “It’s OK, it’s OK.” Carissa likes to play with the baby’s toys. She lies next to her on the floor and basically thinks Elizabeth’s play things are her own.

In November, right before Elizabeth was born, Wes got to spend an hour with the BYU baseball team. He loved it, of course.

After Elizabeth was born, Carissa was eager to include her new baby sister in all her activities, like reading.

My mom and dad came to visit, and the kids had lots of quality time with Grandpa.

I tried to get a group shot of all three of my kids together. Tricky!

Wes and Carissa upside down.

One day I finally let the kids play in the snow. They loved tromping around the back yard.

In December we attended a Christmas party for families with kids with special needs. Both Wes and Carissa got to visit with Santa. I really thought Carissa would be too shy, but she was willing and hopped right up on his lap. And they both got suckers at the end.

One of Carissa’s outfits.

Wes and Carissa discovered another use for this old playpen.

Impromptu family photos.

And the latest news is that Elizabeth (who turned two months today) occasionally smiles. It doesn’t seem to be on purpose. They’re kind of spontaneous and not aimed at anyone. She only rarely looks at people’s faces, so she’s not very social yet, but I’ll take what I can get.

My due date was November 15. I used to think November would never come. And then, as it crept closer, I couldn’t believe it was actually so near.

Around 36 weeks things started to get more uncomfortable, and I began looking forward to not being pregnant anymore. I’d be able to sleep (and still breathe) in any position, not just on my left side (which made my shoulder ache). I’d be able to lay to rest my awful compression stockings that I had to wear to keep pain in check from my many, horrible varicose veins. I could pack away my maternity clothes!

But, still, having the baby seemed far off. On Monday, November 5th John and I went to Wesley’s school to visit the transitional kindergarten classroom. This is his last year of preschool, and we need to decide what type of classroom will be the best fit for him next year–regular kindergarten (which has 1 teacher to 20 kids, and high expectations) or transitional (which has 1 teacher and 3 aides, and is a special ed environment, so slower paced). As we drove together in the car we talked about the baby and I said, “I have no inkling of having a baby today.”

Which was true. I never saw it coming. That night around 11 pm I got ready for bed as usual and wrote in my journal, but my back was hurting. After a little while I called John upstairs to sit with me because it was so uncomfortable. Eventually he pulled up an app on his tablet that timed contractions. It turns out they were about 12 minutes apart. And soon they were 7 minutes apart. Then 5, then 4. Around 1:30 am John called our neighbor and asked her to come sleep on the couch so we could go to the hospital.

I had been dreading this labor and delivery experience because having Carissa was difficult. It left me feeling traumatized and scared to go through it again. This time John and I decided I would try an epidural and see how it went without the accompanying pain.

So as we drove to the hospital (with a towel on the seat beneath me, which John kindly gave me in case my water broke in his car), I felt surprisingly calm. The labor pains hurt, but I knew how to breathe through them, and I knew that in a bit I would have the epidural to help.

We arrived sometime after 2 am and got the paperwork started for my stay. I ordered the epidural right away. First they hooked me up to an IV to get a bag of saline solution into my system. I also had negative memories associated with getting an IV, because during Carissa’s labor the nurse took about a half hour trying to set up my heplock (which I never needed), poking both arms in the midst of heavy, horrible back labor pains before finally getting it in. This time was better.

Getting the epidural made me nervous, I think mostly because I’d never done it before. All in all, it wasn’t a big deal. It took several minutes, but there was only one “Ouch!” moment when I got poked in the back, and then my legs started feeling warm and tingly. I was like, “Hey, what’s going on?” and the epidural guy said that meant it was working, and that the needle was in just the right spot in my back.

And that was the last I felt of my contractions. I’ve had three babies, two without pain medication and one with. After my experience with an epidural, here is what I’ve decided: WHY did I never do this before??

Somehow my labor with Wesley wasn’t so bad. But Carissa’s was terrible. This one probably would have been similar. It was so lovely to not feel the pain anymore.

In fact, it was kind of surreal to be at the hospital, in a bed with a gown on, unable to move my legs (but I would move my feet a little), and to just LIE there. I watched “I Love Lucy” on our portable DVD player for a while. The nurse started by lying me on my left side at 3:30 am, and after an hour she came back and rolled me to the right side. It wasn’t until then, when my view of the room changed and I could see the baby bed set up in the corner, that it registered in my head WHY I was there. To have a baby! Right. So, so different from an active labor experience where you feel everything. Truthfully, so much more pleasant.

Around midnight, long before we left for the hospital, my body started shaking. It’s an effect of the hormones during labor, and I remember having the shakes to some degree during or following my other deliveries. This time I was shaking so strongly that they couldn’t ever get a blood pressure reading from the cuff on my arm because I couldn’t hold my arm still enough. Once the epidural kicked in they transferred the cuff to my calf, and finally it worked.

The first hour of my epidural (about 3:30 to 4:30 am) I couldn’t relax. I was shaking hard, and I was adjusting to the feeling of numbness in my legs. It is a WEIRD feeling to not be able to move your legs. I hate holding still, even when falling asleep at night, so this was hard for me at first. We turned up the thermostat in the room and I asked for some hated blankets, and gradually my shaking improved. Once the shaking lessened, I could relax, and once I relaxed, I could rest. From 4:30 to 5:30 am John and I were able to sleep off and on (a very little, but still). I listened to a book on my mp3 player, and John lay on the couch. For some reason they couldn’t find a spare pillow for him and he had to use our coats.

Nearing 5:30 am, I started to notice mild pressure in my lower back sometimes. I figured things were progressing. At 5:30 am they positioned me back on the left side, and after that I could tell things were really moving along. Three or four times I felt strong, strong pressure deep down that clearly meant the baby was getting in position to come. It was nearly 6 am, and the nursing shifts were about the change. I asked my nurse to call my doctor.

Just after 6 the new nurse waltzed in and said the doctor’s instructions were to “progress all the way and then call him.” I told her it felt serious and asked her to check me. She did, and promptly called out to the hallway for someone to call my doctor and tell him to come NOW. I was at a 4 when I arrived at the hospital around 2:30, at a 6 when I got my epidural around 3:30, still at a 6 at 4:30, then about an 8 or 9 at 5:30. At 6:05 my water still hadn’t broken but the bag of water was basically hanging out. The nurse told me to relax and keep my legs closed (hello, epidural, they weren’t moving).

Then people started shuffling in to prepare for the baby to come. My doctor showed up around 6:15 am and got the party started. I felt a little nervous because, historically for me, pushing has been the hardest part of giving birth. So, so difficult and tiring when I was already completely exhausted from enduring the labor pains. So I asked my doctor what to expect. He said, very calmly, “Well, you’re going to take a few deep breaths, push a little, and then you’re going to have a baby.”

Turns out, that was it exactly. He instructed me to take a deep breath and push. which I tried doing. Then he said next time to push a little deeper down. So I took another breath and tried again. It felt like I was doing nothing, and I asked, “Am I doing this right?” John and the doctor both said, “You’re doing great! There’s the head.” I took a couple more breaths and a couple more pushes, and the baby was born. It was the easiest thing, nearly effortless. I couldn’t believe how much easier that was this time around.

The baby girl was born November 6th at 6:35 am. She weighed 6 lbs 4 oz and was 18.5 inches long. She appeared healthy.

I was in such good spirits that I told John to get out our video camera. He gave me a funny look and said, “Are you sure?” But I felt so happy to have had the baby, to not be pregnant anymore, and to have had it be a positive experience for once. So this is the first baby we have video of during the first minutes of her life.

As soon as I held her I thought she looked different from Carissa as a baby. The longer I held her I more I decided she more resembles Wes as a baby. Her hair color and face shape is more like Wesley’s as a baby.

We had kind neighbors who cared for our older kids while John and I stayed at the hospital that first day. He slept at home with the kids that night, and the next afternoon I came home with our new baby.

We weren’t sure what to name her. We had a first name tentatively chosen, but were completely blank for a middle name. The day after she was born John called me from home and suggested a middle name that he had thought of while trying to fall asleep the night before. It sounded good to me, and it was Irish like my first name is. So we decided on Elizabeth Erin.

She is 11 days old now, and we are impressed by how remarkably CALM she is. She seems just happy to be here. Sometimes we watch to make sure she’s breathing, even when her eyes are open, because she can be so still. She cries when we change her diaper or wakes up hungry, but that’s about it. She seems very sweet, and we adore her. Wes loves to hold her and often says, “I carry you?” which is how he asks to hold her. Carissa is merely fascinated by the baby’s dirty diapers, and is practicing being “soft” with her sister.

And here is Elizabeth, in her first few minutes of life.

Our first day in the hospital together. I watched a lot of HGTV–a special treat for me, who doesn’t have cable at home.

A couple days old.

And now, we have THREE.