Thursday, April 30, 2009

Baby Pics, Baby Pics

Hi Mom! Since Brother is sleeping, shall I entertain you?
When you're short, you have to be creative.

Ta-da, beautemous.

He likes to sleep with his face squished like this.


I can see my toes...

This is what brother does most of the day...



Sometimes he peeks out at me.


All in all, a great way to spend a snowy afternoon!


(Don't worry, the snow is supposed to melt tomorrow and we are supposed to have spring again.)


In other news, Miss Boo made her mother cry this morning when she flung her arms around my neck and said, "I yuv", which means, of course, "I love you". How sweet is that?

Hope you all have a sweet day too.


Cheers,
Breanna

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

I'm Not Pleased, I'm Just Right

About the swine flu, I mean. I said it was going to be a pandemic, and now the WHO agrees with me. The Husband accused me of cheering when the pandemic threat bumped up tp 5 (which I guess is like Defcon 2) but I wasn't cheering; I was just glad they're taking things seriously.

I'm not actually that worried about the flu, since there's not a heck of a lot one can do about it anyway, beyond the obvious like washing your hands and avoiding Walmart. (Can you imagine the disease vector?) But you might not want to kiss a pig anytime soon.

We are all doing great here, where there are no confirmed cases by the by, and we're under a bunch of snow at the moment so there is probably not the public congregating going on that there would be otherwise. We're not congregating, of course, because of Brother and the fact that two in carseats makes for interesting travel.

I am feeling much better this postpartum than I was with Miss Boo by this point, which is the grace of God, since I need to be better this time. Brother is sleeping great, which is awesome since Miss Boo is sleeping terribly (teeth). Because she's sleeping terribly, she's been a bit of a pill during the day lately. Oh well.

The Husband was able to take some days off this week, so I've got help around the house, and we have several dinners still frozen, so all in all we've got a pretty good week/weekend ahead of us.

Oh, and did I mention I can have real coffee again, since it doesn't seem to bother Brother the way it bothered Miss Boo when she was still nursing? Yeah. It's been great.

I don't have any recent pictures because I can't find the camera charger, but I promise to remedy that and post some for you soon. In the meantime, enjoy the piglet and the random model guy.

Hope you all are having a great week too,

Cheers,

Breanna

Two Babies...

...Make for very busy nights and days. :) We are having fun and doing awesome, and I will write you a proper post soon. Just wanted to let ya'll know we're not dead.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.
I didn't think babies ever actually slept 4 hours at night--Miss Boo never did, I thought it was a myth--but Brother has been doing that. You guys must be praying!

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Birth Story

The idea of writing down a birth story is something I never would have thought of without Ina Mae Gaskin, a nice weird hippie lady who is probably the most famous midwife in America, and who has suggested that women think of contractions as "interesting sensations that require all my attention" vs. "painful." I distinctly remember at one point during labor saying "Interesting sensations requiring all my attention my foot!"

I think I said "foot." (The Husband kept laughing at me for my inability to swear under duress.)

Anyhow, Gaskin includes a bunch of positive birth stories in her midwifery books, on the principle that everybody always tells pregnant women horror stories about birth and that they could use some encouraging stories to balance it out. So here's my birth story, for the record (and the curious). Pictures first:

(Me, glad to have my IV out, holding Brother and looking slightly less dead than I did earlier.)

(Me, directly after birth, looking dead as I mentioned previously. The white bundle is Brother. The only reason I post this picture is Miss Boo's face.)


On Friday I began having Braxton-Hicks-ish contractions, at about 4am, except they were a bit uncomfortable. I called the grandmas and put people on baby-alert. The contractions, of course, proceeded to slow down, but did not stop all day or all night. I had Grandma stay at the house, just in case, but I thought things would probably stop.

(Brother, Padraig, and Miss Boo adjusting to each other. Padraig is still mad at us that we made his babysitting job harder, and is unsure what he's supposed to do when the kids are not both in the same room. He settles for positioning himself halfway between them, and anxiously looking from one to the other.)

Things did not stop, even though I cleaned the bathroom and went to Costco to distract myself. (Grandma was with me, in case my water broke in the frozen aisle. I was less tolerant with checkers and traffic than usual, however.) By Saturday night I was bouncing on the exercise ball for several hours to distract myself from the contractions. I still wasn't buying this was real labor. After all, I could read through the contractions and talk through them.


Sunday morning, before we got out of bed, I told the Husband "I don't think we'll go to church today." "Ya think?" said the Husband. Contractions were, by 6am, uncomfortable enough that I had to pause when I had one and breathe through it. The Husband declared for me that we were going to the hospital; I insisted on eating breakfast first. And a good thing, too, since it was the last real food I was going to eat for the duration.

(Brother, taking his sunbath as prescribed for his orange color {mild jaundice}. Babies are the only people who tan to get lighter.)


We got to the hospital around 9am and were checked. I was only at 3cm dilation and was all for going home, where there was food and a recliner, but the midwife thought I might have a rapid (HA!) labor this time and wanted us to stay at the hospital. By the time all this was decided it was lunchtime and I was told I could have a clear liquid tray. In case you're curious, a clear liquid tray is jello, juice, broth, and decaf tea or coffee. There are only three variants of jello, juice, and broth.

(Another sunbathing shot. He's not real fond of being naked, thus the bink; he's not terribly fond of the bink either and eventually demanded that I sit in the sun and nurse him for the rest of his session.)


So I cheerfully labored and starved and looked jealously at the Husband's cheeseburger, and walked the halls. Things went on at a fairly slow pace for the rest of the day. For the menfolks and the ladies who haven't had babies, imagine getting charlie horses every three to five minutes all day and you've got a pretty good picture.


On the upside, the hospital had the most awesome tubs I've ever seen. They were about four feet deep and seven feet long and you could stretch completely out and float in them, which was excellent pain relief at this point. We were chatting about whether the baby would be born by midnight or whether he'd share a birthday with his Opa. We thought he'd probably be born before midnight (HA!).


At midnight I was still only dilated to 5cm. The nurse said that the midwife said if I wasn't progressing by morning, they'd need to start Pitocin (aka, the Devil's Drug). She meant, I found out later, that I should rest during the rest of the night and try to gather my strength, but what I heard was that I'd better find some way to dilate quicker. Therefore I got one hour of sleep that night (the Husband got three), and spent the rest of the time walking and bouncing on the birthing ball and leaning over the windowsill, wishing the baby would get a move on.


By morning I wasn't progressing (6cm) so they started Evil Pitocin, which makes contractions get longer, stronger, and closer together, and a bunch more painful. My coping strategies lasted five more hours or so, as the Pitocin kept getting turned up higher and I kept s-l-o-w-l-y dilating, until it got to the point where nothing was helping and I was rapidly reconsidering my commitment to doing this without pain medicine. (I hadn't had any up to this point, even with the Pitocin.)


First I decided to try Stadol, an IV narcotic that hadn't helped when I was having Miss Boo. I thought maybe this time it would be different. It wasn't; I just felt drunk and I was still in pain. I was getting tired and I couldn't relax enough during contractions for them to do their work. I decided that I needed spinal anesthesia.


The Husband dutifully tried to talk me out of it for an hour, as I had instructed him to do beforehand. When I finally told him that I was worried I would get so tired I wouldn't be able to push when the time came, we called in the anesthesiologist.


(Interesting side note: I found out that the reason things were going so slowly and that I couldn't relax through the back pain that happened with each contraction was that Brother had his nose pointed toward my left hip, instead of toward my spine like it should have been. The midwife managed to get him to turn just before the anesthesiologist appeared, and had I known she could do that, I might have not gone for the spinal. However, I'm still glad I did.)


It would be indiscreet to tell you the anesthesiologist's name, but I have to--you'll understand why when I tell you the guy was called Dr. Stitch. Seriously. It was enough to make me forgive him for saying I could have nothing by mouth from now until the baby was born. (I'd had only clear liquids for the last 30 hours, remember.)


It took about 60 seconds to place the spinal, which was much faster than I thought it would be, so when the told me to lay down I wasn't expecting the sudden and divine relief that washed over me. I lay happily for the next couple of hours, not really feeling contractions, still mildly stoned from the Stadol. By the time the spinal started wearing off enough for me to feel some sensation (and the stoned-ness wore off) it was time to push.


Pushing was great compared to the rest of labor; it took about four contractions and the baby boy was out, and I had impressed the nurse and midwife with my pushing prowess. (Can you tell I like having something to do besides just wait?) Baby boy appeared and was laid on my chest, and immediately began looking around in an offended fashion. He had a scratch on his nose from where he'd been smashed against my hipbone, the stinker. And thank the Lord, the spinal didn't wear completely off until AFTER all that excitement was over. Baby boy was born at 2:15pm, on Monday.


They told me I could then have anything I wanted to eat. I ate a spicy chicken sandwich, fries, a chocolate milkshake, someone's leftover potato chips, a piece of chocolate pie, and then I ordered dinner when I could an hour and a half later. :D It was awesome.


All told, we were officially in labor for 32 hours, and since there were several emergencies in other rooms while we were there, we ended up having 9 different nurses. Now that it's over, it's kind of cool to have the bragging rights, honestly.


Brother, as Miss Boo calls him, is a champ eater and pooper and has his father's ears and toes, and my fingers. He also has, in my opinion, his Opa's forehead, which would make sense since he appropriated his Opa's birthday after all.


Now he's here to stay, thank the Lord, and I can start adjusting to the idea that I've got a baby in arms instead of kicking me in the ribs. God has been so good.


That was a VERY long blog post, so I will stop with that.


Cheers,
Breanna

P.S.

And yet we still want more kids, Lord willing. Go figure. Must be the amnesiac effect of the labor hormones.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

32 Hours, 9 Nurses, 1 Midwife, and An Anestesiologist Later...

...Guess who finally showed up?
The pictures are in reverse order, because I'm too tired to go back and put them in the right order. :) Here is Miss Boo with Baba and Brother, after we got back from the hospital.

Brother and the Husband, aka Daddy, discovering they have the same ears.

Feeling a bit tired after his long, long, long day..

Mom, I've seen the outside and I don't like it. When do I get to go back?

Incidentally, yes, I said 32 hours in the title and I meant it. We also really did have 9 different nurses; other people on the unit kept having emergencies, c-sections, deliveries, etc. It was sort of like waiting at a resaurant as people who arrived after you get seated first.


But I will write a separate post with more pictures and the whole birth story later; Brother is peeping softly from his bassinet, and Miss Boo is insisting I feed him or she is taking matters into her own hands.


Cheers until later,


Breanna

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Hi!

Having given you two text posts in a row, and having some time to kill while I wait for the hot milk for my yogurt to cool down (I made a failed batch of yogurt the other day after shooting my mouth off about how easy yogurt is to make, so today I have to make a good batch to restore my shaky self-confidence), I thought I'd post this video of Miss Boo discovering the peekaboo potential of our coffee table. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

I had a midwife appointment today, and her comment to me was "Don't leave town. I'll see you next week if not sooner." I think that means, in a cryptic way, that Boychild could make his appearance any time at all now. Good thing. I'm getting tired of feet poking me at odd angles.

Tax Day and the Limits of Civil Disobedience; In Which, I Disagree With Francis Schaeffer


Today is Tax Day, and all across the country a strange phenomenon is taking place: conservatives are having protest rallies.



The protest march is typically regarded as something that liberals (even socialists) do, with the technique honed during the 1960s of showing up in ragged army fatigues, flowers, and face paint. Preferably, you had a good supply of herbal substances, as well. This time, the media is watching, bemused, as people take to the streets with signs that say things like "No More Taxes!" and "Bailouts Are for Bozos!", wearing business suits and looking pretty normal. Nobody appears to be stoned, but they are talking about Tea a lot. As in, Tea Party, as in, Boston Tea Party. They are clear this isn't an anti-Obama protest, necessarily, it's an anti-establishment protest. I think it's all kind of funny that the people who protested the establishment in the 60s and 70s are now the establishment getting protested against. Civil Disobedience: Not Just For Hippies Anymore!


All of this is amusing to watch, but does it have any implications for Christians? Francis Schaeffer thought it did; he thought that after Christians had exhausted their options to change their government through legal channels or to flee, they had the option (even the duty) to engage in civil disobedience to a wicked government. For him, one example of this might have been refusing to pay taxes if the government subsidized abortions. Of course, we are in this very position now; the government does in fact use tax money to subsidize abortions and any number of other godless things.


So am I going to send out a rallying cry to you all to stop paying your taxes? Am I going to suggest you hold your own Tea Party and tell Washington where to get off?


Why, no, I'm going to tell you to pay your taxes, fear God, and honor the king. I'm telling you this because this is what Paul told Christians in the New Testament, back when the government they were dealing with was ancient Rome. If Christians weren't justified in refusing to pay taxes to Rome, which used tax money to fund genocides, the hunting and public execution of Christians, and the building of pagan temples, then we are not justified in refusing to pay taxes to our government. If they were supposed to honor not only Ceaser but their corrupt local officials, we can't not honor the king.


Now down to brass tacks: does honoring the king mean agreeing with everything he does, or pretending he is wise when he's a fool? No, of course not; but it does mean that you can't make fun of his ears or his accent in place of critiquing his policy. Does the fact that we have to pay our taxes mean that we should never engage in other forms of civil disobedience? No, of course not; but the forms we may engage in are pretty clearly deliniated.


We are allowed to 1) Refuse to obey laws that require us to break God's laws. For example, laws requiring us to worship idols (like in the book of Daniel), or laws requiring us to cease from preaching the Gospel (like in the book of Acts), or laws requiring us to break any of the other Commandments. 2) Get persecuted and martyred for refusing to obey wicked laws. 3) Preach the Gospel.


That's about it.


I see nothing in Scripture that says protest marches and writing to your congressman are wrong, but the idea that they are the primary ways to change society is founded in democratic thinking, not theology. The way Christianity brought down Rome, after all, was not by holding rallies and convincing the government to accept it. The Roman government only accepted Christianity after it became apparent that it was an unstoppable force, moving from individual to individual, and that people would rather die than give it up.


Perhaps, instead of getting hung up on the democratic process and whether or not America is or ever was "a Christian nation", we should just be working on whether or not our neighbors are Christians. The best form of civil disobedience might be a sort of divine fifth column work--if the people are mostly Christians, what else can the government do but bow?


So in honor of Tax Day, why not pay your taxes, fear God, honor the king, and make it a point to talk to someone (over a cup of tea) about the Lord today?


Cheers,


Breanna

Monday, April 13, 2009

Tock


Milo: Who are you?

Tock: My name is Tock. I'm a watchdog.

--The Phantom Tollbooth


I'm writing to distract myself from 1) the peanut butter oatmeal cinnamon cookies I made "for the Husband" and 2) what may or may not be serious contractions, so forgive me if the piece is a bit disjointed today.


For the quote above to make sense, you have to understand that Tock is a WATCHdog, i.e. a dog who has a built-in watch. He watches over time, and is highly offended when Milo says he's "just killing time" because, you see, time is a gift. (Tock is the sensible one in the book; I aspire to be like Tock but I'm afraid I identify more with the Humbug, who thinks the answer to every math problem is "17.")

I've been thinking about time, specifically the rhythm your days get into when you are the mommy of a Miss Boo and (currently) a miserable little black dog who wouldn't believe you when you told him it was raining, and it wasn't worth it to go out into the yard to see if the bone he ate yesterday magically reappeared. It occurred to me that time is a gift; without time, we wouldn't get rhythm.

Rhythm is, I think, why God created us in time in the first place. Our souls are eternal, but we have beginnings and so we experience eternity as a series of events. Every year God gives us spring, but it's a different spring; every day, God gives me waking up, going to sleep, three meals and my little round of chores. Every day these things are the same, but they're also different every day. As a sinful human my temptation is to either crave absolute steadyness ("I hate change!") or absolute novelty ("I'm bored!"), neither of which is appropriate for me. It's easy to see that it would be silly to ask for either of these things in the stuff we obviously can't control, like the weather, but it's hard for me to remember day-to-day that I can't control little stuff either.

So God gives me rhythm in my days as well as rhythm in my years and rhythm in the pews (I mean the church year, but that's a nice little music reference for those of you who know which album I'm talking about), to remind me of His goodness, His creativity (Who else would make all the crocuses different from each other and different from last year?), and His mercy. Every time the rhythm changes from autumn to winter, from abundance to dryness, from a feast to a fast, I get the chance to exercise my faith and remember, He is the one who'll bring us around to summer again.

All this brought on by realizing I've done laundry on Mondays now so long I can't remember when I last got through a Monday without washing something. So there you have it; housewives can be philosphers, too. :)

Hope you all are enjoying a rhythmic day,

Cheers,

Breanna

Easter Pics

Happy Easter! We wore our hat for nearly 20 whole minutes.
We thought we were beautiful.


...and thirsty.
Smashing the eggs was fun....
...you could stick your fingers inside if you wanted to.
Drinking apple juice from a big girl (non-sippy) cup...


...post-Easter toy carnage.

I'll write you a proper post later, but we have a desperate need to read The Runaway Bunny at the moment.

Cheers,

Breanna

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Alive and Still Pregnant...

...but sharing the computer with company. :) We'll get you a cute Easter/Passover post here by Monday; I have cute pictures.

And Boychild is doing just fine, still on the inside but counting the days until he gets paroled.

Cheers,

Breanna

Seder

We've done a Seder every year since we've been married. It's a really fun tradition, and it gets more meaningful each time we do it.

We change things up a bit, of course, figuring we're under the New Covenant and that we really wouldn't be doing it right even if we tried to do it perfectly right (for one thing, this pregnant lady isn't going to clean her entire house, including the bottoms of all the shoes, looking for little crumbs that might have leaven in them). For another thing, we have some food that's probably not strictly traditional and omit others that are (you can't make me eat gefelte fish). We do, however, have the real Seder plate, and we do go through the ritual where we remember that God saved us out of Egypt.

Tied in with all the Passover traditions in our Haggadah are a lot of references to redemption, freedom, victory, and blood. This is an Orthodox Haggadah we're talking about; they don't apparently know that they've anticipated Easter or foreshadowed the ultimate Passover Lamb beautifully. But as Christians, it's amazing to see the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, and to see the beauty of the Lord setting up Communion during the last Passover meal He ate with His disciples.

In keeping with that, we sometimes end our Seder with my husband serving everyone Communion, using the wine and the matzoh. The symbolism is powerful, and it becomes immediately apparent what He was claiming to be--the Lamb to end death, the King of redemption, the Bringer of freedom. There's a moment during Seder when you invite anyone who is hungry or desolate to come and eat with you, symbolically inviting the whole world to share the feast. When Christ said He wouldn't drink the cup again until He drank it with us in the new kingdom, He suspended the Passover meal until all those who would, could come and share His meal, so to speak.

God doesn't do anything accidentally. If I don't remember anything else from this Passover, I'm going to try to remember that.

Have a blessed Easter tomorrow,

Breanna

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Look, The Wheels Go Round

That quote from Arthur has been running through my head, over and over again, keeping me sane, mainly because it's in the same scene with another quote:

"If I start to die, please take this off of my head."

If I start to die (or go into labor), please take this out of my hands: The wheels have been going round, and round, and round, and round, and round....

I'm thrilled Miss Boo likes books and all, but I wish there was a different one she'd like as much to go to sleep with. We've been reading Wheels on the Bus over and over and over and OVER again for the past two weeks. The only reason I keep it up is that it produces moments like this:


She's had to sleep with Baby lately. Baby has displaced Lambie as Dolly-in-Chief. It's a hard job, but somebody has to do it. Baby also has to eat what Miss Boo eats, get her diaper changed regularly, and generally be Miss Boo's own Baby. (Just in time, folks!)

I, too, have had babies on the brain recently. (Wonder why?)


I wasn't trying for a witness-protection-program-type blur here, but this is the only way I could take a picture of my own pregnant belly. That you don't get to see my double chin is a fortunate side effect. :)


It's more impressive than that in real life. I swear the kid sometimes stands with his toes on my spine and his head against my belly button and stretches out his length. At some point the belly just gets ridiculous and then the kid has to be born. I keep trying to convince Boychild we have reached that point, but I think he's going for some sort of record.


Oh, well. It's a gorgeous spring day here; my crocuses are up and the lilies and narcissus are starting to think about growing taller, the pussywillows are blooming, and the birds are singing. It'd be a great day to have a baby, but in the meantime I'm just going to enjoy the ability to have my windows open and the sunshine coming in.


Happy Tuesday,


Breanna


Monday, April 6, 2009

My Son is Sort of Like Michael Jackson


....Not in any of the ways you might be thinking; he's not crazy or mentally slow or operated-upon or a frighteningly unnatural color. Nor do I know that he dances particularly well for an unborn kid; and I dearly hope his voice will be a bass when the time comes.


No, I mean my son is like Michael Jackson in the sense that he keeps threatening to make an appearance on the world stage and then changing his mind. :) Yesterday we had another bout of contractions, this time with the lovely addition of back labor. I asked the Lord to please give me a big huge sign, like my water breaking in the middle of Costco or something, so I know for sure when things happen.


The frozen aisle at Costco remains unscathed, and I am still pregnant this morning, so everyone can take a deep breath and decide the due date might be right after all. :)


We're just going about our normal lives; I refuse to go in for false alarms this time when I ought to know better. :D We'll keep ya'll posted,


Cheers,


Breanna

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Saturday Morning

I don't know if she's picked this up from her parents or not, but the baby gets up about as slowly as a teenager on Saturday mornings.
Leave me alone, Mom. I haven't even had my "Mil" yet.

In depressing news, I saw Rick Springfield on TV this morning peforming a concert. No, he wasn't playing "Jesse's Girl"; he was playing a song from his children's album entitled "Don't Keep the Sandman Waiting" which included a line:

There's a boy in France
Putting on his pants
He thinks the sandman's late

and proceeded to explain that the sandman had to catch the moon before it crossed the equator. RICK SPRINGFIELD. In clothes not much different than he wore in the 80s. I thought:

1) Of the Metallica song "Enter Sandman". Made the whole thing really creepy.
2) This had to be a spoof, like "A Mighty Wind" or "This is Spinal Tap". It wasn't.
3) Oh the humanity.

Have a nice Saturday, everybody!

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.
Contractions on and off, but nothing exciting. I'll keep ya'll posted.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Still Pregnant, No Pictures

Ever get a piece of a song stuck in your head on a loop? I keep hearing:

"So we talked about some old times,
And we drank ourselves some beer,
Still crazy after all these years."

only with "pregnant" where "crazy" is.

Well, it feels like years.

And beer would make this more fun, but I can't have any, so I'm moodily drinking my healthy water and eating healthy fruit and such and wishing I could be un-conscientious without being a bad mommy. Oh well. I'll drink Good Coffee again one of these days.

It's that time in the pregnancy when you wake up every day thinking, "Well, it probably won't be today, but on the other hand it might, so I suppose I ought to paint my toenails/wash the laundry/make sure there are diapers just in case." After a week of just in case, everything is done and you're reduced to, "so I suppose I should really watch the last hour of that DVD, just in case." It IS a motivator to keep up with your housework, thinking that you might be leaving in a hurry to have other people wandering around poking through your cupboards for diaper cream.

I've wondered if this is the kind of thing Christ was talking about when He mentions that a bunch of things that will happen near the end of time are only "the beginning of birth pangs". As in, they are the "is it? isn't it? what should we be doing?" phase, but of cosmic significance. And they will motivate us to keep up with our spiritual housekeeping, so to speak; maybe that's what it means when the Bible says to be sober and watch for Christ's coming. ("It could be today. I should paint my toenails." Et cetera. ;D)

I don't know why I'm ever surprised when Scripture's comparisons are apt, but this one is pretty dang apt. (The same with the thing in Isaiah about false beliefs being like a bed that's too short to stretch out on or a blanket that you can't wrap all the way around yourself. Is there a better picture of frustration?)

ANYWAY, I just wanted to let ya'll know nothing exciting is happening yet, but at least I will never look at Matthew 24 quite the same way again.

Hope everyone's having a happy Friday,

Cheers,

Breanna

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fool--Sort Of

Well, the midwife says I'm not dilating yet, so nothing YET. It might be my son has his Uncle Dunkle's taste in April Fool's jokes. On the other hand, the midwife says that if the contractions keep up, this could just be a slow labor that will take a couple days to gear up.

So, hurry up and wait!

I love late pregnancy. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

Braxton-Hicks Was a Jerk Anyway

Dr. Braxton-Hicks, or the Drs. Braxton and Hicks, or whomever the pair of names refer to, "discovered" in the 1880s a phenomenon that had been happening to women presumably since Eve had Cain: "false" labor contractions, or practice contractions. Here's the thing about Braxton-Hicks contractions-- it's really hard to tell them sometimes from real ones.

So as I sit here contracting, trying to decide if this is real or just a real long practice, I have to think the guy was probably a jerk. Or a pair of jerks.

I'll keep you posted,

Breanna