Misty Water-Colored Meeemories

4

Birthday Girl

November 23, 2012

Today, my newborn baby Rat is one year old. To be precise, she will be exactly one year old today at 5:56 p.m. That’s the first time I heard her sweet little mewing cry, a sound I wish I had recorded because it’s growing increasingly difficult to remember what this busy little girl looked and sounded like as a tiny, helpless baby.

Eighteen Hours.

She is already everything I always hoped I would be. And no, I don’t mean that in a weird, vicarious sort of way, like I just gave away my nefarious plan to mold her into a NYCB dancer in my basement lair, but she’s fiercer, braver and mightier than her mama ever thought about being.

Bonnet.

My daughter has changed my life for the better in more ways than I could list in a book, let alone on this blog. Being her father’s wife and her mother are the two greatest things I’ve ever done and ever will do, and if anyone thinks that’s hopelessly un-feminist or that I’ve lost my sense of self or, frankly, my mind, well, I can live with that. I am an integral part of a family. I am important and necessary in ways I never thought I would be. I finally have some sense of my own worth in the eyes of God, and that is what Harper Nell Powell gave to me on her birthday.

Trust the Gorton's Fisherman.

Lest you think I’ve completely gone down the rabbit-hole, I’ll tell you that I still adore my job(s), and I expect I always will. (I told Blake the other day that I don’t ever plan to “retire.” Sure, I’d like to work less and with less pressure, but giving up writing and photography would be the exact opposite of a happy retirement.) I love that I get the opportunity every day to be creative (and get paid for it!), and I love interacting with other adults in a professional setting. I even love the minutiae of running a business. It’s just that I love being a wife and mom more. And if there’s just one thing I want Harper to know always, it’s that I love her and I love being her mom. As I sit here, I know that my own mother loves me more than anything in the world, but I don’t think she was particularly fired up about being a mom in general. I, on the other hand, relish it. I love washing Harper’s little clothes, I love picking up her toys, I love thinking of what to feed her for meals, I love reading books about child development, I love socializing with other moms, I love taking her to church even though it’s exhausting, I love sewing and crafting things for her, I love changing her diaper in the back of my car and I love planning her birthday party (which has been the main reason for my recent unplanned blog hiatus).

Bath time.

That sounds like a lot of distractions from work, and it is, but being Harper’s mom has given me and my photography business a clarity and a focus that I never knew I could have and that, to be bluntly honest, very few who know me personally, including me, thought I was capable of. What used to take my all day can now be done in a couple of hours, i.e., during naptime. And although I try never to speak for The Guy, I think he would wholeheartedly agree that, although he has always loved his job, he has a whole new level of enthusiasm and confidence about it, in part because of his role as a father. If you were to distill it down to a single reason, I guess it’s that there are far fewer hours in a day that we can spend focused solely on our work, so we have to come to our jobs with a laser-like focus and take care of what’s important and eliminate what’s not, which has made both of us more efficient, more creative and more motivated.

This first year has not been easy. Joyful, yes. Easy? Not on your life. There has been an enormous learning curve for me and The Guy to overcome, and I’ve said more than once that, when we have another baby, I’ll feel kind of bad for Harper, because she’s the one who had to be the guinea pig. Every baby is different, so there’s no guarantee the next one will be smooth sailing, but having the first one is like riding a roller coaster in the dark; you never know what’s coming next. At least the next time around, we’ll have SOME idea what to expect. But Harper’s the one who made us parents, and because of that, she’ll always be special.

I’m so excited to see how she’ll grow and change and learn and develop in the next year. Yesterday, at Thanksgiving dinner with family, she more than held her own with her two- and four-year-old boy-cousins, so if I had to guess, I’d say we’re probably going to have more snails and puppydog tails than sugar and spice in our lives. And that’s just fine with me. It’d be great if she were a Girlus maximus like her mama, but if she’s not, then my five-year plan involves turning Harper Nell Powell into a spider-killing, attic-exploring, four-wheeler-riding machine. Which I am most definitely not. Although I did kill a spider yesterday to keep it from getting in her room. (If it had been anywhere else, I totally would have screamed, slammed the door, run away and waited for The Guy to get home. So yeah, I can unload a 9 mil into a splatter target with a pearly-white smile on my face, but smooshing a spider gives me the shivers for 45 minutes. Sue me.) So on top of everything else, Harper makes me brave.

She’s asleep at the moment, no doubt passed out face-down in her crib, drooling on her Winnie the Pooh doll that’s becoming more of a constant companion by the day, but when she wakes up, we’ll look at her Global Babies book that Linda and Elaine gave her (it’s the first thing besides Pooh that she wants every morning – I think she’s checking on them), cuddle her “Tiger Tail” (a little purple-and-yellow plush football with a striped tail attached), scatter blocks and maybe even rip up a fresh magazine (there’s very little Harper likes more than a brand-new, pristine magazine). She’ll babble to herself and say “Uh oh,” “BOOM!” “bo,” “I love you” (sort of), and, if I’m lucky, “good girl.” And that she is, my friends – a good girl. So I better go and fix another cup of coffee. It’s going to be a busy day.

Harper Thanksgiving 2012

Your candle-lighting
Kel

P.S. Want to see the many ways this nugget has grown and changed over her first year? Go here!

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14

Stage Fright

July 27, 2012

A couple weeks ago, when I traveled to Birmingham for my sorority’s chapter reunion (more on that later), I undertook what was, by far, the most nerve-wracking photo shoot of my career to date. And yes, I am including my first shoot with Jennifer Robison in that statement.

I shot my best friend’s bridal portraits.

The location was the historic Alabama Theater, which made for a breathtaking backdrop but was a real challenge for me, lighting-wise. To complicate things even further, The Guy was on baby duty, so he couldn’t assist me.

Desperate, I posted on the reunion Facebook page: “I have kind of an odd request: I’m shooting Dr. Brandi’s bridal portraits Friday at 1:30 at the Alabama Theater (!!!!!), and I could really use an assistant, which, not being at home and all, I don’t have. Anybody interested in lending a hand???”

By that afternoon, I had a volunteer. Our sweet sister Amy flew in THAT DAY from Washington, D.C., hopped in her rental car and drove straight to the Alabama. Though she’d never so much as held a reflector in her life, she did the best job you can possibly imagine. It was meant to be. The three of us had the best time working together, catching up, laughing our heads off and wandering (unsupervised!) all over that lovely old theater.

And though I was so nervous I literally almost threw up on the way there, I’m pretty pleased with how Brandi’s bridals are turning out so far. Tell me what you think!

There was a lot of this going on that day.

Recognize that necklace?

That’s also the fascinator I bought to wear with my first wedding dress. Remember, the one I had to replace 11 days before my and The Guy’s wedding? All this time, I’ve been meaning to sell it on eBay or something, but I keep forgetting. Well, it just happens to match Dr. Brandi’s dress PERFECTLY!

—-

Dr. Brandi’s every bit as gorgeous as she is smart, and she’s just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. I’m so very blessed and lucky to have had her in my life all these years.

But just because she’s a blushing bride and all doesn’t mean I’m going to let her forget the many shenanigans we got up to, like that time in college when we got drunk in her dorm room and then decided to paint her toenails before we went out dancing that night and after we were done we decided we needed to change our majors to Art Things because we were clearly such GENIUSES but the next morning realized it looked like Koko the finger-painting gorilla had given her a pedicure. After suffering a traumatic brain injury.

And we thought those guys were staring at us because we looked so hot.

—-

You know, stuff like that.

Your much relieved
Kel

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16

Five Diapers

June 8, 2012

Packing or, more accurately, re-packing Harper’s diaper bag is serious business in the Powell household. If The Guy or I come in with a trunkload of groceries, Chihuahua wearing a Cone of Shame, Harper practicing her Dying Screech Owl routine and enough dry cleaning to outfit Nicole Richie for three days, then by God, we will repack the diaper bag before we even put the milk in the fridge. There’s good reason for this.

I’m kind of preoccupied with the Zombie Apocalypse preparedness under normal circumstances, so you can imagine that this tendency took on obsessive proportions during the last weeks of my pregnancy. Amazingly, though, the diaper bag went largely ignored – I never even got it out of Harper’s closet. My rationale was that it would be a couple weeks before I took her anywhere that I might need one, so what’s the rush?

Famous last words, as they say.

If it weren’t for the fact that we had Harper, I would call the 10 days immediately following her birth the worst of our lives, hands down. People, there was NO END to the number of things that went horrifyingly, ridiculously wrong. It was practically BIBLICAL. Here is just a small sample:

–We had to take Harper to the emergency room in the middle of the night TWICE. (My boobs weren’t working and she wasn’t getting anything to eat.)
–We had to take me and The Guy to the emergency room once each.
–I got so sick with a sinus infection that I couldn’t hold or even touch Harper for about 14 hours.
–I had what the lactation consultant declared was the single worst case of engorgement she had ever seen.
–Our house caught fire.
–Which caused us to basically have to empty our savings account and give all the money to electricians, appliance-repair people and an unscrupulous heating and air-conditioning guy.

Yes. FIRE.

We had been up all night with a starving and therefore screaming baby. We called the pediatrician’s office at 6 a.m. on Sunday when we realized her eyes were dull, her lips were chapped and the inside of her mouth was bone dry. The doctor told us to give her a bottle of formula, which was, at that point, the single best thing we’d done for her. She took two ounces and passed out in the most blissful milk coma either of us had yet seen. We three were content, and we were exhausted.

After putting Harper in her bassinet, Blake and I laid down together in bed for the first time since we’d gone to the hospital to have her. We were both on our backs – oh, how delicious it feels to stretch out on your back after not being able to for months – and as we sank into the mattress, our feet touched.

It was an ordinary, insignificant gesture, but over the preceding year, it was a comfort we’d begun to take for granted. Now, that tiny moment of telepathy between our pinky toes communicated just how profoundly – and how magnificently – our lives had changed in only a few days. We both had tears in our eyes. Less than a minute later, our new little family of three was happily unconscious.

Exactly one and one-half hours later – I know because I looked at the clock – we woke up to howling smoke alarms. It must be some malfunction, we both thought. We didn’t leave the stove on. Heck, we haven’t had time to even USE the stove! Thankfully, the baby continued to sleep. Blake and I stumbled out of our bedroom, headed toward the kitchen, where we assumed we would whack at the smoke alarm a few times with the broom to turn it off, then return to bed.

Wrong.

The house was filled with acrid smoke.

The Guy turned to me. “GET OUT,” he said. “GET HARPER, AND GO OUTSIDE.”

I ran back to the bedroom and scooped up the baby, my mind racing.

I’m not dressed!
I didn’t see fire.
It smells like an electrical fire.
How long until the fire department gets here?
Is our house going to burn down?
Should I grab picture albums or something?
I need things for the baby!

Wait, what kind of things?!

Thus, Harper and I waited outside for the fire department with her wrapped like an eggroll in four blankets and me wearing a short, sleeveless pink nightgown, an entirely-too-thin-for-the-weather cotton shortie bathrobe and a pair of gold ballet flats with my leopard-print handbag slung over my shoulder, into which I had shoved five diapers.

That was my contribution to my newborn baby’s health and welfare: five diapers.

Turned out the fire was caused by a deteriorated electrical cord on the back of the fridge (I KNEW it wasn’t the heater!). We had it repaired, then I set about ensuring, so far as I can, anyway, that Harper and I never again wind up waiting for emergency personnel with nothing but five measly diapers to our name.

The diaper bag stays packed at all times, and it’s always in the same place, which is a location that is distinctly unlikely to burst into flames. Unless one of my dining-room chairs spontaneously combusts. Which, in my world, is not at all outside the realm of possibility.

Here’s what’s in there:

Five disposable diapers. We cloth-diaper Harper most of the time, but let’s be honest here, disposables can’t be beat when you’re faced with a spectacular blowout.

One or two cloth diapers.

At least one small wet bag, preferably two.

Plastic grocery sacks.

Wipes. Lots of wipes. It’s almost impossible to have too many wipes.

Hand sanitizer. See above re. “spectacular blowout.”

A change of clothes for Harper, which I switch out seasonally or when she has a growth spurt. Right now, since it’s summer, I just carry an extra onesie, but during the winter, we had a long-sleeved onesie, stretchy pants, a pair of socks and a hat. A onesie and a pair of Baby Legs are really all you need for the spring or fall, at least in Louisiana.

A bib or two.

A couple of burp cloths.

An extra shirt for me. Just a ratty grey t-shirt from Old Navy, but it’s better than sporting poop and/or barf all down my front (or back, as the case may be).

Pacifier(s). Harper’s not much for pacifiers anymore, but there was a time when we didn’t leave the house without at least three.

Pacifier holder.

Pacifier wipes. These are also great for bottles, of course.

Teething toy.

Stuffed rattly-doll-type toy.

Small, thin flannel receiving blanket. (This IS Louisiana, after all.)

A Dr. Brown’s bottle filled with purified water. Maybe two, depending on how long we plan to be out.

Containers filled with baby formula and rice cereal.

Baby food.

Baby spoon.

A pair of travel scissors. These come in handy more often than you’d think.

“Hygiene products” for me. Look, momma’s gotta be prepared too.

—-

It sounds like an overwhelming amount of gear to schlep around, but I roll everything, and it all fits easily in my diaper bag with room to spare. These are baby items, remember, so most everything is quite small.

Blake, by the way, has his own plain black diaper bag that has pretty much everything in it that mine does. And yes, he actually likes carrying a diaper bag. In fact, he says he loves it. (He and Harper usually have a daddy-daughter outing of some sort on his day off.) No, he does not care if you laugh at him for wearing a murse. He said that if you see him wrangling a baby and a stroller and you still think that black bag slung over his shoulder with bottles hanging out of it is a murse, then the joke’s on you, my friend.

—-

So now I’m curious:

Whether or not you have a baby, what do you carry to be prepared?

Your Girl Scouting (not really – I didn’t like the uniforms)
Kel

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15

Icons

March 27, 2012

The most beautiful and glamorous women in the world, according to Kelly Phelan, age 6:

(Besides my mom. No, really. I was convinced that my mom was literally the most beautiful woman in the world and that she looked exactly like Barbie. In fact, I used to cut all my Barbies’ hair short so they would look more like my mom.)

(That’s not weird or anything.)

(OK, now that I’ve fulfilled – no, SURPASSED – my Awkward Quota for the day, here we go.)

Wonder Woman

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

Miss Piggy

Lucy Ewing on Dallas

Francesca Annis, a.k.a., Lillie Langtry on PBS Masterpiece Theatre’s Lillie

Um. One of these things is not like the others. To say the least.

(I was a really weird little kid.)

(I know, right? SURPRISE!!1!)

Although I’m proud that I’m limiting Harper’s media exposure, that means her personal style icon at this point is probably Father Phil.

So who were your heroes when you were six?

Your admiring
Kel

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37

The Breath of Life

February 28, 2012

Whenever people learn that I pledged a sorority in college, they have one of two reactions:

1. No f^&$!%g way.

2. Well, DUH.

(It seems there is never any middle ground with me.)

For some reason, I tend to hear No. 1 slightly more often than No. 2. “You don’t seem like the sorority type,” they say. And in some ways, I guess, that’s true. After all, one can’t easily imagine Elle Woods trolling the comic book shop, listening to Stabbing Westward (shut up) or getting a tattoo.

But anybody who’s ever been to one of my parties, seen me in my Sunday best or sat next to me at a Junior League meeting can’t imagine a horde of zombie velociraptors keeping me away from Bid Day.

Looking back on it, it was probably that dichotomy that drew me to Delta Gamma.

I could easily write a book about my sorority experience – and one day, I just might – so there’s no way I could describe it here, but suffice it to say that while it was typical in some aspects, it was pretty unique (from what I understand, anyway) in a lot of others. For one thing, not all the girls fit the sorority mold. Some did, of course, and outwardly, at least, I was one of them, but we also had musicians and artists and gamers and hippies who refused to shave their legs.

(OK, so there was just the one hippie, but still. One’s all you need, right?)

People, usually people who never belonged to a sorority or fraternity (isn’t that always the way?), accuse “Greeks” of buying their friends, and frankly, there is a little truth to that. I mean, yeah, I wanted to make lifelong friends and belong to something bigger than myself and network and blah blah blah blah blah, but having people to hang out with at this big scary urban campus where I knew a grand total of, like, two people was a big part of the equation as well.

But there’s an essential truth of Greek life that cannot be ignored:

If you’re a total wing nut, it doesn’t matter if your daddy bought the chapter its very own party bus, you’re still not gonna have any friends.

Fortunately, we never really had that problem during my time in DG. Let’s be honest, when you put 100 women together in close quarters, some people are going to get along better than others. But – and I know nobody will believe me when I say this – while we weren’t all BFFs or anything, we actually, you know, liked each other. It was the first time I had ever been part of a large group of females where there wasn’t all this jealousy and backbiting and manipulation. It was, in short, freakin’ AWESOME, and if there was some way that I could be married to The Guy and have Harper but still walk across campus every day at lunchtime to eat Arby’s and watch Days of Our Lives in the suite with my sisters, I would do it in a hot minute.

Thirteen days ago, I lost one of my beloved sisters, Brandi Thorpe. Not Dr. Brandi, but her little sister in Delta Gamma, actually. Thorpe, as we always called her, was just 33, and she lost a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis.

(It looked for a little while like she might leave us the day before, on February 14, and I had to smile, knowing that would be the biggest double middle finger in the history of the world to Valentine’s Day, a “holiday” of which neither I nor Thorpe, as perpetual single gals, were ever very fond.)

Despite work schedules and deadlines and Junior League projects and infant daughters who had just started sleeping through the night, there was never any question that the Powells Three would make tracks for Birmingham immediately. The Guy didn’t say a word, never once challenged the wisdom of driving 20 hours in four days with a three-month-old baby, but I know my husband, and I know that inwardly, he was a little perplexed: All this? For a sorority sister? Really?

Of course I’d told him about the closeness among the DGs, but I don’t think he really believed it – hell, even I had started to think, on some level, that I had mythologized the whole thing in my mind – until we got to the funeral home Friday night and he saw. We saw, really. How it was as if literally no time had passed, as if we’d all hung out in the suite yesterday, how we fell into each other’s arms and hugged and cried and comforted one another like, well, sisters. I overheard The Guy remark to another “DG Husband” that he couldn’t even remember all his fraternity brothers’ names; he was amazed that after 15 years, we could still be this close.

The next day was Thorpe’s funeral, and I don’t really want to talk about that yet except to say it was perfect and beautiful and moving, and I’m pretty sure it was everything Thorpe would’ve wanted it to be. Including rainy. With her great love for musicals, Thorpe definitely had an appreciation for the dramatic.

Her family had a special section for us in the front, and the 20 or so of us who were present took part in the Cream Rose Ceremony, a ritual that Delta Gammas perform when a sister passes away. We all more or less held it together until the bag piper began to play, and as Mere’s fiance, Andrew, said, “If you can listen to a bag piper play at a funeral without tearing up a little, even if you don’t know the person, you have no soul.”

(I have to brag on Harper a bit: Because it was raining, the bag piper played indoors and loudly. The minute he started blowing, I turned to my sister Katrina and said, in between sobs, “It’s only a matter of time until Harper starts screaming.” But she never did! The Guy said she looked startled, then broke out in an enormous grin. As Katrina said, “She’s just like her momma. She knows when to act up and when to be a lady.”)

At the end of the weekend, we all said that despite the terrible reason, we were glad it brought us all back together again. Before Thorpe’s departure, we had started planning a chapter reunion for this summer, and now the Birmingham girls have a standing monthly dinner date (with a quarterly Saturday thrown in for those of us from out of town). Thorpe would’ve hated missing all the fun, but I know she’d be happy that these renewed friendships are part of her legacy.

Through various circumstances, some of my pre- and post-college pals are Facebook friends with some of my sorority sisters, and after Thorpe’s passing, several of them remarked that they wish they’d known her. I could write the rest of the day and not even put a dent in everything there is to tell you about Thorpe, but here are just a handful of things that she was:

Me and Thorpe.

–She was a daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, sister and friend.

–She had a degree in English, but she worked as a banker, a career she began while we were still in college. She’d been off work for a while because of her hospitalizations, but she held her job until the day she died.

–She had an awesome condo in downtown Birmingham, where she lived with her three cats, Issy, Beau and Hallow.

–She liked to get her party on every once in a while, but she was nevertheless one of the most responsible people I have ever met.

Eric.

–She loved Halloween as much or more than I do.

Malloween.

–She played her illness pretty close to the vest most of the time, but she was a tireless advocate for her fellow CF patients.

–The night before the Golden Anchor Ball (yes), we dyed her hair in her hospital room. Did a pretty good job, too. (See the third photo down for proof.)

Golden Anchor Ball.

–Girlfriend loved her some hair dye.

Pink.

–She introduced me to the deliciousness that is cream cheese and Keebler Club Crackers.

–She was a stellar example of doing all you can do but not sweating it when you’re doing all you can and you can’t do any more. Which is the chief reason I haven’t abandoned this blog in a fit of misguided penance and remorse.

–There was nothing she liked more than talking about high school and college. We used to give her a bit of a hard time about that, but the other night, it hit me: The past was the one thing Thorpe could be sure of. Because of her health, the future was even more uncertain for her than it is for most people, and even the present was sometimes a little shaky. So she focused on her good memories.

–She was the sweetest, smartest, cutest, feistiest little sprite, and I am so grateful for the privilege of having known her.

Goodbye.

I will always love her very, very much.

Delta Gamma’s motto is “Do Good” (get it?), and that’s exactly what we’re going to do here today.

For every comment on this post, The Guy and I will donate $1 of our own moola to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

We’re also trying to find a business or organization to match our donation, so if you know of anyone who might be willing, please email me.

In your comment, tell me about something that helps you breathe a little easier. Or a story about someone you miss. Or your best Halloween costume of all time. Or your favorite snack involving a Keebler product. You get the idea.

Source: anchorssaweigh.tumblr.com

Your hopeful
Kel

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8

The Marriage of True Minds

February 14, 2012

Dear Perkins,

Isn’t it funny how, in just a little over two years, we’ve gone from this

Scrooge.

to this

First Date.

to this

Ten.

to this

to this

The Aisle.

to this?

Family.

I’d make that trip a thousand times with you.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Prince Charming.

King Blake 1.

Your adoring
Perkable

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14

The Beginning

December 5, 2011

Like the grasshopper who sang all summer, I had every intention of procrastinating telling Harper’s birth story. Sometimes, big narratives like this intimidate me, I guess because the words on the page can never live up to the story in my head, especially in this instance.

But after almost two weeks away from my keyboard, my writin’ fingers are getting itchy. So away we go!

First, a warning: This is the story of my labor and Harper’s birth, and I think we’ve all watched enough National Geographic Channel and YouTube videos to know what that entails. Therefore, if you’re the kind of pansy who gets squicked out by the word “tampon,” then stop reading now.

In fact, if you don’t like the word “tampon,” then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog at all. Off with you.

—-

On Friday, November 18, I got dressed to go to lunch with my friend Joy and her mother-in-law, Donna, at The Glenwood Village Tearoom here in Shreveport. Just before I left, I went to the bathroom and…recognized that labor had begun. (Even I have my limits, so we’ll just leave it at that.)

As anyone who’s ever had a baby knows, just because labor has technically begun doesn’t mean you’re going to have a baby any time soon. When I started having strong, regular contractions, I was hopeful but knew we probably had a while to wait.

The Guy and I spent the weekend in a buzz of nervous excitement. I decided I could not possibly have this baby until we found drapes for our bedroom, so he dutifully drove me all over town until I finally settled on some at the Home Depot less than a mile from our house.

We hung the drapes and cleaned the house and shopped for groceries and prayed fervently that the baby would come (or at least start to come) before Monday, but alas, the contractions started tapering off Sunday night, and by my OB appointment Monday afternoon, they had all but stopped.

By that time, I had hit the wall. This had been going on for 72 hours, and I was exhausted and more than a little discouraged, especially when I learned that I was only dilated about 1 centimeter. (For reference, at 10 centimeters, you’re fully dilated and ready to give birth. Clearly, I had a very long way to go.)

We decided to check into the hospital the following evening and proceed with The Plan.

I was emailing pretty regularly to let folks know what was going on, so I’ll just tell you now what I told them then:

—-

Wednesday, November 23, 2:07 a.m. (about 2 1/2 hours after checking in to the hospital)

Subject: At last, some real progress!

The nurse checked me before she placed the Cervadil (sp?), and I was already two cm dilated! Now that it’s in, contractions are pretty constant and intense, but so far, no pain, just a little discomfort (knock on wood, of course).

Please pray, pray, pray, PRAY that pitocin won’t be necessary!

My BP has been good, too, and that’s great news for Harper.

All’s well otherwise. B. and I are just so wired, it’s ridiculous. We get settled down a little, then we hear one of the babies on the unit cry and get amped all over again. The nurse said she’s going to bring me something to help me sleep, as I’ll need lots of energy for whatever tomorrow (today) has in store for us.

Ah, here she is! Ok, off to dreamland. I’ll let y’all know as soon as there’s any news that is news!

Love you all!

—-

Wednesday, November 23, 8:36 a.m.

Subject: Well, poo.

Dr. came in this morning and announced that while my cervix is indeed softer and thinner, it is still posterior and now completely closed.

Dear Cervix: WRONG DIRECTION, IDIOT. Love, Kel.

So now we’re trying a different medicine, Cytotec, which is supposed to be better/faster/etc.

I gotta hand it to Dr.: She’s doing everything she can think of to keep me off pitocin and give me the best possible chance for a [natural childbirth].

She’ll be back after surgery, at which time we should have a little clearer picture of the course ahead. Until then, I’m flat on my back. Literally.

If anyone would like to come visit, we’re at Christus Schumpert Highland (the one on Bert Kouns) in L&D room 133. If you can believe it, we have by FAR the smallest, least elaborate wreath on our door. And I AM OK WITH THAT. Dude, some of those things look like parade floats.

Hurry up, Harper Nell!

—-

Wednesday, November 23, 11:28 a.m.

Subject: Pitocin, here we come.

Welp, the Cytotec didn’t do a blessed thing, either. I am contracting regularly (about every three minutes) and toward the high end of “moderately,” but still no dilation whatsoever. So we’re going to give the pitocin two hours to work its magic.

The good news is Harper is healthy as a horse, and my BP has only gone up once.

—-

And here, as you may have guessed, is where things get interesting.

The nurse came in and started the pitocin drip, and I admit I was pretty bummed. I knew all along I would do whatever I had to in order to deliver Harper safely, but a selfish part of me was really disappointed that the chances of me getting the birth experience I wanted were, at that point, poor to nonexistent. But I had to make the best of it, so I decided to go as far as possible without anesthesia in the hopes of speeding things up a bit.

Also, being completely honest, the idea of a needle in my spine terrified me significantly more than the thought of an unmedicated childbirth.

WHAT.

Everybody’s afraid of something.

At first, everything was OK. Don’t get me wrong, I was hurting and hurting pretty bad, but I wasn’t, like, half out of my mind with pain or anything. I would characterize the pain as, say, really bad menstrual cramps times 10. Men, I’ve obviously never taken a hit in the misters myself, but based on The Guy’s descriptions, I’d say you can imagine a glancing blow (so to speak), or maybe the aftermath of a moderate injury. In other words, very painful but bearable.

The Guy stepped out of the room for a bit – his parents brought him something to eat, and he didn’t want to eat in front of me since I hadn’t been allowed anything but ice chips for the last 12 hours or so – and my doctor came in to check on things. Good news! The Alcatraz of cervixes was by then dilated two centimeters. So we were sort of back where we started. But I once more chose optimism and decided to take this as a positive sign. She announced that she would go ahead and break my water to help the process along. She pulled out this instrument that sort of looked like a very long, white, bendy crochet hook.

I was OK for about five more minutes.

Then I kissed everything resembling sanity goodbye as I slowly entered a brightly colored, Hunter-S.-Thompson-esque world of pain.

I have two tattoos, one of which took half a day to complete. I have dislocated every joint from the waist down at least once, and I have broken all my toes, many simultaneously.

And I have still never felt pain like that in my entire life. Never even came close.

As I sit here, I can sort of recall it, and just the memory of it makes me sick to my stomach.

Welcome to an unmedicated, pitocin-induced childbirth, a.k.a., The Seventh Circle of Hell! We’re so pleased to have you on board today!

I begged to get out of bed, but the nurses wouldn’t let me. If I’d had the wherewithal to focus on anything but not screaming in agony, I probably would’ve thrown one of the mythological Kelly Phelan Tantrums, but I was having trouble breathing, let alone forming coherent sentences.

(No, I have absolutely no idea why they wouldn’t let me stand up, and yes, it’s really weird. I asked ahead of time and was told I was welcome to move about and use my birthing ball and yoga mat all I wanted as long as I stayed hooked up to all the monitors, so I don’t know what changed. All I do know is we ended up carting a giant blue ball to the hospital that ended up being utterly useless.)

And so, relegated to my hospital bed, I had no choice but to close my eyes, concentrate on breathing slowly and evenly and try not to pass out.

It was in that moment that John McCain appeared to me.

No, not Jesus. Not the Virgin Mary.

John McCain.

Yes, that John McCain.

God knows which neurons were firing out of control, but suddenly, all I could think about was John McCain. And I made up my mind that if he could survive six years with broken arms in some North Vietnamese hellhole, then I could make it through the next contraction. And the next. And the next.

The nurse checked me again, and I was at 5 1/2 centimeters. A little over halfway there.

Finally, I decided that John McCain wouldn’t let a little old needle scare him, and I told the nurse I wanted an epidural AND I WANTED IT NOW.

But it wasn’t as simple as that.

(It’s never as simple as that, is it?)

Before I could have an epidural, I had to receive an entire bag of fluid through my IV. That, my friends, was the longest 15 minutes of my life. Thank God the nurse agreed to turn that son of a bitch up and let it run wide open.

John McCain and I begged The Guy not to talk, make noise or even breathe loudly and just sit with us while we tried not to cry.

Finally, the anesthesiologist arrived. And because I am Kelly Phelan Powell and my life is a comedy, I had to get the one anesthesiologist in all of Shreveport, Louisiana with a deplorable excess of personality.

You know what’s more fun than unanesthetized, chemically-induced labor and getting a needle the size of a fountain pen shoved up your back?

Having an unanesthetized, chemically-induced labor and getting a needle the size of a fountain pen shoved up your back while you try really, REALLY hard not to move so you don’t end up paralyzed!

I swear to God, life with me is one big barrel of monkeys.

Slowly, my body went numb from my waist to my toes, and the pain subsided.

A while later, the anesthesiologist came back to check on me. “Doing alright?” he asked. “Are you too numb? Do you need me to turn it down?”

Everybody’s a comedian, dude.

Blessedly, I slept for a bit, then the nurse came in to check my progress. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“I, uh…I kind of feel like the baby’s going to…”

“Going to what?”

“Going to fall out.”

She examined me, then hurried to find the doctor. Meanwhile, another nurse came in to prepare the room for the delivery and I tried really hard not to sneeze or anything.

Pretty soon, all the necessary parties were assembled and standing before a giant spotlight (I kid you not) trained directly on my naked ladybits. It was humiliating, but what can you do? I just rolled with it.

By that time, the epidural had worn off a little, so I could tell when to push. And after about 45 minutes and the strangest sensation I don’t think I can ever describe, Harper Nell Powell entered the world, and I burst into tears.

She breathed on her own right away, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she looked wonderingly around the room with huge almond-shaped eyes.

The nurse laid her on my chest, and she gave a little gurgling cry, and I fell stone in love.

Someone once told me that giving birth is like having God Himself in the room with you. At the time, I thought it a hopelessly melodramatic description, but turns out that’s just about right.

Snooze.

Fish Lips.

Family Portrait.

And call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure I want to do it again!

(But not right now.)

Your completely consumed
Kel

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