Baptism Weekend

We made it! Pauline's first road trip was a complete success. Tim, Grandpa Chuck, Pauline, Minka, and Mommy drove from Berlin to Muenster on Friday (week 4 - time is starting to go by very fast!). It's normally a 4 to 4.5-hour drive; we stopped twice to feed Pauline, but she handled most of the trip like a trooper. She was fussy once we got to our hotel, even after eating, so we set out for dinner, which entailed a long stroll once with Mommy and another with Daddy. The reward, however, for her fussy afternoon and evening was that she slept that night for darn near 8 hours straight. We'll take it!

Saturday morning we set off after breakfast for a stroll around the old city. We headed to the open-air market, which is one of the largest in Germany. Pauline seemed to enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells; Minka and I decided to sit it out, after the umpteenth person tapped me on the shoulder to remind me that dogs aren't allowed in the market. We whiled away the afternoon waiting to hear from Father Boecker, who'd said he would call in the evening and wanted to meet with us at that point. Pauline and I took yet another walk in the late afternoon so Tim could get some rest, and when we got back to the hotel, Caroline and Antoine had arrived. Caro is my former college roommate; her son Antoine is like my godson, and the two of them are very close to me. We're incredibly moved that they drove up from Lausanne, Switzerland in a whirlwind weekend just to meet Pauline. Anyway, Tim, Pauline, and I set off shortly after that for Schoeppingen, and indeed, Father Boecker called while we were on our way. Our meeting with him took longer than we'd expected, but we outlined the baptism ceremony, and he gave me copies of at least some of the texts he'd be using so I could interpret them into German for Chuck and Tim. Back to Muenster (it's about a half-hour each way) for dinner at the Pinkus brewery - Pauline was harder to get to sleep, but got a solid 6 hours once she fell asleep.

Sunday morning we woke up, fed the baby, got ourselves dressed, got breakfast, and left for Schoeppingen. Pauline was an angel during Mass - it took a bottle and a bit of rocking, but she liked the singing especially. (I can't wait to see what she does with a Methodist service...) She was so calm that I was able to get her into her baptismal gown during Mass, so she was ready to go. Her gown was the same one worn by her Grandma Liz (Tim's mom), her uncle Tom, and her cousin Rosie. She also wore a bracelet from her godparents, a baptismal ring from Chuck and Beth, and a gold cross of mine that once belonged to her namesake, my mother's godmother. We held her in a lovely white silk blanket that was another gift from her godparents.

The ceremony was a lovely one, with lots of reference to the special nature of the occasion - that Pauline was returning to the home of her ancestors. Pauline didn't cry or fuss at all when she was baptized - a moment which Antoine captured on video for us. We were joined for the ceremony by my friend Beate, a colleague from the Embassy who comes from another town near Muenster and who helped us to contact the priest last fall to arrange the baptism. Beate's mother also joined us, which was neat. Other guests included the members of the local historical society we met in February, and Renate Klitz, a very distant Klitz cousin who had been in contact with Tim and Chuck years ago. Though she'd fallen out of contact, she saw the article in the local paper about our visit in February and wrote to Chuck to ask if she could come for the baptism. It was really neat to meet her and her husband, and of course, wonderful that Pauline could be surrounded by so many friends for this important occasion. We were also joined by another distant Klitz relation, who'd e-mailed us after seeing the article in the local newspaper, and by a reporter from the paper. Stay tuned for yet another media appearance by our daughter.

After the ceremony, we invited everyone to lunch in Eggerode, the smaller town outside Schoeppingen which is actually closer to the Klitz family's farmstead. The hotel/restaurant put on a great spread for us, with lots of typical Muensterland foods. Caro and Antoine had to leave after lunch to get back to Lausanne, but it was so wonderful of them to come. After lunch, the rest of us strolled to the Klitz family farmstead, where Chuck, Tim, Renate, and Pauline posed for a picture on the Klitz Bridge, and Chuck took some soil from the plot of land his ancestors once farmed. Mr. Schulze Sievert, the descendant of the landowners who employed the Klitzes, invited us to walk over to his farm, which is just adjacent to the Klitz plot of land. He and his wife had us in for coffee, and we got to continue our conversations about emigration, history, farming... all sorts of things. Tim and I both thought when we met the members of the historical society in February that Chuck would have loved to talk to them, and we were so happy that he had the chance to do so. It was such a special day.

We went back to Muenster around 6 that evening. Pauline had been perfect all day, but by then was worn out and fussing. My sainted husband took her and Minka for a walk around 8:30, to let me get some rest; I didn't hear them come back, or much of anything else until Pauline woke up around 6. (I think there may have been a middle-of-the-night feeding in there, but I slept through it.) Monday morning we packed, got breakfast, and headed out. Our angel was great on the ride home, just to cap off a wonderful weekend.

Birth story

For those who haven't heard it, here's all the news about how Pauline came into the world.

Tim and I went in on Thursday, March 26 - our due date according to the German way of calculation, or one week past due according to the American way - and started with a half-hour on the fetal monitor. We then went in for our check-up - at which point our doctor tried to tell us that there was no pressing need to induce labor, we could really go a few more weeks. What?! We'd agreed with him months earlier that if Pauline hadn't come by her due date, we would induce. We discussed this with him and he agreed to begin induction, noting that her large size and my gestational diabetes gave two pretty good reasons to induce. So, off we went with our midwife Katrin to a labor/delivery suite, where I was given a quarter-dose of Cytotec, which is a drug developed to treat stomach ulcers. Because it's a synthetic form of prostaglandin, obstetricians have been using it more and more to induce labor, though this is an "off-label" use of the drug. Well, an hour on the monitor, and the quarter-dose wasn't doing too much, so Katrin sent us off to register in the hospital and get some lunch, with a long walk to try to get things going. I was feeling contractions, but they weren't really anything to get excited about yet. So, Tim and I took a nice, long walk to a restaurant for lunch (want to freak out a waitress? Walk into a restaurant 9 months pregnant, and when asked "When's the baby coming?" answer her: "Today, but not for a few more hours." We made up for it with a large tip.) We checked into the "family room" we'd be staying in - basically, a double hospital room where Tim got the second bed. We then went back to the labor/delivery suite, and Katrin gave me a larger dose of the medication. This really got things going - regular, productive contractions, and I began dilating much more quickly. Yay! Another hour on the monitor, then Tim went to get Mom while I took myself for a walk around the hospital. (Stairs: good to keep labor going, but make sure there's a handrail - hard to manage while in hard contractions!) We strolled around a bit more once Tim and Mom were back, then it was time to head back to the labor/delivery room. At this point, around 5 or 6 PM, contractions were getting harder but still very manageable. We labored for a while on the bed, trying a few different positions, then decided to take Katrin's recommendation and move to the huge tub/pool in the room. The warm water and change in position really helped me get through another hour or so, but by the end of that time, the contractions were very hard and nearly constant - no break from one to the next. I told Katrin maybe it was time to talk about an epidural; she called and learned that the on-staff anesthesiologist was in surgery and couldn't come to us for at least half an hour. OK, so we waited... breathe, breathe, breathe...

Once the anesthesiologist arrived, Tim and Mom were asked to leave so I could get the epidural. She tried 3 times, but couldn't get the needle into the right space. She determined that she needed a longer needle, but there wasn't one available at our hospital; it had to be brought from elsewhere. This took another hour or so, by which time there had been a shift change. The new anesthesiologist, with the longer needle, finally got there and got the epidural in on his first try. Yay! More than 2 hours after I asked for it, pain relief! (Because I'm a sick puppy, I asked to see the needles, though not until after the epidural was in. They're long. As in, they mark the length in centimeters along the needle. Yikes!)

Now it's late in the evening, we're at about 7-8 cm dilated, and labor's progressing well. I felt enough relief to close my eyes between contractions, at least for a few seconds. My water broke - which unfortunately meant less pressure on the cervix, so we went from 9 cm back to 7. But all was going fairly well. I was given another dose of the epidural, but it was apparently a little too much, as contractions slowed. So they finally began an IV drip of Pitocin. Meanwhile, regular exams were showing that Pauline seemed to be turned upside-down - head-first, but face up instead of face down. It's not necessarily a problem, but it's not the ideal position. Katrin hoped that with the harder contractions from the Pitocin, Pauline might turn herself the right way around.

Now it's 2 AM. I don't feel pain, but I do feel extreme pressure and an increasing urge to push. But the baby was still too high up, and hadn't turned. Katrin decided that if we hadn't made any further progress by 3 AM, she'd call in the obstetrician... who came in around 3:20, examined me, and concurred that the baby was too high up for an instrument-assisted delivery (forceps, vacuum, etc.). Since we weren't progressing, he decided Pauline would need to be born via C-section.

All of a sudden, a flurry of motion! The almost silent delivery area burst into activity, as a full surgical team was assembled within half an hour. Tim was given scrubs, I was moved into the operating room in the delivery area and prepped for surgery, they checked to make sure the epidural was working well, and hung screens so I couldn't see what they were doing below my neck.

And then, at 4:01 AM, after feeling a sense of being scooped clean like a melon, we heard a hoarse little cry, and saw a very red little baby. Moments later, Pauline was handed to her daddy for the first time, and we got to stare in awe at our baby while the doctors stitched me up. Katrin took her across the hall to our labor/delivery room to check her out and weigh her, which Mom got to see. And about 20-30 minutes later, I was wheeled back across the hall, belly deflated like a balloon, and got to hold Pauline for the first time.

Our experience in the hospital was... very, very different from what we would have experienced in the US. Maybe the best illustration of this was how they approached pain management: my epidural was removed just a few hours after the surgery, and I was given my daily medication - 5 doses of ibuprofen, to space through the day. The equivalent of about 3 Advil tablets per dose. I don't know about you, but that's about what I take for a headache - not for major surgery! But that was what I was allowed to take. We had some language-barrier issues with the nursing staff; we were given no guidance on breastfeeding, which resulted in a very rocky first few weeks that we're just starting to get over, 3 weeks into it, thanks to help from a specialist at another hospital. But we got through it, as did Pauline, who roomed in with us 24 hours a day from the time she was born until we were finally discharged, the following Tuesday.

All in all, we can't say we would recommend our hospital to other first-time parents, but the important thing is that all 3 of us are healthy. Pauline is more awe-inspiring every day, and although we're exhausted right now, we're learning more about her needs and her schedule and learning to fit our sleep and the rest of our lives around her. I think this is part of becoming parents... that, and the indescribable feelings of joy, wonder, and love we feel when she looks into our eyes. Tired as we are, and hard as it was to bring her into the world, we wouldn't give this up for anything.