An update that's long overdue!

Two and a half years since my last post, and while much has changed, sadly our yard has not! :) Since I last wrote, the most significant change was a new addition to our family, Maximus Han Uckun, on April 21, 2009. Living with Max is pure joy. Exactly one year before Max joined us, we adopted our first dog together, Zoe. Add to the mix my seventeen-year-old sister, Kristina, who has been our amazing nanny for the past 6 months, and you can imagine our cute two bedroom house from one of my previous posts is feeling very, very small now. We've been renovating the basement for over a year now, but we're very close to having a couple of extra rooms that will nearly double our living space.

Auntie Kristi flew home to Washington to spend a month with mom and dad, and we will be joining her shortly. Max will finally get to meet Grandpa! Since Auntie Kristi is away, Max went to daycare for the first time this week (here is a picture of his first day). All of my mommy fears about leaving him with strangers were for naught. Max is having a fantastic time with all of the other kids, and doesn't even notice when I leave! Little stinker.

In September of this year, I started a new job as a Grants Manager at Princeton University (where Aybars works). We have been having lunch together nearly every day since I started, and this week we've been meeting Max for lunch since he's at a daycare only a 1/2 mile from where we work. All three of us love being so close to each other. This is so much better than having mommy commute to Philadelphia every day.

It's hard to believe Max will be 8 months old on Monday. The last year flew by. A year ago, I was getting ready for my final semester at UPenn. I still can't believe I managed to finish my degree waddling around campus. But I did. Some of the proudest moments of my life happened this Spring--first, welcoming little Max to the world, and then graduating three weeks later with Max, Aybars, and Mom there with me.

Max's Birth Story
Maternity leave began on Monday, April 20th, and on my drive to my last final, I asked Max to please not come JUST yet. He waited until I was in the middle of the oral portion of the final. There was a loud thunderclap, and then my water broke! Thankfully, it was nothing too dramatic, and I didn't even realize exactly what had happened until I said 'goodbye' to my professor. I drove the 40 miles home through a thunderstorm and horrible rush hour traffic with contractions 12 minutes apart. They stayed 12 minutes apart until late that night, so I had time to watch a movie with Aybars and Steve (our housemate for a few months), and to eat half a pizza!

When we finally tried to lie down and get some rest around 10:30 p.m., my body protested, and the contractions kicked it up a notch to 3 minutes apart. On the drive to the hospital, I told Aybars, "I want to have a natural birth so the baby and I are alert when we meet for the first time. So when I'm screaming for drugs, just remind me that this is what I wanted!" Labor was a little painful, but didn't really get bad until about 2:30 in the morning. I wasn't the type to get angry with my husband, but I do remember seeing all of the electronic gadgets lined up on the table--the laptop, the iPhone, the iPod, the iPod Blaster, the cell phones--and it made me seethe! I roared at Aybars to get them out of my sight, and after he put them away, I was fine. For some reason, my labor did not go well with electronics! The last few hours of labor was unlike anything I have experienced before. It was the most exhausting, humiliating, exhiliarating, lonely, blessed thing I have ever gone through. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in between most contractions, and then was startled awake after about a minute with the intense pain of another contraction.

One of the most helpful bits of advice someone gave me about natural childbirth was that just when you think you're going to die, it's almost over. There was a moment when I was groaning and crying, "God forgot about me!" Thank God for Aybars, who was there with me the whole time, reminding me that I was not forgotten. My natural childbirth almost didn't happen, though, because Aybars and the nurses wanted so much to ease the pain that they kept offering me an epidural. By the time I was feeling abandoned by God, I would have taken one if they had let me! By that point, though, I was too far along; I had reached the point of no return.

Delivery was not nearly as bad as the labor leading up to it. By then, the pain was overshadowed by the understanding that it was almost over--thank you GOD! I just wanted to get that baby out. During the delivery, I remember pushing so hard that it felt my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. They didn't, but the blood vessels in my face did! In the middle of one push, all of a sudden, I was in a different place, at a party with a ton of people. Then, I drifted back into a room with a glaring light above me, and people calling, "Kelly! Kelly!" I responded, "Is it over?" "Not yet! Keep pushing!!!" Two more times I passed out before the nurses realized I needed coaching to remember to breathe between pushes! It is truly amazing how your body takes over to accomplish the task of bringing a new life into the world.

A short time later, I saw Aybars' eyes get wide with an intriguing look of wonder and disgust as Max's head began to crown. "Out! Get him out!" was my only thought. When his little head finally made it's appearance, my midwife asked me to sit tight and not push for a second. Ha! I was in no mood to wait. Max shot out, and she had to scramble to catch him. There are no words to describe seeing his little face or hearing his cry for the first time. When the nurses placed my naked, slimy little baby on my chest, he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. His eyes were alert and filled with wonder, and when he heard his Daddy's voice, he lunged toward him with his little bobble-head. Emotions flooded over me--love for my precious husband and new little son, gratefulness that it was over, and a tremendous sense of accomplishment. I felt like I had just been through a battle and survived!

Afterwards, I remember thinking, "Why didn't anybody tell me this is what it would be like?" The responses I've heard from other women is, "What could we have said?" I don't know exactly what I would say to another woman preparing to go through labor. Looking back, what might have helped is having another woman there to be with me. Our culture is so isolating during some of our most significant life events. If there was a way I could have known when Max would come and I could have planned to have Mom there, I would have moved heaven and earth to make that happen!