Hocus Pocus Party! (2017)

So I just have to start out­—in light of the astounding number of Hocus Pocus–themed costumes last year (probably owing to Disney’s announcement and other marketing, but still)—by saying that I started planning my Hocus Pocus party and costume theme in September of 2016, yes, more than a year before the actual implementation, so basically, I’m a trendsetter. Or psychic. Take your pick. Also, Hocus Pocus has been my favorite Halloween movie since pretty early childhood (although I don’t think I actually saw it until several years after its theatrical release). It’s just one of those infinitely quotable classics (year-round, even), and I just love everything about it.

Me with my two IRL sisters—we did a sort of long-distance group costume 

(we live in Utah, Germany, and Virginia, respectively) 

So every year, I have the idea for a party but then suffer some period of doubt—can I even pull this off? Is it really worth the effort? But then something sparks my creativity, and from there it’s basically a downward spiral. Last year, two things happened that really kicked me into gear. 1: Disney came out with their Hocus Pocus costume line. Now, I’m really more of a DIY-er most of the time, but I knew that if I could just find a purple hood, the costume would be instantly recognizable, and I could go from there, so—problem solved. I bought the Disney version of Sarah’s hood from the Halloween store but supplemented with a few pieces from my own wardrobe and finds from the thrift store. 2: I happened across one of those Facebook food videos showing a recipe for pizza-stuffed skulls, which then led me to this delightful website with pages and pages of Halloween-themed recipes (hungryhappenings.com), and suddenly the ideas were overflowing and the motivation fire was lit!

Disney'sSarah Sanderson hood and Party City witches' broom

Now, the nice thing about Hocus Pocus, especially compared to my previous year’s theme, Once Upon A Time (the TV show), is that you can go fairly broad with general witch-themed décor, and then highlight a few specific pieces and food items to make it Hocus Pocus specifically. So I got onto the Michael’s website and scoped out a few decorations to buy once it all goes on sale for 50-60% off (which, pro-tip, is about halfway through October, roundabout Columbus Day), while planning my overall look around that.  The few specific set pieces I decided to make were Winifred’s book, the black flame candle, and Billy’s (the zombie) and Emily Binx’s gravestones.

For the book, I used the same technique as I had the year before, which was to create one of those paper-bag book covers they teach you how to make in high school to cover an existing book I had (making an actual complete book is a little outside my skill range). I started with a Trader Joe’s paper sack, crumpled it up good to make it look like aged leather, and mapped out the dimensions for creating the front-of-book decorations. My first task was deciding how to create the look of sewn-together bits of skin. I thought about just making folds in the paper along the lines I wanted, or maybe painting, but it wouldn’t hold or give quite the effect I was after. So I decided to try actually sewing the folds (I did not rip the bits apart to sew together, just sewed along the folds), but I wanted something thicker than thread, to really highlight the stitching and make it look a little coarser. So I had the kind of bizarre (yet brilliant) thought—I had kind of accidentally bought unwaxed dental floss a while before, and it had been sitting unused in our bathroom cabinet, and it made the perfect twine-like medium for sewing together folds of a paper book cover. Once the sewing was finished, I painted kind of unevenly over the folds to give the illusion of age, and I think it turned out pretty dang awesome, if I do say so myself.

 

My next problem with the book was the snakes. I wanted to do something 3D, but I knew the paper cover really wouldn’t support the weight of anything like clay or, if I were anywhere near that ambitious, actual metal. So I went to Michael’s and basically just browsed the whole store looking for something that would work. I saw some black floral tape (literally walked the entire store looking for ideas) and decided that if I could wrap it around a cluster of pipe cleaners, that would give me about the right look (and, importantly, flexibility) while adding very little weight. I also initially mistook the color of the snakes as being kind of a dark brass, so in the end I was painting my beautifully wrapped black snakes with several coats of a silvery paint. For the heads of the snakes, I found some doodads in the bead section that were about the right size and shape. I wasn’t able to get the bends in the corner snakes to match the ones in the movie exactly, but in the end it was basically close enough.

Now, the eye. I actually, before I even started, scoped out this really intricate DIY blog where someone had created a much more heavy-duty replica than what I was going for, and they had like, embedded a whole, round plastic eyeball that moved around inside its plastic ball into the side of their book. Again, not really feasible for my project, but knowing that there was a book out there that had a moving eye—I wanted one! So what I ended up deciding to do was essentially rip apart and repurpose a craft googly eye. I got a hold of some decent-sized ones, and I printed off an image of an eyeball (photoshopped a little, since the only one I could find that had enough eyeball to use was purple… I really thought there would be more eyeballs on the internet). It took several tries, and in the end I had to leave a little bit more of the clear plastic part intact (for gluing purposes). I also realized after I put it together that the googly eye (which I had stuck my photoshopped iris to) wasn’t moving, because apparently the back of the googly eye is slippery, and it won’t just slip around on paper. So in the end I had to draw some light veins on the plastic googly eye back with colored pencil, but MY EYEBALL MOVES!!!

I created these *interior pages* based on lines/screenshots from the movie

So, for the black flame candle I thought, easy, just buy a black pillar candle and melt it a little. There were two problems with this idea. 1: If you watch the movie again (and pay attention), you will see that the black flame candle is not, in fact, made of black wax. It is basically printed all over with incredibly intricate designs that I decided I was just not up to replicating, and I figured that since there’s no way of actually replicating the black flame part, black wax would get the idea across just fine. 2: Pillar candles—and I knew this from working at Yankee Candle back in the day—are really not designed to melt over the sides (the way they make them now, anyway). I was kind of thinking I could burn it for a little while and tip some melted wax from the center down the sides and create some effect with that, but the pillar I bought was even hardier than I expected, and that basically got me nowhere. So I thought, I wonder what would happen if I set it upside down on my electric tart warmer (tarts are small patties of wax that give off fragrance when melted, and you put them in this dish over a warming device, like a candle or a special lightbulb). To be clear, I don’t exactly recommend this, and I very much expected it to go poorly. Then, I forgot about it for like an hour. When I remembered, it had sure melted all right, but was completely lopsided. However, this worked to my advantage, because it ended up giving me just about the half-melted look I was going for. So, inadvertent success.

The last thing I really expended serious effort on to make appear just like in the movie was the gravestones. Now, when I set out to do this, I definitely expected to carve a couple of names and cut out the shapes and call it good… Then I watched the movie again, to get an idea of what they should look like, and it turns out that the Disney propmaster was feeling extra ambitious that day, because these gravestones are some serious art. I simplified a little, mostly because I’m not that much of an artist, and also I was working with cardboard. Now, you may or may not know this, but there’s a certain kind of spray paint that creates the texture and look of gravel. It is awesome, and I have used it in several (mostly Halloween-related) projects before. The problem is that it would be virtually impossible to draw in pencil on top of the paint, and these gravestones were wayyyyy too intricate to even consider attempting freehand. I can barely write a name across a gravestone freehand (I had to add a middle initial to one of my background graves that I tried to do freehand…). Actually, I should back up. I thought it would be neat to carve (using a box cutter) the gravestones to make them look more like stone, so I drew it all in pencil, then carved on top of it, then spray painted. (There’s also a hilarious anecdote in which I broke the spray paint nozzle a little bit, brought the whole thing back inside since I was going to have to go buy a new one, ended up getting it to work 20 minutes later, and ended up getting spray paint all over my living room floor, but it was fine because my floor is some kind of wood laminate and I wiped it all up while the paint flecks were still wet…) Well, the carving effect did not translate visually in the way that I’d hoped, BUT it was not a wasted effort, because it allowed me to follow the carvings to trace in sharpie what I had previously very carefully drawn out and then carved. 

I also thought it would be neat (since I ended up with some extra spray paint) to create varying smaller gravestones to create the illusion of a full graveyard outside my sliding window doors. I only put names on the intermediate ones, named for Matthew’s brother, my sister, and I made up a first name for the Sanderson sisters’ mother (briefly mentioned in the film). I also had some extra cardboard, and I had seen some silhouettes at Michael’s of black cats, but they were too cartoony for my taste, so I drew and painted my own to just prop up in the corner for people to notice (or not—that’s the beauty of the subtle things).

Another thing that was really important to me was this idea that my sisters and I were going to dress up together and be the three Sanderson sisters (instead of just me by myself). Since they didn’t live near enough to be able to actually come to my party, I asked them to take pictures of themselves in their costumes, and then I photoshopped them into Hocus Pocus backgrounds to put up on my wall. I looked for old-looking frames at the thrift store and I found this great one with a crack in the glass (the lady at checkout was apologetic, but I was like, “All good!”). 

So I set those things all up, along with some potion bottles and other spellbook props from Michael’s, and then I covered everything on the one side of my house that wasn’t Hocus Pocus–related with cobwebs. Oh, I also found this neat lampshade drape thing that I hung from our main light fixture like a chandelier, and I bought a candelabra (that turned out to be sparklier than I realized, but you only notice up close).

The last touch for the décor was an homage to literally my favorite line in the entire movie. It’s an obscure joke that I knew people wouldn’t get, but honestly, explaining it was half the fun. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, the kids lure the witches into the pottery kiln at the high school in an attempt to burn them to death, using a French-learning tape recording. So the witches hear the voice and follow it into the kiln and then get trapped and burned. It doesn’t end up working, because the ashes come back together to form the witches again, but Winifred is mad, and with this extremely grumpy look on her face, she says, “Hello. I want my book. Bonjour. Je veux mon livre.” And it’s just one of those smart jokes that you have to be paying attention to but that is actually completely hilarious. So I borrowed a similar, repetition-based French CD (sorry, it’s no longer the 90s…) and set it up to play (quietly) in my bathroom throughout the party, with a sign outside the bathroom door saying “WARNING: Do not operate kiln without an instructor present” (mimicking the one in the movie).  And I totally enjoyed and didn’t mind at all explaining the joke.

You can sort of see my laptop in there under the sink (I also don't actually still own a CD player...)

So, food. Obviously, dead man’s toes had to be on the menu—I figured these could easily be made out of pigs in a blanket—and so did the witches’ life potion (Sprite mixed with lime sherbet gives that green-glowy, frothy look) but I had to go to the movie (and the internet) for more ideas. In the movie, the life potion ingredients include, in addition to dead man’s toe, “oil of boil” and “newt’s saliva”—I really wanted to find a way to incorporate those, but I didn’t want to make them their own drink, and what else is liquid enough to be that? Condiments, that’s what. It just came to me, eventually. 

Also pictured: pizza skulls and candelabra mentioned earlier

The real winners were the ideas I found on that HungryHappenings website. I mentioned before that the great thing about Hocus Pocus is that general witch-y things work well with the theme, and I found some great ones. The pizza-stuffed skulls, of course—I ordered the pan to make them as soon as I saw it, along with a silicone mold for my other great recipe find, which was the black chocolate-caramel spiders. In fact, Sarah eats a spider out of someone’s garden in the middle of the movie (“What a pretty spider!”), so—perfect!!

The pizza skulls didn’t go quite as planned… I cheated a little on the dough, because the recipe calls for a TON of it, so they ended up a little patched together, and some of them had sauce leaking out the sides. Also, my pan wasn’t quite the same size (I think the skulls were a little smaller since it was a 6 instead of a 4 like on the website), so it was hard to proportion the ingredients, and I felt like it was a lot of crust. I also meant to do an imitation Domino’s herb crust, but I ran out of time. But they sure looked awesome!!! And that’s really the important thing. I prepared them on the day of the party. I started about 3 hours ahead of time, which almost wasn’t even enough because I had to do them in two batches and I didn’t realize when I initially skimmed the recipe that they have to be chilled for half an hour before baking, but it worked out.

The skull pan (see recipe for more details)

The spiders were a little trickier, because it turns out that the candy company no longer makes the black caramel. I thought about just trying to mix the black chocolate with the regular caramel and hope it just turned out a really dark brown, but then I found this black food coloring paste at Walmart and decided to get some, just in case. This was the correct decision. I wasn’t sure how well it would integrate with the caramel, but it worked like a charm, and the “black” chocolate turned like, light purple when it was melted, so I would have ended up with super funky-looking spiders without the paste. I also didn’t follow the directions quite precisely enough (I think I stirred too fast toward the end), so the ball of caramel-chocolate ended up greasy, but the website had directions on how to fix that. The molding part was also a little tricky to figure out (basically I ended up not being able to use my fingers at all because it warmed up the chocolate too much, so I ended up using a spoon to fill the molds), but once I got the hang of it, I ended up with some pretty sick chocolate caramel spiders, if I do say so myself! I stuck them in the freezer and left them there till about an hour or two before the party, so they could thaw, but not too much.

I also had my own idea (not from the website) to do red velvet cake balls that looked like eyeballs. I had some insane notion of trying to drip red food-coloring onto the warm white-chocolate shell and then drawing irises with blue/green and black food coloring, but (fortunately), on my last trip to Michael’s I ran across some sugar cupcake decorations that looked like eyeballs and decided to just press them into the top of my cooling cake balls instead. Thank goodness, because not only would my initial idea have been probably unworkable in and of itself, it turns out I’m kind of terrible at making cake balls, haha. I had done them the year before, so I rigged up my homemade *double boiler* (pan of boiling water with a heat-safe bowl sitting on top) and starting melting the chocolate, but it was not working, and I basically ruined almost an entire bag of white chocolate chips because my chocolate was seizing up. The dipping part hadn’t gone that well the previous year, so I thought if I refrigerated the inside part overnight, that would help, but it also did not. I finally googled how to melt chocolate and realized that I had too much water in my pan (it was hitting the bottom of the bowl), so I started over (good thing I’d bought extra white chocolate…) and managed to at least get my cake balls covered in chocolate. They still looked a mess, and the sugar eyeballs ended up saving the day on this one (also the fact that the bits of red velvet in the white-chocolate coating looks more or less like veins helped). In the end they turned out ok, but I will never try to make cake balls again… (that’s probably not true, but I will hate it). Finally, I had also found this recipe for Winifred's book-shaped s'mores pops that were pretty fun. 

   

Sarah also mentions her “lucky rat tail” when they first come back from the dead, and I was hoping to be a little more creative than black licorice, but in the end, that’s what I used. I also went with apple cider for my second drink, since Allison’s parents’ party is serving that. And I knew I wanted to incorporate Halloween candy—at first I thought “Dani’s Halloween Candy,” but then I realized that “Jay and Ernie (Ice)’s Stash” was a better way to go. I wasn’t sure if the candy would get overlooked among all the other food offerings (and I was hoping not to get stuck with it all, tbh), but it was actually very popular, and mostly consumed by the end of the night.

For the party itself, the only place I could find the Hocus Pocus music to play for background music was YouTube, and the playlist I used has actually since been taken down, but I found mostly instrumental stuff and added a video of “I Put A Spell On You” (couldn’t find an audio version without the dialogue, so went with video) and found an audio of Sarah’s singing “Come Little Children,” as well. For a game, we played Psychiatrist, except with a spell cast over the players instead of a psychosis. Actually, the best part about it was that we sent people into the bathroom to wait while we came up with a *spell,* which meant they all heard my French tape and got to appreciate the joke. :D Our guests were Mario and Luigi (and Toad), Wendy and Peter Pan (and baby), Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, Superman, a butterfly, Chewbacca, and a soccer player (who was supposed to be Darth Vader but couldn’t find his jacket). It was so much fun, both to plan and to spend time with friends!

My husband as Billy the zombie: pirate jacket from previous year's costume, a women's blouse that I tore up and styled a little, an 80s mullet wig that I pulled into a messy ponytail, and a bunch of makeup (including zipper lips)

Birth Story

The story really begins at my 37-week appointment (although I was actually 37 weeks and 6 days at that point), when my doctor told me I was 2 cm dilated, which I wasn't really expecting at that point, and I also lost my mucus plug over the course of the next day. I hurriedly (and repeatedly) googled whether or not that meant I was definitely going into labor within the next 24 hours, and of course, the answer was "maybe, maybe not." Pretty much everything about pregnancy at that stage means both something and nothing. I was a little freaked, because I felt like there was just so much I wanted to get done still before baby came, and I spent the next two weeks in like, contingency planning mode but also hoping that it wouldn't be needed... I'm pretty sure I was the only 40-weeks-pregnant lady trying to encourage her baby to stay on the inside as long as possible.

Before we went to bed on Tuesday (August 7), I said to Matthew, "This is all about to go exactly as planned or horribly awry..." We had scheduled an induction for Thursday morning (August 9), so we were almost there but still had one kind of big day to get through. What had been the plan for Wednesday (August 8) was that my mom would fly in early in the morning, Matthew would start his trial (which would begin on Wednesday and then pause Thursday-Friday and resume on Monday, hence the induction Thursday) but still be able to leave if I went into labor so that he could be there at the hospital with me. Well, my mom's flight was delayed, which meant she now wouldn't be arriving until Wednesday evening, and Matthew's trial took a turn that meant he really wouldn't be able to leave that day even if I did go into labor. So if Baby could hold off until at least the end of Wednesday, we were golden, otherwise, we were kind of screwed.

Well, I made it to the end of Wednesday. My mom's flight ended up getting delayed twice more, and Matthew had tried to get me to stay home and go to bed early, but I figured a couple hours of lost sleep wouldn't kill me at this point, and I should probably greet my mom. So we went to pick her up a little after midnight, and on the way to the airport, I started having contractions. I'd been awoken by small cramps a few times in the night in those weeks previous, and my strategy had been to just kind of pretend I didn't think they were what I thought they might be and ignore it, which seemed to work. As we were driving, I kept quiet and didn't say anything to Matthew at first, but we were in the clear, so if mind over matter has any bearing in these matters, I just kind of let it happen this time. 

I called my OB when we got home, and she told me I could either just wait and go in for my scheduled induction time the next morning, or if the contractions got so bad I couldn't talk through them, I could go in to be admitted through triage. The pain really wasn't too bad yet, so I tried to go to bed and see if I could sleep through some of it. I could not. I decided to get up and take what was probably my last opportunity to eat something (they told me I could have breakfast before my induction, so I figured the same rules applied here). I downloaded a contraction-timer app, which told me my contractions were about 1:30 to 3:00 minutes apart and 20 to 45 seconds, for which the app advised "Get Ready!" (but not "Go to the Hospital" just yet). My mom kept telling me that seemed really close together, and while I didn't want to totally jump the gun and get sent back home, I also was confused by the timing and by about 3 a.m., I figured we were close enough, so I woke Matthew up, and we got all our stuff together to drive to the hospital. Again, my pain level wasn't totally unmanageable yet, although increasingly uncomfortable, and I wonder if I hadn't been scheduled for the induction, they might have actually turned me away at the point I showed up at.

Triage took waaaayyyyy longer than I was expecting, though. Maybe because they were trying to decided whether to even admit me, but while I was in the room waiting, the pain started really amping up, plus I started getting more and more grumpy about the fact that not only was I in what was now a significant level of pain, but I also hadn't had any sleep that night (should have listened to my husband and gone to bed when I had the chance...). In fact—I've always been very strongly pro-epidural—but if I weren't, I think just the desire for sleep would have driven me to it at that point. I also felt like I could have handled the increase in pain if the contractions were, say, 10 minutes apart, but as it was, every 4 or so contractions I would finally get a long enough break that I would realize I kind of felt ok, and then immediately another wave would begin. 

We finally were admitted around 4:30 (my mom had also been relegated to the waiting room this whole time, but then, it was a place she would be getting to know pretty well over the next several hours...), and they took me up to a room. When they wheeled me in, I said to Matthew, not entirely without apprehension (I was still a little nervous about this whole becoming-a-mom thing), "Well, this is where our baby will be born." (I think maybe I jinxed it...) I had been asking for the epidural since we'd been in triage, but the nurse had to get some blood work or something first, and then another nurse came in and said there was a line for the anesthesiologist, so we'd better put in the order asap. It was during this time that I discovered that popsicles were a pretty effective tool for managing my pain—I'd remembered from the hospital tour that we were allowed popsicles, and popsicles had been one of the closest things to a craving that I'd had in the last few weeks of pregnancy, so I requested one, and it was amazing how having that to suck on helped me focus away from the pain. The irony is that I only figured that out about 2 contractions before the anesthesiologist arrived... 

The anesthesiologist was a bit of a hard nose. One of the first things she said when she came in was, "You can't have a popsicle right now." She kind of chastised the nurse for letting me have anything to eat within half an hour of the epidural procedure but thankfully didn't push it (i.e., make me wait). She then noticed my mom with her phone out (on FaceTime with my sister) and said, "You can't film this." Just everything she said was very abrupt and kind of accusatory. Only one person is allowed in the room for the procedure, so my mom had to step out. At first, she just went beyond the curtain in front of the door, but I guess the anesthesiologist heard her shuffling around outside it, so she made the nurse go and close the door to I guess keep my mom out or whatever. Anyway, in the end I got my drugs, so that worked out. I was a little nervous about the procedure itself, since I'd heard the actual injection can be painful, but I just kept telling myself it had to be better (or at least couldn't be worse) than the contractions, and once it was done, all the pain would stop. And I was right. I promptly rolled over and went to sleep. I sleep on my side, and apparently gravity has a legitimate effect on the epidural anesthesia, so what this meant is that over the course of my 2-hour nap (we'll get back to the timeline in a minute), my left leg went completely numb, and I was still feeling contractions a little bit on my right side, which I was somewhat put out about (once I switched sides, though, it all went away).

I was all set to settle in for a full day of labor, knowing that first-time moms can take a long time (and, I think, kind of forgetting to count the first few hours before we got to the hospital). I had brought a book, I figured I'd sleep for a few hours... Well, at 7:30 they woke me up because my doctor was in for the induction—she knew I'd gone into labor, but since it was already on the calendar, still came in to see how I was progressing. The (outgoing at this point) night nurse checked my cervix and got this kind of concerned look on her face. She said, "I think you're still a 4 [what I had been when I was admitted]... I'm going to go find someone with a little more experience." We really didn't think anything of it at the time—she did seem kind of young. So the day nurse came in for the shift change, followed by Dr. Oh. She wasn't the doctor we'd mostly been seeing at our practice, but she was the one on hospital duty on Thursdays, which was the only day we could induce between Matthew's trial (Monday-Wednesday) and hospital policy (they won't induce Friday-Sunday). Dr. Oh told us that I hadn't made much progress since I'd been admitted, so she was going to stick with the original induction plan and administer pitocin. Personally, I thought this seemed a little unnecessary, but I'm not really one to insist against medical advice, so I agreed. She then went to check my cervix as well, got the same puzzled look, and said, "Where's the head? ... Did it, is it further up in there or something? We'd better get a sonogram here just to check."

Well, sure enough, the sonogram showed that the head was nowhere near the birth canal. My baby was breech, and "We don't do vaginal breech deliveries." Now, let's pause here, for a list of things I've worried about going wrong over the course of this pregnancy: miscarriage, premature delivery, birth defect/disability in the baby, stillbirth, baby coming out a boy because the 20-week ultrasound was somehow wrong, being that one incredibly rare statistic of maternal death or near-death from post-birth complications. Not on that list: C-section. Truly. It was like the one thing I felt reasonably confident about not having to deal with. I didn't exactly skip the C-section paragraphs in all the pregnancy app articles I read about labor and delivery, but I read it from the perspective of like, something interesting that happens to other people—which I suppose is where it got me. God does like surprises...

Well, as I said, I'm not exactly one to argue with my doctor, but I'd read enough about unnecessary C-sections that I at least wanted to ask a few questions. So I asked if there was any chance Baby would turn on her own if I continued to labor, and she basically said there was no chance of that. I asked her how many C-sections she'd performed and she said thousands. So I asked Matthew for a blessing while the doctor stepped out, and we (Matthew, Mom, and I) decided we felt ok about it. The concept was a little frightening to me, but mostly because I was already concerned about postpartum recovery in general, and C-section recovery is supposed to be even harder. The doctor and nurses did a good job of staying calm in the moment. It's only looking back that I can kind of pick out some of the signs of how freaked out they were. Dr. Oh couldn't figure out how we'd gotten to this point with a breech baby in the first place. "Did she just flip this last week? Maybe she just has a really firm butt and it felt like a head..." It also all started to move very quickly at this point. Again, I had kind of settled in for like an afternoon or evening birth, and I kind of still thought/hoped that it would take a while to get me into surgery, but within about an hour they told me they had a room and we were going for this thing. 

I was already relatively well-prepped, since I'd had the epidural and all they needed to do was change the anesthesia going into it. We had a different anesthesiologist this time, and he was much more friendly. My poor mom was once again banned, though—I'd also remembered from the hospital tour that only one other person would be allowed in the OR for a C-section, but I think she was disappointed to miss the birth. Matthew was escorted away to get fitted with scrubs, and they wheeled me in for prep. It was kind of scary. I mean, there are a lot of emotions that come with needing a C-section—primarily, I would say, disappointment and apprehension, if not fear—and I'd had very little time to process it. The OR ceiling felt really close, and it was all so much brighter than I'd pictured, and having surgery while you're awake is nerve-wracking because you just think, What if the anesthesia doesn't work and I feel everything?? One thing that actually helped me calm my mental state a little in that regard was the previous experience of having had LASIK (another waking surgery). I reminded myself that everything had gone just fine with that—in fact, I actually hadn't had the anesthesia done properly, and it was still fine. 

Every person in that room (and there were a lot) came up to my head and introduced themselves. I remember finding it a little much that every single one of them told me their name and role. I guess I just didn't feel the need to personally greet each of the five NICU nurses or whatever when I was being strapped to an operating table. They lay your arms out to each side and put some kind of weighted blanket on top of them, and then there's a bar that swings out above your chest, where the drape then hangs. I discovered, rather unpleasantly, that I actually could see the doctor's hands in the reflection of the lights overhead. Since I had no particular desire to witness the removal and replacement of several of my vital organs, I basically turned my head all the way to the side so that my eyes wouldn't inadvertently stray to something I couldn't unsee... By this time, Matthew had arrived. One of the myriad doctor/nurse people had joked with me earlier that they'd seen him taking selfies outside the OR (it turned out he was actually taking a picture of the entrance to the OR, since he knew I like to document things, lol). 

They began the surgery, and Matthew just put his head down close to mine and we shared a pretty intimate few minutes talking about the fact that we were about to be parents (he later told me he was also avoiding watching the procedure, although he did get a glimpse of my intestines). The anesthesia worked just fine (they also have the anesthesiologist stand right by your head just in case), and I could feel a slight tugging sensation throughout most of it. When it came time to pull the baby out, they told me, "Ok, you're going to feel some pressure up through your chest and into your shoulders." Boy, did I. I felt it mostly in my shoulders and clavicle, and it was a little bit painful... and then, ostensibly, Baby was out, but she was completely silent. I'm like, waiting to hear a cry (maybe I've seen too many movies) Matthew said, "There's the baby!" And the doctor, "It's a little girl!" (rush of relief, not gonna lie...), and I'm thinking, Where is this baby?? but no way am I looking anywhere near the top of that drape because I really didn't trust my eyes not to stray to that reflection I definitely did not want to see... 

Well, they took her over to the weigh station with the NICU nurses (standard procedure for C-sections, apparently), and then I could hear a little cry. The first thing I heard the nurses say was, "Oh, this is not recent..." referring to the breech position. Apparently they could tell from abrasions on her legss and a big purple bruise on her ear that she'd been breech for several weeks, at least (oops, guess it was her bum the doctors thought was her head after all). At this point, Matthew went over to see her and take some pictures. When we did the hospital tour, they mentioned something about the husband being able to cut the umbilical cord, and Matthew gave me this look like, Why would anyone ever want to do that?Well, in a C-section, he's obviously not allowed on the operating side anyway, but from what I could see over at the weigh station, they had left a good bit of the cord attached, and Matthew was gamely taking the scissors and cutting it off where the nurse showed him to, which I found kind of amusing. Once they had her cleaned and weighed, they brought her over to do skin-to-skin with me... and placed her directly on top of my throat. Now, I don't know about you, but when I imagined that first moment of skin-to-skin, it did not involve having my esophagus half crushed by 8 pounds of baby. I mean, I guess there's not a lot of room on that side of the drape, but it kind of ruined the moment, especially because I very quickly had to say, "Guys, I don't feel very good..." They managed to get the baby off before I turned my head to the side and heaved. 

I spent the rest of my time in the OR throwing up nothing (I guess this is why they don't let you eat), spitting out the saliva that kept collecting due to the heaving, and.. burping. Incessantly. It was so weird, and very confusing, not to mention unpleasant. I guess air gets into your stomach from being all opened up or something. When they finally finished putting me back together, I was wheeled into the OR recovery room (my mom still wasn't allowed in here either. When I got there, Matthew had his shirt off and the baby skin-to-skin. He explained to me later that she'd had to have meconium pumped from her stomach and her oxygenation levels were low, so she needed the contact. I think it was a sweet bonding experience for them, although as my recovery dragged on, I started to get a little concerned about my lack of interaction with Baby. First, they had to cut off the anesthesia and wait for it to wear off. It's kind of a weird sensation to be asked, "Can you move your feet?" and have the answer be legitimately no. Then they also start giving you pain medication, and the stronger it is, the more likely you are to be drowsy from it. So I got my first dose, and after a few minutes, the pain was worse, not better (this seemed strange at the time, but looking back, I realize it must have been the anesthesia wearing off). So the nurse said she had something stronger she could give me, but it would make me very sleepy. I had two doses, but the pain kept escalating, until I felt like it was on par with the contractions from earlier. So she said, "Well, I can give you one more, but I'll have to put you on oxygen, because when we give people this much, they sometimes stop breathing..." #awesome

So with the third dose, complete with oxygen tube, my pain level finally started to decrease instead of increase, although it still hovered somewhere around a 5 or a 6. She told me they wanted me down to a 3, ideally, before sending me up to the postpartum unit. By this time, I knew it had been a couple hours, and I was really starting to get concerned about starting breastfeeding. My goal was not to use formula (at least, not right from the outset) if we didn't have to, but I also don't want my child to starve. When I asked about it, my nurse said, "Absolutely not" in my drugged out state and assured me that newborn infants can go about 6 hours from birth before they really need to feed. Well, she left the room, and another nurse came in for the baby (mom and baby have separate nurses in the recovery room) and said, "Hey! Would you like to try breastfeeding?" I was a little concerned that the other nurse would come back and chastise me for going against her directions, but Baby's nurse got a bit scornful at this concern and said that she was Baby's nurse, and there was no reason I couldn't breastfeed right then and there, as long as I wasn't in the room alone with Baby, and she set me right up.

This was my first real contact with Baby outside the womb, and I wish I could say it was magical, but I was seriously so drugged. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I was glad I could at least start feeding my baby. She had so much hair. Is it terrible of me to confess I was kind of hoping for a small baby with an unremarkable amount of hair? Haha. But honestly, I was a little flabbergasted trying to figure out where in the world this child had come from, since neither Matthew nor I was born with so much or such dark hair... She definitely gets the weight and height from her dad though. Her little legs and arms and fingers and feet were all so long!! Matthew was also born by C-section (being a twin), so they have that in common, as well. And my mom (later in the day) kept insisting she looks exactly like my sister Rebecca (I joked, "It's a good thing she came out of my uterus then, or there might be questions...") Another remarkable thing was how alert Baby was. I'd read varying opinions on whether the drugs from a C-section or even just the regular epidural can make a baby sluggish at first, but they seemed to have no effect on our little one. Right from the outset, she was wide awake and looking around at everything. We also confirmed that we wanted to name her Merlene, after my grandmother who passed away before I was born, Rose, which really was just a name Matthew liked, but it also happens to be my middle name, after a great-grandmother on my mom's side.

Well, it wasn't too much longer before they decided that my 5 or 6 pain level was close enough and the regular postpartum recovery unit could give me more drugs (not the strong stuff) to keep getting that under control, so they wheeled us all up to the 6th floor. I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a drugged haze, which was miserable, especially because I was dying to call my dad (especially, since Merlene was his mother) and the rest of the family to introduce our baby. But I couldn't keep anything down (I literally threw up like, 2 cups of just water at one point), and I could still barely keep my eyes open. I maybe should have known better than to take Percocet, since that kind of stuff always makes me sick, and in combination with the other stuff, it was really just a losing battle. It was probably (barely) worth it, to manage the pain on that first day, but I refused more of it when they offered, and I pretty much have just been living on Tylenol and ibuprofen since...

In the end, although it wasn't what we had planned or wanted, I definitely feel like a lot of things came together exactly the way they needed to for us to get our little Merlene here safely. If I hadn't been scheduled for the induction, the doctor might not have come until it was too late (to avoid a complete emergency situation). We were blessed that the hospital nurses recognized that something wasn't right and we were able to determine that before I'd progressed too far into labor. As details emerged about her position in the womb (bum down, folded in half with her feet up on either side of her head), it became clear that a vaginal delivery (attempt) would have been disastrous. I think it was even a blessing that I went into labor just long enough before the induction to have avoided an unnecessary administration of pitocin and to be already prepped with the epidural so that the process could move as quickly as needed once the situation unfolded. I'm grateful for the medical technology that allowed me to deliver this baby safely and with relatively low risk, despite the unfavorable circumstances, and for good doctors and nurses who were able to make the right calls and perform the necessary procedures properly.

Germany

So, despite the fact that Germany is my home base here on this trip, it's not exactly one of my travel destinations, but we've done a few fun things I thought I'd mention. Aaron and Rebecca live in Dusseldorf, which is in the northwest corner of Germany, about equidistant from Brussels and Amsterdam, and nowhere near just about any other major German city, haha. It's not really a tourist destination, but they have a fun little canal running through the center of town, and it sits right on the Rhine River, so there's also a nice waterfront. I spent my first few days here mostly just chillin and working through jet lag. We got out to run errands a few days, and one of the days Becka took me down to the canal and "altstadt" (old town), where we sat out by the river and had lunch (KFC, haha).

When we got back from Spain, Aaron had the day off work because of a bank holiday, which was excellent, so the four of us went downtown again. We found the most adorable little spot, it's a bar, I guess, but it's done up like a beach, with sand under the tables and potted palm trees all around, and they serve virgin margaritas, so we each got one, and it was absolutely delightful. The weather is starting to get warmer here, and it was a lovely day. Also, one of my favorite surprising things about Germany—they have rhododendrons here! I fell in love with rhodies on my mission, and they only grow in two places in the United States because they require a very specific soil pH level or something. But it's the perfect time of year and they're all in bloom!! Not as much color variety as in Washington, but they make me so happy.

On Saturday, Matthew and I went out to Lippstadt, about an hour and a half northeast of Dusseldorf, to visit with his friends the Herbers. The Kennedys hosted Lea Herber as a foreign exchange student, and Matthew had been to visit her family when he was in Europe before, so since they were not too far away (you'd be surprised how far apart many things are in Germany...), he wanted to get out to see them again. Only the parents, Thomas and Barbara, were at home this weekend. The children are all off at school now. But they gave us a little walking tour around Lippstadt. There's a ruin of a 900-ish-year-old church that used to be a monastery; it was torn apart for the stone after the monastery fell out of use, but the main shell is still standing and I guess they have concerts there now. In the main part of town, there was a farmer's market, and there's also another big church, but this one is still in use. Apparently it's been used as both an Evangelical and Catholic cathedral over time, so the style is somewhat mixed. And the town square has the most charming little fountain, with a whole bunch of statues that have joints you can move, and they're all on platforms that spin, almost like one of those German clocks, but made of stone. The Herbers also took us to this delightful little ice cream parlor, where they serve ice cream in the shape of spaghetti! It was so weird! But delicious. They also do pizzas made of ice cream. We finished up walking along the river—apparently Lippstadt is known as the Venice of Westphalia, because there are several offshoots and canals around the main river. Also, they have the most beautiful backyard. They created a little pond, and they keep fish and bees and birds—canaries that all look like various kinds of creamsicle—and it's just this little microcosm sitting behind their house, but Matthew and I were both inspired by it.

After that, we spent some time in a parking lot with Matthew re-teaching me stick shift driving... I drove home part of the way back to Dusseldorf, but we switched when we had to stop for gas. I had to learn it then, though, because Becka's friends were all getting together that night  for a party to watch Eurovision (apparently a yearly international singing contest?) at a place about 20 minutes from Becka's house, and I was our ride, haha (Matthew and Aaron were busy with their weekly D&D, which is usually Saturday afternoon for Matthew and I, but evening in Germany). I actually made it the whole way without stalling once (woohoo!!), and the party was really fun. It was neat to meet all Rebecca's friends, they have a pretty great group here in the ward, and there were several who I had mutual friends/acquaintances with, so that was neat. Also, I won both Eurovision bingo (by being the first to get a bingo) and the "sweepstakes" (we all drew countries out of a hat, and the winner of the game was the person whose country they had drawn won the contest—mine was Israel, lol).

And now we're back to home base again, after our latest adventure. We got in this morning on the overnight train from Munich—I'm not sure if this last one was better or if I just started getting used to the hard mattresses, but I felt like I slept a little better. We were on the top bunk again (see Austria), but this one had a net spread across the opening, so it made me feel better about not falling. Also, we somehow found ourselves in the middle of some kind of bachelor party—I remembered later that it was Friday night (time's been a little difficult to keep track of, haha), so I guess it makes sense. They weren't entirely raucous though—they were congregated in the halls until after I went to sleep, but they were relatively quiet, so it worked out.

I do have one last funny story to share, although it's possible you simply had to be there. Europe has this problem where coins are much more difficult to acquire proportional to their necessity in the general exchange of currency. There are no 1 euro notes, only 1 and 2 euro coins, and there are so many machines that will only take coins, but the ATMs only give bills, which has been frustrating—as a traveler, at least—on more than one occasion. Rebecca has a washing machine in her kitchen, but the dryer is in the basement and only takes 1 euro coins (not 2 euro, very specific). So we went to the grocery store today to acquire some coins so that I can do some laundry before going home. Becka had a stack of bottles to return—there's a machine at the store that spits out a receipt that you can redeem from the cashier—but because we specifically needed 1 euro coins, she did them in batches. After getting the receipt from the first batch, she sent me up to redeem the receipt while she finished up the rest. So I went and stood in line, and when I got to the front, the lady gabbled at me in German, which I understood none of, but then she gestured at the groceries that were up next on her till (from the person behind me), and I understood that she wanted to know if the stuff was mine, but no, I was just redeeming my bottle receipt. So by this time, Becka had made it to the back of the line with her other two receipts, so I joined her. And then we got all the way almost to the front when she suddenly realized she'd forgotten she needed to actually buy one thing, so she gave me one of the receipts and dashed back into the store. And I got up to the front and felt like a revolving door comedy sketch, just like, "Hello, it's me again!" And the lady looked up and did this massive double take—which Rebecca saw just as she was getting back in line again—and the whole not speaking English (or German, in my case) thing just made it that much funnier. So I went to rejoin Becka in the back of the line (again), and we just dissolved laughing and could barely get a hold of ourselves enough to conduct the third transaction. I was tempted to go up with the third one and pretend I wasn't with Rebecca after all, but I couldn't have kept a straight face, haha. So, you know, we're just up to our usual sister shenanigans here in Germany. As much as she drives me crazy sometimes, I'm going to miss this girl...

Neuschwanstein

The last day of our trip, we came back to Germany to visit Neuschwanstein Castle. We took another overnight train, and this one went worse for Becka, slightly better for me—at least we were on the bottom bunk this time, and I also learned from experience to take a nap on the subsequent bus ride from Munich, where our train terminated. 

I tried to learn from my mistake with the Alhambra and book tickets ahead of time, but the reservation I made on Monday apparently never went through, which was kind of annoying, but fortunately, it’s not top tourist season yet, and I guess even then they don’t tend to run out till about noon. Our bus arrived at 10:40, so we were in good shape to just get in the regular line and buy tickets for the 12:35 tour. We spent probably more time dawdling than we should have, because we suddenly realized as we were ready to go up that the carriage ride we’d been planning on might not get us to the castle on time—there was a long line, and no indication of how long the ride takes. So we decided to take the bus, which was somewhat less fun, but it got us there on time.

I personally thought the castle is (even) prettier up close/in person than the faraway view you usually get in pictures. They let tours in every 5 minutes, and you have to wait for your group number to be called, but once it is, everyone storms the gate, haha. The inside of the castle was different than I expected—I think I honestly was expecting it to look like the interior they show in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... but apparently only 30% of the rooms were ever finished, since King Ludwig died pretty young. The man definitely had an unrivaled passion for luxury, as apparent by the rooms he did finish. The throne room is decked out all in gold with a huge crown-shaped chandelier that I kind of got a kick out of, and a huge mosaic floor. The walls of the rooms are all covered in paintings of scenes from German folklore, and the wood carving on all the furniture is so intricate. He had a slew of modern amenities that you don’t even realize were even available in the 19th century, a room made into a synthetic cave complete with fabricated lightning and dripping water, and a large ballroom where he would simply sit and imagine what it would be like to live in medieval times (I believe he was known as painfully shy). Every inch of the rooms was painted some bright color. It was waaaay over the top, but actually not in like a gaudy way. My favorite part was the crown-shaped chandeliers—there were more smaller ones in the ballroom. Our tour guide was pretty fun, too. He was very soft-spoken, but still full of character. He ended the tour with, "Me? I think he [Ludwig] was a little bit special" (in his soft German accent, lol).

Just as we were about to leave the castle, it started pouring down rain. Since it had been sunny all morning and seemed similar to the storm in Granada, I figured we could wait it out, so we just hung out in the tunnel at the exit for about half an hour. Finally I agreed that maybe the storm wouldn’t be letting up soon and agreed to let Becka run back to get our stuff (they make you leave backpacks in lockers but it’s all the way at the other end of the castle, and there’s no indoor way to get back there...). By the time she got back, though, our ponchos has worked their magic and it was basically done raining. So we hiked up to the bridge that overlooks the ravine and gives a spectacular view of the castle. Rebecca was not convinced it was safe, and I have to admit, the wood did give a little under all the feet and it was a little nerve-wracking, but it is reinforced by steel, and hundreds of people walk across and stand on it every day, so I persuaded her to come out and take a picture with me. 

It started raining a little as we were heading back down, so we decided to have an early dinner at the restaurant up near the castle. It was a cute little place where the waitresses all wear traditional Bavarian outfits, and I had some kind of pork and noodle concoction with mushroom sauce (no, it was not stroganoff). Our dinner outlasted the rain, and we wanted to take the horse carriages down since we’d missed them on the way up. 

There was a bit of a line, and also people weren’t really observing it anyway, but it worked out for us because we ended up with  an awesome driver. He had a great little Bavarian hat, and we sat up front and Becka made instant best friends with him. He told a bunch of jokes and also a lot of information about the horses and the whole carriage business. The rain hood was up on the carriage, so I couldn’t tell if there was any kind of view of the castle from the trail, which would have been neat on the way up, but it didn’t really seem like it anyway. 

After that we had about an hour and a half to kill, so we went and sat out by the lake, which is very beautiful, surrounded by mountains and trees on almost all sides. Very picturesque.

And that’s it! We conquered Europe!